Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:55 pm Post subject: Do non-native speakers speak a language better?
I was in a coffee shop this afternoon, and served by a waiter who spoke Afrikaans. Nothing strange about that, except that his Afrikaans was so perfect that I started to suspect that he's not Afrikaans. Listening to him a bit more, confirmed this when I picked up a slight English accent. I asked him, and he confirmed that Afrikaans was his second language. When I complimented him on his Afrikaans, he said: "Well, I try." Indeed yes, harder than most Afrikaans speakers, who assume (as native speakers tend to do) that they speak their own language well enough not having to try to speak it well. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Location: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula
Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:38 pm Post subject:
I don't know if they speak better, but they do tend to speak more formally, at least, from my experience.
We have a lot of Filipinos in my company (and that's another thing... why are there so many Filipinos in Acctg & Finance?), and even though they speak with moderate to strong accents, they are usually well-spoken and speak very formal, by-the-book English.
Do you often meet people speaking your language in a way that you don't recognize them as non-native speaker? I think it happens very rarely in case of Polish. Non-natives usually speak it with a noticeable accent or make grammar/spelling mistakes. I don't count language geniuses.
My experience doesn’t always let me judge correctly, but if I didn’t know you and according to your written English had to guess if you’re natives or not I’d place André, Greg and Walker in the native English speaker group. Sometimes in Walker’s messages I find something which would make me suspicious but very rarely. On the other hand, it’d be quite easy for me to guess that Sander is not an English speaker (that I understand him best is a different thing :) ).
It’s only my subjective point of view and maybe the natives here will say something quite different.
My experience doesn’t always let me judge correctly, but if I didn’t know you and according to your written English had to guess if you’re natives or not I’d place André, Greg and Walker in the native English speaker group. Sometimes in Walker’s messages I find something which would make me suspicious but very rarely. On the other hand, it’d be quite easy for me to guess that Sander is not an English speaker (that I understand him best is a different thing :) ).
It’s only my subjective point of view and maybe the natives here will say something quite different.
Now you made me curious! Firstly, I think it's fun that you'd put me in the native English speaker group. But what is it about my writing that makes you suspicious? Not that I find it strange at all, I'm just curious to know. But I guess it might be hard to give examples from what I've written.
Speaking of vocabulary I have heard non-native speakers speak better Swedish than native speakers of Swedish. I've met one person whom I first thought was Swedish, but I soon suspected that she wasn't. It was her intonation that gave her away and it turned out she was German. I'm not sure if I ever would've suspected that she was German if she hadn't told me; I just knew she wasn't Swedish. Right, there's also a Turkish girl/woman at work who doesn't have any accent whatsoever, besides her Stockholm accent. Yet her native language isn't Swedish but Turkish. When I found this out I was really surprised. The only thing that gives her away is that sometimes (rarely) she says en instead of ett or the opposite e.g. "an table" or "a apple".
My experience doesn’t always let me judge correctly, but if I didn’t know you and according to your written English had to guess if you’re natives or not I’d place André, Greg and Walker in the native English speaker group. Sometimes in Walker’s messages I find something which would make me suspicious but very rarely. On the other hand, it’d be quite easy for me to guess that Sander is not an English speaker (that I understand him best is a different thing :) ).
It’s only my subjective point of view and maybe the natives here will say something quite different.
Now you made me curious! Firstly, I think it's fun that you'd put me in the native English speaker group. But what is it about my writing that makes you suspicious? Not that I find it strange at all, I'm just curious to know. But I guess it might be hard to give examples from what I've written.
Speaking of vocabulary I have heard non-native speakers speak better Swedish than native speakers of Swedish. I've met one person whom I first thought was Swedish, but I soon suspected that she wasn't. It was her intonation that gave her away and it turned out she was German. I'm not sure if I ever would've suspected that she was German if she hadn't told me; I just knew she wasn't Swedish. Right, there's also a Turkish girl/woman at work who doesn't have any accent whatsoever, besides her Stockholm accent. Yet her native language isn't Swedish but Turkish. When I found this out I was really surprised. The only thing that gives her away is that sometimes (rarely) she says en instead of ett or the opposite e.g. "an table" or "a apple".
It's nothing specific, I think that sometimes the natives would write something in a bit different way. For example, I think (but am not sure, I insist) that in the sentence:
"I'm not sure if I ever would've suspected that she was German if she hadn't told me; I just knew she wasn't Swedish."
the bolded words would've been written differently.
But my general opinion about your (written) English makes me put you close to the top rung of my 'private' classification of the Langcafe non-native speakers.
I can second what KSa has said. Essentially, if I didn't know, I'd definitely think that André, Greg and KSa (and also Fredrik, but he's not here) were native speakers of English; I agree with what KSa about Walker as well. As for Sander, I suspect that he's the sort of person who doesn't bother to type properly on the internet, but can actually speak English much better in real life.
Actually, no. There is one thing which makes it absolutely obvious that Greg is not a native English speaker. Despite his extremely high level of English, there is one thing he hasn't learnt: in typed English, one does not generally leave a space before exclamation marks, question marks, colons and semicolons.
I must say, it is hard for me to identify native and non-native speakers on the Internet. Some people are just careless and pay scant attention to things which they consider to be trivial: orthography, grammar, punctuation, etc.
I may be rhetoric here but it is far easier to identify whether he's writing in British or American English (duh!). That in turn hints to me his origins. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Do you often meet people speaking your language in a way that you don't recognize them as non-native speaker?
Many English speakers here speak fluent Afrikaans, without a trace of an English accent. The same applies to many Afrikaans speakers, who speak fluent English without an Afrikaans accent. Generally, Afrikaans speakers speak better English than English speakers speak Afrikaans (older generations at least, younger English speakers are mostly fluent or at least fairly fluent in Afrikaans. You'd also find many Xhosa, Zulu, etc. speakers who speak fluent Afrikaans and/or English (and vice versa).
BTW, thanks for the compliment on my English! :wink: :D _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Do you often meet people speaking your language in a way that you don't recognize them as non-native speaker?
Many English speakers here speak fluent Afrikaans, without a trace of an English accent. The same applies to many Afrikaans speakers, who speak fluent English without an Afrikaans accent. Generally, Afrikaans speakers speak better English than English speakers speak Afrikaans (older generations at least, younger English speakers are mostly fluent or at least fairly fluent in Afrikaans. You'd also find many Xhosa, Zulu, etc. speakers who speak fluent Afrikaans and/or English (and vice versa).
BTW, thanks for the compliment on my English! :wink: :D
I think it's mainly the case of multilingual/multicultural countries like SA where it's easy to access a language you want to learn (native speakers, newspapers, TV channels etc.). Otherwise it might be harder to master a language which doesn't mean impossible.
Do you often meet people speaking your language in a way that you don't recognize them as non-native speaker?
Many English speakers here speak fluent Afrikaans, without a trace of an English accent. The same applies to many Afrikaans speakers, who speak fluent English without an Afrikaans accent. Generally, Afrikaans speakers speak better English than English speakers speak Afrikaans (older generations at least, younger English speakers are mostly fluent or at least fairly fluent in Afrikaans. You'd also find many Xhosa, Zulu, etc. speakers who speak fluent Afrikaans and/or English (and vice versa).
BTW, thanks for the compliment on my English! :wink: :D
I think it's mainly the case of multilingual/multicultural countries like SA where it's easy to access a language you want to learn (native speakers, newspapers, TV channels etc.). Otherwise it might be harder to master a language which doesn't mean impossible.
I agree. I officially started learning English in school when I was six years old. But by that time I already knew a tiny bit of English (it helped that I had an English speaking uncle). I grew up with my parents reading an English daily newspaper and English magazines along with Afrikaans newspapers, so I started reading English at a fairly early age. You hear, read, write and speak English every day, (or Afrikaans, if you're English), so you pick it up, even if you don't put much effort into learning it. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
My experience doesn’t always let me judge correctly, but if I didn’t know you and according to your written English had to guess if you’re natives or not I’d place André, Greg and Walker in the native English speaker group.
Oh that was kind. :D
Benjamin wrote:
There is one thing which makes it absolutely obvious that Greg is not a native English speaker. Despite his extremely high level of English, there is one thing he hasn't learnt: in typed English, one does not generally leave a space before exclamation marks, question marks, colons and semicolons.
Out of curiosity, would you consider Singaporeans to be native English speakers? _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
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