Anyway, there we are - thank you very much
- They like you!
- Thank you!
So, as he was talking, how many of you thought about "valaška" and "halušky"
and "tvaroh"?
Today we had some type of thing for lunch and we didn't know how to translate it
We have 15 minutes!
You have the possibility to ask any question you wish!
Related to language!
So anybody have a question?
It doesn't happen every day!
Wave!
well, there's one!
- Hi David! - Hi.
- I noticed you didn't speak about ELF.. -No. -Particularly at the end when you were talking about the job of the English teachers
I wondered what you think about the need to teach ELF
English as a lingua franca - one has to remember why ELF
evolved in the first place it was too to give
respect to these new varieties basically, wasn't it? Once upon a time
there was this view that there was really only one kind of English that was
correct and everything else was a bit
sort of suspicious or dubious or
deviant or gutter speak or what have you .. the inferiority complex concept of
other varieties it's applied to every new variety of English over the
centuries when
American English first came along it was dismissed in Britain as being a
completely irrelevant
horrible gutter kind of speech that they hoped would disappear
very soon and conversely you get the attitudes going in the other direction
and so these attitudes that there is one kind of English
only that respectable and correct and
the one you have to learn and everything else is rubbish was around for an awful
long time
the main thing that ELF did in my view was
it got rid of that conception or tried to and it's still trying to
to make the point that all
first of all varieties of English are equal
if you like some are more equal than others because of the power
basis that they have behind them, but all
have validity moreover it is argued
that because people are learning English in a similar way
all over the world there are going to be similarities
which will allow us to generalize
about what's going on in my talk you're quite right
I was only referring to individual varieties like Ghanian English
or Singaporean English and so on.. and the reason why I did that because I
think these are the areas where the identities are
clearest now is it possible to step back and say
but there are certain similarities in the
English produced by Ghanaians and Nigerians and Singaporeans and
all second language learners of English such
that we are able to say there is a general
a general dialect that transcends individual cultural identities
and the ELF movement it seems to me is sort of arguing in that direction
I believe it's premature to go so far
and the question is
tell me what the features of this shared
variety of English is - what are the features that identify ELF
tell me them - list them for me and
there are hypotheses around people say well this is a very widely used feature
this is a very wide feature problem is that there's been so little empirical
work done
that you can't be sure and every time I've come across one of the features it has
been suggested as an elf
defining feature I find that there are people who don't use it
or there are certain circumstances where you don't get it - I'll give you an example
and one of the things people say about learning English
is that the distinction between countable and uncountable nouns
disappears - that uncountable nouns will be treated as countable nouns
so all foreigners all over the world
will at some point say ehm - there are furnitures
in there - that sort of thing
and researches being done - rather than research, rather than furniture
or I have some important informations for you
rather than information now you know I thought that's a good feature that's very
probably true
and to begin I thought yeah! that I everywhere I've been
I found people doing that and then course I find people who don't do that at all
and even in the corpus of data that they have
the big you know million work corpus they've got their if you go searching
for words like:
informations and furnitures and so on - you don't find them!
you know - they're not there! and so you begin to think
just how much is this ELF actually
real as opposed to a kind ideal for
towards which the English language might be moving so
I'm not against it by any manner of means I don't want Henry Widdowson sitting on
my head
- he's too big - and no - you know I do I do believe that there is
there will be an accommodation of
many of these varieties which will one day
maybe produce something like this but isn't there yet
so that's my view at the moment
- You spoke of many different influences
that lead to the development of these new Englishes
could you say that there can also be one can be developed intergenerationally
with word meanings - and just two examples that I was thinking of
the word "gay" and the word "wicked"
you know
I think that used to be the case that there was a very clear intergenerational
distinction such that you could say
this particular feature is characteristic of a younger group
and that of an older group and the two don't meet very much and I noticed this in my own family
actually
in in a feature of pronunciation I say schedule
- "shed-yool" -all my kids say "skej-ool" everyone - these are British kids but the
american influences has come in
and they all say it and so now when I'm talking to them I say ""skej-ool" but I
say "shed-yool" when I'm talking to
Hillary for example and so now I've got two pronunciations
and likewise I might have two meanings of "gay"
in my head - I do because I've got the old meaning of "gay" in there as well as the new
meaning to gay
I know I'm sensitive about it and so it's it causes the usage problem every
now and again
sometimes I have to avoid the word because I don't know whether my audience will understand
this meaning or
that meaning - so it is a comp.. the chronological dynamic is a complication
but notice I said at the beginning of my answer used to be the case
and the reason why I say that is because of the Internet - you see the thing about
the internet when it comes to
interaction and dialogue so i'm talking now about
all the social media sites i'm talking about.
forums, blogging forums - you know all that sort of thing
chat rooms - who are you talking to?
when you enter which a chat room? you have no
idea ninety percent of
the people that you are encountering anonymous
you don't know whether even you know their age
certainly you don't know that sex even they male or female
straight or gay? some sites actually make you decide
but most don't - so I don't know whether this guy I'm talking to on the chat room there
and using English in a rather strange and unfamiliar way
is A) a native speaker or a non-native speaker I have no idea
whether he's male or female, old or young or anything - and so suddenly
you know those clear - clearer distinctions that I was familiar with
have disappeared
and now on the Internet I mean you know we're all using it now
in that or at least - there are two types people in the room
people below a certain age
who have never known anything other than - you've never known the world other than the internet
have you?
right? and then some slightly less young people a bit further back there
and scattered around the room - not and hardly any
less young people in the room actually - but there are a few for whom
we're not actually saying anymore - what is the internet?
but, you know, they're not native speakers on the Internet anyway
and so as a result everything has to be rethought
absolutely everything in language has to be rethought and
we're at the beginning of this transitional period so I don't know
whether
on the internet one day we will see a a resurgence of the kind of situation you
talk about
but it certainly making it less impactful
at the moment
-Do you think that in future there will be probably two or more
different pronunciations within one language within one English
that people won't understand each other - two different pronunciations
well this already happens of course me when you
when you actually look at the pronouncing dictionary
if you take one of the big pronouncing dictionaries of English - like the Cambridge one or
whatever John Wells's dictionary of Peter Roaches' dictionary
and you actually count up the number of words in
English in there that have already got two
or more pronunciations - you'd be surprised how many there are - about a
THIRD of the words - the same with
spelling - if you go through a dictionary and ask how many words in English have an
alternative spelling
you know "col-or"
"col-our" and encyclopedia
with an AE in the middle or an E in the middle, flower pot
with a hyphen in the middle or no hyphen in the middle
you find that about a quarter of all english words got
alternative spelling man
there are already - there is already so much diversity there
- do you say "uh-geyn" or do you say "uh-gen"
well of course it's both - right from Shakespeare's time on
Shakespeare uses both pronunciations and
same today "guh-rahzh" - or "gar-ij"?
there hundreds, thousands of words
with these alternative pronunciations - the BBC of course has to choose one
- and it does - and it recommends it to announcers or to you - one
of the alternative pronunciation "kon-truh-vur-see" or "kuhn-trov-er-see"
"ree-surch" or "ri-surch" and so on
but diversity of this kind has been part of
English from the very beginning
and so what I see when we talk about global English is simply an extension of
what already exists
at a world level.
-One last question? -Thank you.
-I worked and lived in the Netherlands for two years
and I was looking for a job there
and I didn't manage most of the jobs asking for a teacher who's a native speaker of English
Which I'm not and never will be
So I have a kind of deficiency that I was born with and bred with and you might not be in
the position to quadriple our salaries - could you please advocate for
the competence of non-native English teachers?
- Absolutely! I do this all the time!
absolutely right - but it's taking time for this new
mindset to establish itself you know
all of this is so recent - we're talking half a century
only - it takes a long time before the institutions
recognize the new realities - now by the institutions I mean things like the
examining boards
you see who still are very conservative and will expect
traditional British English and Received Pronunciation and so on
so forth - you know that - but even they are changing - even they're beginning
I've talked to several examining boards in last 10 years
so I'm doing what you say and and trying to persuade them to
become more tolerant of diversity and some of them are!
now absolutely - the British Council for example
another organization, another institution - once upon a time
would never have had for example an American accent
teaching in its place - now you will find them
And so slowly the institutions
are changing - if - you've mentioned the Netherlands- I know the Netherlands very
well my daughter lives there
and the level of English spoken
in the Netherlands and in Denmark and in Scandinavia generally
is is commensurate with any native speaker
that I know - in fact once or twice I had the occasion to explore
the limits of linguistic competence of one or two people from these parts of
the world comparing in other words
how much do you know in terms of any test I can think up
vocabulary range, grammatical range -stylistic range and so on
compared with a native speaker - I did with Jan Svartvik
once and Jan Svartvik - one of the co-authors of the grammar of English
that I mention with Randolph Quirk - and we worked together for a long time
one day we sort of compared notes and I said to Jan
Jan, is there, is there any area
of English that you feel weaker than me in
and he thought in his Swedish way for a bit
and he thought and he thought - and he said "David, there are two areas"
One is - now if you can guess what it might be
one was nursery rhymes
you see - so he didn't have an intuition about all those
little nursery rhymes that you learn when you're 18 months of age - how could he?
you know? - he knew some of them but he didn't have an intuition about it so
that was one area and the other one - this is the last question isn't it because you
can't follow this next story
and the other one he said "David is..
ehm..making love"
I said Jan - we can do something about that - we can have a microphone
in there and we can record several lovemaking enterprises - and your intuition
can improve in no time -
he says " I don't think that would be very proper, David, no no"
so you know there are occasional areas where
there is a differential but for - you know
are they the the important areas ? How often will you be referring to lovemaking or nursery rhymes?
in your classrooms
not very often I suspect - Thank you very much!
Thank you, you did very well with your time and everything..