Using English on TBBS

[BlobVanDam]

Let's face it - the only people currently using English correctly live in Australia & New Zealand

I think NZ is stretching it considering they have all of their vowels muddled up.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

swagman, billabong, billy boiled, jumbuck, tuckerbag.

English-speaking country, my ass

 

[Trilliam]

"Swagman": an iterant worker who carries their sleeping roll/bag aka a "swag". Usually sought work on farms, cattle stations, sheep stationsetc
Billabong: originally an Aboriginal word
A billy is a metal pot made to hang over a fire to boil water/cook food/make tea, if you want a cup of tea while out camping, you have to wait for the billy to boil. Also similar meaning (perhaps origin) in Scotland.
Jumbuck: see origins of Billabong
Tuckerbag: from the English Tucker (food)+ bag.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Just curious about those of you for whom English isn't your first language. Is it strange to "speak" in English to others here on such a frequent basis? Were you very fluent in it before joining TBBS, do you use it frequently in RL? Are there ever times where it is difficult or you really wish everyone spoke a different language?

Also please don't turn this into an American-bashing thread!

My first language is Dutch, but when I was only a young teenager I started reading (under the impulses of my Anglomaniac grandfather) in English - tv helps as well.
So when I first joined the WWW I was already fluent enough in English that it didn't pose many problems.
After that, all major textbooks at university are in English.

My previous job was at the Brussels office of a big American company so all "official" conversation was in English. It's the same at my current job, everything gets done in English. The staff is also very multinational and multicultural so English really is required.

Talking to you for as long as i have, you've really made me realize that a lot of native English speakers suck balls when compared to people who speak English as a second or even third language. I always laugh/die inside when you correct me in spelling lol.

Now, while I do live in the United States, and speak English rather well, I think, my parents speak Spanish. I learned English and Spanish side by side; my parents would teach me Spanish, and my older brothers would teach me English.

Since I use more English than Spanish, I primarily think in English. However, I can and do, think in Spanish. I've even dreamed in Spanish before. I tripped out the first time that happened, lol.

As a boorish American, everyone should speak English! Or, barring, that, Spanish.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Thanks to the similarities, I can read French pretty well (to the point of being able to read a newspaper with only a few difficulties), but actually having a conversation in it is well outside my reach. Which is disappointing, since I worked with quite a few French people during my PhD. But I hardly had time to sleep, let alone to learn another language.

Después de haber estudiado un poco de español, me gustaría que más gente de aquí lo hablan. Pero creo que Star Trek no es muy popular en España y América Latina.

You speak some Spanish too? I'll be in my bunk.

 

[Deckerd]

This thread has been Shamelessed. We need a stamp or something.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Your ideas intrigue me and i would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[captcalhoun]

I'm not quite sure what you mean with the "j" sound...I have this odd thing myself where in Swedish, my "r" sounds are really bad, but in English it's no problem.

it's like in Thor; they say 'yo-tuns' but i know it's spelt Jotuns. or you say 'yah-ger' not 'jah-ger' for Jaeger.

 

[Emher]

Ah you mean that instead of "yay" we say "yee". And thus "Jotuns" becomes "yeotuns" Or simply the Swedish word "Joterna", "yeoturna".

 

[Myasishchev]

^This may sound stupid to Romance language speakers, but I think one of the really great things about English (and Russian) is the lack of accent marks on letters. If you want to write something, you just write it.

Look at all those unnecessary squiggly things. I know how to say Espana, I don't need an estimated value of the "n." I guess it's one of those things you pick up when your native tongue does dumb things like spell an f sound with a gh... sometimes. The thought process is probably semi-ideogrammatic.

Not all diacritics are useless; personally I think it's a little easier than making sense out of digraphs, when I read in a foreign language.

I read Spanish pretty well, but am dreadfully out of practice and have lost what little confidence I had in speaking. It's not that I have trouble with my accent...my accent is actually very good. It's the confidence to put the words together quickly.

Am I just biased and misinterpreting it when I think that Spanish-speakers actually do speak faster than English-speakers? Because I can read Spanish ok, but could never, ever understand a native speaker of it, except it very short bits.

They may just outrun my working memory.

 

[Marten]

My accent is pretty much terrible, fortunately you do not need to hear it. As for writing, my biggest concern is that I write slower in English than Sweden, making long posts somewhat tiresome to write.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Also, in some countries, it's still rather common to learn Latin in higher school education. For example, I studied it for 5 years. But it's mainly confined to translating from Latin so constructing a sentence would still be a serious challenge to me. However, I really like the idea.

Same here, I studied Latin for 5 years in high school, but it was mostly translations from Latin to Italian (and only rarely the opposite). Even at the time, I couldn't really use it in conversation. But there is something very cool and dignified in Latin, which would lend well to using it as an auxiliary language. Well, except for the crazy declinations.

but I bet the xenoglosses have a tought time with "engine." That is, I bet I told them it was pronounced "ehng-yne," they'd believe me.

I would.

Anyway, you haven't seen anything in that regard until you've realised that in Greek, there are about 7 different ways to create i.

I defy you to explain how it is useful.

It's more a matter of different sounds shifting in spoken Greek and all ending sounding like "i", while the written form remained the same.

As a boorish American, everyone should speak English! Or, barring, that, Spanish.

I would have no problem having one standard language for international communication, be it English, Latin, or Chinese, with people using their own language locally. In Italy we already have a similar situation: a lot of people here speak their regional language at home and between friends, but switch to standard Italian at work or when speaking to people from different parts of Italy. Since my parents come from different regions, I'm not a strong speaker of any regional language, but I can more or less understand the one from my father's place (Piedmontese), the one from my mother's place (Sicilian), and the one from the place I grew up (Emilian).

Después de haber estudiado un poco de español, me gustaría que más gente de aquí lo hablan. Pero creo que Star Trek no es muy popular en España y América Latina.

You speak some Spanish too? I'll be in my bunk.

Espero que te diviertas.

 

[Shaytan]

Well, except for the crazy declinations.

*nightmare*

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Am I just biased and misinterpreting it when I think that Spanish-speakers actually do speak faster than English-speakers? Because I can read Spanish ok, but could never, ever understand a native speaker of it, except it very short bits.

They may just outrun my working memory.

Knowing vocabulary, grammar, etc. doesn't automatically mean that one can actually understand everything from listening. This also is something that has to be learnt when learning a foreign language: to understand all those muttering, babbling, speaking-with-the-speed-of-a-Formula-One-Car natives

As for diacritics--they are absolutely not useless. My language has some and each creates a different letter representing a different sound. We don't spell in my language, we don't have to. Thanks to diacritics, we write as we speak and speak what we read.

The same with Russian. Each "e" is a different sound, so each is needed.

Well, except for the crazy declinations.

*nightmare*

Not if you use them since childhood

Speaking natively a difficult language (like one of Slavic languages) makes most of other languages easier to learn

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Since I took a year of Latin, declensions aren't really a problem for me. The ironic thing is I spent so much time studying Latin grammar that I neglected to learn any vocab. This is sad since Latin isn't taught like it's an actual language. Exams almost exclusively test on translation from Latin. You could probably get by just learning the vocabulary and figuring out sentence structure from context.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Is it strange to "speak" in English to others here on such a frequent basis?

Not really. I am friends with people all over the world and so we necessarily have to use one common language. English is ideal for this purpose, due to its simple grammar but depending on the chat partners in my group we also use other languages.

Were you very fluent in it before joining TBBS

Actually, I was more fluent before I joined any boards. All this colloquial English spoilt me.

do you use it frequently in RL?

Not exclusively but among other languages (Dutch, Italian, French and German).

Are there ever times where it is difficult or you really wish everyone spoke a different language?

Are there times when I don't? Contrary to many other languages, in English there is one specific word for every nuance of a meaning. Foreigners are bound to pick one of the 19 wrong ones out of 20 options given in their dictionaries, which inevitably leads to misunderstandings

Also please don't turn this into an American-bashing thread!

No necessity, really. They already excell at it without any foreign help

 

[iguana_tonante]

Exams almost exclusively test on translation from Latin. You could probably get by just learning the vocabulary and figuring out sentence structure from context.

I don't think you could, except if the speaker made special efforts to avoid ambiguous sentence structure.

The fact is that with word cases (which I learned just now are called in English "declensions" and not "declinations" ), every word in the sentence could equally be subject, object, or any complement. Word order is also useless. So, while it would be easy to judge meaning from context in "Tullia malum manducat" (Tullia eats an apple), it would be impossible to understand who is sending whom to whom in "Tullia Corneliae Iuliam mandat" without declensions (Tullia sends Iulia to Cornelia).

 

[rhubarbodendron]

also, there were writers who didn't give a damn for proper grammar. Apparently, they put all words of a sentence in a box, shook it well, poured the words out and wrote them down in the order they happened to fall. Cicero, for example, and both Catos - utter nightmares!

I never had difficulties with the language, I would like it if more people spoke Dutch

Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands. Maar dat weet je al.
Is dat oude Nederlandse Draatje nog actief waarin Addie en je zondags te plaatsen gewoon waren?

(translation for non-speakers of Dutch: I speak a bit Dutch, but you already know that. Is the old Dutch Thread still active where Addie and you used to post every Sunday?)

 

[Gul Re'jal]

You could probably get by just learning the vocabulary and figuring out sentence structure from context.

No, you couldn't. In the languages that heavily use declension, word order in a sentence is not as strict as in, say, English.

Mother loves daughter.
Daughter loves mother.

In English the meaning of the above sentences is completely different.

Matka kocha córkę.
Matkę kocha córka.

In Polish both sentences have the same meaning and both are correct sentence structures. It's the form of the nouns that tells you who loves whom.

 

[Bears Discover Fire]

As a boorish American, everyone should speak English! Or, barring, that, Spanish.

Actual incident in my H.S. freshman Spanish I class:

Dick student who didn't want to be there: "Fuck you! This is America, speak English!"

Dick tenured teacher, who also didn't want to be there: "Chinga su Madre! Es California, habla Espanol, pendejo!"

Dick student: "'El bano es a la derecha'. That's what you just asked, right?"