What does surprise me though, as a British person living in London, is that more and more British people are using simplified English. I'm talking about English people who were born in England, using simplified English. These are the very people who should be speaking English as a first language, as a mother tongue - grammar should be something they simply acquire naturally, right? Well, all that depends on whom they are learning English from. If their parents are not speaking standard English at home, then they will be picking up the mistakes their parents are making. You cannot assume that all English people are highly educated and speak grammatically correct English: some English people speak English badly because they have not had a teacher correcting their mistakes at school. But even if they have had a teacher screaming at them about grammar, they may lapse back into simplified English as a result of peer pressure, if all their peers speak simplified English. Such is the mortal enemy of all English teachers around the world.
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| What do people make of your grammar? |
What I find worrying is the way simplified English ("you was") so acceptable that they don't even realize they are using a simplified form of English. Yes, this is amongst English people in England - we're not talking about immigrants here or second generations of immigrants, but people who are as English as they come but probably did not have a good education. They genuinely do not realize when they are using simplified English as that is just the way they speak, it is not like they are trying to use street slang to sound cool. This reminds me of the way some Singaporeans only speak Singlish and are completely unable to code switch from Singlish to standard English: But even then, one could argue that such Singaporeans probably speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien or Malay as a first language and thus when struggling in a second language (English), they have simplified the grammar to facilitate their communication. Fair enough I say, but English people speaking simplified English? Oh dear. All I can do is shake my head in disapproval.
Am I being a snob over grammar? Perhaps. Is communication impeded if someone uses simplified English? No, not at all. I still understand the speaker perfectly if she said, "you was at the meeting yesterday" instead of "you were at the meeting yesterday". Even if the sentence was simplified further to "you is at the meeting yesterday", I can still figure out what is being communicated without too much difficulty, although at that point, I would probably pause for a moment to think as the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past using the present tense - but no matter, it is still understandable. I note that the same sentence when translated into Chinese becomes a lot simpler from a grammatical point of view: "你昨天在开会" ("you yesterday at meeting") one doesn't even bother with the verb 'to be' in Chinese. Hence if a Chinese person said, "you is at the meeting yesterday" I could appreciate that the speaker is not used the complexities of English grammar when it comes to conjugations - but for an English person to make the same mistake in his/her native language? I'm afraid s/he only gives the impression that s/he is not very educated and can't even speak his/her own language. You wouldn't use simplified English in a business context.
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| "Was you at the meeting yesterday?" |
So that's my little rant for today. Ironically, I'm headed to the Netherlands tomorrow morning and I will be speaking in broken Dutch with the locals, I will not be conjugating my verbs properly in Dutch as my knowledge of the Dutch language is very limited. What do you think about this issue? Should we expect people to continue conjugating verbs properly or should we just accept that this simplification of grammar is a trend that is here to stay and we should just get used to it as the English language evolves? Let me know what your thoughts are on this, many thanks for reading.
I admit I am a prude, and yes I judge others by their grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure, much like that b**** in your first illustration. I find it most disturbing when English language teachers in Singapore make such mistakes as my daughter's. Her teacher insisted "Alan and George is going to the fair together." The reason being Alan and George are going together, so its singular! WTF! And what's the deal with that hyphen - hard-working instead of hardworking, cloud-nine instead of cloud nine. Kid you not, these errors were part of my daughter's spelling list.
ReplyDeleteGroan. Alan and George is? Time to complain to the MOE Vanessa!!!!
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DeleteCould you be more specific about 'the issue of gender in the context of work'? Clearly, I've not worked in S'pore since 2011 but am happy to talk about the issue in general, once you've told me what you would like me to address please.
DeleteNot very related, but I think it's a video you'll enjoy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ehrFk-gLk
Change is not always bad, IMHO.
Ha! I have actually watched this clip before, I subscribe to this guy's channel!! :)
DeleteI had no idea there was such a thing as simplified English. You mean people actually deliberately use 'you was'? The horror! I am deeply mortified and perturbed. Typos and a lack of understanding of the English language is one thing. However, to actually be grammatically incorrect for the sake of 'simplification' is just a sacrilege to the language.
ReplyDeleteWell Di, some people defend this kind of English by linking it to Ebonics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English but that's in America, not England. You see, in America, going back to the days of slavery, the slaves didn't go to school to learn English the way the white people did, so they learnt a different kind of English, with different kind of rules, grammar amongst themselves. White slave owners never bothered correcting their English as the slaves were still understood. Now years after emancipation, black people still lived very separate lives from white people and even if they went to the same schools, the moment black people went back to their communities they reverted back to black English rather than use standard English. (Ref: to kill a mocking bird). 'You was' is a feature of black English where grammar is simplified - but black English has a whole set of other rules the same way Singlish isn't just simplified English, but has it's own system and doesn't seem to make any sense to an outsider.
DeleteBut that's American black English. As to why white English people speak simplified English (gosh and they exist, I know one such woman), well all I can say is that it is a failure of the education system not to force everyone to learn grammar. Like seriously, figuring out the difference between I was and You were is not exactly rocket science, but some people just don't do well at school and don't learn anything in class - like the teacher could try to teach till she is blue in the face, but the information goes in one ear and out there other. Some claim that this is a result of white people trying to copy black Americans - but in the case of my white English friend who says, "you was" - she is not trying to do that, she is just one of those people who were not particularly bright at school. She is a really nice and polite person, I do like her as a friend - I hate to say this about a person I do like, but she just doesn't strike me as particularly bright/clever, that's all.
To me, there is no such thing as simplified English the way we have simplified Mandarin characters. Simplified English is just not proper English. Singlish and Ebonics are just improper English or colloquialism at best. They do have a place as you mentioned. Blacks today are still apart in many ways from mainstream culture. Singlish has its roots in the multi-lingual culture of yesterdays --- You want to makan or not? ... Mau mati, ah? Why you drive so fast? Ai zai si!
DeleteFor English speakers to deliberately "simplify" English is just disturbing. I also hear "yous guys" and "anyways". The "s" is not necessary. If you watch the Real Housewives series, you will be horrified to hear bad grammar coming out of their foul, Gucci mouths.
Unfortunately, with the movement in North America (I don't know about the UK)to focus on "whole language" in schools, grammar as been tossed to the wayside and is only taught as an aside rather than the main focus. You should see the terrible grammar mistakes in children's writing these days. I often kneel over in mortification.
Bess, You is my Woman now.... You is.... You is... And you must laugh and dance and sing for two not one.......
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apiq3VN2Ra8
:P
I've never really thought about native English speakers using simplified English, but amusingly enough now that I live in the U.S. I'm always told by Americans that I 'speak very proper' all 'British-like' despite my Asian appearance (as far as American conceptions of British people all having RP accents go)-- which I might have taken as a compliment, had they not gone on to tell me that the reason I use proper grammar is because I, quote, had the benefit of learning English as a second language and thus learnt more 'precise' applications of grammar/vocabulary. :P
ReplyDeleteLearning a language as a second language does force you to think harder - I remember how I had to sit down and memorize how to conjugate French verbs, but I never had to do that for English. The fact that I don't make stupid mistakes like 'you was' is a miracle since nobody actually taught me English grammar properly, I just learnt the rules along the way and figure it out myself. Some native English speakers never really figured it out and hence they just keep making mistakes and I am too polite to correct my friend when she says 'you was', so if no one is gonna correct her, she isn't even aware that she is making a mistake.
DeleteI definitely agree about thinking harder when learning a language as a second language-- I've also had a similar experience learning Korean and its various conjugations. To clarify my comment I meant it more in the sense that, as a native English speaker, it's strange to have well-meaning people constantly telling me something along the lines of 'your English is so good!' with the assumption that (being non-American) I learnt English grammar as part of learning English as a foreign language, when English is actually my first language. So it's hardly praiseworthy for someone like me to be able to use grammar properly, although your post suggests an alarming trend otherwise!
DeleteOh and I am currently in Eindhoven in the Netherlands - the Dutch people I have met all speak English flawlessly, they don't make mistakes like 'you was'. They may have an accent but the grammar is perfect. Go figure. And there are native English speakers who say 'you was'.
ReplyDeleteDo you think English speakers are less forgiving towards English learners when mistakes are made than native speakers of other languages?
DeleteI will give you a longer reply when I get back to London - I am currently in Eindhoven in Netherlands where I just witnessed a Vietnamese guy and a Mexican guy speaking to each other in English - neither were fluent but they understood each other. Such is the way English is used as a global lingua franca today.
DeleteHi John, I think you're asking the wrong question - let me explain. I think the point is this: why are some people upset when you make a mistake and whilst others simply let it go (as long as they can understand what you are saying)?
DeleteLet's go back to the example I used in the blog piece: "you were at the meeting yesterday". If someone said, "you was at the meeting yesterday", that doesn't impede understanding, it might irk the grammar police in you as the error is glaring, but no matter. Many people would simply ignore the mistake as they are not looking out for something to judge that person speaking - but if you do judge the people who made that mistake, then that probably says a lot more about the person judging than the person making the mistake (yes I am pointing the finger at myself).
So by that token, it doesn't matter whether you are a native speaker or a foreign learner, it really depends on the mindset of the person who is judging and the question is why they are so judgmental. So when I was meeting that Mexican and the Vietnamese guy in Holland, yeah we defaulted to English as a common lingua franca and it wasn't great English from the both of them - but so what? The Mexican guy's English was better than my Spanish (well, just - he had a taste of my Spanglish when I tried to express more complex ideas) and certainly, I spoke no more than the basic pleasantries in Vietnamese. So in that situation, I didn't judge them at all - I just felt grateful that they defaulted to a language that I spoke as a first language.
Fair point. What about between a English learner compared to say a Vietnamese learner? For example, when a foreign learner speaks, how would an Englishman react to really atrocious English as compared to atrocious Vietnamese? My sense is that in the UK, US or Singapore, more would be disgusted to bad English as compared to someone speaking badly of an exotic language? Do you think that's true?
DeleteNo John, let's be sensible here: when I encounter a Vietnamese person struggling on in English, it is evident to me that he learnt English as a foreign language and I am grateful that he is making the effort, so we can communicate. I remember being in Vietnam, I was armed with 4 sheets of Vietnamese phrases I had printed off the internet and I was desperately trying to communicate with the locals in their language - I knew I sounded stupid and mispronounced everything, but I was hoping that the locals would give me the benefit of the doubt that I wasn't actually stupid, just someone who hasn't learnt much Vietnamese. In fact, it was my AirBNB host who was the Vietnamese guys speaking to me in broken English - I heard him have a conversation with his girlfriend in Vietnamese and he sounded totally articulate and eloquent in his mother tongue. We tend to give people the benefit of the doubt when it is clear that they speak English as a second or third language. In the case of my AirBNB host, his first language is Vietnamese, 2nd language is Dutch and English is in fact his 3rd language. I realize that of course and that's why I don't judge him for speaking English rather poorly.
DeleteNow most people in the UK would recognize that the same way I did. I think it is rather presumptuous to demand and expect the whole world to speak English to a high standard. Rather, I think people who look down on others for speaking English poorly are probably quite insecure. I remember a friend of my mother who insisted on speaking English to the waitress in a Chinese restaurant when the staff were clearly Mandarin speaking and I thought, what a total fucking bitch, what are you trying to prove? Why can't you speak Mandarin with them? In that situation, I was far more critical of my mother's friend than the PRC waitress (who couldn't speak much English). Thus every situation is unique and I tend to be very forgiving of people who speak English poorly if English is not their first language. However, I do not extend that courtesy to English people who can't speak English as that probably tells you a lot about their background, upbringing and education - and believe you me, there are plenty of English people who can't speak English properly.
"people who are as English as they come but probably did not have a good education."
ReplyDeleteI've never heard a "you was" in my 20 years in the UK. Yay, all my mates and people in my town have good education then.
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Delete(Sorry, I had to edit my comment as I found some typos in my original post.)
DeleteDear Anti-Haze,
Can we assume that all English people speak English perfectly just because it is their mother tongue? Consider this: would you assume that all English people are well-educated? Of course not. Would you walk into any English primary school and expect all the English kids to score straight As for their English language exams? Of course not, there will be a range of grades. Are there poor people in this country who have not had a good education? Of course there are. Are there stupid people in this country who struggled to pass their exams at school? Again, of course there is (like any other country). If you are trying to tell us that you only socialize with well-educated people who have had a good education, then fair enough - but I happen to mix with people from all kinds of social backgrounds, including those who have not done well in their formal education.
So should it come as a surprise that some people cannot speak their own mother tongue properly? I think you're falling into the foreigner's trap. I was in Holland this week and I speak a little Dutch, I mispronounce the words, people struggle to understand me and I inevitably switch to English eventually after struggling. I was in this cafe trying to order in Dutch and this kid looked at me - he must have found it amusing to see this foreign struggle in Dutch and he was a local boy. Probably no more than 5 years old and of course, his Dutch is fluent, far better than mine. And for a moment, I thought, hey that boy probably thinks I am stupid cos my Dutch sucks and his is much better. And that statement is true, of course, but I am looking in as a tourist, as an outsider - I suspect that part of the fact that you are not noticing the minor flaws in the English of your locals is because you are still subconsciously aware of the fact that you are a foreigner looking in and you probably have a different accent; but more to the point, you're not an English teacher - you're probably more self-aware of how you sound rather than trying to pick up the mistakes that others make. So when an English person makes a mistake like 'you was', you'll probably just let that go and not care - rather than get worked up and write a whole blog piece about it. Unless you're gonna tell me you work as an English teacher in a primary or secondary school, but you're not, are you? My mate is a hairdresser and gets surprisingly upset when he notices someone with bad hair - whilst I really don't notice things like that. (As a bald man, I have little interest in hair, it just makes me jealous.)