5 Reasons Why You Should Maintain A Good Work-Life Balance
Most native speakers of any language converse every day without even thinking about what language they are using, what using that language means and how they feel about using that language. For the majority, language is just a means to communicate. For others, it’s so much more.
I have learned more about the grammar, syntax, styles and variations of English purely through studying other languages and in doing so I have learned to appreciate my language. But what I want to know is the extent to which others feel the same about their languages.
English
When considering the etymology of English words, it isn’t as ‘pure’ as, say, French or German. I spoke to fellow native English speaker, Sarah Bennett (@penguinbennett), a German and English Linguistics graduate now teaching English in China, about how proud we are of our language.
“Before studying linguistics at university, I wasn’t aware of the intricacies in our language, but now, through this knowledge, I have gained a much deeper respect for my own language, its historical background and its development across the world. Most countries seem to put a lot of educational power towards learning English, but seeing my students struggle with some often absurd rule only makes me feel lucky that I use it as my mother tongue, in all its glorious forms. I’m sure many people with English as their mother tongue take speaking it for granted, but I don’t think that is disrespect to the language.”
Sarah brings up a good point. It’s all very well for us linguists to talk about how great English is, but what about those who haven’t studied their language in depth? Native English speakers can be notorious for their incorrect grammar; how many know the difference between your and you’re and how many know how to use an apostrophe?
Incorrect usage is not necessarily disrespectful. Some will quite happily accept the criticism; however others simply don’t care about the misuse of their language. Perhaps we there is a correlation between such people and the ‘everyone in the world speaks English’ brigade.
But aren’t these people at least proud that their language is being spoken across the world? Sarah goes on to say, “the fact that there are many varieties and dialects of English all over the world is a testament to the power of language; we all change and adapt it to our own use, to aid our communication with each other. Whether the lingua franca will change with Spanish and Mandarin emerging much more prominently is yet to be seen, but I believe English will always remain one of the most powerful languages in the world.”
Parts two, three and four look at our neighbouring languages to see how highly their native speakers value their own language.
Author bio
Lloyd Bingham (@Capital_Trans) is an in-house translator based in North East England. He graduated from Newcastle University in 2011 with a BA in Modern Languages (French, German and Spanish) and also studied Dutch, Catalan, French language variation, Iberian history and German linguistics.
In 2009, as part of a university project, he investigated the extent to which Occitan language and culture is still relevant to contemporary life in Toulouse and the south west of France. He has travelled extensively around the countries where these languages are spoken and has lived in Cardiff, Newcastle, Toulouse, Munich and Alicante. He blogs on his website (http://capital-translations.co.uk) about matters relating to Western European culture, language and linguistics.
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Oh, that’s true about languages, I guess any language that we are native in. Like I am native in Russian and I am very proud that I can use it in any forms. And In fact, I don’t think that English is a difficult language, it is quite simple, but at the same time it distunguishes from other languages))))
We haven’t heard anyone saying that his/her language is something not to be proud of. For example, our native language is Latvian that is used by about 1.5 million people all over the world, so, first of all, we are proud we are one of few 🙂
Secondly, Latvian is a rather difficult language compared to others and that’s a reason why Latvians have learned English, German and Russian so easily (about 70% of population of Latvia speak 2 languages, and about 55% – 3 languages).
What we mean is that if you are not an English native speaker, there is a much bigger chance that you will speak more than 1 language.
In this case, Latvians speaking Latvian, English, German and Russian, are in a very good position, as we are able to be a ‘bridge’ between Western and Eastern Europe.
I agree that English can be fairly easy to lear, but only to a certain point. The fundamental grammar and vocabulary can be easy to grasp. However, there are so many exceptions to grammar and bizarre turns of phrase that it will take decades of living in the UK, for example, to become truly fluent in English. Unfortunately, much of English depends on whether it *sounds* right, which usually only natives will be able to decide.
On another point, I believe there will be very few people who are not proud of their language, although many may well be indifferent.
Studying foreign languages definitely helped me understand English better. In fact, it was through studying foreign languages that I realized that English in common speech usually drops “that” when beginning a clause. As a result, not only do I always try to use it, but I also make sure to correctly use “who” vs “whom”, and try not to end sentences with prepositions.
In fact, you don’t have to regulate your own language just because other languages do thing differently. I mean, dropping “that” when introducing declarative content clauses is just a posibility the english language gives you, and there is no need to correct that. Or, ending sentences with preposition is not even a peculiarity of English, but rather a feature (that) it shares with other germanic languages. There is nothing wrong with that.
English is an amazing language in that it does not require much learning to be able to have a basic conversation in it. If you want to have basic street level communication skills in English, and you are learning it from scratch, you probably need just two months of studying. In French, you will probably need 6 months, and for Russian, at least a year before the other side can understand what you are trying to say and you can understand them. I think this is one of the reasons why English has been so succesful internationally.
On the other hand, gaining true mastery in English beyond (very basic communication) is extremely hard work – it is a very rich and versatile language, full of subtleties that many other languages don’t have.
Nice article and I agree very much with your point about true fluency. As a translator who tenders jobs online, I always ask for (target language) mother tongue translators, yet every time I advertise 50% of the respondents ignore me. I have yet to receive a proposal from a non-native English speaker which does not contain grammatical errors.
I would like to add a point about respect for a language relating to regulation. Clearly in Spain the RAE to some extent defines respectful use for everyone. I think this is a shame as I see no reason why a language cannot be allowed to evolve rather more organically. A less regulated language is not necessarily an unrespected language. A language that undergoes a lot of evolution can still be worthy of respect for its vibrant flexibility and ability to keep up with, and even define, a changing world.
I certainly have a great love for English. It serves me well, and it has beauty, depth and culture.