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ESL forum >
Message board > Language is a set of rules
Language is a set of rules
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HARIM
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Language is a set of rules
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Wall05.
Do you have any arguments or you are just talking for the sake of talking.
How dare you say"If it sounds incorrect to natives then it is incorrect"
Lannguage isn�t a matter of taste.It�s a set of rules that even some natives should learn before they become teachers.There are some non native speakers who are better than me at my mother tongue.
eng789.
Thanks for your good manners.
Nice weekend |
6 Feb 2009
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BRAHIM S
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I am definitely with you there
In my dissertation I conducted experiments (some of which are grammatical judgments based on intuitions - the sort of things discussed here) on learners of English, and each time I had a control group of natives, and their performances are far from being perfect....said otherwise native do make mistakes
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6 Feb 2009
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eng789
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harim are you talking to me. Your comment if I can understand what you are trying to say sounds quite nasty.
The reason I brought up the subject was in order to make sure I was being fair with my students and accept more than one answer if the exercise wasn�t clear enough.
I agree that native speakers are sometimes a bit loose in following the rules so sometimes they need to double check them and that is what I did hear.
But, I promise you that I catch zillions of mistakes all the time because I am a native speaker.
I teach my pupils to follow the rules I taught them and mark them accordingly but when I think there might be another option I check it out.
My friend those who live in glass houses shouldn�t throw stones. |
6 Feb 2009
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mariamit
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Good point Harim. Joseph Conrad who wrote the masterpiece Heart of Darkness was not a native speaker. If you visit South London or parts of the US you�ll see that there are native speakers who don�t speak properly. Language has rules and anyone can make mistakes |
6 Feb 2009
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Zora
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I promised not to get into these discussions but this one annoys me to no end:
I�d like to say that my experience is this - I am questioned by colleagues more than believed... simply because I am
a native speaker - in fact, I have had people say to students in front of me "that I am a native and therefore, I don�t know what I am talking about" (not a nice little discussion ensued afterwards about ridiculing others in front of students!) - it does not matter that I am a certified
translator and that I have been teaching English for fifteen years...
I personally find this frustrating and Wall05 is quite correct
- sometimes... natives usually - and I say usually (because not everybody
is cultured or well-spoken) - do know what is correct, although the why
escapes them..
Goodness knows, I have been in Spain (off and on now) for over 18 years - and I would never ever think to question a colleague
if something is right or not in Spanish! It is not my first language
even though I went to school here and consider myself quite proficient
in the language.
Also, Eng789 did NOT blame her students but questioned her colleagues
criteria - and as it turns out she was right (or closer to being
correct with her answer) than they were...
I really believe that we should be careful about saying such things to others here on the board... Obviously, it offends... and quite truthfully, we natives are extremely generous... believe me.. we could be nitpicking about a lot of things, correcting constantly, etc... and we don�t. So I honestly, don�t think others should be throwing the proverbial stone... as Eng789 pointed out!
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6 Feb 2009
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HARIM
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Zora
You are right.Your insults prove how generous you are.
First,you don�t know what sort of house I live in.
Second,flags and names never tell whether we are natives or not.
last but not least,and as many members did before me,I�ll leave this page to you and to generous people like you. |
6 Feb 2009
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Ivona
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You are all being very strict about language in general. If you didn�t notice, all languages are very alive and are constantly developing and changing. They don�t care about the rules which we are trying to cling on to so much.
Then, what are the standards of �proper language�?? How do you decide what�s proper or what isn�t? Just because someone decided to take London�s dialect, for example, as a standard does not prove it is the proper one. It�s all relative.
If the native speakers said that a sentence/phrase didn�t sound right to them, we should trust them because they have the best feel of the language. Just like i do of mine and you of yours.
Different dialects should be considered a treasure and not sth to be frowned upon. They are the landmark of an area and the people living there. I would never give up my southern serbian dialect, although the northerners mock the way we speak and consider us �illiterate� (which is a terrible prejudice)
We should all keep in mind that the aim of teaching/learning languages is to communicate and in order to do that we should make up sentences that would be correct enough so as not to hinder meaning. We shouldn�t nitpick that much.
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6 Feb 2009
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joebcn
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Obviously non native speakers are more likely to make mistakes, specially when it has to do with every day language, expressions, slang and so on, but we can be as good as native speakers at grammar ,for example.
I myself have to teach Catalan (my mother tongue), Spanish and English at the same time and I am often doubtful about many many language matters
so please  try not to throw any more daggers at colleagues and PLEASE correct our mistakes (at least mine) I�ll be grateful!!!! Have a nice weekend all of you!!!
Joe |
6 Feb 2009
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trelly
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Well well is the soap opera starting again? I�m not a native speaker of English but I know many native English speakers: some of them know why things are the way they are, others not, because they don�t work with the language. I completely agree with Zora when she says we must be careful with our words here. We don�t know each other, words have different connotations according to different contexts and as we are all different, words may harm some people here.
Harim, I can�t get why you say that Zora insulted you. She was really polite in her message, and I agree with those who said your mesage was kind of nasty.
Native speakers know because they have been exposed to and used the language since they were born, they work with the language every day (no matter if they are teachers or not) and perhaps, they can�t explain how things work because they are not linguists or philologists! Native English Teachers know what they say since they not only have the knowledge of the language needed to become a teacher but also because they are exposed to the "here and now" of the language.
Don�t forget about the variations we can get according to regions and accents!! Would you say I�m wrong if I use the word "lift" instead of "elevator"? Would you (or any other) say I�m wrong because I say "I have 1 cat" and not "I have got a cat"?
I can�t explain everyone why Spanish has so many verb tenses to learn and what is each of them used for! I bet the same happens in your mother tongue, and in English, and in any other language.
Again, I think we should measure our words and calm down.
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6 Feb 2009
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Jayho
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"Come hither ye readers, and identify the unhappy cause of these quarrels..."
English, although an international language, is different everywhere and is continually evolving. It is influenced by by many things. It has grown over the centuries. Currently, what is acceptable in one place is not in another. This is evident with the differences in some grammatical aspects between British and American English. Gurus such as Michael Swan can point us in the right direction but at the end of the day it�s the usage in the local community that counts. A native speaker from that community can guide us on what is right and what is wrong, even though this may not be grammatically correct (and they probably don�t know why). Using grammatically correct language goes out the door when the locals can�t understand you. Colloquial langauge is an extremely important aspect of every culture.
If language didn�t change we�d all still be talking like they do in the English classics by Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and the like: "Oh I do fear for you, thou readers, accursed by the mind that fails to think beyond the square ...:
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6 Feb 2009
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Ivona
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Ahhh, Jayho, i �m with you ...
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10 Feb 2009
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