people understand that Spanish speakers speak different dialects of the Spanish language but don’t understand that black people speak a dialect of the English language
saw a variation of this conversation on twitter earlier
I just want to state for the record that this is completely uncontroversial among linguists. It’s the first day of sociolinguistics class.
I majored in Communication Disorders to become an Speech Language Pathologist and am currently and Assisstant. When we were in class we were taught about this as well as other dialect. Under no circumstances do you treat a client for what is considered a dialect. So as a speech therapist when I hear AAVE I move on. It is a real language with real rules.
Thats why it was outrage in the speech community post Katrina when teachers began to recommend students for speech, when it was simply the New Orleans dialect.
“It is a real language with real rules.”
That’s like…literally the first thing my linguistics class covered, too. If it’s spoken naturally, then it’s correct. Just because you’re not familiar with the construction doesn’t make it any less fucking valid.
Sometimes I wonder if native English speakers appreciate how much more comfortable the internet is for them than for the rest of the world
Like, you can go on tumblr and simply read stuff in your mother tongue? Amazing. Go on youtube and you don’t have to replay some sentences ten times to try to understand what they’re saying? Incredible. Look for practically anything on google and know that there will be a fuckton of results that you can read without having to spend half the time looking up words in a dictionary? Fascinating. Make a post or send an ask without panicking that you’ll make a silly mistake or that they won’t understand what you meant? Unbelievable.
@dovalayn I did. I’ve studied English for about 10 years and I have the official diploma for the C2 level (the maximum for a non-native speaker) given by the University of Cambridge.
But it’s still my 3rd language and there will be always things that escape me, mainly the slang. Always. Because you know you are always less than the majority. And it’s tiring.
That’s all I’m saying. It would be nice for once to not have to make the effort. And effort is something that no matter how many years of English class I take will always be there.
But not everyone can do that. Some people can’t afford private English academies or are bad at languages, and they should still be able to exist online as well. Why are you so bothered by people not speaking English perfectly? Or by people posting on the internet in other languages??
Since you think my English isn’t good enough, I’d like to see how you do in your 3rd language, and if you don’t get tired after a while 🤷♀️
I hope @no-passaran doesn’t mind me going on a sort of tangent here, but the fact English is a lingua franca is, like it or not, permeated by features of linguistic imperialism.
Native English speakers are used to having the world, and by extension all non native speakers, accommodate to their language. If someone doesn’t know English then said person is uneducated, isn’t wordly, is not qualified enough. If a person doesn’t pronounce English like a native, they’re pronouncing it wrong. Tourists are expected to speak perfect English and be proficient in it to avoid any inconvenience to native English speakers when travelling abroad to English speaking countries (USA and UK particularly, yet interestingly enough we are demanded to speak in English when these people visit our countries). These are all mindsets and situations that exist and are part of the broader context, in which English does operate on linguistic imperialism grounds on a global scale; I’m going to quote Phillipson really quickly:
It’s… interesting, for the lack of a better word, how non native English speakers must even accommodate to native English speakers, when in actuality non native English speakers far surpass natives by several millions and, if anything, it should be them who ought to change, not us.
English becomes our second/third/etc language, we use it with several degrees of proficiency, being affected all the time by our L1, or all the other languages that we might know, we are constantly building on our current interlanguage and gaining a better grasp on how to operate with English. When we talk or chat with other NNE speakers with whom we don’t share a language, we make ourselves understood, we manage to sort any misgiving in communication, if we make a mistake we re-phrase, re-arrange, express things in another way. We are communicating, we still get our messages across despite some slips of the tongue, little mistakes or even a few errors here and there.
We are able to engage, through the use of English, in cross-cultural exchanges, in cross-linguistic exchanges that are allowed by using English as a lingua franca. We are making the language ours, we’re reclaiming the language that for so long was used to shush us down and we’re using it as an asset, we’re using it as a weapon, we’re using it so our voices cannot be silenced any more.
Our messages do get across, they can be understood. When native English speakers claim our Englishes aren’t clear, or we aren’t making any sense, they are really not making the extra effort. In short, many are uncapable of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural exchanges and communication. It’s easier to say we don’t make sense, and by extension snuffing us out, than paying attention to what we are saying.
And we don’t only have to defend our languages and our cultures in a globalised world (in which the normalised culture is that of the center), but we also have to use English as a tool for doing it.
And we should be allowed to express ourselves, exist online without having to constantly accommodate to native English speakers. Because no matter how good our English is, how proficient we are, someone is always going to argue we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t trying hard enough.
This makes me think of a theological debate I once had online – of course in English. The person I was talking to brought the wonderful argument that since I wasn’t a native speaker, I obviously didn’t understand what she was saying and therefore my arguments were invalid.
Yes. Obviously, while I’m writing university papers on Shakespeare in English and talking to you about eschatology in English, I’m actually just pretending to understand what I’m doing, and any disagreement with you must come from me not getting it because my grasp of the language is insufficient.
if you’re american and coming to australia, I’m gonna go ahead and say that you should be 100 percent way more worried about being king hit by a dude named “dane” in a bintang singlet than any fucking spiders that exist here
what does this say in english
“Good sir, if you are a resident of the United States of America and coming to visit the sunny land of Australia, allow me to inform you that you should be rather more concerned about being sucker punched by a gentleman named ‘Dane’ who is likely to be seen wearing a wifebeater with a beer company logo on it than by any of the dangerous spiders that exist on this lovely continent”.
ok so what does it say in american
“You’re more likely to get sucker punched/cold-cocked by an asshole than you are to be bitten by a spider”.
thank you
Well rattle my spoons, that don’t make a lick of sense. Wot in tarnation does this hootenanny say?
“If ya mosey on by Australia, you best be fixin’ to get to some fisticuffs more’n checkin fer spiders.”
I don’t know who first spelled the name as “Guinevere,” but I’m forever thankful that it’s the form in most common use, because other options include “Guanhumara” “Guennuuar” “Gahunmare” and “Wenneuereia”
thanks to whichever medieval person decided it was time to stop calling the queen by random horse noises
Older forms of English kept Latin’s gender-specific suffixes -tor and -trix; tor is for men and trix is for women. So a male pilot is an aviator, a female pilot is an aviatrix. A male fighter is a gladiator, a female fighter is a gladiatrix.
This contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for both men and women, and trix are for kids.
since this “latinx or latine” discussion is getting attention again, i’d like to point out that it’s important to know how disabled people feel about it, and why you should consider using “e” instead of “x” for making gendered words neutral.
basically, a blind brazilian and anti-ableism blogger first spoke about this issue in january 2015, claiming that words such as “latinx” and “bonitx” are actually anything but inclusive, since visually impaired people can’t understand what you’re saying, because their reading-out-loud softwares can’t pronounce these words. she then suggests that using “e” as a neutral term can be way more inclusive both to nonbinary and visually impaired people (ex.: latine, bonite). she also states that you can be neutral without using “ela” or “ele” by using instead “a pessoa/that person” or simply using the person’s name.
she stills talks about this issue on her page to this day, as well as many of other anti-ableism activists on facebook, and they ask us to spread the word by sharing their posts – so as a non-disabled person, that’s what i’m doing. i hope this helps!
I just want to add, before anyone asks, that for spanish/portuguese speakers the “x” is really hard to use because %99 of the time it doesn’t come out natural at all. We literally don’t know how to say it, like the softwares. If we use it, it usually interrumps our speech all the time because we have to think how we say it. The “x”/the sound that it makes is not usual in our languages. The “e” not only helps disabled people but also it helps us because its easier and more natural in our tongues.
On top of the aforementioned reasons to shift from latinx to latine for gender neutrality, doing so will not be difficult in oral speech even for native English speakers (instead of saying
/ˈlætɪnɛks/ = Lah-teen-ex
you say
/ˈlætɪnɛ/ = Lah-teen-eh).
If we’re thriving for inclusive language, we should thrive for an inclusive language that effectively includes everyone. The use of Latine (and -e suffixes for gender neutrality in Portuguese and Spanish), unlike that of Latinx (and -x suffixes for gender neutrality in Portuguese and Spanish), does not have ableist consequences, and does not exclude visually impaired people.
I’d just like to add that now Inclusive Language has been picking up in Argentina, where we use “le, une” and change the last letter to an e to indicate gender neutral or another gender that is not female or male. It is getting used for plurals too.
For example: “Querides alumnes” instead of the male version “Queridos alumnos” that was thought of gender neutral before.
Also, when talking about someone whose gender you don’t know. “Estoy buscando une psicólogue para hacer terapia, pero no encuentro a nadie”.
The use of the e was decided because it’s more comfortable while both speaking and reading, as it doesn’t shock someone as much as an X would.
DarkestElemental616 