Why can't we speak English?

True, Turkish people always thinks "I can talk english with turkish logic" but this is wrong.

All things aside our students are pretty reluctant to learn English after all they just think English is grade lesson that can improve overall grades and this type of thinking only makes memorizing.

Generally in Turkey English lessons are only time wasting and politicians don't try change this useless education system.

Alfha13 dedi:

They're actually same, there's no "r" sound in British, that's all. They have all schwa sound, we hear "a" in British, "ı" in American, though.

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What does it have to do with what I said? Of course they're the same. English is the language, American can be an accent but British, is not. It's the actual English.

cortex47 dedi:

What does it have to do with what I said? Of course they're the same. English is the language, American can be an accent but British, is not. It's the actual English.

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It's not an accent, British and American are versions of English. Like Mexico and Castile Spanish. Accent is a talking thing, American English is not an accent, but a dialect-like. All the world speaks AmE, and maybe in 50 years no one will have been learning BrE. So there's no actual one. Grammar is based on the British because Brits love their rules.

Linuxginar dedi:

So, US and British English have slight differences.

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Some or so many -depends on you- words, some pronunciations, 2 or 3 grammar rules, vibes.

Alfha13 dedi:

It's not an accent, British and American are versions of English. Like Mexico and Castile Spanish. Accent is a talking thing, American English is not an accent, but a dialect-like. All the world speaks AmE, and maybe in 50 years no one will have been learning BrE. So there's no actual one. Grammar is based on the British because Brits love their rules.

Some or so many -depends on you- words, some pronunciations, 2 or 3 grammar rules, vibes.

Genişletmek için tıkla...

I strongly disagree. Grammar is based on "British" because it their language. USA is just borrowing it. In case you don't know, the changes in a language starts with speaking. So they've changed it, but it started as an accent difference. British is not a version of English, in case, it's the actual language. Canadian, Nigerian, American, Indian, Australian etc can be the versions of that spesific languages. That's why it's called English, because it's the language of English people, nıt American.

cortex47 dedi:

I strongly disagree. Grammar is based on "British" because it their language. USA is just borrowing it. In case you don't know, the changes in a language starts with speaking. So they've changed it, but it started as an accent difference. British is not a version of English, in case, it's the actual language. Canadian, Nigerian, American, Indian, Australian etc can be the versions of that spesific languages. That's why it's called English, because it's the language of English people, nıt American.

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Sorry about the typos, I was writing this on my phone, so I couldn't realize then.

cortex47 dedi:

I strongly disagree. Grammar is based on "British" because it their language. USA is just borrowing it. In case you don't know, the changes in a language starts with speaking. So they've changed it, but it started as an accent difference. British is not a version of English, in case, it's the actual language. Canadian, Nigerian, American, Indian, Australian etc can be the versions of that spesific languages. That's why it's called English, because it's the language of English people, nıt American.

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Got your point but I disagree too. American English is another language, derived from British English. You can say it's a dialect but maybe you know there's no official separation. If AmE is a dialect of English, then why Serbian or Croatian or Bosnian are languages and not dialects? I say all of them are languages, we can't separate them, but most linguist says everyone speak a dialect of a language.

So for me, AmE and BrE are languages; for most linguists, AmE and BrE are dialects of Anglo-Frisian or sth. like that. All in all, they're in the same group.

And Bulgarians speak Bulgarians but first Bulgarians were Bulgar and there were Turks.
Macedonians speak Macedonian but first Macedonians were Greek.

So "It's called English because it's speaked by English people" doesn't make sense.

And also American, Indian, British, Australian Englishes are different from Caribbean, African, Asian etc. It's called standard and non-standard dialects.

Alfha13 dedi:

Got your point but I disagree too. American English is another language, derived from British English. You can say it's a dialect but maybe you know there's no official separation. If AmE is a dialect of English, then why Serbian or Croatian or Bosnian are languages and not dialects? I say all of them are languages, we can't separate them, but most linguist says everyone speak a dialect of a language.

So for me, AmE and BrE are languages; for most linguists, AmE and BrE are dialects of Anglo-Frisian or sth. like that. All in all, they're in the same group.

And Bulgarians speak Bulgarians but first Bulgarians were Bulgar and there were Turks.
Macedonians speak Macedonian but first Macedonians were Greek.

So "It's called English because it's speaked by English people" doesn't make sense.

And also American, Indian, British, Australian Englishes are different from Caribbean, African, Asian etc. It's called standard and non-standard dialects.

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I didn't say "It's called English because it's spoken by English people", I said, "It's called English because it's the language of people from England." The difference between a language and a dialect is sociopolitical. Basically, countries decide that. English in the USA is a dialect because obviously, they think that it doesn't worth calling a language. Let me give you an example, Moldovan is a one-on-one copy of Romanian. Even the accent is pretty close. But they called it their official language. But the USA doesn't have any official languages in the constitution.
So overall, even on the paper, AmE is a dialect and it's still English. It actually doesn't matter what you think, unless the American government says otherwise, AmE is a dialect.

cortex47 dedi:

I didn't say "It's called English because it's spoken by English people", I said, "It's called English because it's the language of people from England." The difference between a language and a dialect is sociopolitical. Basically, countries decide that. English in the USA is a dialect because obviously, they think that it doesn't worth calling a language. Let me give you an example, Moldovan is a one-on-one copy of Romanian. Even the accent is pretty close. But they called it their official language. But the USA doesn't have any official languages in the constitution.
So overall, even on the paper, AmE is a dialect and it's still English. It actually doesn't matter what you think, unless the American government says otherwise, AmE is a dialect.

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You already explained it When it comes to separate a language from a dialect, there's no linguistic thing, it's all political. If USA government said Americanian was their official language, then it'd be language, not a dialect. Like Moldovan, there're Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin. If you look at the languages, they're all same, they're all dialects of one Slavic language, but they're called language, because there're some social and political situations.

After all, mostly people will say it's a dialect. Okay, I've respect that thought but it's not so easy, I must say.

Alfha13 dedi:

Like Moldovan, there're Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin.

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Yeah, those may be agreed as different languages but they aren't so far from a dialect difference since all of these people can understand each other's language.

Nice question. I'll give a example from myself first. I know English so good, I know tons of word, tons of verb. I think thats a bit genetically because there's a lot of English teacher in our family. But when we come to talking part, I am just a trash. Guess, you are in love with a girl. You love her so much, every beatiful thing in your life remembers her to you. You get choice and you will explain your feels to her, but there's a problem. You are shy and non brave person, so that will be harder than others for you. You make a lot of practice, you put all words to your mind and now you are ready. You start with a normal dialogue like "whats up?" Eveything goes perfect, now this is explaining time. But when you start speaking in this part, you can't move your mouth. This is very similar with our English. We know tons of word, but we can't speak. Because we don't know how to speak and pronounce it. All words, paragraphs, stories in lesson books are just teachs word to us. We never make practice. Thats the main reason I guess.

Yes.