Native vs non native English, a lot of questions!

Jolijt · Post by **Jolijt** » 30 Jan 2014, 03:43

Do you immediately know whether you're dealing with someone that has English as first language?
Do Americans know all the differences between American and British English (and visa versa)? Flavor/flavour - Lift/elavator
Do Aussies have a lot of different words as well? (I know thong/flip flop

)

Will English become the first language in Europe? (would you like that or not?)

Do native English speakers realize the difficulty of speaking a second language or has it become common because so many people have a high standard of speaking/understanding English? (or do non native speakers overestimate their skills?)

Non native speakers...did you hesitate to start writing on forums / speaking in public? Do you try to speak/write only American or British English?
How did you achieve the level of English that you are at now?

(my native language is Dutch)

Aussie-reader · Post by **Aussie-reader** » 30 Jan 2014, 06:32

Do Aussies have a lot of different words as well? (I know thong/flip flop

I cant answer all your questions - but just on this point, I have been surprised at some Aussie words with different meanings to British or American English.
As you said, thongs in Australia are what other people call flip flops. This is well known throughout Australia -so you will get signs on hotels, for example, saying Dress Code: no thongs allowed.
It is not referring to your choice of underwear

Australians also refer to pants - meaning trousers, not underwear.
So something like 'Uniform: skirt or pants option' - does not mean there is an underwear option.

We call 'cookies' biscuits (although cookie is well known too and the two almost interchangeable now)

I used to be on another American based forum and wrote the word 'fortnight' in a sentence - was amazed that some people had not heard of it.

They also had not heard of sultanas - I think they call them 'golden raisins'
The sentence "every fortnight I eat sultanas" which would be understood by everyone in Australia, did not make sense to some of them.

Another thing - the word 'root' in Australia, as well as its literal meaning as a plant root - also has a slang meaning - it does not mean to fossick around or to barrack for a sports team.
You would not say "I was rooting around in the garden" or "I was rooting for the football team" - these 2 sentences, quite innocuous in America, have VERY different meanings here.

-- 30 Jan 2014, 21:06 --

People may have heard of the 'Commas matter' example: The panda: eats, shoots, and leaves.

It has an Australian equivalent: The wombat: eats, roots, and leaves.

Jolijt · Post by **Jolijt** » 30 Jan 2014, 10:26

Hi Aussie-reader! Thanks for your reply.

I did hear about 'commas matter' and I like the Australian version

Language is a funny thing.. I regret not having known that straight out of school.
I did know fortnight and sultanas! (root I didn't know... yet another chance to put my foot in my mouth

)

Sultana is a brand name for a type of biscuits with raisins (dutch word 'rozijnen').
Fortnight I know as a typical British English word. It's a bit of a strange word for us because we have no special word for a period of two weeks.

We are hoping to emigrate to the US this year and I'm trying to get a better understanding of what native English speakers think/know when someone speaks English to them. Since Holland is such a small country it seems self-evident to speak more than one language. However the amount of English given in school is no where near sufficient to pass for a near native speaker. Fortunately, we have a lot of British and American TV series!
In my experience native speakers seem to think that if you can order your food, you automatically understand everything else they're saying. I do like the vote of confidence...but really I do not always understand everything

Especially topics that aren't too common on television (lawsuits, murder and hostage situations have almost no secrets) for instance renting a house of opening a bank account can bring up the most unexpected words!

Knowing that native English speakers do not necessarily understand each other makes me feel a little more confident.

Aussie-reader · Post by **Aussie-reader** » 30 Jan 2014, 17:21

Sultana is a brand name for a type of biscuits with raisins (dutch word 'rozijnen').

Sultanas in Australia are not biscuits - they are the actual dried fruit - the ones made from sultana grapes.

as distinct from raisins or currants - which are dried grapes from different sorts of grapes.

Loveabull · Post by **Loveabull** » 30 Jan 2014, 18:29

I'm curious...for all the literary history courses I slept through I still wonder why the "u" in words like flavour and colour, why do we drop the "u" in American spelling? When you read books like the "Mr Men" series after a few pages you know it was published in the UK because of the speech. Really an interesting subject though. I remember as a teen reading Ian Hunter's "Reflections of a Rock Star". An interesting diary, but this was years before Google, there were slang expressions throughout that I didn't understand.

Jolijt · Post by **Jolijt** » 31 Jan 2014, 02:13

Aussie-reader wrote:
Sultana is a brand name for a type of biscuits with raisins (dutch word 'rozijnen').
Sultanas in Australia are not biscuits - they are the actual dried fruit - the ones made from sultana grapes.

as distinct from raisins or currants - which are dried grapes from different sorts of grapes.

See.... that's what's bound to happen when you don't speak the same language... but almost the same!

Reading back my own sentence I see my own assumption "it's a brand name in Holland.. that's how I know" But that not really what I wrote... is it??

@ Loveabull
I don't know the reason for dropping the 'u' ..it happens I guess when a language develops. In Holland we have an expression you can compare to 'short and sweet' in Belgium they say 'sweet and short'. Why??? You can fit Holland and Belgium together fit at least 10 times in a state as Texas.
Sometimes I come across a book with 'US edition' Does that mean that some there's a mix of US/UK books in the bookstores?

That in some way brings me back to my first question... if you speak to someone (or read a topic on a forum) do you realise/realize (UK/US) that is perhaps not a native speaker. Or does the combination of differences is spelling and wrong use of words make someone look plain stupid?

Don't worry about hurting my feelings... I'd really like to know

suzy1124 · Post by **suzy1124** » 31 Jan 2014, 05:59

Great thread Jojilt!...very interesting...

Jolijt · Post by **Jolijt** » 31 Jan 2014, 06:25

suzy1124 wrote:Great thread Jojilt!...very interesting...

I'd love to hear your thoughts about it

suzy1124 · Post by **suzy1124** » 31 Jan 2014, 06:51

Jolijt!
Dummy here!..... pls forgive !...i spelled your name wrong before..

Married to a European, i'd always been intrigued by how they write the no." 7 ", and in no time i was writing it that way too...

Lately, I've observed many Americans doing the same...

Is it a " trend?"

Aussie-reader · Post by **Aussie-reader** » 31 Jan 2014, 06:53

I can sometimes get an inkling that a person is a non native English speaker on a forum - not by their spelling, lots of us native speakers have poor spelling (and/or use spell check

) but by syntax - eg where I work, there is a receptionist who is of Russian speaking background. She speaks English well, albeit with an accent - but once she had to write a certificate saying Child cannot attend school due to illness - and she wasn't sure whether to put 'cannot attend a school', 'cannot attend the school' or 'cannot attend school.'

I can sometimes tell on global forums if a person is of American, English or Australian background by certain words or phrases - eg as I said in my first post, somebody might write that they were rooting for the football team - that is a very American expression and one we would never use in Australia.

Or Americans call them cell phones - Australians say mobile phones.
And Americans say sidewalk, we say footpath.
Americans say trash can, English say dust bin, Australians say rubbish bin.

I'm sure there are many other examples.

Loveabull · Post by **Loveabull** » 01 Feb 2014, 16:18

Sometimes it's amusing when there are place name mistakes. On any forum you have a choice of posting what country, what region you're from. We were talking about family origins on one site and I mentioned distant family from Berwick Upon Tweed. This gentleman saw Jersey and perhaps assumed I knew Wales and said "Aye you're from the low country then?"...um okay if you say so...

Ant · Post by **Ant** » 01 Feb 2014, 18:06

To answer some of your questions..no I don't think English will become the language of Europe and it would be terrible if it did. I think it is very important for nations to keep their own identities and culture and not become one bland nondescript Europe.
I never cease to be amazed at how many Europeans speak English and to a very good standard, my own attempts to speak a "foreign" language usually end in embarrassment. Many years ago an old work colleague of mine gave me his own explanation of why so many Europeans speak or at least understand English, he put it down to Hollywood! He told me that if non-English speaking people wanted to see the latest movies...it was in their favour to learn English(I'm going back a bit now when the movies was "the" entertainment).
As for spotting posters/forum members who have English as a second language, sometimes you can sometimes not, it doesn't really matter. I won't think less of a Spaniard for instance if he spells a word wrong in English or uses it incorrectly, I would still be in awe of them that they could post in English at all!
Finally, yes I do realise the difficulty in speaking a second language, I have tried many times, mainly German, some French, and my attempts at both are laughable for which I am deeply ashamed.

Aussie-reader · Post by **Aussie-reader** » 01 Feb 2014, 20:09

Loveabull, Jersey is an island between England and France.

But I know what you mean - many places in Australia are named after places in Britain - for example Perth is the capital city of Western Australia - originally a place in Scotland.

and we have the 'new' places like USA's New York - New South Wales, for example.

Jolijt · Post by **Jolijt** » 02 Feb 2014, 06:28

We' ve noticed that is better to say 'We're from Holland' than 'We're from the Netherlands'. The name of the language we speak: 'Dutch' is very confusing to a lot of foreigners because they connect Dutch to 'Deutsch' the language spoken in Germany.
We also had a confusion of tongues in a restaurant. Our youngest two children do not speak English yet. The eldest have been to a bilingual high school so they do speak English. Now imagine us saying 'We're from Holland' (in Arizona) to a couple from L.A. talking to our youngest daughter... and adding 'She (age 8 ) doesn't speak English yet' ...
A normal explanation we thought??? But later it became clear that the couple had assumed we came from Holland Michigan and that would make a 9 year old not speaking English very very strange

@ Ant
I totally agree on the identity and culture part. However if I look at the amount of English words becoming the 'normal' words in Dutch not even having a Dutch counterpart anymore I cannot help but wonder what our language will be 20 years from now. I think it would make things a lot easier for people living in the smaller countries. My friend for instance is really scared to go abroad because she speaks neither English nor French or German.
I think your colleague has a point with the Hollywood factor. The Dutch television uses subtitles for foreign television shows, so we hear a lot of English. German television has (always the same!) actors speaking German so they have no English soundtrack. Many younger Germans are not happy with that! The internet made original episodes (legal and illegal) available, rapidly closing the gap in language skills between Holland and Germany.

@ Aussie reader
I love the English language for having so many more nuances but sometimes knowing that there's a difference between attending a school/the school/school will sometimes drive a non native speaker bunkers. And yes... I love spell check

(and google search for checking the right prepositions and just that one word that will complete the sentence I have in mind..)

@ Suzy
As long as the first and the last letter of a word are in place, our mind reads the correct word.. so no worries about misspelling my name

http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/l ... n-you-read

funny you mentioning the number 7... I've noticed a difference in the numbers 2 and 8 in a lot of foreign countries! I'll be on the look out for number 7!
Perhaps it's a trend. In Holland we have a saying: Something you have to travel a long way for, tastes nice... perhaps that's the case here. Perhaps writing a number a like seen in a foreign country keeps a memory alive?

Fran · Post by **Fran** » 02 Feb 2014, 07:26

Folks, if you think you have a problem with American english v English english you should come to Ireland. We in theory speak English but we have never lost the ability to confuse the Brits.

While everyone speaking English would make for an easier life it would mean we lose a lot of the individuality & uniqueness of nations. There are things you can say in any language that simply cannot be translated because they are so unique to that language. A native Gaelic speaker in Ireland will have lots of words and statements that they (even if they speak English equally fluently) cannot translate accurately to English. I have always admired the way the French insist on their own language. It is easier but disappointing to spend a weekend in Berlin without ever needing to even attempt a single word in German, especially as I was hoping to pactise my few words of German.

I always write a 7 in the European way with the cross line on the down leg because I had a math teacher who was a German native - yet I never picked up his way of writing the digit 1 with two lines (like an inverted V)!