What is Euro-English?

Studies are being done now, but from what has already been observed, there are some observations to offer about the lexicogrammar of this emerging Euro-English. Although these characteristics are different from standard English, they usually don’t cause problems in understandings:

· Countable/uncountable nouns, e.g. an advice, advices, an information, informations

· Dropping -s from third person present tense verbs

· Using the relative pronouns who for things (e.g. a book who) and which for people (e.g. a friend which)

· Omitting definite and indefinite articles where they are obligatory in native speaker use

(these points from Murray, 2003:4)

Some features that can cause communication breakdown are:

· ‘unilateral idiomaticity’ (Seidlhofer 2001), i.e. when one speaker uses an idiom from English which the listener doesn’t know, for example, ‘Would you like us to give you a hand?’ as opposed to ‘Can we help you?’

· when one speaker uses words that the other person does not know, which might include correct words in English or English loan words or false friends. An example is handy, which means a cell phone in German. They think it means the same thing in English, but it has a different meaning in English.

Seidlhofer concluded that using communication strategies and the willingness of interlocutors to both try to accommodate is more important for effective communication than “‘correctness’ or idiomaticity in native English terms” (Seidlhofer 2001).

The biggest challenge to the establishment of Euro-English is the tradition that the goal is to be close to native proficiency in either British or American English, an ideology that Modiano claims is waning, but nevertheless still impacts current practices in education as this thinking devalues other varieties of English (Modiano 2003).

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Why a new concept of English?	\|	Justifying Euro-English

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.004 сек.