Re: Foreigner(s)

"Arne H. Wilstrup" <ahw> writes:

""Per Rønne"" <per@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i meddelelsen

There's no reason to teach pupils [or students, for the matter]
unusual usages in UK, no matter how 'legal' they are.

As I have already told Evan Kirschenbaum

Might I trouble you to spell my name correctly at least occasionally?

and Tony Cooper, there is a world of difference to teach English as
a foreign language to children as a nonnative speaker in
comprehensive schools and a-level colleges and to teach

"between teaching"..."and teaching"

them for the sake of being able to speak English colloquially and
according to situations in e.g. UK.

As long as you (and they) are aware that what you're doing is teaching
them to sound like a non-native speaker. Or, worse, like an
uneducated or pretentious or intentionally rude native speaker.

I was at a trip to Berlin together with some of my colleagues who
were teaching German as a foreign language, and I was not at all
impressed: the ordinary things like getting a drink or to order a
meal was not better than my German. They are, however, very eloquent
when they talk about Goethe or some small stories in German in the
classroom.

None of the things native speakers have mentioned here would sound any
less bad in a physics paper or a lecture on existentialist philosophy
than they would in a restaurant or late-night bull session. Indeed,
they'd probably seem more out of place.

And I often have pupils who are more than willing to show me a
dictionary that shows otherwise than I have taught them at the very
moment. So I have to admit that the "computer mouses" is correct as
well, even if is painful to my ears.

I can understand a non-native speaker taking the evidence of a
dictionary as trumping their own judgments. This is usually the right
thing to do. But dictionaries often fail to tell the whole story.
They don't always tell you *who* says it or how it's perceived or
whether it's come to have a new meaning. So, yes. If native
speakers, especially when they reinforce one another, tell you how
something is taken, you should trust this over a dictionary.

MWCD11 tells me that "homey" is a synonym for "homeboy", which means
(among other things), "an inner-city youth". No usage note. A Dane
might well risk serious physical harm if he were to use the word to
address some inner-city Americans--if they didn't realize that he was
merely clueless.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It is a popular delusion that the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |government wastes vast amounts of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |money through inefficiency and sloth.
|Enormous effort and elaborate
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx |planning are required to waste this
(650)857-7572 |much money
| P.J. O'Rourke
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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