This thread reminds me of this scenein Casablanca.
I have been tempted to put an axe in my cubicle, and if anyone makes an inquiry about it, tell them that it’s what they are going to get hit with if they don’t stop axing me questions.
“Right now” is redundant. “He be over there,” expresses the present tense completely.
Anyway, there are two Charos: the comedienne with fractured English and the one who studied under Segovia. They just try to inhabit the same costume at the same time.
And according a US court she really is just a couple years older than me. ¡Cuchi-cuchi!
Exactly. It’s a lack of respect.
It is not a correct translation, it is a too-literal translation. The correct translation of the Spanish buenos días into English is good morning, not good days. A correct translation conveys the original meaning in the new language accurately and correctly (or with the same level of “defects” as in the original) - if the original does not require mental gymnastics from the recipient, the translation shouldn’t either.
Ok…
This is where I’ll chip in –
Trying to learn Chinese in a Chinese speaking environment is NOT fun in the slightest.
Yes, when you go out and make the attempt people do appreciate,
But round family and colleagues - they are more likely to laugh at your failed attempts (laughing AT you not WITH you) than they are to help you.
There is a really high level of what I think of as “language arrogance” here…
And to cap it off - here in Singapore, although they profess to speak both English and Chinese fluently - the level of both in many sectors leaves a lot to be desired
Has your lao por spent some time in Singapore?
“How Can” is the standard complaint in spoken English here -
as in “how can like that one?” or “like that, how can?” - meaning, why are you behaving like that, or why are the rules so unfriendly.
In other words - why is this situation going against me, it isn’t fair.
And other phrases you WILL hear from people that proclaim their first language to be English…
Off the lights
Close the TV
Keep the books
Fetch me to the airport
Borrow me some money
That last one is actually used by people in parts of the US who do speak English as their first language. I heard it all the time when I was living in Wisconsin. (There’s even an MST3K skit referencing this regionalism.) I thought it sounded stupid, but it was natural enough for people who grew up there.
I don’t see any problem with “keep the books”, that’s a common English phrase.
I have the same issue in my job. Worse, with a few people, I’m never sure if the person speaking really isn’t being clear because of an English problem, or if they’re using “an English problem” to avoid being clear. <.<
Definitely it is cultural whether people consider you speaking their language in a crappy fashion “cute” or just annoying as hell. I find Japanese people in general do not respond well to my now poor, mostly forgotten high school Japanese. I’m not sure why that is, because the phrases I know, I have a pretty good accent and I know I am speaking them properly, but they often do not even attempt to reply back to me in Japanese, which seems quite rude.
Filipinos are way OVERLY impressed by you trying to speak Tagalog. I can understand very well and speak broken tagalog to cabbies so that they know not to overcharge me and try to rip me off. I know my grammar is bad and my conjugation sucks, but I can carry on a conversation at least intelligeably. Filipinos often respond with “WOW HE SPEAKS TAGALOG!” when I say the simplest thing. In American English, it would be condescending if someone said “WOW HE SPEAKS ENGLISH!” to someone who speaks broken English, but the filipinos genuinely mean well. I wonder if there is a name for this cultural dichotomy of responding to your native language either warmly or harshly by foreigners.
I think your AAVE is not very good. “He be over there” COULD mean he is over there now, or it could mean “He is often over there and may or may not be there now”. So the right now is not redundant, it increases clarity.
One of the hardest things to learn for ESL students is the prepositions. They make sense to us, but the fact is, that which preposition a verb takes is often arbitrary. So ESL speakers often use the wrong one, and it causes us to actually visualize, momentarily, both what the speaker has said, and what the literal meaning of the correct preposition is, and sometimes it’s funny. Why do we put on clothes, instead of putting them over, for example. Why do we hang up the phone instead of hanging it off, or hanging it down? And try to explain to someone who is an ESL student when to say that someone is “at the hospital,” and when someone is “in the hospital.” Once they get it, they usually ask why, and there is no answer to that.
Something a lot of ESL people get wrong is the expression “If I were in your shoes…” They say “If I were on your shoes.” Why? because when we wear shoes, we put them on, not in. People think literally “If I put on you shoes,” and then get the expression slightly muddled.
That’s just one thing, but, IME, it’s a big one.
What about this from Gutnius Jon i raitim?
Do you consider those to be “broken English”? Dialect? Languages in their own right?
My paternal grandmother and the relatives of that generation were immigrants who spoke Yinglish, a blend of Broken English and Yiddish. In my youth, I found their way of speaking somewhat embarrassing, but now I’m older, that generation is gone, and I listen to Yinglish with a fond, nostalgic feeling.
The funniest misunderstanding me and my wife have had was similar to this.
I drove us to her friend’s house (also Filipino) to pick him up to go somewhere. We parked outside and she called her friend to come outside. He was taking forever, so she called him again to ask him what was taking so long.
Me: “Is he coming out? He’s taking forever.”
Her: “He’s just wearing his shoes.”
Me: “…???”
Her: (getting angry at me) “HE’S.JUST.WEARING.SHOES!”
She got angry at me because she didn’t realize in American English “He’s just wearing his shoes” means “Naked, except for shoes”, so she couldn’t understand my confusion. Try telling this story to a Filipino, and chances are they won’t get the joke. I still laugh about it.
i didn’t get the joke either until you explained, i didn’t even realise that there would be a confusion.