2 ms·

It's hard for me to understand why both you and I are getting downvoted for recognizing that people default to a subset of a language they have in common. I su

It's hard for me to understand why both you and I are getting downvoted for recognizing that people default to a subset of a language they have in common. I suspect if we were talking about "standard Russian" this wouldn't be so contentious. Every region has its own way of speaking, its own idioms and acceptable grammatical constructions. That doesn't mean the regions can't speak a unified generic version of the language. That generic version will still have grammar rules to obey or break.

OJFord 5y ago
Because it was a rhetorical question, I wasn't actually asking what people consider to be a 'global standard English', I was asserting that that's nonsense. There are many dialects of English across the globe, the Indian dialect as valid as the American; the fact that there's enough common ground between them that we can understand each other doesn't change that (it's surely prerequisite for calling it a dialect and not a different language). I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  You're reading a lot into what I've said (e.g. hearing that some versions of English that are in use can be invalid). One way to tell that I'm not invalidating any particular version is that I put "ungrammatical" in quotes. Whether we like it or not, when non-natives from 5 different countries get together in a room in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, the subset of English they're speaking is largely the same as when non-natives from 5 other different countries get together in a room in Lima or in Gaborone. The language they're speaking has grammar rules. It can be thought of as "standard Global English" because it's identifiable, distributed, and distinguishable from American English, British English, Singlish, etc.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result. Nobody is saying that global English is American English. We are simply pointing out that there is a subset of the language that is standard globally in addition to the regional dialects. I'm sure you wouldn't use words like "chav" or "bell end" around a group of foreigners, because they are not globally understood.

OJFord 5y ago

Because it was a rhetorical question, I wasn't actually asking what people consider to be a 'global standard English', I was asserting that that's nonsense. There are many dialects of English across the globe, the Indian dialect as valid as the American; the fact that there's enough common ground between them that we can understand each other doesn't change that (it's surely prerequisite for calling it a dialect and not a different language). I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result.

newsbinator 5y ago
You're reading a lot into what I've said (e.g. hearing that some versions of English that are in use can be invalid). One way to tell that I'm not invalidating any particular version is that I put "ungrammatical" in quotes. Whether we like it or not, when non-natives from 5 different countries get together in a room in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, the subset of English they're speaking is largely the same as when non-natives from 5 other different countries get together in a room in Lima or in Gaborone. The language they're speaking has grammar rules. It can be thought of as "standard Global English" because it's identifiable, distributed, and distinguishable from American English, British English, Singlish, etc.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>I certainly don't switch to 'global standard English' or AmE when I'm talking to someone who isn't British, and I doubt anybody thinks I'm speaking incorrect 'global standard English' as a result. Nobody is saying that global English is American English. We are simply pointing out that there is a subset of the language that is standard globally in addition to the regional dialects. I'm sure you wouldn't use words like "chav" or "bell end" around a group of foreigners, because they are not globally understood.