Sunday, August 9, 2015

Enigmatic Twang

english native speakers with thick accents lose all the benefits of english being the lingua franca

7 comments:

  1. Hahahaa!! Love your comics Malachi, and I get the sense I might be experiencing this soon as I move from Melbourne to London in a few days. Thankfully there are tons of Aussies over there, so it shouldn't be too bad methinks. Keep 'em coming!

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  2. Nice one! I think there are many "native speakers" of English who could slot themselves in here.

    I'm not a "Twitterer", but to repond to the interesting question you asked there about changing accents when we change countries: As a Scot originally from the Glasgow area now teaching English in Germany, when working I automatically remove regional vocabulary and grammar (yes, Scottish grammar is actually different) but British native speaker colleagues can still hear where I come from because of my vowel sounds. I do soften and standardise them quite a bit with the result that I am often asked if I'm Irish, which I'm fine with. It's not surprising really when you think how close the west coast of Scotland is to the east coast of Ireland, where the people sound Scottish to me!

    If asked to "say something in Scottish" by my students, I explain that Scotland's two official languages are Gaelic (which I can't speak at all) but mainly English (!), with its dialects nevertheless being based on English. The dialect I naturally tend to is Glaswegian, generally considered the hardest to understand, but I find it hard to just "turn it on" for show unless I have another person from my part of the world to get into a conversation with.

    However, I think my language changes pretty much instantaneously once I'm off the plane and surrounded by other west of Scotland speakers and my "How are you?"s become "How are yoüü?s"

    Thanks for the great cartoons.

    Eileen

    English to the Point
    www.ettp.de

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Eileen, glad you like 'em - or should I say, thääänks?

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  3. Hahaha, I love this comment so much. I'm an Aussie with a very strong accent and I use a whole heap of slang so I run into this a lot. All good fun and part of the adventure though :D

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    1. oops, i meant comic* not comment. my bad!

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    2. Sounds to me like you've got the right attitude

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