Re: New pronunciation of Bangalore


Ar an ceathrú lá de mí na Samhain, scríobh Michael Farris:

[...] lots (in absolute numbers if not in terms of percentages) of
people in India grow up with as much exposure to English as a
Luxemburger has to French, that is, schooling, media, literature.

It seems to me that by this standard many if not most Dutch and
Scandinavians could be labelled native speakers of English.

Does schooling in the Netherlands or Germanic Scandinavia routinely take
place in English? (Yes, the Finns’ command of English is really good, but
it’s not them you meant.)

Would you agree? And if not why not?

I don’t have any references for it (I need to make notes & tag things more
often when reading) but my understanding is that in the sixties, in France,
those with most competence in the Baccalauréat were from Alsace and Corsica:
their schooling was through French, but French tended not to be the first
language of their family. The medium of instruction at school is the
difference, I think.

Part of the problem is that 'native speaker' is a fuzzy category
usually applied to people who grow up, go to school and conduct most of
their life business in the same language.

It’s also applied (about English) to people like Maciej Cegłowski, who moved
from Warsaw to the US at six and had an English-language education and a
Polish-language home life (cf. http://www.idlewords.com/about.htm ), or
Madeline Albright. Neither are any more a native speaker, in terms of life
experience, than Vikram Seth or Swaraj Paul.

It has a lot less application in places with histories of
multi-lingualism, extreme diglossia or a non-local imposed prestige
language. All three of those conditions tend to apply in many places of
India where 'native speaker' is not a terribly viable category period.

Ah, quatsch. Just because people in a region find the word of limited use,
doesn’t mean the understanding of the word’s meaning by those who do use it,
cannot be related to local situations. Or was Rudyard Kipling not a native
speaker of English?

--
Santa Maradona, priez pour moi!
.

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