4 ms·

> This is exactly the sort of thing that’s been happening in Miami. The example quoted is exactly the sort of thing that's not going on. And where's the thres

by tgv 3y ago

> This is exactly the sort of thing that’s been happening in Miami. The example quoted is exactly the sort of thing that's not going on. And where's the threshold for calling people bilingual? If you say "get down from the car," you're (likely) using that phrase only to people outside your environment. It's lack of fluency. > “Thanks God,” a type of loan translation from “gracias a Dios,” is common in Miami. In this case, speakers analogize the “s” sound at the end of “gracias” and apply it to the English form. That's just an assumption of the "mmm, let me think 2 seconds" kind. The writer also calls it Spanish, but e.g. beef is "ternera" in Spanish. It might be Cuban Spanish, which has a fairly large vocabulary that differs from other Spanish variants.

bedobi 3y ago
"Thanks God" from "Gracias a Dios" ^^^ this is kinda weird considering Cuban Spanish omits the S (and often half the rest of the letters in any given sentence, lol, at least to my lower intermediate Spanish ears), resulting in "Gracia Dio"
- rvense 3y ago
  Yeah, thought that was a weird claim. I'd wager that the form "thanks" is more frequent than "thank" in most people's English, making it easy for an L2 speaker to hypercorrect.
- asveikau 3y ago
  Omitting the /s/ is an oversimplification. Classically what happens in accents like that is that /s/ is rendered as [h]. People do this aspiration to varying extents, sometimes omitting totally, sometimes not. Presence of a vowel following nearby can make a full formed [s] appear. The "a" in gracias a dios could easily make that into "gracias a dio". By the way I had a coworker who was a native Arabic speaker say "thanks God" a lot. I think "thank God" is a phrasing that throws off a lot of people learning English, from multiple language backgrounds.
- codeadict 3y ago
  Indeed, i'm Cuban and we might sound like "Graciah a Diò".
TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
> If you say "get down from the car," you're (likely) using that phrase only to people outside your environment. It's lack of fluency. Fluency doesn't mean you never make such mistakes, and it also doesn't prevent you picking up unusual phrasing from your environment, even when it might have originated as a mistake. In a heavily German but English-speaking workplace, it's not just the Germans who use “until” to mean “by”.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
> The writer also calls it Spanish, but e.g. beef is "ternera" in Spanish. It might be Cuban Spanish, which has a fairly large vocabulary that differs from other Spanish variants. You are discovering the difference between castellano and español; in addition to ternera, it's bife in some parts of South America.
- hsush 3y ago
  What do you mean with "castellano" vs "español"? I'm a native speaker and over here we call the language in general "castellano". For me the two words are synonymous (i.e. both refer to the general language, not to some specific dialect).
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Presumably that Castellano is Latin American Spanish and Español is Spanish Spanish.
    - wageslave99 3y ago
      Nop, both are ways of calling the same language. The Spanish Royal Academy makes it clear: https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol
      - avgcorrection 3y ago
        But your answer doesn’t make sense in this context. The original commenter used both of these words as if they were different. So clearly they didn’t mean that they are both “ways of calling the same language”. Some Latin Americans will call their language Castellano. Then my guess—since one can only guess what the hell people mean—was that this has something to do with the difference between Spanish from Spain and Spanish from whatever Latin American country. (But who knows?) Furthermore, you’ll see that the original context was Cuban Spanish versus whatever “Spanish” without any adjective means. Do you really think that your little pet peeve about the intra-politics of Spanish languages are relevant in this context? People weren’t talking about the differences between Catalan and Spanish! > The Spanish Royal Academy makes it clear: https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol Since you’re so sensitive to minority languages and whatnot, maybe you’ll understand that “settlers” might have their own words that might deviate from an Academy based in Spain.
marc_abonce 3y ago
> but e.g. beef is "ternera" in Spanish Beef is "res" or sometimes "carne" as the article mentions, "ternera" is specifically the young calf's meat.
- kubb 3y ago
  when you get a taco with "carne asada", it means grilled beef. "pollo asado" means grilled chicken but "carne de cerdo" means pork meat, so it depends on the context and spanish variation
leoedin 3y ago
Using a locally different sentence structure isn't a lack of fluency, it's just a different dialect. Here in the UK every region speaks English differently. Sure, there's a kind of "standard" English spoken on TV, but the further you get from London the less it's spoken. It's not just a question of accents and local words for things, but of sentence structure too - for instance the Scots dialect has quite radically different ways of saying things than "standard" English. The people who speak Scots are completely fluent in their local dialect. Just because the language they speak doesn't happen to correspond with the culturally dominant variant doesn't make them wrong.
- tsm 3y ago
  Scotland is particularly interesting to me since language occurs on a continuum between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and the Scots language. SSE features unique words ("The word 'outwith' is not used outwith Scotland") and constructions (a waiter will ask "What are you wanting?" instead of "What would you like?", and after receiving the first order they'll ask the next person "And for yourself?" instead of, e.g., "And for you?"). Scots at its Scotsiest can look like this: > What ken ye what may cast up the morn? For whatlike is your life? Ye ar but a waff o rouk at kythes a weeock, an syne eelies awa. Ye war better tae say, "Gin it's God's will, we'll be ey tae the fore, an we s' dae this or that." But no ye, na: ye blaw an blowst o what ye'r tae dae. And speakers will choose a point somewhere between SSE and broad Scots depending on who they're speaking with, the formality, etc. It's quite common to get Scots words like "wee", "dreich", "swither", etc. The next step up is cannae/dinnae/widnae/etc for couldn't/don't/wouldn't/etc. I recently had a Shetlander say I was "glinderin ida sun". And then at some point it switches from "SSE with a Scots influence" to "Scots".

by tgv 3y ago

bedobi 3y ago

"Thanks God" from "Gracias a Dios" ^^^ this is kinda weird considering Cuban Spanish omits the S (and often half the rest of the letters in any given sentence, lol, at least to my lower intermediate Spanish ears), resulting in "Gracia Dio"

rvense 3y ago
Yeah, thought that was a weird claim. I'd wager that the form "thanks" is more frequent than "thank" in most people's English, making it easy for an L2 speaker to hypercorrect.
asveikau 3y ago
Omitting the /s/ is an oversimplification. Classically what happens in accents like that is that /s/ is rendered as [h]. People do this aspiration to varying extents, sometimes omitting totally, sometimes not. Presence of a vowel following nearby can make a full formed [s] appear. The "a" in gracias a dios could easily make that into "gracias a dio". By the way I had a coworker who was a native Arabic speaker say "thanks God" a lot. I think "thank God" is a phrasing that throws off a lot of people learning English, from multiple language backgrounds.
codeadict 3y ago
Indeed, i'm Cuban and we might sound like "Graciah a Diò".

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago

> If you say "get down from the car," you're (likely) using that phrase only to people outside your environment. It's lack of fluency. Fluency doesn't mean you never make such mistakes, and it also doesn't prevent you picking up unusual phrasing from your environment, even when it might have originated as a mistake. In a heavily German but English-speaking workplace, it's not just the Germans who use “until” to mean “by”.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

> The writer also calls it Spanish, but e.g. beef is "ternera" in Spanish. It might be Cuban Spanish, which has a fairly large vocabulary that differs from other Spanish variants. You are discovering the difference between castellano and español; in addition to ternera, it's bife in some parts of South America.

hsush 3y ago
What do you mean with "castellano" vs "español"? I'm a native speaker and over here we call the language in general "castellano". For me the two words are synonymous (i.e. both refer to the general language, not to some specific dialect).
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Presumably that Castellano is Latin American Spanish and Español is Spanish Spanish.
  - wageslave99 3y ago
    Nop, both are ways of calling the same language. The Spanish Royal Academy makes it clear: https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      But your answer doesn’t make sense in this context. The original commenter used both of these words as if they were different. So clearly they didn’t mean that they are both “ways of calling the same language”. Some Latin Americans will call their language Castellano. Then my guess—since one can only guess what the hell people mean—was that this has something to do with the difference between Spanish from Spain and Spanish from whatever Latin American country. (But who knows?) Furthermore, you’ll see that the original context was Cuban Spanish versus whatever “Spanish” without any adjective means. Do you really think that your little pet peeve about the intra-politics of Spanish languages are relevant in this context? People weren’t talking about the differences between Catalan and Spanish! > The Spanish Royal Academy makes it clear: https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol https://www.rae.es/dpd/espa%C3%B1ol Since you’re so sensitive to minority languages and whatnot, maybe you’ll understand that “settlers” might have their own words that might deviate from an Academy based in Spain.

marc_abonce 3y ago

> but e.g. beef is "ternera" in Spanish Beef is "res" or sometimes "carne" as the article mentions, "ternera" is specifically the young calf's meat.

kubb 3y ago
when you get a taco with "carne asada", it means grilled beef. "pollo asado" means grilled chicken but "carne de cerdo" means pork meat, so it depends on the context and spanish variation

leoedin 3y ago

Using a locally different sentence structure isn't a lack of fluency, it's just a different dialect. Here in the UK every region speaks English differently. Sure, there's a kind of "standard" English spoken on TV, but the further you get from London the less it's spoken. It's not just a question of accents and local words for things, but of sentence structure too - for instance the Scots dialect has quite radically different ways of saying things than "standard" English. The people who speak Scots are completely fluent in their local dialect. Just because the language they speak doesn't happen to correspond with the culturally dominant variant doesn't make them wrong.

tsm 3y ago
Scotland is particularly interesting to me since language occurs on a continuum between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and the Scots language. SSE features unique words ("The word 'outwith' is not used outwith Scotland") and constructions (a waiter will ask "What are you wanting?" instead of "What would you like?", and after receiving the first order they'll ask the next person "And for yourself?" instead of, e.g., "And for you?"). Scots at its Scotsiest can look like this: > What ken ye what may cast up the morn? For whatlike is your life? Ye ar but a waff o rouk at kythes a weeock, an syne eelies awa. Ye war better tae say, "Gin it's God's will, we'll be ey tae the fore, an we s' dae this or that." But no ye, na: ye blaw an blowst o what ye'r tae dae. And speakers will choose a point somewhere between SSE and broad Scots depending on who they're speaking with, the formality, etc. It's quite common to get Scots words like "wee", "dreich", "swither", etc. The next step up is cannae/dinnae/widnae/etc for couldn't/don't/wouldn't/etc. I recently had a Shetlander say I was "glinderin ida sun". And then at some point it switches from "SSE with a Scots influence" to "Scots".