Generally, yes. Native English speakers are in the privileged position of naturally speaking the world's lingua franca, which means there is not often the necessity to learn another language since you can expect many non-native-English-speakers to have learned it as a secondary language. You can get by in a lot of the world just by using English (or a very broken version of it with non-native speakers). Many younger generations pick up on English as a second language through exposure to Hollywood or the Internet since many popular movies and TV shows along with popular websites tend to be in English or whose userbase primarily speaks English. That doesn't mean there aren't any multilingual native English speakers. There are a lot of native English & Spanish speakers in the southwest US, for example. I, myself, am fluent in German and possibly solicitr as well. My uncle is fluent in Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish on top of being a native English speaker. So, they do exist, but probably not as widespread as the rate of English as a second language. Cheers
That´s a very enlightening answer. Thank you for that. English is indeed a very pragmatic language, probably the reason why it became a universal world language. I´m a native german, fluent in Portuguese and Spanish, but I wouldn´t recommend foreigners to learn German for A) NOT exactly being a pragmatic language (german grammar anyone?) and B) being spoken in two and half countries in the world. Still, getting into the roman-latin languages gave me a whole wider view of life in general. I´m really grateful for that.
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It's one of those cases as well, where I generally imagine a lot of confusion comes from non-native speakers not quite grasping how which vowels are placed next to each other in which order, and where in relation to consonants, are instructions on how to pronounce the sound, and if it's hard, soft, long, etc. Which is slightly harder to work out with the US spellings where publishers having stuff printed dropped a bunch of letters to save money, knowing native speakers would be better than 50/50 at guessing what the word was supposed to be, since we can autocorrect for typos in languages we understand, from the context of neighbouring words.
May I chip in on something? Writing as a linguist of sorts (I hold first-class honours in the subject, although sadly don't work in the field; I'm also a qualified copy-editor and entry-level member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading on hiatus), I see here a conflation between the Queen's English and RP. One can speak the Queen's English (dialect – vocabulary, syntax) in a Black Country or Glaswegian accent, for example, just as you can speak the Black Country dialect in RP. RP is an accent, the clue being in the P of Received Pronunciation.
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The way the Queen speaks, vs how everyone I live around day to day does, is a great example of mutually unintelligible dialects XD
There was a mix when Old English first started and it did become somewhat standardised (Bede is a good example) even with some 'Dane' words and continued evolving up to this day. When the Normans came it didn't affect the people as Anglo-Saxon continued as normal for the main part of the population it was only Barons who had to learn both French and Old English but above Barons they used a form of French, there were different versions of French as well. Saying that, it was a Norman King that re-introduced Anglo-Saxon as the language to speak at court.
I was actually recently pointing out to some folks why it actually shows a bit more depth of linguistic understanding on the part of those doing it, when translating a manga or anime and instead of just lazily picking one that's seen as stereotypically "slow" or "stupid", they rewrite a character with a Kansai accent to speak a regional dialect of UK English with longer vowel sounds, or say, cast a voice actor from Minnesota.
I've had the same experience in many countries around the world. Once they hear you speaking English, that's all that the locals will use themselves. Most recently in Iceland, I was looking forward to hearing some Icelandic, but no, they all spoke almost exclusively in English. Kinda takes the fun out of traveling to some extent.
Bede, standardized English? No, the venerable historian wrote mostly in Latin, and the occasional bits of English are clearly in 8th-century Northumbrian. The only movement towards any unification of A-S occurred under Alfred and his successors, with "Classical" West Saxon becoming pretty dominant south of the Thames (and being perhaps over-represented in extant manuscripts due to geography and political influence), but further North it never took hold. And north of the Borders Northumbrian continued to evolve on its own, eventually becoming Scots. (BTW, the adoption of "official" English is conventionally dated to 1362 and the enactment of the Statute of Pleadings; but of course Edward III wasn't a Norman at all. That line had died out two centuries before).
If you say something in English in a foreign country and the locals don’t understand, just repeat it louder and more slowly and that should do the trick.
A family member who speaks perfect (basically native) Portuguese spent a few months in Brazil. During his stay he noticed that, despite speaking very clearly and accurately, the locals would seem to not understand him correctly. Something was not right, so he used the help of his travelling companion (who is a native Brazilian) to test a theory. From then, whenever they introduced themselves to new people, he introduced himself as a native Brazilian and his (native) friend as a foreigner visiting. Suddenly the locals had no problems with him and started pretending that they couldn't understand the companion! Cheers
I stand corrected, yeah almost no one. The hotel staff spoke English in Spain and some tour guides. Trying to purchase goods from shops though! One store I actually placed what I wanted to buy on the counter but the staff were reluctant to sell it to me, saying no English, no English.
The joke was that, assuming you were using translation tools yourself to translate the sentence the word was included in, it would have to be a somewhat wild sentence to begin with. Admittedly I did misread the translation as 'pancake terror' which would have been much funnier.
Ah. Ok. The thing is, I wasn't using any software, I'm just a milhist buff who knows a little German.
That's true of course about Bede but even before the Anglo-Saxon invasion the Angles, Jutes, Saxons all shared a common language coming over from Holland (Friesland). From what I have read Anglo-Saxon was understandable all over Britain but yes there were regional dialects just like their is today. Language was not as formal either as it is today but their was a common basic language for the Anglo-Saxons. I remember going to Boulogne as a youth where they helpfully put all the prices on shop windows in English but as soon as you went inside apparently no-one has heard of the English language at all.
I took two German-language courses when I was in university...er... college. So when I was in western Germany about 15 years ago, I tried to speak German when out and about. (With friends I spoke English, as I wanted to talk about topics that were beyond the transactional.) Once anyone got a hint that I knew English, they immediately switched to English - they didn't want to bother with someone who had only a rudimentary command of their native tongue. In the east, it was different. I honestly doubt many even knew English there. (One fellow told me many knew a bit of Russian, but no English.) All of my interactions (hotel, train station, etc.) were in my elementary German. Many people were patient and even tried to offer help with the language. It was especially difficult booking a bunk in a 2-person, class B room on a domestic City Night Line Doppelstock Schlafwagen. I think the lady was being really kind, seeing as how I was struggling with these technical railroad terms. She said she'd book me in a single bunk in a 2-man room, but would block it off so that I wouldn't have a companion down the line. Apparently the train had a lot of space. My wife (who speaks French fluently) has traveled extensively in France. She says that many French who know English quite well like to pretend that they're completely ignorant of the language when in the presence of a foreigner speaking English.
On a serious matter I am so jealous of the people who have such perfect lives that the spelling of the word "centre" is the only thing they have to worry about in their lives.
Assuming everyone has their pitchforks at the ready for the ‘customize your collection’ description under the Creators Club…
The one thing that annoys me the most on the forum ( and this is not US or UK specific ) is the incorrect use of the words " of " and " have ", as in " I wish DTG would of included " instead of the correct form " I wish DTG would have included. I'm sure we all have our linguistic quibbles, and this is one of mine.
All because of people mishearing the abbreviation "could've". Also a current switch to past simple tense such as "stood" where "standing" should be used, e.g. "Now you're stood here talking" instead of "Now you're standing here talking". But at this point the forum has derailed into irrelevancy, so I'll leave my peeves at the door on the way out...
Oh yes. " sat " instead of " sitting " drives me to drink. ( where's that carafe? ). But you're right, time to sign off this thread.
Don't get me started on the now lazy use of the word dropped. Released, issued, announced, launched etc are all fine words to use. For me dropped means to drop something on the floor, to drop someone from a lineup, if I was a glassmaker and I just dropped my new vase I would be very unhappy.
IIRC, someone here managed to do that three times in a single sentence not long ago. I felt like applauding even as I winced.
I'll see your misuse of the word "dropped" and raise you "trainings" and "learnings"! (Ha, my spell-check underlined "learnings"...I should show that to some of the corporate hacks at work...)
As someone who works in the food industry, I would like to throw in all those products that are named with some variation like "Vegan Chicken Nuggets" or "Fishless Fishcakes".
Not so. While it is true that all the western Low German dialects were related, and probably mutually intelligible, Old Saxon, Anglian, Jutish, Frisian, and Frankish were decidedly different; and there is no evidence for positing a 'stopover' in Frisia (except, perhaps, for the Jutes depending on how one interprets the Finnsburgh Fragment and lines 1008-1250 of Beowulf). In fact there is an amusing story told by Caxton as late as the 15th century, telling of Northerners visiting the South and not being able to make themselves understood.
The real tragedy is England being named exclusively after the Anglos and not the Saxons. Just think, we could have had Sexland! Cheers
Coming from Angle descent myself again going by what I have read it was generally accepted that the Angles from what is now Southern Denmark/Northern Germany travelled to Frisia as did the Saxons and other tribes and some even settled there hence why there is a strong connection with Old English today although I'm aware of it in decline. The invasion would make sense coming from there as well as I think Kent I think was hit first, could be wrong on that one, the South Coast of England by the Saxons and Eastern England going into Southern England by the Angles and there is evidence that they all traded with one another, trading is hard if you are not understood no? That would be Angles but giving what happened after Aethelflaed died it is the Angles who were treated wrongly by the Saxons.
Really it was the Danes' fault: they conquered pretty much everyone except the West Saxons (who just barely escaped), so there was really nothing left of the old Anglian kingdoms. ---------------------------- Well, if you accept the legend/ASC, then Icel led his people from Angeln to what became East Anglia himself; one lifetime isn't enough for a language to change. Now, it is plausible that the migration routes for all of them went by way of Frisia (where the locals definitely spoke a related tongue, close enough for basic intercourse) and what is now the Pas de Calais (Frankish territory at the time, another related language), because their rowboats (no sails yet!) could only cross at the Dover Strait. I would venture that in the fifth century the various forms of western Low German were as close as the Scandinavian languages are today.
I would just like to give props here to solicitr and dhekelian for making a complaining thread very interesting, while remaining on topic to boot.
