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Milky Posted 19 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Who's to decide the future?



Jean-Paul Nerrière, a retired vice president of IBM USA, who is French, says that it is nonnatives who should control things, the way forward. Do you agree with him?

"We are a majority," Nerrière said, "so our way of speaking English should be the official way of speaking English."
  

Top answer

And what is their way of speaking English?

— Mister Micawber

  • And what is their way of speaking English?
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31 Answers
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...And what is their way of speaking English?
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Mister Micawber...And what is their way of speaking English?

According to "them", in the way it can be more easily learnt and understood by nonnatives, I think.
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Mr Nerrière seems to have little understanding of what "controlling" a language means. Native speakers from various English-speaking countries disagree on correct usage. Even if nonnatives were concerned enough about the state of the English language to try and control it, these futile efforts would be doomed to fail. There is no such thing as "our way of speaking English", there are innumerable
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<There is no such thing as "our way of speaking English", there are innumerable foreign ways of speaking it. There would be absolutely no agreement on "correct" usage.>

I'm not so sure he's conerned with what would or would not be correct usage, but more with who says what should be used internationally. About what the Standard/s should be.

<Perhaps Mr N has seen too lit
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Milky

"We are a majority,"

No, the majority are the Chinese. Chinese is the most spoken language, so Chinese should be the official way to speak. So we all should start studying Chinese now, and forget about our language and all the others, because they are not
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Kooyeen
Milky


"We are a majority,"


No, the majority are the Chinese. Chinese is the most spoken language, so Chinese should be the official way to speak. So we all should start studying Chinese now, and forget about our language
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According to "them", in the way it can be more easily learnt and understood by nonnatives, I think.
Oh, no! Not another Esperanto project!

CJ
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Milky<There is no such thing as "our way of speaking English", there are innumerable foreign ways of speaking it. There would be absolutely no agreement on "correct" usage.>

I'm not so sure he's conerned with what would or would not be correct usage, but more with who says what should be used internationally. About what the Standard/s should be.

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<It borders on megalomania to think nonnatives of any language could tell native speakers of any language how to use their language. >

So who does English belong to?
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<I wonder what exactly he has in mind, anyway?>

Are you aware that he "invented" Globish?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/21/features/Blume22.php
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