| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Do we all have to speak The Queen's English? Thread poster: CafeTran Trainer
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If you check the video, is the English that bad? The accent can be tedious, but if the content is engaging, I think it is a minor distraction.
But yes, I guess you have a point, and native speakers might be at a disadvantage over non native content consumption.
There are some pretty heavy native English accents out there, so I would have thought native English speakers would have the upper hand.
Thanks for the refreshing perspective.
| | | | Tom in London
Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo
Local time: 09:20
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Lingua 5B wrote:
But I do agree with you that Tom should/could have skipped that comment. Or phrase it differently.
I'm very happy with my comment.
| | | | | Of course you are | Dec 30, 2021 |
Tom in London wrote:
Lingua 5B wrote:
But I do agree with you that Tom should/could have skipped that comment. Or phrase it differently.
I'm very happy with my comment.
But what I don’t understand, is:
Some years ago you surprised me by writing here that you are tolerant for non-natives making mistakes in English.
Why don’t you show the same tolerance for spoken language?
English is no longer for the British only. They have rolled it out globally. With all consequences.
| | | | | Parallel universe | Dec 30, 2021 |
German Dutch Engineering Translation wrote:
Some years ago you surprised me by writing here that you are tolerant for non-natives making mistakes in English.
That might have been Tom in Edinburgh or Tom in Cardiff but it can't possibly have been Tom in London
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Lingua 5B 
Bosna i Hercegovina
Local time: 10:20
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Tom in London wrote:
Lingua 5B wrote:
But I do agree with you that Tom should/could have skipped that comment. Or phrase it differently.
I'm very happy with my comment.
Why can’t you as a Londoner understand a ton of different accents? You use the word London in your name. It’s not like you live in a remote English village where only one accent is spoken.
You should have skipped the comment because this is an international community. You are known for “my English is better than your English” comments all over Proz, and I didn’t pay special attention to it, as I am used to you doing that. But there are new people here who may perceive it differently.
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Lingua 5B wrote:
Tom in London wrote:
Why can’t you as a Londoner
There’s “in London” and there’s “a Londoner”…
Tom is Northern Irish. So he don’t speaka the Queen’s English anyway. Whereas I am a propah Cockernee geezah.
| | | | AnnaSCHTR
Sjedinjene Američke Države
Local time: 03:20
English to Czech
+ ...
| Different strokes… | Dec 30, 2021 |
Lingua 5B wrote:
You should have skipped the comment because this is an international community. You are known for “my English is better than your English” comments all over Proz, and I didn’t pay special attention to it, as I am used to you doing that. But there are new people here who may perceive it differently.
Well, I’ve always felt it is a pity that Tom, such an intelligent and experienced professional, doesn’t seem to contribute a bit more than little jabs and this somewhat provincial attitude but perhaps it is really impossible for him to understand foreign speakers. I must confess I do not understand at all the language spoken in Glasgow.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/05/globish-robert-mccrum-review
But Globish belongs to a new post-imperial wave in which the story has been reframed to make it less anglocentric. McCrum is one of several recent writers who argue that the latest and greatest achievement of English is to have transcended the legacy of empire. Today its bounds are set so wide that it can truly be said to belong to the world. While its triumph continues, it is no longer coterminous with the triumph of the English-speaking peoples. Some commentators even suggest that it may now be happening at their expense. That is the view of Jean-Paul Nerrière, the French businessman who coined the term "globish" in 1995. He had noticed that non-native English speakers in Asia found it easier to do business with one another than with native speakers. Globish was his name for the kind of English they were using: a "decaffeinated" version without complexity or cultural baggage.
Rather than duplicating the expressive functions of a mother-tongue, globish meets our practical need for a universal "other tongue" – a simple, neutral, intelligible medium for cross-cultural communication. And as it spreads, Nerrière predicts, it will reduce the international influence of English and eliminate the advantage long enjoyed by its native speakers. If in future the world's business is conducted in globish, native anglophones, like everyone else, will find themselves obliged to learn it.
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Tom in London
Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo
Local time: 09:20
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| What you don't understand | Dec 31, 2021 |
I'm stating a fact. Fact: I find that video incomprehensible. Others may not.
[Edited at 2021-12-31 08:05 GMT]
| | | | Baran Keki
Turska
Local time: 11:20
Member
English to Turkish
I don't know much about this debate as I haven't read all the posts, but having had to translate a couple of English texts, apparently written by Dutch and German people (mainly good though they were), in the past few weeks I've gotta say that Globish, Global English or whatever you call it, can be a real pain in the back side especially if you are a translator.
Btw aren't Americans watching everything coming from the UK with English subtitles? In fact they do one better than that, don't t... See more I don't know much about this debate as I haven't read all the posts, but having had to translate a couple of English texts, apparently written by Dutch and German people (mainly good though they were), in the past few weeks I've gotta say that Globish, Global English or whatever you call it, can be a real pain in the back side especially if you are a translator.
Btw aren't Americans watching everything coming from the UK with English subtitles? In fact they do one better than that, don't they? They make the American versions of the UK shows/series so they don't have to bother with subtitles ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Please quote correctly | Dec 31, 2021 |
Tom in London wrote:
German Dutch Engineering Translation wrote:
.....what what I don’t understand, is:
What you don't understand is not something anyone else can help you with. [Edited at 2021-12-31 08:02 GMT]
There’s only one ‘what’ in the cited sentence. And I’m not asking ‘anyone’. I’m asking Tom from London.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Holandija
Local time: 10:20
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| @Tom and others | Dec 31, 2021 |
Tom in London wrote:
I'm stating a fact. Fact: I find that video incomprehensible. Others may not.
After back-tracking across two forum threads to discover what the bruhaha is about, I finally found the video link and watched it for a few seconds. A few seconds were all that were needed to convince me that this is not the type of video that I would watch unless I was desperate for the knowledge contained in it. I would not say "incomprehensible", but sufficiently difficult to comprehend to result in me not watching it further or even bothering to download it.
However, this may also be due to the poor sound quality. If a recording has poor sound quality but the speakers use queen's English, the speech may still be comprehensible. The poorer the sound, the more difficult it is to understand a foreign accent. And then it reaches a point where the combination of poor accent and poor sound makes the video unwatchable. In the video under discussion, though, I'd blame poor sound quality more.
For the sake of the argument I re-watched portions of the video carefully in order to evaluate the actual quality of the speakers' English. Both speakers (the announcer and the presenter) have excellent English skills, in that they are able to generate complex sentences with idiomatic expressions and for all practical purposes free of grammar and syntactical errors. They also both speak slowly and without mumbling. Both speakers are, as far as I could see, at least fully bilingual. If there had been subtitles, or if this were a written presentation, it would have been a pleasure to read.
As to the question of why it is an hour and a half, well, the answer is simple and clear: this is a recording of a live webinar. Live webinars tend to be much longer than carefully designed video presentations because there is a social aspect which is appreciated by the participants who watch the presentation at the time that it is given, and some people prefer the slow pace of learning that is associated with webinars. So if anything, this just shows once again that few recorded webinars make for good tutorial videos.
[Edited at 2021-12-31 11:24 GMT]
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