Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

No, Warren, I'm not going to teach you :-) there are people with greater knowledge about linguistics than me, unless you'd like to know basic things. I'm not a linguist, but was taught some basis of linguistics (as a part of my studies). What's more, Warren, I'm not actually sure I could develop this subject in English (French or Polish would be much better for me)

:-)

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Rafal Wolk:

@ "the thread" - sorta sux that most debates end in "them vs. us" and dick waving.

It doesn't have to be like this.

I don't suffer fools gladly, I'm afraid.

(I must agree, that telling someone that they don't have a handle on their own language is preposterous).

Indeed, it is.

Not only is the person attempting this liable to get it badly wrong, but it is also extremely bad manners.

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Agnieszka Piechna:
No, Warren, I'm not going to teach you :-) there are people with greater knowledge about linguistics than me, unless you'd like to know basic things.

What basic things do I need to learn Agnieszka?

What basic things could you teach me?

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Wendy Tweed:
English is a real bastard - you can digest all possible books, read tons of poetry and other literature and still discover you are unable to put your message across the way you would like to - your English is stiff and unnatural. [/edited]

Your English is far from being stiff and unnatural, Wendy.

I had always taken you to be a native speaker.

And I also love Lewis Carroll.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 11:32

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Warren, you seem not to know even what linguistics is.
Maybe you'd like to have a look at this site:
http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields.cfm
there's information about linguistics and about different parts of it. I'm sure you can find more resources with more details in the internet.

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Agnieszka Piechna:
Warren, you seem not to know even what linguistics is.
Maybe you'd like to have a look at this site:
http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields.cfm
there's information about linguistics and about different parts of it. I'm sure you can find more resources with more details in the internet.

Ta very much, Agnieszka.

Linguistics is about languages or summit, right!?

I didn't know nuffin about it till I come on goldenline.

You Poles are really brainy !!!

Cheers.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 11:31

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

warren whitmore:

Ta very much, Agnieszka.

Linguistics is about languages or summit, right!?

I didn't know nuffin about it till I come on goldenline.

You Poles are really brainy !!!

Cheers.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 11:31

Should I now say, with the same load of sarcasm, that you Brits are really well mannered?

Geeez... Rafal is right. Each and every thread in the end turns into an "I've got a bigger one" contest.

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Warren, why this irony?

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Come back Dariusz, all is forgiven ;)

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Agnieszka Piechna:
Warren, why this irony?

Because you apparently assume I know nothing about linguistics, not even what the word means.

I don't like talking about my academic qualifications, but funnily enough one of the subjects I studied at university was 'linguistics', and I was awarded a first class degree.

I would suggest my views of what linguistics is, and what constitutes 'correctness' in language, have a greater basis in fact than your own.

You have very fixed ideas, Agnieszka, which you appear to believe very strongly.

However, I believe many of these ideas to be mistaken.

I'd say that, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing', and that it is yourself rather than myself who requires the background reading of the subject.

Agnieszka, if you would like to improve your knowledge of English and language in general, I would begin by googling the term 'pragmatics', and then apply what you've read to your (lack of) understanding of my posts.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 12:08

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Steven H.:

One sucks one's language with one's mother's milk.

So can we link bottle feeding with social disorder and 'dumbing down' in language? ;)

Ha, ha, ha....! Who knows...? The relationship you have mentioned might seem (or is) absurd at first sight, but come to think of it, it is worth considering. You know: mother/son/daughter ties, family ties, when your mum feeds you with her breast milk, she talks to you more and all the rest...

Incidentally, Steven, I didn't mean that you find the language in milk. If it were so, I would readily pay English Mums for their milk.
Arsenal on my mind ...!

PS. Wow! It really is an interesting issue to ponder over -
how about royals and other rich ladies having their babies breastfed by women from lower classes. Did it affect the babies in any way? If so, in what way....?Wendy Tweed edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 12:29

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

warren whitmore:

Agnieszka Piechna:
Warren, why this irony?

Because you apparently assume I know nothing about linguistics, not even what the word means.

I don't like talking about my academic qualifications, but funnily enough one of the subjects I studied at university was 'linguistics', and I was awarded a first class degree.

I would suggest my views of what linguistics is, and what constitutes 'correctness' in language, have a greater basis in fact than your own.

You have very fixed ideas, Agnieszka, which you appear to believe very strongly.

However, I believe many of these ideas to be mistaken.

I'd say that, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing', and that it is yourself rather than myself who requires the background reading of the subject.

Agnieszka, if you would like to improve your knowledge of English and language in general, I would begin by googling the term 'pragmatics', and then apply what you've read to your (lack of) understanding of my posts.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 12:08

Mister I-know-everything, thanks so much, if not you, I'd never learn that I don't know anything about linguistics, thank God, somebody finally told me this! those liars who teach at my faculty made me think it was the other way round.

and you definitely don't have to worry about my English. I know what to do if I want to improve it or broaden my knowledge about language in general.

have a very nice day :-)

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Agnieszka Piechna:
Warren, you seem not to know even what linguistics is.

Just for clarification, let us start from scratch:

The simplest and clear definitions are:

Linguistics is the study of the way in which language works.

Grammar is 1)the rules of a language, concerning the way in which you can put words together in order to make sentences
2) the way someone either obeys or does not obey the
rules of grammar when they write or speak a language.

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I know it, Wendy :))) and I put definitions of both, linguistics and grammar in one of my posts (it was my answer to what Steve J. had said).

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Agnieszka Piechna:
the way you wrote it, it sounded like: English (linguistics) is descriptive, Polish (linguistics) is prescriptive.

That's precisely what I meant. And I stick by it. The British culture of linguistics seeks to describe what is found. The Polish culture of linguistics seeks to prescribe what is correct and to disregard as "incorrect" whatever does not fall into the prescription.

This helps to explain the Polish student's obsession with not making mistakes and how it clashes with the Native Speaker Teacher's approach of "hey, just speak - it doesn't matter as long as you're saying something". And then the Polish student complains "But no one ever corrects my mistakes!" while the teacher says "Wow! I really got these students speaking!"

Anyone out there agree with me or do you think I'm out of my tiny mind?

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It's perfectly all right with me as long as they say what they really mean.

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Response to Agnieszka Piechna:

Miss I-don't-know-much-but-like-saying-the-little-I-do-know-very-loudly, I would suggest that if the people who teach you linguistics haven't taught you that the grammar of English is descriptive rather than prescriptive, then they are not very good at their jobs.

Or perhaps you weren't paying attention when they told you this.

Or alternatively they told you this but you ignored what they said as you imagined you knew better.

Are you quite sure you know what to do to improve your English and your knowledge of language in general? (Edit, why did I bother to ask this?) Might an understanding of pragmatics help you understand that not only are the literal meaning of words important, but also how the extent to which the speaker's intention is clear to the listener?

Mister I-know-everything, thanks so much, if not you, I'd never learn that I don't know anything about linguistics, thank God, somebody finally told me this! those liars who teach at my faculty made me think it was the other way round.
and you definitely don't have to worry about my English. I know what to do if I want to improve it or broaden my knowledge about language in general.

have a very nice day :-)

warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 13:59

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Steve Jones:

Agnieszka Piechna:
the way you wrote it, it sounded like: English (linguistics) is descriptive, Polish (linguistics) is prescriptive.

That's precisely what I meant. And I stick by it. The British culture of linguistics seeks to describe what is found. The Polish culture of linguistics seeks to prescribe what is correct and to disregard as "incorrect" whatever does not fall into the prescription.

This helps to explain the Polish student's obsession with not making mistakes and how it clashes with the Native Speaker Teacher's approach of "hey, just speak - it doesn't matter as long as you're saying something". And then the Polish student complains "But no one ever corrects my mistakes!" while the teacher says "Wow! I really got these students speaking!"

Anyone out there agree with me or do you think I'm out of my tiny mind?

I'd go further than you, Steve.

I'd suggest it is unscientific to make value-judgements concerning the way people speak.

This is not only true about English linguistics, but linguistics generally.

I'd say anyone who believes otherwise has a primitive understanding of language in general.

English grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive, full stop.
Unlike French, there is no official body to prescribe 'correctness'. What is right or wrong in English is simply what the majority of educated native speakers happen to say.

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Steve Jones:

This helps to explain the Polish student's obsession with not making mistakes and how it clashes with the Native Speaker Teacher's approach of "hey, just speak - it doesn't matter as long as you're saying something".

This obsession stems from the way Polish grammar is taught from grade 3... I can't remember how many hours I spent trying to dissect all these useless rules governing adverbs, clauses etc. It was no fun at all and it didn't really contribute much to actual speaking. In my case anyway. But we MUST know the rules of declension even though every native speaker knows the language intuitively. It is like asking a gazelle to understand all differential equations and some goddamn Hamiltonians that govern its movements in case of being attacked by a lion... It just runs and we just speak. Unfortunately when I was at school all languages were taught this way - in case of English it was "you ought to learn the rationale of 3rd conditional clause and past perfect continuous". To be perfectly honest I have no idea if I have ever used these in real life but we HAD to know if for the sake of it.
Same went for German, which IMHO is on the same effed up level of annoyance to learn. They have probably more rules to memorise than we do and execute them with Prussian precision. French is probably the worst as far as I know since in English and German if you make mistakes the locals will think that perhaps you are a bit thick but they will speak nonetheless. The French refuse speaking unless you have mastered French to some insane level. Hence I could never be bothered with it.

Temat: Polish attitudes to the British people

Steve Jones:
the Native Speaker Teacher's approach of "hey, just speak - it doesn't matter as long as you're saying something".

Would you agree with that approach, Steve?

I wouldn't.warren whitmore edytował(a) ten post dnia 16.02.08 o godzinie 14:20