Franglais chez Ikea

“My other son, he’s going to this [school in Hong Kong] and it’s really expensive. But they have all these Indian teachers teach English. Now, my other son, not the oldest one and not the young one yet, he speaks English with an Indian accent and it’s so funny.”

(French ex-avocat/lawyer with her 5-year-old son, both with
great blonde hair, at the Ikea bistro, 11.30am today)

Aside: While we adults were chatting, her son sat on the floor, making himself supremely comfortable resting his back on my leg and arm wrapped around my knee, sipping his gigantic orange soda. Yours truly stood stock-still for fear of stepping on the kid’s fingers. Diners and bistro staff giggled at the sight of us three.

Trivia: Her son wonked out the elasticated queue barriers near the cashier’s while his mum and I were chatting. Boy, did the mum looked embarrassed. Sharp tug at the webbing and thing was right again.

Rider: To that bistro staff personage, stop giving the mum and kid the stink-eye. Five year olds do that sort of thing. And the boy DID apologise (albeit in French). C’mon! Will a local 5 year old apologise? There’s your answer.

Trivia: The avocat had fantastic air-force blue eyes and great-looking cleavage even after having had three kids. Ladies, eat French and stay good-lookin’. Told you so.

Lifehack: The enchanting avocat relocated to Hong Kong recently, and got in touch with the local French cultural mission to ease her family into life here. That’s the way to do it. Have your own kind (French-speaking or anything else) show you the ropes when in a strange, foreign land. That way, you have others knowing who you are, what you are, how you be. It’s safer to start off like that till you can go it alone. Learn to have ‘family’ when making home away from home.

Home away from home (via Wikipedia)

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011. Image powered by Zemanta/WordPress.

Notes: Grammar and language fluency

KNACKER’S LOG, 01 Nov 2011

The more grammar they read, the worse their language gets. Running order worsens too. Harder they try to be grammatical, down, down, down goes readability. They don’t even notice this.

Up the grammar focus, and grammar actually becomes a distraction to these people — they can’t focus on the subject matter. So the subject matter ends up running on fumes — a great way to crash land. End result? Sequencing is all over the place, so half the time these grammarphiles write won’t make much sense anyway. And they don’t even notice this.

Worse, these people have learnt the wrong sort of grammar. Resembles mental masturbation more than anything else. Don’t know what the hell these people have learnt or how they learnt it, but theirs is nothing ever like what we had in school.

* * *

BTW, S.S. mentioned the other day she was teaching Primary 1-or-whatever kids a thing called Procedural Writing. What the hell is THAT???

Turn out Procedural Writing was how to write a set of steps that others could follow. Well, then, it’s PROCEDURE Writing, not ‘procedural.’ It isn’t a bloody adjective, you know. So it’s back to the Servile Wars vs. Slave Wars crap again, and again, and again. Ad nauseum.

Why the hell can’t the school call a spade a spade — “How to write a set of steps”? “Procedural Writing” is f@#king abortion English, and f@#king bad naming.

*Eyesroll* I don’t know how the hell schools couldn’t figure out something as simple as Procedure Writing, and then make teachers like S.S. teach kids this crap — and then complain about falling standards.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011.

Cross-post: Help foster your own help

CROSSPOST

Something frequently seen in the ‘soft’ humanities is actually a laughing stock. Find out from our sister blog here:

‘If you’re helping, don’t foster at the same time’
http://learnenglishorstarve.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/vocab-foster/

How much English do you use?

Romans! Lend me your hand!

Tell me how much English you use every day.

Poll below.

Multiple answers allowed; tick any that applies to you.

Finish it and move on.

Thanks.

Ever noticed

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED that the media often use grammatically correct and easy-to-understand language when it comes to reporting the standpoints of the government but jerky, substandard language on its opponents?

Have you ever noticed as well that the VOs (voice overs) for TV and radio broadcasts tends to be in clearly enunciated tones and unaccented accents for the same?

What does that suggest to you? What effect do you reckon it might have on other people such as your friends and family?

Do you notice these things, even on an irregular basis? Why do you think you notice or don’t notice? Is there something about your work or upbringing that makes you notice or not notice? How would you know? And how would you go about getting to know?