Sunday, July 22, 2018

Quality Degradation

When you a native speaker speak to a language learner and start speaking badly like they do


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...to help learn English me not patronize learners language!


4 comments:

  1. Haha, I'm afraid it's true, though. I found myself saying "there's less insects" the other day, and my friend corrected me, saying "you mean: fewer. I thought you teach English?". I guess it's because I have to keep correcting my ESL students (countable/uncountable is often confusing to them). I've started mimicking their mistakes! XD

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  2. In response to the comment above: To be fair, many native English speakers use "less" when referring to countable things, even though it's not "standard" English. If an ESL student made this mistake, it wouldn't be the thing that made them sound non-native.

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    Replies
    1. If there's one good thing to come out of the popularity of "Game of Thrones," it's King Stannis the Grammarian making more people aware of the proper use of "less" versus "fewer"! :-)

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  3. The first time I read this, I mentally corrected "You English good!" to "Your English is good!"

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