h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey Johnwf, sorry to be such a bother, just missing your spicy comments about my poor English. And (I know neva at the beginning of a sentence!) I'd like to know what makes you language savvy.

Helena

His parents.
They couldn't stand to have a child who swore ungrammatically.

LOL, what an answer! I think when I got something learned quickly it was how to swear. Of course, as a lady you shall not aloud.

Hmmm...
What makes me language savvy?
Hmmmm...
I'm not sure I understand the question.

Perhaps it's not a question but one of those statements in the form of a question? You know, how people (especially younger people) raise the pitch of their voice at the end of a sentence so it sounds like a question? You know? Right?


There were two points I did want to discuss with you further, but of course we don't want to clog up the British-English thread with our personal conversation, so I'm really glad you came here.

The two points are inexorably interwtined. Let me explain.

First: Yes I did say you 'spoke' with an accent that reminded me of a the kind of European-English that is often heard in American TV comedy sketches. The famous show 'Taxi' for example had an eastern European (Russian?) character named Ladka who had the same sort of generic Polish/German syntax which produced comic results in communication.

There are hundreds of other examples - few are genuinely true accents but only the invention of actors. We can all recognise characters who are suppposed to be British, Chinese, Aboriginal Indians, Frenchmen or Russians and others when played by English speaking actots. It's a kind of stanadardised but 'artificial' version of real accents, compiling and accentuating the more common and obvious distinguishing markers. To play a Brit you just have to say things like 'Wot,wot,wot!' and "Oh, I say!" and "Ra-a-ather!". None of which is real, but it is recognised by an audience.

The way you were writing sounded like a TV character version of what eastern European immigrants are supposed to sound like. It is supposed to make us smile and understand and hopefully forgive our differences. You seemed quite happy with it, so I assumed it was okay to laugh. I even suspected you were making it up with one of those 'translation' programs that can render plain English into a variety of dialects and accents. (pause)

The second point, was the revelation that you are actually of the female persuasion. As you pointed out, I probably should have known from the 'feminine' form of your name, Canicula. But I didn't. Because I hardly ever think about gender in online personalities. As a result I speak to everyone in what I hope is a gender neutral tone, but sometimes when I get a little rowdy and start to goof around, it inevitably takes on a 'guys thing' sort of horseplay because I am a guy. A bit rough for the ladies sometimes.

So, these two points are intertwined because:

If I had known you were 'on the girl's team', I would never have tried to chuckle you up and get you laughing at your language 'deficiencies'. It's a guy thing to seek approval by allowing people to have fun at our expense. This prescription will not always work for a girl.

Instead I would have pointed out that men find women with european accents very attractive. There is a strange and mildly erotic quality to a woman with a Germanic accent. Marlena Deitrich is probably the greatest example of a woman who could entice men with almost exactly the same broken accent that Ladka used to get laughs.

So, don't go for the laughs, go for the gusto!
Don't worry about your accent, most English speaking men will find it mysterious and sexy. Online it's different though because gender normally isn't an important part of these conversations.


Whether intentional or not you keep coming up with lines like:
>> Of course, as a lady you shall not aloud. <<
that leave me smiling from ear to ear and pleasantly confused.

There is a pun on 'aloud' and 'allowed' that leaves us wondering which you really mean. If 'allowed' then the tense should be "as a lady you are not allowed" or "as a lady you would not be allowed".

If 'aloud' then you might have meant "as a lady you shall not say so aloud" or "shall not say these things aloud" or "not say such things out loud."

There is always confusion between 'shall' and 'will' by most speakers of English, the distinctions are fairly subtle and not something a 'forrin' thinker can account for quickly while translating thoughts into a second language. Nor is it something that someone like me, who became 'language savvy' just by listening to speakers around me and reading the great writers, can really explain. It becomes second nature. But there are rules for their usage if you want to ask the Brit Eng thread it would be interesting to hear some of the explanations and of course somebody will be able to quote the rules eventually.

Hope you're having fun at h2g2.
And if I've offended in any way, it was never my intention, just having a laugh with 'the guys'.


~jwf~

Thanks again for your patience with me.

I should admit that sometimes I like to toy a bit with puns as fas as I can master them.

The attraction of accents works the other way around as well. Lots of American women love British accents and call them sexy.

Maybe I should leave it the way it is, but I am a very curious and adventurous person and I am not satisfied yet with the level of accomplishment of my command of the English. It is easier to write up informally and quickly than to trying to think up something sounding formal and high level. I want to change it.

Like I mentioned before I read lots of books in English, good and not so good authors, but I find it hard to improve simply by reading. Maybe it is age related. Maybe I just don't get it.

For instance: yesterday I read about a IM conversation between a German, who speaks (or writes) a good English (she studied it at the UNI) and a French lady who is born American, her parents have moved to France when she was a kid. The two girls had posted their conversation on a board because of the funny content. The topic went on about showering habits, and the German said: "while being under the shower". The French understood, but the responses of the (mainly) British friends were confused, they missed the joke completely because they focused of the "under" the shower.
The French girl asked me whether this might be wrong and I said it should be "in" the shower.

so far so good.

What threw me was when I asked my son, currently Sophomore at HS, and working on Honors English II, told me that both would work... that his friend would say: "I couldn't pick up your call because I was under the shower"

Now what? Especially the use of xing is very controversial around here.

Sorry, for going on and on, I'm just desperate.

Oh, don't mind him, he once thought I was a 14 yr old girl from Skidworthy.

He's always trying to chat any newbie up in the hopes that they have a part that he's been missing off his Triumph rustbucket. When he gets on Ebay they keep expecting money.

LOL, that was funny, Proof, or would you have a name you'd like to go with? Nah, you don't sound like a 14 year old girl to me. My request is a serious one.

rustbucket, that word exists in German too, we'd use it for a car.

>> ..going on and on, I'm just desperate. <<

The word desperate is a strong one:

"Having lost all hope; despairing.
Marked by, arising from, or showing despair: the desperate look of hunger; a desperate cry for help.
Reckless or violent because of despair: a desperate criminal.
Undertaken out of extreme urgency or as a last resort: a desperate attempt to save the family business.
Nearly hopeless; critical: a desperate illness; a desperate situation."


Putting it at the end of a sentence (the way you have) really makes it even more emphatic and almost frightening.

I realise that German syntax is generally designed to put the most important or emphatic words as close to the end of a sentence as possible. The logic of a German sentence builds and reveals and climaxes in a burst of meaning and fullfillment.

English is more subtle. Maddeningly so.

You didn't just put "desperate" at the end of a sentence. Nope, you dropped it at the end of a paragraph and the very end of the entire post. It reverberates like a thunderclap. Emotionally I am overwhelmed by a desparate cry from afar and knowing there is nothing I can do. This leaves me feeling helpless and reluctant to reply without considerable thought.



Because I am determined to assist you if I can, I have been unable to reply until now. But now I can at least explain to you that some words in English have great power and do not need such amplification.

There is much more to criticise in your earlier posting, but I need to think further.


~jwf~

John,

it is a fair assumption that you think that every mistake I make stems from German?

I'm just desperate. Good grief. Ok, I see, that's too German.

I'm desperate just. No?
Desperate I am. oops dropped the just.
Just desperate I am. Ahhh!

Well, glad to read that you are completely consumed by the task to help me finding a better English.

Maybe I should - for entertainment purposes- translate my sentences into German. Do you speak it? You might find that some sentences have to become a complete make over to make sense.

Still would put the desperate right there. On purpose. For a dramatic exit.

The use of the word desperate is actually a sign that you are listening to your new fellow Americans and picking up their bad habit of overstating everything. Everything is the best, biggest, brightest, fastest, largest...
They make everything superlative and exagerrate for emphasis.
"Oh I love it!"
"Oh I'm desperate!"
"Oh I hate that!"

It isn't 'wrong' it's just not necessary to be so emphatic or dramatic all the time. For one thing it leaves nowhere to go. But if that is the way your new neighbours speak then they won't be much help to you.

Quite honestly, your best bet is to talk to other German Americans and listen to their stories of how they picked up on some of the more obvious problems. Most of which are in using the 'wrong' tense of a verb, falling back too often on the -ing form. You did it again in:

"...the task to help me finding a better English."

which should be:

"...the task OF helping me TO FIND..."

In this case the 'helping' would be the ongoing activity and the finding is way off in the future, perhaps infinity.

~jwf~

I did a terrible mistake in my last posting, that one is very embarrassing.
Alright got the message, won't bother you anymore.

Finding was right because it is hopeless.

Some Brits told me I should more often use -ing...

Anyway thanks a lot!

Don't pay any attention to him.
Englich is his second langwige, too.

He is a beliggered resident of the 3ird wirld coventry of Canuckistan.

Oh, my! I followed the trial of bred crumbs and found this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F58240?thread=377989 Leave her alone about her Englich, John, she udnerstands Scot's, an' thas enou' f' all that!

Oh, by the way. To me enemies and creditors, I'm known as (egenever lisnot) at the turn of the year, I decided to reverse my usual nickname and change the format of my tag. Just for fun and conforsion.

How do you say "rustbucket" in Deutscher grammer phonics?

Undt your foray into the wirld of Burns' Pottery was a bit of a shock to me (since my real name involves the same surname) until I realized that it was only on N2G2 that I am known by my real name and pottery.

Where in the Fool's Paradise are you living?
I am in Texas, the eastern part.

Hey, Rex, I love your comments! Thanks a bunch, the hero who came to my rescue.
I am in North Carolina, Western part, Piedmont to be a bit more precise. Are you an expat? What's the best name I could call you? I do understand Scots, literally, and culturally, at least I am giving a lot of thoughts to them.

Ah John it is your second language? It would explain why you are more correct than most of the Americans I talked to. Usually there is the blank stare when I ask them about correct grammar.

To most on here, I am known as TR, for (tonsil revenge). That's why the (egenever lisnot).
But Rex will do.
Here, boy! Sit!

No, I was born in Decatur, Illinois and have never left the continental U.S.

We did live near a place called Muddy Creek in one of the Carolinas when I was very young. Near Mt. Airy.

We also lived in Atlanta for a year or so, before returning to Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

Scots is a dialect of Englich.
It is a bit more intelligible than Doric, which is nigh on incomprehensible.

Oh, John is giving you a blank stare. It just doesn't have to do with language. He and his father spent many years in the broadcasting/entertainment field.

I can be hypercorrect, also, but I don't choose to too often because it gets boring after awhile. I expect people who were taught Englich to actually have a passing acquaintance with it.

So, which state or province of Yermany did you escape from?

yeah, good boy, Rex, wanna have a treat?

I am born and bred in Bavaria. Born in Munich, but my parents moved me around throughout the world and returned right for elemenary school. Unfortunately at this point of time people would consider it a danger or hinderance to introduce another language to a child, and thus I only had little interaction with English speaking friends. What I have learned was a very good understanding of the English, never had problems with it, but, alas the grammar, the grammar...

Scots is not even a living dialect, as far as I know, and the doric remains, in different forms, that's what I found out so far. Would you say it is both, an accent and a dialect? Btw, for a German both words have a different meaning. We would call a lot of accents dialects.

Are you from Scottish descendants or just interested?

I never was truely offended by John, well, ok one or two expressions he used were kinda offending, but I think I do understand where he is coming from. Not sure what you meant with the second language (which was his first) and the entertainment bit.

In Broadcasting, particularly radio, diction is very important. In order to have proper diction, one must learn how to pronounce the words. In seeking this knowledge, one also encounters the meanings.
In order to write good broadcast material, even a simple news flash or notice of a club date or a baby shower, it used to be the habit to learn how to write. Not giving in to all the silly stictures of educational meanness, but sticking to as many rules as seem to prove useful in real life.

John learned to speak Englich propahly because it meant a paycheck if he dood it well.

I thought you smelled like a Munchkin! I used to talk regularly with a fellow from there. His name is Bossel.

We haff several Bavarians running around this part of Texas. I used to deal with one at a post exchange at Ft. Hood. There is a pair of sisters at the Killeen mall who run a Payless shoe store, also.

Of course, this part of Texas is overrun with people from that end of Europe. Czechs, Poles, Lats, Slavs, Armenians, Moravians, and a few Germans and Chinese...

Best I can tell, someone in my past was run out of Scotland. Several other guesses as to pedigree involve a Cherokee on my father's side, the Burns bunch, and a Welsh horse thief named Wright on my mother's side, right next to the tattoo of Kirk Douglas eating a latka.

Ach, Scots not a living dialect? There are many who would disagree most vehemently. Of course, most o' them are illiterate, so it's mostly written, not spoken.

Englich grammar is based on the mistaken assumption that all languages can be treated the same. Thus, the supercilious weasels who were proficient at getting children to choke down Latin also got it into their heads that as fluid and absorbative a patois as Common Englisch could be digested in the very same manner.
They were wrong. I have heard from native Cantonese speakers that Englich is harder to learn than Basque.
Because there are no real road maps for Englich usage. You have to travel the road to find the bumps and the ditches and it is only from counting your bruises that you finally realize what to avoid.

Ach, dialect versus accent...
Yes, I am aware of the dictionary distinction. But in actual practice, if you can't understand what someone is saying, then there is no difference.
We once had a young gentleman from Johannesburg at my High School as an exchange student. For the first three weeks, until I got used to him and he began to modify his pronunciation a bit in accordance with the milieu he was now ululating in, I cudna ken a word!
I remember when I first began to watch the Benny Hill show when I was a young teenager. I had no idea what he was saying! It took a while before my ear could catch the divisions between the words and then what he was doing the vowels.

The bit about
Englich being John's second language has to to do with his Canadianness.
He waves it about so much, we take potshots at it occasionally.

Och I ken, I'm such a plague... why are you using the doric then, when you are a Texan gal (think you are female, right?) with a eclectic pedigree like most of the Americans?

What I meant with Scots not living anymore as a disctintion from the Doric, which is very much alive and spoken in parts of that wonderful country. While the auld Scots appears to have retreated to the literature haven, and its descendant the Doric has taken over.

I can write in Scots at least a bit, but I don't as I feel as I would be intruding into foreign territory.

>> ...German. Do you speak it? <<

Nine.



I took one year of first-year German at University but can't remember much more than I can of Latin or French which I also took for one year only. It was like sticking my nose in the door just to say I'd been there but without really getting much from it.

No, I only speak English. And I envy anyone like yourself who can actually carry on a conversation in a second language. Again I remind you that you are communicating and being understood. That is more than I can do.

But I know you want to be able to speak and write English more fluently so I have been trying to think of what might be your best bet for good advice on improving your English. And even though you think I was just trying to blow you off, I was serious about consulting other German speakers who now speak good English because they have already gone through what you are struggling with now. They will know the problem areas and how to explain them to you better than I could. They really might be able to make sense of it for you.

I don't speak German and so I can't begin to imagine how to explain certain things about English to you without either using examples with my voice (which one cannot do online) or explaining it in German (which I can't do at all).

There are a lot of German speakers online at h2g2.
You might try 'Ask h2g2' and see if any of them have any suggestions.

Glad to see you have met TR (tonsil revenge, Thesaurass Rex, Texas Radio, etc.)


~jwf~