Fifty / Sixty

[Fish]

Originally Posted by nurvonic

are you talking about american slang? then of course not. believe it or not, america has proper english.

so whatchu talkin' bout, Tye.

p.s. izi nizeed tizo sizee mizy bizitches tizo gizet sizome izof mizy mizoney, izand smizack thizem izup..yo yo checkit.

Should I be ashamed that I know exactly what you said?

My advice? Don't even try to pinpoint the date it'll come out. You'll most likely be disappointed, and that way when it does come it will be all the sweeter

[Tye]

Originally Posted by nurvonic

are you talking about american slang? then of course not. believe it or not, america has proper english.

so whatchu talkin' bout, Tye.

p.s. izi nizeed tizo sizee mizy bizitches tizo gizet sizome izof mizy mizoney, izand smizack thizem izup..yo yo checkit.

This is how I feel about slang: English started out as a poor common man's language that was not worthy of being used among royals and in the court of the royals. I don't want to see the language decline back to a standard similar to that, but based on how America's youth treats the English language it is going to end up back where it began. Using slang is being lazy. Just say it right.

[Deepwaters]

Tye, just as there are regional American accents and dialects, the same thing is true in England. Also, in England the manner of speech is often governed by class and access to higher education. What you're probably thinking of as an "English accent" is the speech of someone born into an upper-class family and educated at Oxford or Cambridge. Contrast this with lower-class London speech, which is very harsh and clipped, or the speech of northern England (listen to old interviews with the Beatles and you'll get that), or Scotland or Wales.

I can't figure out what type of English Alizée is learning. As far as pronunciation is concerned, she definitely has a French accent. You can hear it in Fifty/Sixty, which she pronounces "Feefy Seexty." (It's terribly cute. ) So she doesn't sound either British or American. As far as word usage, at this point she's probably doing what I'm doing to learn French, and encountering a lot of English on the Internet (including here). God help her, poor thing . . .

[fsquared]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Tye, just as there are regional American accents and dialects, the same thing is true in England. Also, in England the manner of speech is often governed by class and access to higher education. What you're probably thinking of as an "English accent" is the speech of someone born into an upper-class family and educated at Oxford or Cambridge. Contrast this with lower-class London speech, which is very harsh and clipped, or the speech of northern England (listen to old interviews with the Beatles and you'll get that), or Scotland or Wales.

I can't figure out what type of English Alizée is learning. As far as pronunciation is concerned, she definitely has a French accent. You can hear it in Fifty/Sixty, which she pronounces "Feefy Seexty." (It's terribly cute. ) So she doesn't sound either British or American. As far as word usage, at this point she's probably doing what I'm doing to learn French, and encountering a lot of English on the Internet (including here). God help her, poor thing . . .

Language change is a very interesting thing. I recall some interesting anecdotes regarding the propagation of things like the "missing 'r'" in British English. A lot of times, certain features arise in the "prestigious" dialects, that are then copied by other speakers, and then come to be associated with less prestigious dialects. I think that even happened in France once, when some royals were deposed, and then some decades later, when that family/etc. returned to power, the speech dialects that that family had preserved had now become associated with low-class French. (I can't remember when it was, but I suspect I got it from Trask's Historical Linguistics so if you're curious, you can read it there.)

One should also note that often language change is actually slower in "emigrant" populations speaking a language than in the "home country", e.g. more retentions of old pronunciations in Latin American Spanish vs. Castillian Spanish.

Oops, off topic. Sorry.

I think it would be very difficult to ascertain what kind of language she's learning based on 4 words sung in a French song (which would make it very likely for them to be pronounced with a heavy French accent as opposed to any British or American accent). I do suspect that almost anyone in Europe who is learning English would learn a British variety though unless they were specializing in American English for some reason.

BTW, regarding English as a peasant language, my impression is that English did not have it nearly as bad status-wise as other languages like German, Russian, etc. prior to the establishment of their literary traditions.

[Fish]

You forget, England has its own dialects and slang. While I agree with you on the southern dialect (and I have a southern twang myself), its only really bad if you actually aren't all that well educated. Otherwise its simply an accent with the word ya'll thrown in.
English in its current form has never been a 'high' language, mostly because its the bastard child of German and Latin. American English is just another dialect, similar to the Australian/NZ dialect.

On the topic of slang, though, that will change the language for the worst if it continues. That isn't a regional thing, or the natural evolution of a language. Its more of a laziness and stupidity that stems from people not caring to know their own damn language.

Edit: Yes, we've gone way off topic here.

[fsquared]

Originally Posted by Fish

You forget, England has its own dialects and slang. While I agree with you on the southern dialect (and I have a southern twang myself), its only really bad if you actually aren't all that well educated. Otherwise its simply an accent with the word ya'll thrown in.
English in its current form has never been a 'high' language, mostly because its the bastard child of German and Latin. American English is just another dialect, similar to the Australian/NZ dialect.

On the topic of slang, though, that will change the language for the worst if it continues. That isn't a regional thing, or the natural evolution of a language. Its more of a laziness and stupidity that stems from people not caring to know their own damn language.

Edit: Yes, we've gone way off topic here.

More like bastard child of Anglo-Saxon and French...but I don't really know what you mean by never having been a 'high' language here...that's a social phenomenon. England became quite powerful in the Middle Ages and has had a high prestige and a rich literary tradition since Old English (Beowulf), Middle English (Chaucer), etc.

BTW, apparently the "Lancashire" dialect of British English has historically had low prestige. I don't know what it sounds like myself.

[Fish]

Which is why I said in its current form. Old and Middle English are nigh incomprehensible to a modern English speaker, in the same way French or German would be if you haven't studied it.

And Anglo-Saxon was a fairly Germanic language, if I'm remembering what I learned in German class right.

[SupaKrupa]

What, nurv? lol

Old english is completely different. You wouldn't be able to tell is was any sort of english. Romance languages are closer.

P.S. I'm quite bored and actually need to study linguistic (I'm doing a course) so if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask, i've got a bigass textbook which has the answer to every question posed in history.

[Deepwaters]

Anglo-Saxon is a Germanic language, yes, but fsquared is right, the mix-in is French, not Latin. It happened mainly because French became the court and literary language of England for several centuries after the Norman conquest.

[Tye]

Originally Posted by fsquared

More like bastard child of Anglo-Saxon and French...but I don't really know what you mean by never having been a 'high' language here...that's a social phenomenon. England became quite powerful in the Middle Ages and has had a high prestige and a rich literary tradition since Old English (Beowulf), Middle English (Chaucer), etc.

BTW, apparently the "Lancashire" dialect of British English has historically had low prestige. I don't know what it sounds like myself.

Like Deepwaters said, the langauge of the English royals was French during parts of the Middle ages. French was used by the royals, and an unrefined version of English was used by the poor people. The reason why some people didn't want the Bible translated into English in the Middle Ages was because the church thought the English language was not worthy enough to have the Bible translated into it. Shakespeare wrote his plays in English so that it would be accesible to common people. Shakespeare gave the language credibility in the literary filed.

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Anglo-Saxon is a Germanic language, yes, but fsquared is right, the mix-in is French, not Latin. It happened mainly because French became the court and literary language of England for several centuries after the Norman conquest.

I wonder what the English language and culture would be like if the Normans had failed to conquer England?