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Ok, this is not technically related to this fandom, but it is realted to fanfic in general.


Is there a New English being taught outside the US?

I keep finding the following examples from non-US authors in some other fandom and I am just waiting for it to start cropping up here...


Span:

The entire crew span around to see the newcomer.

I would say that they spun around...

Sat:

They were sat across from each other.

I would say that they were sitting across from...

I am finding the above usages in ever increasing amounts in some other fandoms, expecially at Twisting the Hellmouth.

Is this the new direction of Engish, or am I just picking really good authors with a quirk in their grammar?

James

Well, maybe I should keep my mouth shut, because after all Germany did so bad in PISA (the international comparison of the students around the world)

I started learning English in 1994. I don't believe that students around here learn a new english. Most books seem to have been updated in the early 70's, judging from the topics. There are a couple of new books, but the kind that I saw were rather worse than the old ones. I mean, if you learn simple present it would be useful to learn that you have to add an s after all those verbs following he, she, it. My little neighbor didn't learn that, which I though was rather striking.

But back to learning English in Germany. Well, I don't think I learned more than the structure in my first years in school. You learn grammar and more grammar and even more grammar. Of couse you need to write your own little texts, but they are short and rather frustrating for a German student.

(I should mention that the structure of sentences is rather free in my language. You can rearrange the words in almost every order you like. And if your German teacher told you not to start every sentence with "Er" or "he", how you would say, this can be quite difficult. *sigh*)

You learn English when you can understand almost every text you read and moreoverm when you understand something when listening to someone speaking that language who has not the same bad accent as you.

Later on we started to read novels, such as Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hide. Some of us even read Shakespear (I didn't, or only a few lines of a poem).

I have to admit I forgot a lot since I'm not in school anymore. But despite that fact, what I can do now, I learned here, by people correcting my mistakes. With the time I got a certain feeling for this language, and with time I get more courageous to try something new. Sometimes it's good, sometimes people write this: ?????

However, they didn't exactly encourage us to be creative with the language in school. Since every mistake you make is dangerous to the mark you'll get, you stick with the things you know!

Based on the non-native English writers (in a related fandom) that I beta for - I don't think it's a matter of 'New English' being taught, but that the instructors are failing to catch these little grammatical issues. (The other 'problem' being that some of us are so used to convoluted English grammar that it takes a bit to realize it's wrong. - Then it gets picked up by other inexperienced writers and passed on.) A related issue for the kids I beta is that they were given instructions to read modern English writing, cannot afford to buy masses of books and so read fan fiction - without realizing how many of the writers they are reading aren't native writers themselves or should have the grammar police after them.

An example: I beta for a young woman in Greece. One of the writers she was studying is actually French and requires 2 betas to whip her work into passable shape. (She is a very good with story concepts, but occasionally she leaves ME scratching my head as to the word usage.)

BTW, 'span' is wrong in the context given in any case. It's simply the wrong word. Spin > Spun Span > Spanned

well, this non-English writer wouldn't be caught dead using her verbs that badly... which doesn't necessarily mean she's a really good author, just that she can spell.

This said, I've seen plenty of actual English people use awful grammar and spell much worse than I do and I have to tell you, frankly, that insults me even more than seeing errors from people who I know are trying to do their best at a second - sometimes even third or more - language.

To me, writing well in *any* language is a mark of respect towards it and the people who speak/read it. And sadly enough it seems to me like the people whose first language it is are usually the ones to mangle it the worst... The ones who "know it" and don't think they need classes in it - whereas people learning it as a second (third or whatever) language usually take care to learn the rules and the exceptions and make a point of writing/speaking it well so they can be understood by the native speakers/writers.

My 2 Canadian pennies (which are almost worth 2 whole US pennies, now! *lol*)

I don't recall who said it, but there was a comment made many moons back that the English were the only people who refused to properly teach their children their own language in school.

Ah, found it:

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
(George Bernard Shaw)


Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
(James Joyce)

I think that was James' point.

Yes, but I wasn't very clear about it.

James

Well, my two European cents, since there are no Pfennige anymore....

Did it ever occur to you James that this could be mistakes for lack of looking over it and not for lack of knowledge?

I admit that span around doesn't exactly look like a typing error, but then, who knows?

The German keyboard goes Qwertz instead of qwerty. Maybe in the language of whoever you were talking about span could be a typing error. I don't say it isn't just wrong grammar, after all, we know what looks like a duck...

And they were sat...

What do you think? Maybe this person was writing "they sat around" and then decided that they were doing this right in this moment. I think that's what would change it into progressive. Correct me if I'm wrong.

So he or she retyped: They were... and then someone interrupted him or her, she came back to her computer, thought she had already changed the sentence and wrote on without noticing it. Doesn't happen? Happens to me all the time. That doesn't necessarily mean we don't *know* the right version.

Oh and as to "to spin" not being the right word in this context, the dictionary doesn't always tell you the exact meaning of a word.

I'll quote Mark Twain here:

So if I search an english word for "Schlag" in my dictionary and it doesn't tell me the exact meaning of all those words, wouldn't it be possibly that I write:


Before Luthor could do anything, Clark landed an apoplexy in his face.

"Don't you dare touch Lois ever again," Clark growled angrily.

/me hides

It would have been sooooo hilarious if you'd used "bar" instead of "apoplexy" -- Clark is strong enough to pick one up and throw it, isn't he? HAHAHA! (sorry, tired and stupid today)

...but I wouldn't have let you do that - either of them. Says the girl with the red pen in her hand who likes to correct mistakes.

I could accept that once, twice, even three times, but no, they were very consistant, sum 27 times.

But it was nice of you to give them the benefit of a doubt, too.

James

Ah, well. The fact that English is the language that has by far the most second-language speakers in the world also means that English is the language that gets the most chances of being mangled by non-native speakers.

Barbara, that "apoplexy" translation for "Schlag" (a blow) was hilarious. My own command of German is worse than lousy, but one of my astronomy friends subscribes to a very good German astronomical magazine, Sterne und Weltraum. I can't read it, though, so my friend sent me an "automatic translation" from German to English of one of the articles. The translation wasn't too good, though, since it thought the word "Stern" (a star, a distant sun) should probably be translated as "asterisk" - one of these little things: *

One of the funniest mistakes you can expect Swedes to make when they speak English is getting the word for "ID" all mixed up in a very funny, embarrassing way. In Swedish, "ID" is "legitimation". However, although Swedes rarely use abbreviations, we have abbreviated "legitimation" so that we only say "leg". Swedes are very proud of this word - it is short and snappy and sounds soooooo international. Surely it must be an English word? But of course! So when a Swede is waiting in line in another country somewhere and begins to suspect that the security officer over there may want to see his ID, chances are that he will ask this officer, very politely, "Do you want to see my leg?" (Naturally, the Swede will pronounce it so that it really sounds like "leg", too, and not "ledge"!)

Ann

Actually, those aren't ESL errors. For the most part, English as a second (or foreign) language speakers are taught grammar far more effectively than those of us who grow up speaking English - and I'm speaking as someone who has worked with non-native-speakers, first as a teacher and now as a counsellor and colleague, for several years.

What you're noticing, James, is a couple of grammatical errors which are really more colloquialisms, in that they're fairly common in certain parts of Ireland and the UK. Just as there are colloquial (and ungrammatical) variations of standard English in the US, there are on the other side of the pond as well

So, for example, while the correct past tense form of spin is spun, I've seen it mispresented as span in parts of the UK and Ireland - even if it's taught correctly in school, people still use the wrong version in everyday speech. Likewise I was sat there is often, often used instead of sitting there - I've heard it in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin and all over the place. Again, it's wrong, but it's colloquial usage.

It's the same kind of thing as informal usage in parts of the US where people will say a couple days, omitting the of which belongs there; or could care less instead of the correct couldn't, or there ain't no way - a double negative - instead of there's no way or there isn't any way.

Sure, errors like that shouldn't end up in work meant for public consumption, but - as with any of these regional variations on standard grammatical language - sometimes people hear them all around, think they're correct and use them because no-one's told them otherwise. I'm guessing that you're seeing them more often now because you might be reading work in British-based fandoms?


Wendy

The dictionary on my computer (produced by Apple) describes one use of span as being an archaic past tense for spin

so even though I would in principal agree that the correct word in this instance may be spun, I would not be so hasty to claim an ESL problem, as perhaps it may very well be a colloquialism...


that being so, in general I have read that in English speaking schools all over the world the quality of teaching languages other than English (LOTE-education) is very poor. so I would like to challenge ANY NATIVE ENGLISH speaker, to write anything in a LOTE of their choice...be it fanfic, or what, I believe that the people writing on this site in particular have done very well... one or two mistakes is almost expectable, and I would not call it a new language, or even a pigeon, only a very understandable mistake given our language's multiple irregular verbs, what would perhaps be more common would be "Spinned", but since that is picked up by a spell check, then the writer could detect their mistake and attempt to correct it, perhaps misspelling the word due to pronunciation...

and this is all besides the fact that it is *almost impossible* to learn a language to the same fluency of a native speaker after the age of seven (Known as the critical period in brain development, and although there are many exceptions, this is one main reason we have accents, especially our characteristic caricatures of foreigners speaking English)

REGARDING THE QUOTE FROM GB Shaw
a survey of Queensland university students in their final years of studying primary education (to be teachers of students aged 4-12) did not know the definition of a syllable

how on earth can you teach a child to read, spell, basic grammar etc. if the teachers do not know it themselves.... continue long rant into the quality of Australian education systems and the bad influence of deconstructionism and post-modernism on education in general


well that was my 50 cents (AU$)
which is now at a 20 year high compared to the green-back, at somewhere between AU$1=between US-$0.85 and 0.87, depending on the day and time of day....

on another note...
well, more in keeping with the beginning of my previous post than the end...

perhaps your SPIN/SPUN and WERE SITTING/SAT examples come from a country where an English CREOLE LANGUAGE is spoken quite commonly...
Eg. Singapore and SINGLISH ... there are numerous hillarious examples of SINGLISH on the web including my favourite restaurant menu ever

I can't find the reference today, but I did an essay on creoles and English as an international language, anyway I found a menu on someone's blog where the restaurant was serving:

Barbecued Sea-Cockroach entrails, floating in liquid
this turned out to be some form of lobster bisque...(or lobster soup?)

Well, as I mentioned Britain and Ireland specifically... no.


Wendy

Well, I'm reading more British influenced crossovers, epecially Buffy and Angel. Has those two programs recently become very popular over there?

But back to the first thing of yours that I quoted.

When the first time I brought Elisabeth home to meet the family, I mentioned in passing that we were almost there. We just needed to pass over one more creek (pronounced crick in my home town.) She looked at me and the following exchange more or less took place.

E: One more what?

J: One more crick.

E: You mean creek?

J: Yeah, crick.

E: Spell that.

J looking puzzled: C - R - E - E - K.

E: Yes, so where does the i sound come from?

J's mouth opens and shuts repeatedly...

Needless to say, I was preplexed. I knew the two were the same thing, just didn't sound the same...

Not quite the same thing, but a nice story anyway.

James

An interesting idea, beethoven.

There are so many people on these boards who don't speak English as their native language that we should have enough people to correct mistakes. You could indeed challenge people to write something short in a LOTE. Maybe a drabble or something like that?