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So as we know, children acquire their native language by being exposed to lots and lots of input in that language, internalising it, and not only memorising vocabulary but also developing mental rules (the grammar) of how that language is spoken. As such, when we come to be adults, we have a very sophisticated mental model for whatâs grammatical and whatâs not in our native language. As far as linguists are concerned, it is this, and not the rules handed down by style guides or generations of English teachers, that determines what is an acceptable English utterance and what is not (and the same in any other language). Thatâs the difference between descriptive linguistics (i.e. linguistics) and prescriptive âlinguisticsâ (which is more of interest to English teachers, authors of style guides, etc.).
This is not to say that prescriptive linguistics has no value at all⊠it would be pretty difficult to teach literacy at primary schools if the answer to everything was just âwell I donât know, what do *you* think sounds right?â, not to mention trying to teach second-language learners. And if youâre writing for publication, you know, you do usually have to use a standardised form of the language and not just whatever sounds right in your head. Realistically, I think through education most English speakers develop two mental models â we can distinguish between âwhat sounds right in standard Englishâ, âwhat sounds right in informal English (encompassing dialect, sociolect, etc.)â and âwhat is wrong Englishâ. This is far from unique â there are many languages where the difference between the standard and colloquial forms of the language are very well-acknowledged â but in English theyâre often ignored (except when a dialect is especially divergent from standard English, like AAVE or Scots). But I mean, my personal speech (my idiolect) is not very divergent from standard Australian English (I donât say âyouseâ or anything like that haha) and it still has some differences, like my use of double object pronouns. There are other things too, like how in colloquial English you can often drop pieces like the subject pronoun and copula, which you canât do in the standard. Like when my partner has a look of mischievous glee on his face as he stares at his phone, I can ask, âYou trolling people on Facebook again?â In standard English there should have been a copula â âareâ â in there, but in colloquial speech I can drop it and itâs not ungrammatical (now if Iâd said âTrolling be you people on Facebook again?â, that would be ungrammatical).
Anyway, Iâve rambled on this far about native languages. But something I also find interesting is the way that we build up mental models of second (and third, fourth, etc.) languages too. That is, after some time learning an additional language we donât just produce it through sheer memorisation of rules, we actually develop a âgut feelâ for what sounds right and wrong, in the same way we did as children for our native one(s). This is one of the reasons that learners are recommended to consume vast amounts of media (TV, film, books, podcasts, etc.) in their target language â the more input you get, the less likely it is youâll form mental models that are wrong!
Because thatâs the thing, of course. When you learn a new language, you can develop mental models with errors. I know I have some of these with Spanish â for example, I can âgut feelâ the genders of probably 98% of words, but because my âgut feelâ is just âall the word endings have to match!!â I make mistakes. By âmatchâ I donât just mean oâs and aâs â other endings that pretty reliably signal one gender or the other â -ciĂłn, -dad, -or, etc. â are definitely in my brain as masculine or feminine endings. But eâs are often crapshoots (youâve just gotta memorise, so if itâs not a common word IDK, and in the case of "el arte" even though itâs a common word still IDK because Iâve seen Museo de Bellas Artes too many times) and anything with an ending that suggests the opposite of its actual gender â "el tema", "la mano", "el sistema" absolutely does my head in. Iâll usually get the article right because thatâs how you memorise the word, but Iâll try making adjectives match the ending instead. So like, "el planeta lejana" instead of "el planeta lejano", or "el sistema catĂłlica" instead of "el sistema catĂłlico". And if Iâm reading something that someone has written in actual correct Spanish, and I see a âmismatchâ like "sistema catĂłlico", my brain will be like !!!WARNING!!! even though itâs my brain that is wrong and the actual Spanish speaker that is correct. I think the only to âfixâ this is just way more reading/watching/listening about planets and systems and dramas and so on. But still, itâs cool to me that I can go from knowing zero of a language (12 years ago) to having that ingrained sense of whatâs right and wrong in it, even if itâs imperfect.
But then, here is a related topic that interests me. Obviously when itâs just me by myself making mistakes in Spanish, that is a mistake. But when you have a whole ton of non-native speakers speaking English the same way, even though itâs a way that native English speakers mostly think sounds âwrongâ, it actually becomes kinda right. For example, you have this concept of Euro English, or the English spoken by non-native speakers in Europe (often at an extremely high level, of course!). I think the vocabulary section of the Wikipedia article[0] conveys the differences from standard English really well. Now Iâm sure there are a huge number of Europeans who take pride in never making âmistakesâ like this, so please donât think Iâm insinuating every non-native English speaker in Europe speaks like this đ But umm, from having known many people from countries like Spain and France, some of these immediately ring a bell for me. And honestly, these kinds of uses donât sound any more wrong to me than some of the things said in certain US dialects⊠like âthe car needs washedâ or âI might could do somethingâ sound worse to my ears, even though I know theyâre legitimate in some dialects. So I guess to me, âEuro Englishâ has come to sound like a perfectly legitimate dialect of English, rather than like, âa collection of common mistakesâ.
Another point of comparison would be Indian English. You will (rightly) not hear many people say that Indian English is just âfull of mistakesâ where it differs from standard English! And yet it, too, is largely spoken by second-language speakers (if often, like in Europe, people who are so good at English that theyâre functionally bilingual, but itâs still not their mother tongue). Again, most of the Indian English vocabulary listed on Wikipedia[1] is immediately understandable to me, it just sounds like a dialect I donât speak. And considering the very long history of English in India, its use in many standardised media there (like TV news, newspapers, etc.) and the fact that there are 130 million English speakers in the country (making it the second-largest national supradialect after American English!) Iâm pretty sure everyone who knows what theyâre talking about recognises Indian English as a legitimate dialect and not âpeople speaking English wrongâ. (Also, I have to respect Indian English as there are some things on which itâs apparently the only other dialect that accords with Australian/NZ standards, like using the word âcapsicumâ for what Americans call bell peppers, or spelling chilli with two Ls and pluralising it âchilliesâ.)
The point Iâm trying to make is that there is a tipping point whereby learnersâ mental model of a language ceases to be âmistakenâ and starts to be âa new dialectâ. Sort of similar to how a pidgin becomes a creole, except creoles have native speakers and these varieties have very few of those (Indian English is estimated to be the first language of just 260,000 people, for example â approx. 0.2% of all the dialectâs speakers). But still, there must be a point where the same mental model of, say, English is shared by enough people that it comes to be a new, definable variety. And seeing as how for natives, our local dialects donât replace our knowledge of standard English, thereâs no reason it has to be the case for these varieties either â that is, Euro English doesnât have to be at odds with standard English; someone who speaks perfectly excellent standard English might still code-switch between the two depending on the crowd theyâre with. And as someone with a linguistics background, I love all the variety in the English language, including the influence of other languages on ours. Iâve never seen why learners of English should be expected to choose a native dialect and try to mimic it perfectly⊠speaking awesome English doesnât just mean people who speak like BBC newsreaders. And speaking good English doesnât mean phrasing everything exactly like a native would.
I think I have to apologise that this post has been all over the place. The thought bubble that got me rolling was just about how we acquire and store mental models of the languages we speak, and this is an interesting little NYT article from 1997 about that[2]. The grammars of the languages we speak from childhood are stored in a part of the brain called Brocaâs area, but when we learn a language in adolescence or later, it doesnât go in that same area â the brain creates a kind of ancillary Brocaâs area next to the first one. But thatâs still kind of impressive to me â we create a new Brocaâs area from scratch? Wow! The brain is truly incredible.
[0] English Wikipedia - Euro English - Vocabulary
[1] English Wikipedia - Indian English - Vocabulary
[2] New York Times - When an Adult Adds a Language, It's One Brain, Two Systems