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This article seems to take an angle that any of this is unique to English. Are things any different for non-native speakers growing up in India, China, Korea, S
by silicon2401 5y ago
This article seems to take an angle that any of this is unique to English. Are things any different for non-native speakers growing up in India, China, Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc?
- Clewza313 5y agoEnglish is unusual for being polycentric. For the vast majority of the world's languages, there's exactly one prestige dialect (Parisian French, Mandarin Chinese, Tokyo Japanese, etc) and a bunch of "inferior" dialects, and the first scenario (highly educated professor goes to a different country and is tripped up by using the "wrong" word) would not be possible. As it happens, though, Arabic is also a notably polycentric language, although it has a single prestige dialect too (MSA). And English is the closest thing India has to a prestige dialect, since all other languages are regional.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- andrewzah 5y agoNo. I had similar experiences when learning Korean in Korea. There is a trend by native English speakers to bash english, and treat it like no other language can have any of these issues. The only major difference is noted in the other response; English has a lot of different dialects. Korean has Standard Korean that everyone learns now, and unofficial regional dialects. With English you have people randomly learning American English, UK English, Indian English, etc, which all have various differences in vocabulary, idioms, grammar, etc.