[HN Gopher] I started taking English classes at the age of 46
___________________________________________________________________
I started taking English classes at the age of 46
Author : homakov
Score : 106 points
Date : 2022-12-11 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mxgrn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mxgrn.com)
| gfd wrote:
| >I start taking English classes at the age of 46
|
| I think it should be "started" instead of "start".
|
| I'm also ESL and have given up on learning English properly after
| 30 years of trying. Nowadays I just rely on grammarly/gmail (and
| it does catch this particular example).
| jacooper wrote:
| Try learning German......
| mxgrn wrote:
| You're right, thanks! Fixed.
| w-m wrote:
| Thanks for teaching me the word garrulous! For years in my teens
| and twenties I built my English vocabulary slowly, by looking up
| any word I didn't know while browsing the internet. Looking up 15
| words every day adds up, even if you don't have a system for
| memorizing them. But there too have I reached a plateau.
|
| I remember taking a test that tries to gauge the size of your
| vocabulary fairly recently (it was linked and discussed on HN
| IIRC), and being somewhat disappointed that I, in my mid-30s,
| rank like a native ~15 year old. I'd like to express myself in
| more sophisticated ways, like an adult would, but the look-up
| method is at an end there. Hardly ever do I need to look up a
| single word when reading tech content, which is what I consume
| the most.
|
| So for me it would take an effort to seek out such material, that
| pushes my vocab bounds. Kudos to you for getting active, it's not
| that low of a hurdle to get started on!
|
| (Corrections welcome)
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Read books.
|
| East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, for example. Or
| collections of Sherlock Holmes stories. Or Asimov's Foundation
| series (skip the last couple of books!). Or Night Watch by
| Terry Pratchett. Or Parliament of Whores by P.J. O'Rourke.
|
| Or go through lists of famous opening lines of novels and maybe
| pick up a novel that you really like the beginning of ("It is a
| truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
| of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife", "It was the best
| of times, it was the worst of times [...]", "It was a bright
| cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen",
| etc.).
|
| It doesn't matter what it is, as long as the writing is good
| and you like reading it.
|
| (And don't bother looking everything up. It shouldn't be
| necessary and it makes the reading process dull.)
|
| Another option is to watch TV.
|
| Watch something you never used to watch before, such as Grand
| Designs or Would I Lie To You (start with the clip "I
| accidentally bought a horse" on the "WILTY? Nope!" channel as
| it has fantastic subtitles... which you WILL need). Or maybe A
| Bit of Fry & Laurie, for example the sketches about language
| and the sketch with the pretentious tourists (it's on youtube
| as "A Bit of Fry and Laurie S02E04 Czech"). Or Jimmy Carr
| hosting I Literally Just Told You (season 1 episode 2 -- the
| others are not as good). Or Carr hosting The Big Fat Quiz of
| the Year/Decade/etc or 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
|
| A third option is radio/podcasts.
|
| The Unbelievable Truth (hosted by David Mitchell), for example.
| Or In Our Time (hosted by Melvyn Bragg) -- start with some of
| the older ones as Bragg is no longer as sharp or as clear in
| his speech as he used to be just five years ago.
| w-m wrote:
| Thanks for these suggestions! I'm already a fan of Fry and
| Laurie, of David Mitchell, and have read the Night Watch.
| (And some Asimov, but in my native tongue.) So it's highly
| likely I'd enjoy the rest of these things.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| You're welcome :)
|
| Let's throw in The Importance of Being Earnest and HHGTTG
| (don't watch the movie). Maybe also some Vonnegut books? My
| favourite is Hocus Pocus.
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| I think learning at that age for some people is not going get
| anywhere (at least for me). And this is not about giving up. It's
| about being adult is about not giving a shit to a lot of thing.
|
| Learning language process is about > 50% mimicking / copying. I
| didn't realize until I graduated and worked with a British boss
| first time. I realize that 90% of schools in my country have
| taught english wrong all along. In school, they still teach
| student to mix and match a sentence on their own which is WRONG,
| resulting in weird non real world sentence with correct or
| incorrect grammar. Good speaking comes from listening to tons of
| real world audio / conversation / encounter any arbitrary
| context. This is akin to the process of training neural network.
| Good writing comes from reading a tons. And then we start to
| write and speak _like_ those english speaker.
|
| So at this point my english skills won't going anywhere because
| my adult's mental model commands me to stop mimicking and
| copying. For example, this phrase sounds good but I hate it and I
| won't use it: "that being said, ..." which sounds nonsense to me
| as non-english speaker, I prefer "however" which sounds mediocre
| writing but it's a straightforward meaning. Think about it when
| you translate "that being said" .. it doesn't give a twist hint
| at all, it sounds like "something is stated" that's it. Excuse me
| for long whining.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I am older than TFA's author, and still practice language
| acquisition.
|
| I generate utterances like I type: fast and with a lot of
| mistakes.
|
| That being said, I have yet to make the sort of mistake which
| results in a couple of tons of manure being dumped in front of
| my house, so I could probably safely stand to loosen up even
| more...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > "that being said, ..."
|
| You can think of it as a contraction of, 'despite that having
| been said'.
| mxgrn wrote:
| > It's about being adult is about not giving a shit to a lot of
| thing.
|
| This. In my little theory, that's exactly the watershed: will
| one be able to find something exciting to do. If succeeded,
| learning abilities and creativity follow the energy. It's akin
| to falling in love, really. But yeah, when you get older, you
| my need to try harder finding those things.
|
| I couldn't find any tricks as to how to identify such areas of
| interest, but I "discovered" an indirect factor that raises the
| chances for that: regular physical exercise, ice baths, proper
| nutrition, and staying calm. When I feel great, the world
| suddenly becomes a fun place to live.
| poszlem wrote:
| As someone who moved to an English-speaking country as an adult,
| I noticed the temptation to reach a "local maximum" in language
| learning and stop making progress. This can happen when you feel
| like you have reached a point where you can get by with your
| current level of proficiency, but it can actually limit your
| ability to fully express yourself in the language. The only way
| to overcome this challenge is to make a deliberate effort to
| continue learning and improving. I agree with the author of the
| blog post and appreciate their message.
|
| One thing I also noticed is that the general tendency to be
| welcoming and non-offensive makes it very hard to get corrections
| and feedback from people you are talking to. That is very much
| the opposite approach than what happens in my country of birth
| (also a Slavic country, as the OP) where people will almost
| always correct you. I now realise that receiving corrections and
| feedback, even if it is sometimes delivered harshly, is an
| important part of language learning.
| drivers99 wrote:
| In the spirit of giving a correction, and how to get them, the
| title should say either "I started" or "I am starting" not "I
| start." I was going to suggest lang-8 for written corrections
| but it appears they changed to HiNative.com (I'm not
| affiliated) which appears to be for a combination of
| corrections and asking language questions.
|
| I used to give language corrections on lang-8. I started to
| notice there are two types of corrections you can give. One
| type of error is a true grammar mistake, like saying "a apple."
| Another is just making it sound more native. In those cases I
| would sometimes decide how to fix the grammar while keeping the
| original way of saying it, but also suggest a better way of
| saying it.
| js2 wrote:
| "A apple," a grammatical mistake yes, but always makes me
| smile because it reminds me of the Honeymooners episode where
| Ralph Kramden gets stage freight presenting he "handy
| housewife helper" ending his latest get rich scheme.
|
| https://youtu.be/em1DEwOtm3I
| drivers99 wrote:
| Haha "I will now do it the modern way" is really relatable.
| I'm going to steal that.
| mxgrn wrote:
| From what I've seen so far, ChatGPT is surprisingly good at
| editing texts. Would love to hear an opinion from a native,
| though.
| mxgrn wrote:
| > either "I started" or "I am starting" not "I start."
|
| ... And suddenly it seems so obvious! Thanks, fixed!
| a_lieb wrote:
| To be fair: titles and headlines are often written in the
| tense you used, often to give a sense of energy and
| intensity. In fact, this is the most common form in news
| headlines, like "Smith wins 2022 election" or "new
| statistics show increase in employment rate."
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| That's definitely true, but just for the third person.
|
| For the second person, "you start taking the bus at age
| 30" is an imperative statement, which has a totally
| different meaning from the observation "You start _ed_
| taking the bus at age 30 ".
|
| And for the first person, "I start the project on Monday"
| refers to the future, "I started the projected on Monday"
| the past.
| munificent wrote:
| Headlinese:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese
| wrs wrote:
| Another thing that stood out: "the primary school" instead of
| just "primary school". It implies there was only one primary
| school where you lived, which I'm guessing is not what you
| meant.
|
| I don't give "nativeness" corrections like this unless asked,
| but when I do, it can be fascinating to dig around in my
| unconscious language skills to try to explain _why_ things
| sound "wrong".
| mxgrn wrote:
| Appreciated the effort! Love these tiny details. Edited the
| post.
| mxgrn wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. Wanted to add that, for me personally,
| effort _has_ to follow fun, and only then it's efficient, and,
| most importantly, sustainable. This post was partially inspired
| by an awesome book called Company of One by Paul Jarvis, btw.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I don't correct people on the street but I do correct and
| advise without being asked for people I work with that I know
| are not native speakers. I have the sense that they appreciate
| it
| robocat wrote:
| > the general tendency to be welcoming and non-offensive makes
| it very hard to get corrections and feedback from people you
| are talking to
|
| In New Zealand it is usually offensive to "correct" someone's
| English, because the act of "correcting" pronunciation and
| grammar is often associated with status signalling (higher
| education is associated with high status by many stuck-up
| knobends). The same dynamic occurs in other English speaking
| countries too. I have seen the same thing in Spanish with
| madrilenos too, and I am sure it happens in many other
| cultures.
|
| Correcting someone is often fraught with issues:
|
| * Foreign speakers have clammed up, or gotten upset, when I
| have carefully tried to help. It is very difficult to be
| tactful without causing embarrassment.
|
| * Many native speakers are ashamed if caught out making
| mistakes, so we eventually learn to avoid correcting the
| mistakes of others, even humdingers.
|
| * Usually we want to remain on the topic of conversation. It is
| hard to inject corrections without breaking the flow, even in a
| one-on-one conversation. Nearly impossible in a social
| environment.
|
| * The mistakes of ESOL speakers are often ingrained and
| resistant to improvement. Trying to fix errors over and over
| again is tiring for both people.
| 988747 wrote:
| I am such person, stuck at "local maximum". I do still live in
| my country of birth, though. One of the reasons I'm stuck is I
| keep thinking: "Should I invest more time in learning English,
| or maybe it's better to start another language? (Spanish
| perhaps)" ROI with learning new language seems much higher than
| learning more English, just to avoid occasional hiccups in my
| conversations.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| I'd like to offer a counterpoint: quite likely you'll reach a
| ceiling unless you move as a kid or, better yet, as a toddler
| or baby! I spent ten years in the US, and was very lucky to
| have a wonderful native uncle who cared a lot and, sometimes
| tenderly and other times quite bluntly, corrected me
| constantly, but naturally this became less frequent.
|
| I was 17 years old when I arrived in the US, and after half a
| year there I could almost sense getting better by the day, it
| was an extremely exciting experience. My very naive illusion,
| however, was that this progress would stay linear until I
| caught up with the natives, but it unsurprisingly plateaued, in
| particular when it came to my accent and pronunciation. But
| again, that first half year felt amazing!
| frant-hartm wrote:
| The effects of just absorbing what's around you diminishes at
| the C2 level. From my experience a huge effort must be made
| to improve beyond that, e.g. pronunciation won't improve
| without focused effort - you need a tutor or youtube videos
| on the topic.
|
| Still, great improvements can be made in niche areas - know
| you are traveling to Scotland for holiday? Watch video or two
| about the accent differences, few movies and you understand
| 95 % in no time.
| somrand0 wrote:
| nah, I disagree.
|
| I've been trying to express complex ideas at the limits of my
| own grasp of language (including my native one) since always.
| And so long as I've kept trying I have kept improving. Surely
| diction is difficult, but you would have probably needed some
| diction tutoring or other tips to better use your mouth to
| sound like a native. It is possible but it's work.
|
| so this is my counter point to your counterpoint.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| Plateauing is compatible with maintaining an upward trend.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| In the UK there is indeed a reluctance to correct people's
| English as you say, but if you live somewhere like London you
| are surrounded by non-native speakers so apart from other
| considerations it would also be exhausting to correct
| everyone's errors. We must also be mindful of the reality that
| English is the global language, and as such it is arguably not
| the place for someone who speaks a particular dialect to be
| overly prescriptive. The situation in a Slavic county is likely
| to be different - a non-native speaker is I suspect far more of
| a novelty, and the reasonable assumption for native
| interlocutors is that the non-native is actively eager to
| improve their proficiency rather than merely trying to get by
| in the language, so feedback is welcome.
| argella wrote:
| Question for ESL people here.
|
| One of my direct reports is a non-native English speaker. He has
| a pretty thick accent and talks fast. Common feedback I get from
| customers we work with is that he can be hard to understand.
|
| I plan on giving him some career advice that he should work on
| this. Talk slower, consider working on reducing his accent.
|
| Any suggestions on how to do this in a way that is sensitive /
| not-offensive?
|
| My first instinct is just to say it, share comments I'm getting
| from our customers, etc. but I don't want it to be hurtful. It's
| really a "you could be more effective if ... " thing.
| thriftwy wrote:
| You could say that some of the customers, who are not native
| speakers themself, havd trouble keeping up with his speed of
| speech.
|
| That would likely both be true and remove entitlement from the
| question.
| bojan wrote:
| > Any suggestions on how to do this in a way that is sensitive
| / not-offensive?
|
| Offer him a course or private lessons paid by the company (with
| the company investing ideally both money and time). They are
| probably aware of their accent and shouldn't refuse the
| possibility to improve.
|
| If they do refuse, then it's a bit questionable if you want to
| work with a person that is not open for feedback.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| > Any suggestions on how to do this in a way that is sensitive
| / not-offensive?
|
| Wouldn't that depend on what culture he is from and what that
| culture considers offensive?
|
| Either way, I've heard good things about "Accent makeover"
| classes, so if they are available to him, maybe it is
| worthwhile to pay for him to take such a course?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| anyfactor wrote:
| I sometimes think about sitting down and properly learning
| English. But for some reason, I think that would be a waste of
| time.
|
| The issue is that my mistake stems from my carelessness, not from
| my knowledge of English grammar. One of the most common mistake I
| make is forgetting to use sub-three letter words to my sentences
| like - to, is, and, or etc. Now the issue is that, this IS 80% of
| what English grammar stands for. My writing style is kinda
| keyword focused, if that makes any sense to anyone.
|
| The internet as a whole has become quite tolerant and the spaces
| I dwell usually don't criticize me for my bad grammar. My keyword
| focused statements gets my ideas across. Also I found that, if I
| cared too much about something I end up not expressing it. So the
| only things I talk about are my impromptu ideas which are jumbled
| and careless.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > The issue is that my mistake stems from my carelessness, not
| from my knowledge of English grammar
|
| I remember one time when I asked a native speaker to proof-read
| an article I wrote. Most of my mistakes were missing "s" in the
| present tense, one of the first thing you learn as a beginner.
|
| > I sometimes think about sitting down and properly learning
| English. But for some reason, I think that would be a waste of
| time.
|
| Same here. My company would pay for English lessons (3h a week
| with an English coach). It's quite a commitment and I'm worried
| that I'm way past the diminishing returns and it would take
| tons of effort for barely noticeable improvements. On the other
| hand, I'd love to get better and it'd be helpful professionally
| for sure.
| [deleted]
| kekkidy wrote:
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think one of the best ways to increase your overall ability to
| utilize a language is to read as much fiction as you can. Authors
| do not like to sound repetitive. As they write their novels, they
| will be forced to find alternate ways to say the same thing.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Agreed, and I had one language prof who said she could always
| tell who in her courses read for pleasure and who did not.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| Online gambling promoters are the best communicators. They
| hustle and you feel as if you are in control and there is the
| investment ad with fine print after the aster saying, "You do
| not own..".
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, authors write dialogue, which is speech as it would be
| said.
|
| This is an important distinction in languages where talking
| like, say, a newscaster, would sound extremely stuffy and
| awkward.
| dghughes wrote:
| I've read about native English speakers who take classes to
| cleanse their colloquialisms from their speech. It's for
| conducting business with people who speak English but not
| natively. OP in a way is trying to do the opposite.
| mxgrn wrote:
| Well, only in a way :) I don't think colloquialisms are
| necessarily what I'm after, but rather a richer, literate
| language.
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| For American "literate"language favored by artists and
| elites:
|
| Avid book readers of classic and Early Modern English
| literature have a much wider and expressive vocabulary, and
| are more likely to pepper their speech with socially-accepted
| literary references.
|
| But for richer American language:
|
| I especially love the colloquialism, grammar and accents
| across the American regions. They're so vibrant, punchy and
| exciting. This is best experienced in person when traveling
| and stopping into local restaurants but can also be found in
| literature, music and social media as well but it requires
| effort to find which it what makes it fun.
|
| In my case, I ask myself a question like what does a 40 year
| old blue class worker from New Jersey or a 19 year old
| Floridian rapper sound like, then the hunt is afoot.
|
| Elites find local speech ignorant but I find it mesmerizing -
| a radiant, colorful flower in a sea of sameness.
| js2 wrote:
| > blue class worker
|
| Blue collar, a reference to the working class wearing blue-
| collared shirts as opposed to the professional class
| wearing white-collared shirt.
|
| Blue class workers are sad students, or maybe Smurfs. :-)
|
| > Elites find local speech ignorant but I find it
| mesmerizing.
|
| On account of because of your comment, I think you'd really
| enjoy _Ball of Fire_ (1941).
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OwcxH46a16g
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| It's possible that blue class workers got those blues
| real bad. I asked their women for comment, but they said
| they woke up this mornin', upped, and left 'em. The only
| ones I could catch up with were very old ones from the
| Missisippi Delta region, who admitted to feeling like a
| broke down engine...
| mabbo wrote:
| Damn, I would probably benefit from that.
|
| I've had a number of misunderstandings over the last decade
| where in hindsight, my communication was the root cause. My
| favourite: "I would". Meaning "in your situation, I would do
| X". And the person later came back and said "but you said you
| would do it".
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| Ooo, that is a particularly great example - I wouldn't have
| thought of that (no pun intended), and I pride myself on
| being able to scale my use of English to the skill-level of
| the person I am speaking to.
|
| In fact, even if I was in "speak simply" mode, I would still
| use "would" instead of, perhaps, "recommend," as "would" is a
| shorter word: I favor simpler words over multi-syllable
| versions when trying to be maximally understandable to
| someone whose native language is not English. I'm glad you
| brought it up!
| mabbo wrote:
| To this day, I'm still unsure whether there was a
| misunderstanding or if I was being taken advantage of, but
| I presume good intent from the person.
| frant-hartm wrote:
| As a non-native speaker, I fail to see how that can be
| understood differently.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| Which meaning of it do you feel is the one that is clear to
| you?
| LaLaLand122 wrote:
| I would never understand it as "but you said you would do
| it", I would say "would" is safe to use with non-natives.
| But it may depend on the native language of the other
| person. There are some really weird languages out there!
|
| The other day Duolingo did show me you can say "i A i B"
| ("i" being "and") to say "both A and B". Start a sentence
| with "and", a conjunction, without anything before to...
| "conjunt"... I still can't parse it without raising an
| exception.
| frant-hartm wrote:
| I understand it as an advice, recommendation - "If I were
| you, I would do X".
|
| After re-reading I probably see the issue, but you never
| said "I will do X" which changes to would in reported
| speech:
|
| I will do X -> You said you would do X.
|
| Did they understood "I would do X" as "I will do X"?
| cromka wrote:
| Interesting point, never thought of that. As an ESL speaker,
| somewhat advanced and with an experience of living in the US
| for a while, I have learned many colloquialisms that I recently
| had to become more aware of when dealing with someone speaking
| the language at a much more basic level. So this concept
| actually applies to people like me, too, and maybe even more
| so, since we're less likely to be able to instinctively
| evaluate how common or rare a colloquialism can be to a another
| foreign ear.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I too try my best to learn and use colloquialisms. Excessively
| formal language is very academic, something you learn in a
| school rather than by actually communicating with other humans.
| Inability to understand and communicate using informal language
| and slang marks us as foreigners. Even subtle differences in
| word choice can sound weird to native speakers.
|
| I test my fluency by attempting to pass off as a native speaker
| on the internet. If anyone ever suspected I'm not a native
| speaker, they never told me. I was once unmasked in an old
| video game though because of a mistake specific to that game
| and people from my country, a mistake I had internalized since
| childhood. That was quite shocking to me...
| kingbirdy wrote:
| > I was once unmasked in an old video game though because of
| a mistake specific to that game and people from my country, a
| mistake I had internalized since childhood. That was quite
| shocking to me...
|
| I'm curious to know what the "mistake" was here. Is it
| something like referring to in-game items via their name in
| your native language, instead of English?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, sort of. The game is Tibia, it has an item called
| copper shield. When I was a kid, all my friends and I used
| to write and pronounce it as cooper shield. I internalized
| that mistake to the point I actually thought the item was
| called cooper shield despite knowing what copper is.
|
| So decades later I went a gaming community on the internet
| and suggested we all play this old game. Everything was
| fine until I said cooper shield. One guy immediately
| messaged me "br?" and I was shocked. No one else noticed
| it. Turns out he was also a foreigner who learned
| portuguese by playing the game together with brazilians and
| he recognized that specific brazilian mistake.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > a mistake I had internalized since childhood
|
| This can happen even in our native language.
| bojan wrote:
| > I test my fluency by attempting to pass off as a native
| speaker on the internet. If anyone ever suspected I'm not a
| native speaker, they never told me.
|
| How does this work exactly? Do you explicitly say you're a
| native speaker and then wait until someone realizes you are
| not and tell you?
|
| Because I don't see it happening that people will tell you
| they don't think you're a native speaker organically, in a
| conversation that's going on about something else.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| On anonymous and pseudonymous communities, people tend to
| assume everyone's american for various reasons. This is
| also true here on HN.
|
| In my experience, when people think someone else is a
| foreigner, they ask them where they're from. The assumption
| that they were talking to an american was violated so they
| try to determine who they're actually talking to. So if I
| can manage to not violate that assumption, it must mean
| that my speech resembles that of an american native
| speaker.
| aix1 wrote:
| Reminds me of this classic: https://greatbritishmag.co.uk/uk-
| culture/what-the-british-sa...
|
| "What Brits say vs what they actually mean."
| cardanome wrote:
| As a German I feel this is just common sense polite speech.
|
| The only think cracking me up regularly is getting asked "How
| are you?". I just can't get used to it. Every time I hear it
| I have a split second reaction of actually processing how I
| am feeling before reminding myself it was just meant as a
| phrase.
|
| It is such a shitty thing to ask. It makes me more aware of
| my feelings but sets the expectations that I am not allowed
| to actually verbalize my feelings. Don't ask if you are not
| prepared for an honest answer.
|
| And yes, I know it is just a ritualized thing. Still annoys
| me.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| I get the same feeling of momentary compulsion to exactly
| answer a greeting when confronted with two very common
| greetings in Thai: "Have you eaten rice yet?" and "Where
| are you going?"
|
| To this day, I am still not entirely confident in how I
| should respond with to the prior.
|
| In regards to the English "how are you?" greeting, think of
| it as a formulaic inquiry meant only to ensure there isn't
| anything absolutely horrible going on with you at that
| exact moment - anything lesser equates to "fine" or "I'm
| well, thanks."
|
| More broadly, it is an appropriate situation to note
| anything out of the ordinary going on - "oh wow, I am so
| tired this afternoon!" etc to scope the ensuing situation.
| The greeting really is a question that equates to being
| asked "is there anything particularly out of the ordinary
| going with you right now I should know about that would
| impact us talking?" If there isn't, "I'm well, thanks."
|
| (I know you know all this, but your comment got me musing
| on the topic.)
| DFHippie wrote:
| As a native speaker of English, when someone asks me that I
| _do_ try to express how I am, but I know my response is
| being interpreted relative to a baseline of how people
| answer this question. If I 'm having a rough day I will
| answer differently from how I would on a good day. But
| while doing this I'm balancing all sorts of other
| considerations: how much time I can spend away from other
| topics, whether I want a closer or more formal relationship
| with the other person, what they want, etc. I modulate my
| response relative to the communicative baseline, so my
| interlocutor, if they're fluent, can infer that I'm doing
| well or poorly, I'm in haste or willing to take some time,
| that I put great stock in the my relationship to them or
| little.
|
| I think this implicit communicative baseline is a huge,
| invisible barrier to communication among people who are
| apparently fluent in a common language. You can still
| understand the question as serious and answer it honestly
| conveying how you are to the speaker, and have it come off
| as fake or formulaic to people not aware of the baseline.
| I'm sure this is true for all languages. The problem, of
| course, is acquiring a knowledge of these baselines and the
| context in which they apply is extremely difficult, often
| even for native speakers. The native speakers find it
| difficult to introspect about this and explain why they
| interpret things as they do. Because it is invisible to
| them, it is difficult for them to teach this to someone
| else. And it is difficult for them to realize someone else
| is not doing this and therefore not be offended by non-
| natives, or people with ASD or whatever, not communicating
| relative to this baseline. A Dutch person saying something
| bluntly isn't "just being honest". They are just comporting
| themselves relative to the Dutch baseline. A Japanese
| person using non-confrontational polite formulations isn't
| being dishonest. They assume you are familiar with the
| Japanese baseline (while not necessarily even being aware
| this is their assumption).
|
| I think it is common for people to believe people from
| their native culture come in all sorts but people from
| other cultures all have personalities in a tight range.
| They're all lazy or wily or emotionless or angry or cold. I
| think what they're perceiving is the way one communicative
| baseline deviates from another. They take this difference
| as a deliberate, communicative modulation away from _their_
| baseline, the honest, neutral one. To them, the other
| person 's neutral state is not neutral. They always speak
| as they they're angry, say, or in a hurry, or trying to
| deceive. It is analogous to the way people perceive
| themselves as having a neutral, invisible accent and all
| other people speak in some quirky way.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I (a native english speaker) frequently ask this question
| at the start of conversations. and I am actually seeking
| information- it is not an empty ritual.
|
| The following are in the context of a workplace
| conversation; other types of conversations may vary
| slightly depending on the scenario.
|
| Specifically, I am trying to understand how to set the tone
| for a conversation. If you are feeling stressed, busy,
| exhausted or frustrated, I may keep banter to a minimum,
| decide to ask for a meeting later instead of engaging a
| full conversation now, or even decide that whatever caused
| me to get your attention in the first place is less
| important and offer to help you instead of asking for your
| help.
|
| If you are feeling bored, content or happy, I might ask for
| more direct help than limiting the conversation to simply
| getting an answer to a question.
|
| No matter what the answer is, I'm also trying to use
| showing an interest in you to set the tone of the
| conversation to one of camaraderie and collaboration,
| rather than direction, accusation or competitiveness.
|
| There's a ton of nuance involved, no set rules, and the
| actual amount of time I am expecting to spend on the topic
| correlates pretty strongly to how well I know you. I'm not
| asking to be your therapist or your friend, but I _am_
| hoping for an honest answer, and if anyone expresses that
| they are struggling, I will offer to help however I can.
| secondcoming wrote:
| How is it different from 'Wie gehst?', which is "How's it
| going?" which has the same rules as 'How are you?'
| pythonguython wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker currently studying Russian in
| Kazakhstan, and I completely understand the frustration of
| lacking sophistication. It can become a negative feedback loop
| where lacking the ability to have fun and nuanced conversations
| causes me to avoid talking in the target language, which then
| only brings me further from reaching the language level I want.
| It certainly takes dedicated effort - language learning by
| osmosis can only take you so far as an adult. P.S. I had to look
| up the word "garrulous", so kudos to you for the vocab word.
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| Two things I observed while slowly getting better at English.
|
| First, the "sophistication" can backfire. There're a lot of
| comments about reading here, but there're very fine lines between
|
| - "simple English", think a stereotypical ESL speaker
|
| - "well educated" English, think a native posh college alumni
|
| - "colloquially broken" English, the way native speakers speak to
| their friends
|
| - "out-of-place highfalutin" English, a hallmark of someone who
| didn't have a chance to experience the variety of contexts
| growing up in an English speaking country.
|
| It's quite hard to balance those, but I guess it just comes with
| time and practice while being mindful of it. For me personally it
| worked in waves, from unnaturally-broken to too-correct to
| feeling comfortable enough to break the grammar in natural ways
| to noticing more unnaturalness to... you got the idea.
|
| Second, and I'm forever grateful to the person who first
| introduced me to this idea, is realising that high level language
| acquisition can only come with a new personality attached. It's
| very weird and disorienting if you're not aware of it happening,
| but it's a natural and necessary part of it. You need to grow a
| personality to _feel_ in your second /third/etc language, to
| react to jokes on the spot, to make friends, to dream, to live in
| that language context. It often differs from one's
| identity/personality in the first language, and that's fine, it's
| just as valid. Embracing the process and the difference makes
| things easier.
|
| I don't think it's possible to do that through learning though.
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| Something else that came to mind while I was reading the
| comments: you _do_ want phonetics /pronunciation classes when
| you're C2+. Do learn IPA and learn the sounds, it's crucial not
| just for your accent but for understanding others. I found [1]
| very useful, but only combined with a great tutor.
|
| Something I didn't appreciate enough is that we don't actually
| hear sounds when we hear people speaking. We hear _phonemes_ ,
| which are clusters of physical sounds that make semantic
| difference in the language. The clusters themselves aren't
| fixed either, they are very loose and mostly defined through
| what they are not -- i.e., the difference that we perceive in
| "lip" and "leap" is not absolute, the actual sounds might
| easily overlap between speakers, but we adjust to the
| particular accent/speaker using the fact that they probably
| still have two separate phonemes there.
|
| It works very well until one starts to learn a second language
| that might have not just different "clusters", but a different
| number of them. My first language is Russian, and in Russian
| there are just fewer semantically meaningful vowels; I honestly
| thought that the word "milk", moloko, has three roughly
| equivalent sounds, whereas in English that'd probably be heard
| as two or three distinct vowels ([m@la'ko]). Similarly, Russian
| "soft" sounds like m in miata are widely heard as having "j" in
| them, "m-ya-ta", while native speakers just don't hear that.
|
| Phonetics training helps to start actually hearing all those
| sounds, to adjust our inbuilt clustering and start perceiving
| things that natives do. You suddenly start understanding native
| accents much better, and gain a new appreciation for the
| language and its beauty.
|
| It's just as much about perception as it is about accent.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I think English is peculiar in the sense that tons of people use
| it as a second language, and there are also many local variants
| that sound quite different. As a result, I feel that English is a
| more flexible language than let say French.
|
| I wonder how often English native speakers here on HN feel that
| some comments aren't clear or odd-sounding due to approximative
| English. It's something I barely have experience of in my native
| language, as there are comparatively fewer foreigner speakers.
| And when reading HN comments, I'm mostly incapable of guessing
| the origin of the commenter (with a few exceptions).
| munificent wrote:
| I can definitely recognize the writing styles of non-native
| speakers and can sometimes guess their primary language by the
| way they write. For example, Russian speakers tend to omit
| articles before nouns and speakers of romance languages often
| prefer Latin-derived words which also exist in English over
| more common Germanic words because those words transliterate
| easily from their language.
|
| I love it. It helps some of their culture and personality show
| up in their writing. It reminds me how diverse and varied the
| world is, and what a delight it is that we can come together on
| the Internet.
| nkrisc wrote:
| For precisely the reason you stated - loads of non-native
| English speakers for all over the world - you just get used to
| it. I'm so used to "broken" English that's it just not really a
| big deal. I know what they meant. Drop all the articles and
| don't conjugate verbs for all care (many verbs don't even
| change in most tenses anyway), it rarely makes a difference.
| And if I'm not sure I'll ask.
|
| English is flexible, adaptive, and with a rich vocabulary. In
| my experience is pretty hard to not be understood, no matter
| how poor your English. Don't know what something is called?
| Just put two words together, I'm sure it'll be good enough to
| be understood.
| icambron wrote:
| Oh I notice oddities all the time. Unusual word orders,
| preposition use, that sort of thing. As an example "I barely
| have experience of" is perfectly clear but not idiomatic,
| enough to tag you as likely non-native (compare to "I've barely
| experienced"). The thing about most native English speakers is
| that we don't care; we're just happy everyone else is speaking
| English. If the cost of every person in the world being able to
| communicate with me is hearing some very-slightly-off phrasing,
| that is a great bargain.
|
| (It's also not always true. While I'm relatively familiar with
| UK, Irish, Aussie, and NZ English and can often identify them
| in writing, Indian and Singaporean English still send me for a
| loop, and I likely mistag them. They have just as strong a
| claim to "native" as I have, of course, but they sound
| "foreign" to my ears.)
| grecy wrote:
| > _As a result, I feel that English is a more flexible language
| than let say French_
|
| French is only stuffy and inflexible in France.
|
| Travel the length of West Africa and you'll quickly learn it is
| extremely malleable and fun to play with. For many people it's
| their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th language, so they're making it up
| and playing with it too!
| RugnirViking wrote:
| yeah, like others have said, it's very easy to see a lot of
| non-native english comments all across the internet, tv, real
| world, in pretty much every space. It's something that it's
| fairly easy to ignore - people are usually able to get their
| point across, especially because native speakers have a whole
| lot of experience with interacting with non-native speakers,
| especially those from major language families, so can usually
| recognise patterns in broken grammar.
|
| It's something I have experienced the other way too, living
| abroad as a native english speaker, I realised how much more
| perfect I had to get things, because there are very few
| foreigners learning to speak this language, so I have to be
| much more precise with how I phrase things, as people don't
| have the practise with parsing my broken language haha.
| tayo42 wrote:
| The comment about discovering as you write is interesting. Might
| have to give that a shot. I never really had a motivation to
| write.
| Twisol wrote:
| This is one of those titles that doesn't make sense when HN drops
| the leading word. It should be:
|
| > Why I start taking English classes at the age of 46
| biggerChris wrote:
| b212 wrote:
| Also had no idea about the mechanism. Why?
| regzok wrote:
| Wasn't even aware HN is doing that.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| What's a good rule for when to use "the" before a noun?
| I liked the movie I installed the new update I
| installed the new Python I installed ~the~ Python 3.11
| I visited ~the~ Brazil I visited the Amazon River I
| visited ~the~ San Francisco
|
| Seems very inconsistent. Exclude "the" before _some_ proper
| nouns.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| See also:
|
| - He is in hospital
|
| versus
|
| - He is in the pub
|
| Does this mean _any_ hospital vs a _specific_ pub? No! It 's
| just the idiom, and you have to get a feel for it. On the plus
| side, it's these sort of crazy nuances that help make email
| scams more detectable.
| jfk13 wrote:
| It can be either "in hospital" or "in the hospital"; this
| tends to be a regional difference. UK English prefers without
| "the", while US English is likely to include it.
|
| "in pub", on the other hand, would never be right.
| wl wrote:
| "Likely" is not a strong enough word here. In US English,
| "in hospital" without the "the" is a grating error.
| jfk13 wrote:
| You're probably right, but I wasn't sure if there might
| be some regional variation even within the US.
|
| In contrast, if you asked where my son is and I replied
| that "he's in school", I think that'd be fine, wouldn't
| it? Or "in prison"? (Well, that would be less fine, but
| not for grammatical reasons...)
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Yeah both of those responses would be correct and how I
| would answer as a native speaker. Though depending on the
| context I would likely say "at school" vs "in school" as
| my default response.
|
| US native English speaker, so this may depend somewhat on
| what variety of English is being used.
| ryanf wrote:
| Yes, in US English you'd say "in school", "in prison",
| but "in the hospital", for whatever reason. But you'd say
| "in hospice".
| somrand0 wrote:
| you're omitting "the" when using capitalized nouns. except when
| prepending "new"
|
| in a way, I understand that the function of "the" is some kind
| of emphasis (or something). The answer you seek is not
| syntactic, but semantic.
|
| I liked the movie... But which one?
|
| I liked Movie-Title. Now there's no doubt which one was it.
|
| My point is that to say "I installed THE python 3" could be
| understood as a sort of emphasis... I installed THE python 3
| could signal (in the appropriate context) that you did not
| install python 3 from the conda foundation but the one from THE
| PSF (this is a shoddy example, but this is a random comment on
| the internet)
|
| I watched Star Wars. I watched THE ('complete', or 'original',
| or 'new') Star Wars trilogy
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Welcome to the English language, where the grammar is made up
| and the words don't matter.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| ESL speaker here :)
|
| I think one of the "mistakes" the English language makes is
| that adjectives preceed the noun they modify which "leaves you
| hanging" until you are listening/reading the sentence until you
| reach the noun and can now understand the last phrase.
|
| It seems like your error here is partially due to that.
| I liked the movie I installed the update (new) I
| installed the version of Python (new) I installed Python
| 3.11 I visited Brazil I visited the river of Amazon
| (river in the Amazon :)) I visited San Francisco
| linux2647 wrote:
| > I visited the river of Amazon
|
| Except there is a river called "The Amazon River". Native
| English speaker here: I feel like rivers are always prefixed
| with "the":
|
| - The Rio Grande
|
| - The Nile River
|
| - The Columbia River
|
| - The Yellow River
| nightpool wrote:
| This article should help explain some of the theory behind
| "the" in more detail:
| https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/definite-articles/
| vore wrote:
| Regarding the use of "the" before a proper noun, it's actually
| a huge mess in English:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/a/15534
|
| It's really just whatever the tradition has dictated.
| Twisol wrote:
| You can sort of justify "the Amazon River" as "the Amazon
| river" -- i.e. the river that happens to be in the Amazon
| rainforest. The other two don't really act like "adjective +
| noun".
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| One trick I employ for language acquisition: as a native
| X-speaker, I often encounter native-Y speakers making mistake Z
| in my mother tongue. When I remember to do so, a little googling
| at home often reveals that a light retro-translation of Z _is_
| indeed the proper (sometimes even a refined) construction in Y.
|
| Fortune, mxgrn!
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