Hi Jay--
You ask:
Why might someone WANT to try to sound exactly like a native speaker of
this language when you are not one?
One big reason is so that you can communicate! Never mind my experiences
with Russian which are my most extensive. There I can communicate pretty
well with adults and sometimes pass as, say, a Latvian or Estonian if I
don't talk for too long. But no way to have a reasonable conversation with
a four year old! And no way to get over the feeling of being unable to
"say it the way I wanted to say it" even with colleagues when discussing
topics of mutual concern (like, for instance, the relation between sense
and meaning! :-)
But it goes a long way beyond that. My dad, in middle age, spent several
years in England. I noticed that after about a year he had adopted what
for my tin-American ear sounded like an English accent and use of some
expressions that were locally prevelant but also sounded strange to me.
I accused him of language snobbism-- my old man an Anglophile!?! Perish
the thought. His explanation was that he found if he did NOT adopt local
ways of speaking, even simple tasks like buying groceries ran into snags
and things really got difficult on the phone-- so we joined in, as best
he could.
Somehow I think those who study the development of standards of other
kinds ought to have some helpful things to say about standards for
spoken language and their feedback effects on human practice.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 09:21:10 PDT