Speaking better English

Here in Ecuador, I mostly say "Hola" (hello) instead of the most common greeting, "¿Como está (usted)?" -- how are you, which implies the greeter wants a response.

When strangers or people you hardly know ask how-are-you, do they really want to know?  Usually, at least here, I believe they just expect the pedestrian "Muy bien" -- fine -- often followed by the same question back to them.

I've had about two dozen brief conversations with the assistant janitor of my condo complex over the past year-and-a-half, and almost all of them go the same....

Me:  "Hola."

Her:  "¿Cómo está usted?"

Me:  "Mejor que antes."  Better than before.

Her:  "!Qué bueno!"  That's good!


cccmedia in Quito, Ecuador

In my original post I should have mentioned that personal greetings tend to differ from one nation or ethnic group to another - even when their native language is English, I mean. So someone trying to learn English needs to take that fact into account. A common Australian greeting is "G'day" or "G'day, mate"; in the Caribbean, we say "Wha' happenin'?"

Responses vary, too. As ccc wrote above, when someone asks "How are you?", they really don't want to be told. The standard response is to say, "Fine, thank you", even if you're sick. If they ask, "What's going on?", just say, "Not much". One English greeting that used to amuse me was "Watcha!" So spelled; it stood for ""What are you (doing)?" - Watcha doin? The only proper response was a return "Watcha!"

Farewells are usually casual, too. "Take care" or "Cheers" are more common than they used to be when I was younger. Then, it was "So long" or "See you later".

It's important for people whose native language is not English, that while written English is pretty much the same the world over, spoken English comes in many varieties. I wrote about that a couple of years ago in a blog-post of mine called "English as she is spoke".
barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/07/english-as-she-is-spoke.html

All languages have their minority dialects, and their different accents too - and English is certainly not an exception in that respect. Foreigners wanting to learn how to speak English should aim to speak the standard southern-England accent, if that's convenient - or the standard Midwestern-US accent, if that is. Still and all - you have to take whichever accent you can find!

Also as a greeting, it's common to say "Morning!", if it is morning - short for the more formal "Good morning" - and "Afternoon!" or "Evening!" if it's later in the day. "Evening" has no defined time. Here in the Caribbean, "evening" starts about midday; but for me, it starts about dusk. "Good night!" is a farewell,by the way, never a greeting. We tell small children "Good night" (or "night-night" when they're in bed and we're on our way out the door.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Responses vary, too. As ccc wrote above, when someone asks "How are you?", they really don't want to be told. The standard response is to say, "Fine, thank you", even if you're sick. If they ask, "What's going on?", just say, "Not much". One English greeting that used to amuse me was "Watcha!" So spelled; it stood for ""What are you (doing)?" - Watcha doin? The only proper response was a return "Watcha!"

Farewells are usually casual, too. "Take care" or "Cheers" are more common than they used to be when I was younger. Then, it was "So long" or "See you later".

What's your take on the English "alright?" or "you alright?" as a greeting, and not a question? Seems quite strange to me

romaniac wrote:

What's your take on the English "alright?"; or "you alright?"; as a greeting, and not a question? Seems quite strange to me

It's mainly used among people who see each other regularly. It's a variant of "How's it going?", "How are you?", "What's up?" and similar. "Are you alright?" (spelt "all right" in English-English, by the way) and "Everything OK with you?" are common enough. The response is "Fine; and you?" Unless you've been sick, of course, when you're entitled to give them the rundown on all your aches and pains!

I think I made a mistake in selecting the title of this thread. I would like to change it to "Speaking better English", but don't know how to do that. Would somebody be kind enough to tell me? Thanks.

The reason is that some EB members have learnt to speak the language, but not well enough. There are too many posts from members whose English is not easily understood.

Besides that, some posts just get the idiom wrong. I have just noticed an old post from one of the Administrators that greeted us with the words "I hope you are all doing good" - or something like that. Now, "doing good" doesn't mean the same as "doing well"! The idiom is not the correct one for the context: that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Well and good are tricky.

Of course confusions like that happen in all languages; but this is an English-language forum, where people interested in knowing good English (!) should have a place to come to. [And, yes, it is all right to end a sentence with a preposition - never mind what the school textbooks say!]

Among the most puzzling verbs in English are "do", "will" and "want". We say "I don't [do not] need anything to drink", where foreigners might expect "I need not anything to drink". We say "I won't go" - sometimes "I will not go" - but never "I not go". We might even say "I'm not going to go" or "I'm not going". Most confusing of all, perhaps, is "You don't want to take that with you", which means "You need not [or, needn't] take that..."; whereas "I don't want to take that" means "I would rather not take it".

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Among the most puzzling verbs in English are "do", "will" and "want". We say "I don't [do not] need anything to drink", where foreigners might expect "I need not anything to drink". We say "I won't go" - sometimes "I will not go" - but never "I not go". We might even say "I'm not going to go" or "I'm not going". Most confusing of all, perhaps, is "You don't want to take that with you", which means "You need not [or, needn't] take that..."; whereas "I don't want to take that" means "I would rather not take it".

This confusion of course depends on your origin or where you've learned (learnt, as you would say) English.  I would say the same for your reference of "foreigners might expect"   There are variations in how English is written and spoken among countries where English is the native language, and there is not only one correct way.

There's been plenty of times I've spoken with Brits and felt like I needed a translator   We're both communicating in "English" but it is not the same dialect, not to mention accent.

There are indeed great variations, romaniac! I've posted several brief essays on language on my blog, that may be of interest to you. Here's one from July 2013, and I think you can find the others by clicking on the "language" label that appears at the top of every blog-page.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/ … spoke.html

This next link is to a very short video from some years ago, of an Australian TV reporter accosting a man who advertised his house for sale while specifying "No Asians".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YM9Ereg2Zo

No Asians - red hot

In this case it seems to have been a cock up, probably caused by reading the text of the advert down a telephone with strong Australian pronunciation, likely being taken down by a 10 Pound pom.

Many non native speakers of our really difficult language master the written form by using text books, but those books fail in epic style when it comes to the spoken word, as do many local English teachers.
I'm not knocking the teachers' efforts here, but most of them have no training at all in oral skills.
Some pick up oral skills by watching films mastering the required techniques from there, but most just fumble about, totally unable to get their lips and tongue in the right position to do anything worthwhile.
Oral work should be a requirement for all English teachers, but only an experienced native speaker can pass on the real skills required for the students to master a language.

To speak better English, it's usually necessary to be able to write better. That includes spelling better. On one of the other threads a poster uses the word "elemenry" instead of the proper word "elementary". The T-sound is important, though the last vowel is not . Several posters have used the word "wanna" instead of "want to". In casual conversation, we often do say "wanna" - but not on all occasions. Sometimes we actually say "want to", and it's important to know what is correct and what isn't. The same advice applies to "gonna" (often pronounced "gunna") and its correct version "going to", and "dunno" as a casual form of "don't know". One should never WRITE the casual versions of those words.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

The same advice applies to "gonna" (often pronounced "gunna") and its correct version "going to", and "dunno" as a casual form of "don't know". One should never WRITE the casual versions of those words.

Context matters here, so these casual forms may be difficult for a non-English native-speaker to grasp.

In college years ago, I did some traveling for a research project about network-radio news writing.  In Chicago, I interviewed Lyle Dean of ABC Radio News' American Contemporary Network.  This was a network providing hourly newscasts on WLS, WABC and other top-40 music stations all over the country.

Lyle had a good understanding of kickers -- the final story in a newscast, typically an item that was humorous or off-beat.

He knew he could loosen up on the English language in a kicker, in a way he would never do in reporting a straight-news story about President Nixon.

If "gonna" is gonna make the story, he told me, use "gonna."

cccmedia

This link might be of some help to those whose native language is not English - although it was actually written for people here in Cayman whose native language is a dialect of English, but not proper English. Our Island's educational standards are very poor, generally speaking, a situation that is often a serious obstacle to workplace-promotions. It's also an obstacle to the gaining of respect among expats here who can speak proper English - and of course to overseas speakers of English. So many don't know there is a difference between "loose" and "lose" - hence my chosen title.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2012/ … glish.html

The author G K Chesterton once noted, The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Yet another inconsistency in the English language...

Sometimes even native-speakers of English get confused when they fail to comprehend exactly what they hear. An example of this kind of thing can result in what has been called (only since 1954, believe it or not!) "Mondegreens" or "Lady Mondegreens" The following is an extract of a blog-post of mine from March 2014. It's an amusing story. (The first part of the post was about the folk-etymology of British names and ordinary words, which doesn't concern us here.)

To Lady Mondegreen, now. Not quite a folk-etymology, because it was invented by a child who grew up to be a writer – one Sylvia Wright. In 1954, she published an essay on a verse her mother used to read to her from an 18th-Century collection of ballads:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where have ye been?
They have slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

The little girl felt desperately sad for the poor lady who died with one of Scotland's famous martyrs, and resented the poet's failure to mention her again in his story. Decades passed before the adult Sylvia Wright actually read the poem for herself, and learned that the killers of the Earl o' Moray had in fact laid him on the green. Unaccompanied...

Wikipedia tells the story, and gives other examples of what are today called Mondegreens. We all have our favourites. Bob Dylan sang “the ants are my friends”, Creedence in Bad Moon Rising sang “there's a bathroom on the right”. And, at Number One, for me, the last verse of Psalm 23, which begins “Surely good Mrs Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life”.


Those last three were mis-hearings, respectively, of "the answer, my friends, [is blowin' in the wind"], "there's a bad moon on the rise", and "Surely goodness and mercy..." One I still remember from my childhood is, from a Christmas carol, "while shepherds washed their socks at night" instead of "watched their flocks". I'm sure all native-speakers who read this present post will have their own favourites. It might be fun to read them.

Ah well, maybe not...!

Here's another quick tip for those whose native language is not English... It's not true that one should never end a sentence with a preposition. "I didn't know where we were going to" is perfectly all right; and so is "I didn't know where we would end up".

It's also worth mentioning one of the several differences between English-English and American-English (meaning US-English). When I first left Australia (in 1963), and for many years afterwards, I used to say "Gosh, it's got cold all of a sudden". In recent years, living in a Caribbean island with more US TV programs than British, I say "It's gotten cold..."  Both are correct, but the latter gets me odd glances from longtime British friends. So does spelling "program" that way, without the -mme ending that the Brits prefer.

cccmedia wrote:

Lyle had a good understanding of kickers -- the final story in a newscast, typically an item that was humorous or off-beat.

He knew he could loosen up on the English language in a kicker... If "gonna" is gonna make the story, he told me, use "gonna".

cccmedia

I had to laugh tonight at Mike Embley, the BBC newsreader, who seems a good-humoured chap though never taking liberties with the English language. After reporting on the cock-up at the Miss Universe show, with photos of the whole shambles (the award was given to the wrong candidate, who had to give back the crown and dry her tears of joy), Mike's signing-off comment was a simple "Watcha gonna do?" He managed to say it without shrugging, which made it all the more unexpected, and funny.

"Speaking better English" requires an awareness of the language's taboo-words. I've blogged about some of these, during the last five years, and here is a link to a piece about one of the worst taboos - particularly in American English. The word is "nigger", which is a disparaging word for people whose skins are not white. It's quite commonly used by racists, so anybody who uses it will be immediately classified as a racist. Foreigners should be very careful not to use it.

As with all taboo-words, there are rare occasions when it is acceptable to use this word, and the blog I wrote about it reports two instances that I myself have come across.
//barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-story-of-nigger-brown_21.html

Random words of interest...

"That's all well and good, but..." is a common English expression that speakers of English as a second language might not be familiar with. In that context, well and good actually mean the same thing. That's not always the case.

We say "he speaks well", but not "he speaks good". We can say "he speaks good English", though. "He looks well" means that he doesn't look ill; "he looks good" implies that he looks better than expected. "He's doing well" = "he's succeeding", but "he's doing good" = "he's doing something admirable".

Well is also a common interjection in English, like er, hmm and ahh. "Well, he's looking good, but he's not well, you know."

Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, a French colony in the South-west Pacific Ocean, was a port of call for cruise-ships operating out of Australia. Shopkeepers who were anxious to attract cruise-passengers sensibly put signs in their windows saying "ENGLISH SPOKEN". Those signs gave birth to a slang term for all English-speakers, used by French-speaking residents of both New Caledonia and the next-door New Hebrides - "Poken".

My wife and I discovered this when we stopped over in Noumea on our way back from Bahamas to Australia in 1970 and were addressed as "Hey, Poken!" by hustlers wanting to sell us something. The usual term for Englishmen, in French, used flippantly or contemptuously, was "biftek", a sort of pidgin variant of "beefsteak". All English people were reckoned to eat beef steak, just as all the French eat frogs.

That's got nothing to do with speaking better English, of course, but I just this moment thought of it and wanted to pass it on here. No harm done, I think.

Sometimes, learning odd types of English can be fun. Here's a link to a famous Monty Python skit on Australian usage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_p0CgPeyA

(I had posted that in the Australia section, together with a piece on that country's pretend-language "Strine". Worth having a look there.)

My two Norwegian granddaughters speak English only when they're with us. One speaks it in a stilted fashion ("I not want "), the other colloquially ("I don't want"). Certainly the auxiliary verb "do" must confuse a lot of foreigners. Why should we say "do" and "don't", and when?*** They're usually quite unnecessary. Nevertheless, foreigners who do (!) want to speak English properly must learn the rules.

*** "I don't think she's here", but never "I don't hope she's here". Ridiculous!

Here's an interesting little comment on the importance (or not!) on speaking English "correctly". Enjoy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 … cist_.html

You've got to love the Aussies! 

Saw a YouTube recently by an Aussie (about where the Pulse night club was situated) and when the camera panned in on the big lit-up sign on the roadside he said to his thousands of his viewers worldwide...
"There it is, look, it stands out like a dog's balls."

I couldn't stop laughing for minutes.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Here's an interesting little comment on the importance (or not!) on speaking English "correctly". Enjoy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 … cist_.html

OMG - I'm a white supremacist.

I will immediate mess up my gramer and spel fings badly to prove I'm inclusiv, luvvy duvvy and a steaming moron without a clue.

I'm of the op-onion the far left and the far right are having a secret competition to see who can see who can say the daftest thing whilst keeping a straight face.

Moving one to Melissa A. Fabello's moronic piece from a few years ago, it was a valiant attempt to produce total crap as serious work, but her many other literally pieces of cow poop are, apart from using oppressively correct grammar, flabbergasting works of mindless crud.

Her excellent piece (Not), "Are you being oppressed if people say you need to eat a cheeseburger" and her terrific work all about men's 7-step guide to going from sleazy street harasser to respectful conversationalist are prime examples of her ability to get clueless crap published on the internet.

However, her wild flailing around in a bootless endeavor to sound bright with has hit on a point, grammar, spelling and use of a language isn't fixed and does require imagination to develop.
People keep telling me grammar and so on are the most important lessons an EFL student must master but I shout from the rooftops, "Get stuffed, creativity is far more important".

Any twit can learn stuff from a text book, but it takes imagination to turn what you've learnt into something worth having.

Grammar nazis, watch this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Much as Fry can be a nasty little bigot at times (I gave him a very stern telling off on twitter), he will listen and he realised he was being a prat, so I can forgive him that one bit of naughtiness, especially as I love his work so much.

In conclusion, have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time with words.

El_Jost wrote:

Saw a YouTube recently by an Aussie (about where the Pulse night club was situated) and when the camera panned in on the big lit-up sign on the roadside he said to his thousands of his viewers worldwide... "There it is, look, it stands out like a dog's balls.

I couldn't stop laughing for minutes.

Yes, that is a classic, El. It's always amused me, and I chuckled when I watched that video. It was - and apparently still is - a common expression in my part of the world, when I lived there. Among men, at least; it was always far too coarse for mixed company.

Fred wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY
Much as Fry can be a nasty little bigot at times (I gave him a very stern telling off on twitter), he will listen and he realised he was being a prat, so I can forgive him that one bit of naughtiness, especially as I love his work so much

Fry is a pain in  the neck sometimes, but he really is a brilliant logician. I loved that video link, although the actual video part of it was irritating beyond measure; I had to scroll down the page so I could listen without being distracted by the silly screen.

I was a pedant when young, until I discovered (at the age of 24, when I visited my first foreign country, England) that language is all about context, as Fry explains in the interview at the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBOCHPCYnDw

Fry has a nasty side, something I noticed with his very bigoted rants about Muslims.
I tweeted a message, "I respect you for who you are, not hate you for what you are",  a clear reference to his sexual preference.
I'm hoping he realised you can't blame a whole group for the actions of some of that group, even when those actions are truly disgusting as we see with the nut case element within Islam and other groups.

As for thoughts about language, someone had better tell Shakespeare you can't mess about with English or he'll go around corrupting English and writing plays and sonnets that remain famous for four hundred years after his death.
Wobbling Willy was a cheeky man who wandered around with a pen making up words and phrases as he pleased. That King James bloke will sort him out by writing a bible that won't change a single word of English.
I yearn for a return to the days when Beowulf was 'normal' English, before all those people messed about with the real English language.

Here's a Venerable bit of English.

Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit
thoncsnotturra than him tharf sie
to ymbhycggannae aer his hiniongae
huaet his gastae godaes aeththa yflaes
aefter deothdaege doemid uueorthae.

Fred wrote:

thoncsnotturra than him tharf sie

Shouldn't that be he ?
Looks like even early English speakers had difficulties telling the difference between the 'nominative' and the other cases. 
What amuses me is the way the Brits (nearly) always say "you and me" regardless of case....
while the Americans always say "you and I" also regardless of case.
Note, the Americans come out better because the nominative case occurs more frequently than the other cases.

El_Jost wrote:

Fred wrote:

thoncsnotturra than him tharf sie

Shouldn't that be he ?
Looks like even early English speakers had difficulties telling the difference between the 'nominative' and the other cases. 

No.

Bede was a native English speaker of many years ago, and that means his English doesn't follow the rules set out in modern grammar.
Our version of English is likely to be equally foreign to readers In a thousand years or so.

And there goes the point; grammar and style shifts as easily as a great vowel shifts.
(I wonder how many people won't realise that was a joke until they read this and open google)

Moving on to my puerile mind and swearing, what might very well be considered a very naughty word now could well be the norm in a very short time. Court records from times gone by used words we would normally consider very rude today (Except if Spongbob says them), so what's stopping language shifting again to allow use of these words, and other words becoming rude?

Perhaps it would be better if I didn't quote the discoveries made by Booth in court documents of 1310 as the team here would likely take offence at the use of that language.
As a note, I think it's pretty clear the term was used to suggest the person in question was less than a genius.

In the interests of forums peace, we don't need this thread turning into a kerfuffle so, before the hullaballoo turns into a cacophony or we all start speaking gobbledygook and discombobulate or flummox readers, so making them into curmudgeon who are lackadaisical when it comes to reading the rest of the thread, it's time I bade thee cheerio.

Yikes, Steady on young fella!
I didn't mean to upset your apple cart.

"Effing and blinding" is a great British term for using serious curse-words or taboo-words generally. Newcomers to the language should be careful not to use taboo words in inappropriate situations, lest they (the speakers) be deemed as disrespectful. I'm not sure that expat.com's moderators will allow me to give examples of "effing and blinding", but I hope they will be tolerant enough to let me give this link to a blog-post of mine from three years ago in which I explained why one of the worst cuss-words is more innocent than it seems on the surface.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/ … in-on.html

Being an old codger, I am conservative enough to avoid their use except in male-only company. Even then, I use them sparingly. I disapprove of their use by women or children. Foreign women - i.e. those whose native language is not English - can be forgiven for using them, since they can't be expected to know all the rude meanings. Even some English-speaking women don't always understand how some taboo-words came into being or what they mean. Once, a well-educated English acquaintance of mine referred to someone as a tw**. Horrified, I said "Lee, you can't say that word!" "She was quite taken aback. "Why? What does it mean?" She asked. "I won't tell you", I said; "you'll have to ask your husband." Which she presumably did, since I never heard her use it again.

Do any other English-speakers have an opinion on this topic?

Gordon Barlow wrote:

"Effing and blinding" is a great British term for using serious curse-words or taboo-words generally. Newcomers to the language should be careful not to use taboo words in inappropriate situations, lest they (the speakers) be deemed as disrespectful. I'm not sure that expat.com's moderators will allow me to give examples of "effing and blinding", but I hope they will be tolerant enough to let me give this link to a blog-post of mine from three years ago in which I explained why one of the worst cuss-words is more innocent than it seems on the surface.
http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013/ … in-on.html

Being an old codger, I am conservative enough to avoid their use except in male-only company. Even then, I use them sparingly. I disapprove of their use by women or children. Foreign women - i.e. those whose native language is not English - can be forgiven for using them, since they can't be expected to know all the rude meanings. Even some English-speaking women don't always understand how some taboo-words came into being or what they mean. Once, a well-educated English acquaintance of mine referred to someone as a tw**. Horrified, I said "Lee, you can't say that word!" "She was quite taken aback. "Why? What does it mean?" She asked. "I won't tell you", I said; "you'll have to ask your husband." Which she presumably did, since I never heard her use it again.

Do any other English-speakers have an opinion on this topic?

I think your statement towards foreign women is quite sexist.  Do you really think "foreign" women are so incapable of learning on the same level as a male?  You're dearly mistaken and your age doesn't excuse you!  I for one believe in equal opportunity swearing.  A word is no more or less profane based on the gender or age of the person using it.

With that, and your link to that drivel aside, I find it hypocritical that you think people should be careful not to use profanity (and racist terms which you mentioned in an earlier post), yet you draw attention to them by posting and linking to your blog posts about them in the spirit of "speaking better English".  It may have been in better taste not to have brought both ideas to the forefront, instead of feigning caution and conservatism.

If we ignore the morality of the subject, profanity and racist terms are in fact part of the language.  This isn't exclusive to English and I think many people even enjoy learning the profane words of any foreign language and even seek them out as beginners. They may feel the need to use them to express themselves even in a limited sense, or to understand when someone else around them is displeased, which is somehow important.  With that said, I think most people who utter those words are perfectly aware of their meaning and intend to convey their thoughts in that way.  Though it does happen to some people simply repeat words they've heard in a certain situation or context, without understanding the implication.  It's up to each person if they want to be known as someone that uses the profane "F" word or the racist "N" word, or the many other profane words in social interactions.  As you noted, your "well -educated acquaintance", made that error and rightfully corrected herself as an educated person should.

Since when are men allowed to be ruder than women?!?

Ruder among themselves, beppi - pretty much forever, in my personal observation! But not in mixed company. Poor old Romaniac can complain all he likes about sexism, but it has always existed in my world. Let him disapprove of my standing when a woman comes to the table, and holding doors open for women, and similar minor courtesies. I don't mind if he doesn't do those things; and he has the ranks of strident feminist extremists on his side. Bully for him.

But I believe that a certain amount of sexism is acceptable. It isn't necessarily sinister for societies to allow women to wear high heels and dresses, and not men. Or for societies - male and female - to frown on women using naughty words. Let him encourage his women friends to indulge in "effing and blinding" as much as they like - but not in my company, please. My mother and grandmothers would have disapproved as much as I do!

I'm sexist, but holding a door open for a lady used be get me accused of being a gentleman.
Do the two words mean the same time, just separated by time and social/political attitudes?

Fred. Oh dear! A true gentleman holds the door open for any woman, not just a lady...