My English is just as important as your English
This weekend I read a very informative article about English as a lingua franca. The article explained how non-native English speakers especially among each other use English differently, and it predicted some of the developments of the language in the future based on their studies.
Just as the article says, "To some, our proposal may seem to be a recipe for "permissiveness" and a decline in "standards"," I can see this to be the case for some native speakers. I do understand and fully agree that there is a level of fluency to be kept, but the message going across is always more important than the full accuracy of the language. Besides, a language needs standards to survive, so compromises can be made only to a certain extent.
When comparing natives with non-natives, sometimes the non-natives ace the grammar and spelling even better than those who learned it as a first language. A non-native speaker has the advantage of memorizing things based on other languages. I absolutely know the difference between there, their and they're. For me they are "siellä", "heidän" and "he ovat". Or how about another example from personal experience: as a teenager I helped an American teenager to spell the word "absolutely". I remember the spelling of difficult words (not that absolutely can be counted as a difficult word), because I pronounce them in my head in my first language.
Sometimes I come across with native English speakers who think it's incredible, sometimes even ridiculous that my husband and I use English as a lingua franca. Some people just can't wrap their heads around two non-native speakers using their language to have a life together. As if something was lacking in our lives, because we use a third language.
Just hear me out.
Some of the biggest decisions of my life I have made in English. I got to know my husband, in English. We fell in love, in English. We decided to live together, have a family, buy a house and get married, all of it, in English. English was the first common ground for us.
When my husband proposed to me, instead of asking "tuletko vaimokseni?" or "wil jij met mij trouwen?", he popped the question in English. When we chose the names for our children, they had to be names that would easily fit in an English-speaking mouth as well. We didn't go for Päivikki or Yrjö, Marijke or Joeri.
I have talked about everything there is to life with my husband in English, the big and the small things. We still use English as our main language of communication, partly because some habits are hard to shed, but also because we've noticed our kids are picking it up as a bonus language, so why fix something that isn't broken.
Without English we would've remained strangers to one another and our life together would not have happened. (Although I do know couples who had no language in common at first, yet ended up together anyway. Personally not being able to verbally communicate with a partner was a big no-go for me.) Now ten years into the relationship I have learned Dutch and he can follow a conversation in Finnish, but we are more than grateful for English.
The native English speakers are there to teach and guide us with the language. I speak very differently with natives than I speak when I use English as a common language with another foreigner. With natives I'm concentrating very hard to avoid making mistakes, which usually leads me to make more. I also tend to overload my processing capacity by trying to adapt myself, so that I don't go on babbling about an elevator to a Brit or use the phrase "to be pissed" wrong to an American. This is automatic and sometimes I do wish I could just turn it off and relax instead.
When I use English as a lingua franca, I don't think how I'm going to say something, I simply use the language. The message usually goes across and when it doesn't, only then I start adapting my vocabulary. I know I'm not the only non-native speaker who has ever realized that speaking English is easier as a lingua franca in comparison to speaking it with a native.
But in the end I can't really know how all of this feels to a native English speaker. I can count with one hand the foreigners who have ever spoken Finnish to me. I remember every single one of them, because that's how rare it is for someone to learn my language. I have been thankful and impressed about anyone who ever had the willingness to try to speak in my language when it wasn't their mother tongue.
Language is a living thing as it always evolves with its speakers. The world is getting smaller each passing year at a rate much faster than ever before. English is an international language and as such it belongs to everyone of its speakers. English will evolve in the mouths of non-natives as much as it does in the mouths of natives. English might even learn a thing or two from other languages, and that I believe will bring all English speakers closer to each other.
Just as the article says, "To some, our proposal may seem to be a recipe for "permissiveness" and a decline in "standards"," I can see this to be the case for some native speakers. I do understand and fully agree that there is a level of fluency to be kept, but the message going across is always more important than the full accuracy of the language. Besides, a language needs standards to survive, so compromises can be made only to a certain extent.
When comparing natives with non-natives, sometimes the non-natives ace the grammar and spelling even better than those who learned it as a first language. A non-native speaker has the advantage of memorizing things based on other languages. I absolutely know the difference between there, their and they're. For me they are "siellä", "heidän" and "he ovat". Or how about another example from personal experience: as a teenager I helped an American teenager to spell the word "absolutely". I remember the spelling of difficult words (not that absolutely can be counted as a difficult word), because I pronounce them in my head in my first language.
Sometimes I come across with native English speakers who think it's incredible, sometimes even ridiculous that my husband and I use English as a lingua franca. Some people just can't wrap their heads around two non-native speakers using their language to have a life together. As if something was lacking in our lives, because we use a third language.
Just hear me out.
Some of the biggest decisions of my life I have made in English. I got to know my husband, in English. We fell in love, in English. We decided to live together, have a family, buy a house and get married, all of it, in English. English was the first common ground for us.
When my husband proposed to me, instead of asking "tuletko vaimokseni?" or "wil jij met mij trouwen?", he popped the question in English. When we chose the names for our children, they had to be names that would easily fit in an English-speaking mouth as well. We didn't go for Päivikki or Yrjö, Marijke or Joeri.
I have talked about everything there is to life with my husband in English, the big and the small things. We still use English as our main language of communication, partly because some habits are hard to shed, but also because we've noticed our kids are picking it up as a bonus language, so why fix something that isn't broken.
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| It's all about making a connection with another human being. |
The native English speakers are there to teach and guide us with the language. I speak very differently with natives than I speak when I use English as a common language with another foreigner. With natives I'm concentrating very hard to avoid making mistakes, which usually leads me to make more. I also tend to overload my processing capacity by trying to adapt myself, so that I don't go on babbling about an elevator to a Brit or use the phrase "to be pissed" wrong to an American. This is automatic and sometimes I do wish I could just turn it off and relax instead.
When I use English as a lingua franca, I don't think how I'm going to say something, I simply use the language. The message usually goes across and when it doesn't, only then I start adapting my vocabulary. I know I'm not the only non-native speaker who has ever realized that speaking English is easier as a lingua franca in comparison to speaking it with a native.
But in the end I can't really know how all of this feels to a native English speaker. I can count with one hand the foreigners who have ever spoken Finnish to me. I remember every single one of them, because that's how rare it is for someone to learn my language. I have been thankful and impressed about anyone who ever had the willingness to try to speak in my language when it wasn't their mother tongue.
Language is a living thing as it always evolves with its speakers. The world is getting smaller each passing year at a rate much faster than ever before. English is an international language and as such it belongs to everyone of its speakers. English will evolve in the mouths of non-natives as much as it does in the mouths of natives. English might even learn a thing or two from other languages, and that I believe will bring all English speakers closer to each other.
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