I don’t think that some sort of “international English” would be a threat to the local varieties that you mentioned
This is exactly what is already happening with Scots and American English. Scots continues to disappear, and features of American English increase in usage due to the proliferation of American media. Class isn’t the only factor here.
Not prescribing anything at all means implicit agreement with the prescriptions already in place
There is a world of difference between spontaneous consensus between members of a particular culture or ethnic group and the top-down enforcement (as in the case of Scots speakers being physically punished in school for speaking their native language) or promotion of a specific dialect.
This is exactly what is already happening with Scots and American English.
If American media were to affect so much Anglic varieties spoken in Scotland, you’d expect SSE (Scottish Standard English) to increase in rhoticity due to said influence. And yet the opposite is happening.
Granted, the example is from SSE, not braid Scots; it works nice here though, since any potential non-British pressure would affect SSE first, then Scots.
The example also shows which Anglic varieties are threatening Scots: RP and its spiritual successor Southern Standard British English, both non-rhotic. That’s because mere exposition towards another variety is not enough to trigger variety shift, you need some sort of [soft or hard] power over the speakers. Such as attacking their local identity to sell them an alternative one (governments love to do this shit).
Now, back into the hypothetical “international English”: what pressure do you think that a hypothetical standard built upon the speech of L2 English speakers, mostly in continental Europe, would have towards Scots? I don’t think that it would; at most you’d get some entitled corporation drone from London or New York screeching that “learning a dialect for international communication is too hard!” (i.e. a fraction of what others already do.)
Also note that the basic idea (“you aren’t supposed to speak this natively”) isn’t too far off from how Esperantists promote Esperanto, except that it’s towards a dialect instead of a full-fledged constructed language.
There is a world of difference between [spontaneous consensus between members of a particular culture or ethnic group]#1 and [the top-down enforcement (as in the case of Scots speakers being physically punished in school for speaking their native language)]#2 or [promotion of a specific dialect]#3.
I numbered them for convenience. #1 is a specific case of #3, and rather close to my “hot take” proposal. Nobody is proposing #2, this sort of Vergonha style linguicide is inhumane.
[I’d also like to reinforce that the idea is a “hot take”. As in, I knew that it would be contentious, and I’m not exactly sure myself if it would be the best approach.]
If American media were to affect so much Anglic varieties spoken in Scotland, you’d expect SSE (Scottish Standard English) to increase in rhoticity due to said influence.
I was specifically referring to Scots words and phrases disappearing from use and even British English words being replaced with americanisms. This absolutely is happening; as someone from Scotland, I have seen it first hand.
what pressure do you think that a hypothetical standard built upon the speech of L2 English speakers, mostly in continental Europe, would have towards Scots?
It’s the way these sorts of efforts tend to be held as “correct speech.” Scots is already denigrated as mere slang or a language of the uneducated. Whether created by academics or the aristocracy, I believe the result would be the same; social pressure develops surrounding ‘prestige’ langauages / dialects, and those using others eventually wind up facing employment discrimination, and so on. It’s a story that has played out many times in the British Isles and around the world.
This is likely the last reply that I’m going to arse myself with. The reasons should become evident across the comment.
I was specifically referring to Scots words and phrases disappearing from use and even British English words being replaced with americanisms.
You’re disingenuously (or worse, idiotically) moving the goalposts from your earlier claim, that contextually conveyed that “American English” (bloody umbrella term, you likely mean General American) was directly threatening Scots (false).
That said, addressing your new claim poorly disguised as the old one: the reason why Scots and most British varieties are picking those words and expressions is not American media itself, it’s Southern Standard British English (SSB) and perhaps SSE. And SSB picks words and expressions from every bloody where, including American dialects.
SSB picking new lexicon is a natural and expected process for any living variety, not part of the problem; that variety is thriving, prestigious to the point that your likely next king (prince William) speaks it, it’s slowly displacing RP’s role as standard due to societal changes, and it has enough of an international presence that even some L3 muppet across the globe might use it as reference pronunciation. It is not at risk of being displaced, not even lexically.
What is part of the problem is that SSB is cannibalising other varieties spoken in the islands. You can literally see it in those maps:
In layman-friendly words: the speakers of those local varieties aren’t “urrm” (arm) or “sliver” like some American “youruberr”. They’re saying “ahm” (arm) and “splinter” like mid-high class Londoners.
(And the only exception in those maps that shows a feature from SSB being displaced instead of displacing is the [ɑ:]→[a] usage in “last”, that still has nothing to do with typically American [æ].)
Before you complain about including phonological data instead of just lexical one, given that your new claim was about “words and expressions”: when it comes to language displacement, both walk side-by-side.
This absolutely is happening; as someone from Scotland, I have seen it first hand.
Your “as a” = “I’m expecting you to be gullible trash and «chrust me»” backfires badly here. It shows that, as a layman, you’re perhaps in the worst position ever to get a clear picture of what’s happening, for three reasons:
biased sampling - you aren’t basing your conclusions on wide data, but on anecdotes
ideological bombardment - remember when I said that “governments love this shit”?
the de facto standard language of your government is the lingua franca - so it’s hard for you to gauge why English is threatening those local varieties, and if that threat would apply to a hypothetical “International English” or not.
I stopped reading here as Brandolini’s Law is a thing.
You’re disingenuously (or worse, idiotically) moving the goalposts from your earlier claim
How is that?
Scots and most British varieties are picking those words and expressions is not American media itself, it’s Southern Standard British English (SSB) and perhaps SSE. And SSB picks words and expressions from every bloody where, including American dialects.
So what you’re saying here is that American media is, in fact, threatening Scots albeit indirectly?
“I’m expecting you to be gullible trash and «chrust me»”
What was it you said earlier about native English sneakers putting words in each others mouths?
It shows that, as a layman, you’re perhaps in the worst position ever to get a clear picture of what’s happening
I’ll use spoiler tags to reduce visual clutter for other posters.
How is that?
comparing old claim vs. new claim
Here’s your old claim: “This is exactly what is already happening with Scots and American English”. This was uttered as a reply to “I don’t think that some sort of “international English” would be a threat to the local varieties that you mentioned”.
As such, in the context you were initially saying the same as American English is a threat to Scots, and any sort of «international English» dialect would be the same.
Now here’s your new claim: “I was specifically referring to Scots words and phrases disappearing from use and even British English words being replaced with americanisms [SIC].” You’re shifting the claim from a “general threat” to “words and phrases”, and “Scots” to “Scots and even British English”.
As such, yes, you are shifting the goalposts. (Not that it matters as I debunked both the old and new claims.)
So what you’re saying here is that American media is, in fact, threatening Scots albeit indirectly?
So what you’re saying here is that you’re functionally illiterate?
Seriously. Learn to read dammit. I’ll even help you out.
Spoonfeeding time
SSB happens to adopt American media words and expressions, for the reasons already stated. SSB is not itself threatened.
SSB threatens Scots. And due to the threat, it leaks SSB words and expressions into Scots, including the ones that SSB adopted from American media.
Prevent SSB from displacing other varieties from the equation, and Scots survives; perhaps adopting one or two American words, but that’s no biggie, vocab comes and go. Remove American media from the equation, and Scots still meets a sticky end because it’s still being cannibalised by other British varieties.
As such, no, American media is not even an indirect threat in this case. It might be to AAVE or Appalachian, dunno; but not to Scots.
The threat is from whatever is whatever “a Brit” is expected to speak when being “a proper Brit”; formerly RP, nowadays SSB. It’s ultimately that meme of “national identity”, not global matters.
What was it you said earlier about native English sneakers [SIC] putting words in each others [SIC] mouths?
I was not putting words in your mouth. I was highlighting that this is an implication of what you said. What I was contemplating, back then, was that Anglos might do something like this:
further reasoning
[Alice] I like bananas.
[Bob] U liek bananas than I assome u haet apples Y U HATE APPLES ALICE?
Two different cans of worms; in one you’re looking for the implications of what another person said, in another you’re making shit up.
But let’s play with the later a tiiiiny bit. If I were to do the later, here’s how it would sound like:
"You’re blaming American media because you don’t really care about Scots; Scots is just a convenient sacrificial lamb for you nationalists to find some overseas threat to your Reich and its Reichsprache [heil the queen the king!]. That nationalism is also the reason why you’re treating American English and British English as if they were dialects, as you nationalists hate when people notice internal variation of your languages. «Noooo! We’re an united Folksreich! One British English, One British People!».
…I’m not doing it though. I do have grounds to call you illiterate, disingenuous, or even potentially an irrational, as you’re clearly unable to follow a simple reasoning. However, I don’t have the ones to call you a nationalist. But it should give you an idea of what I originally meant by putting words onto the others’ mouths.
Side note: in that quote you’re diverting the focus and distorting what someone else said. Should I take it as a sign that the concept of intellectual honesty is a bit too complex for you?
Nice ad hominem.
No, that is not an argumentum ad hominem. If you want to call out fallacies, at least learn to identify them, otherwise you’ll vomit stupid shit like this.
why this is not ad hominem
An ad hominem here would be “your claim is incorrect because you are a layman”. That is not even remotely close to what I did; instead I wrote a big wall of text, with reasoning and sourced data showing that your claim is incorrect. There’s argumentation there, not just a “u layman than u’re arguement is invalid lol lmao”.
I’m highlighting that you’re a layman and listing those three points to show why “as a native” is not a valid way to strengthen your own claim. It’s shitty reasoning; I could’ve said instead that it’s a combo of appeal to authority and anecdotal evidence (it is, both), but simply calling out fallacies is less useful for people reading this than saying why they’re bad.
Here comes the cherry on the cake:
Let’s pretend for a moment that your claims weren’t completely bollocks, and that you aren’t totally scapegoating American media for what’s a shitty phenomenon that would happen even without it. No, let’s pretend that it’s incontestable truth.
Even then, you still consistently failed to use this to back up your original claim, that boils down to a hypothetical “international English” being a threat towards Scots.
If anyone reading this wants to defend the claims that the muppet above is backing up, be my guest, and I’ll be happy to reply you, as long as you have basic reading comprehension and aren’t disingenuous (unlike the poster above). However, I’m not going to bother further with him.
So what you’re saying here is that you’re functionally illiterate?
Learn to read dammit.
Spoonfeeding time
you’re clearly unable to follow a simple reasoning
the concept of intellectual honesty is a bit too complex for you
the muppet above
as long as you have basic reading comprehension and aren’t disingenuous (unlike the poster above)
You seem to have become rather upset. As you began by decrying the behavior of native English speakers online, I’m disappointed to see that you yourself are now resorting to insults. I’m going to disengage until you can discuss this matter calmly and rationally, at which point I’d be delighted to revisit the topic.
This is exactly what is already happening with Scots and American English. Scots continues to disappear, and features of American English increase in usage due to the proliferation of American media. Class isn’t the only factor here.
There is a world of difference between spontaneous consensus between members of a particular culture or ethnic group and the top-down enforcement (as in the case of Scots speakers being physically punished in school for speaking their native language) or promotion of a specific dialect.
If American media were to affect so much Anglic varieties spoken in Scotland, you’d expect SSE (Scottish Standard English) to increase in rhoticity due to said influence. And yet the opposite is happening.
Granted, the example is from SSE, not braid Scots; it works nice here though, since any potential non-British pressure would affect SSE first, then Scots.
The example also shows which Anglic varieties are threatening Scots: RP and its spiritual successor Southern Standard British English, both non-rhotic. That’s because mere exposition towards another variety is not enough to trigger variety shift, you need some sort of [soft or hard] power over the speakers. Such as attacking their local identity to sell them an alternative one (governments love to do this shit).
Now, back into the hypothetical “international English”: what pressure do you think that a hypothetical standard built upon the speech of L2 English speakers, mostly in continental Europe, would have towards Scots? I don’t think that it would; at most you’d get some entitled corporation drone from London or New York screeching that “learning a dialect for international communication is too hard!” (i.e. a fraction of what others already do.)
Also note that the basic idea (“you aren’t supposed to speak this natively”) isn’t too far off from how Esperantists promote Esperanto, except that it’s towards a dialect instead of a full-fledged constructed language.
I numbered them for convenience. #1 is a specific case of #3, and rather close to my “hot take” proposal. Nobody is proposing #2, this sort of Vergonha style linguicide is inhumane.
[I’d also like to reinforce that the idea is a “hot take”. As in, I knew that it would be contentious, and I’m not exactly sure myself if it would be the best approach.]
I was specifically referring to Scots words and phrases disappearing from use and even British English words being replaced with americanisms. This absolutely is happening; as someone from Scotland, I have seen it first hand.
It’s the way these sorts of efforts tend to be held as “correct speech.” Scots is already denigrated as mere slang or a language of the uneducated. Whether created by academics or the aristocracy, I believe the result would be the same; social pressure develops surrounding ‘prestige’ langauages / dialects, and those using others eventually wind up facing employment discrimination, and so on. It’s a story that has played out many times in the British Isles and around the world.
This is likely the last reply that I’m going to arse myself with. The reasons should become evident across the comment.
You’re disingenuously (or worse, idiotically) moving the goalposts from your earlier claim, that contextually conveyed that “American English” (bloody umbrella term, you likely mean General American) was directly threatening Scots (false).
That said, addressing your new claim poorly disguised as the old one: the reason why Scots and most British varieties are picking those words and expressions is not American media itself, it’s Southern Standard British English (SSB) and perhaps SSE. And SSB picks words and expressions from every bloody where, including American dialects.
SSB picking new lexicon is a natural and expected process for any living variety, not part of the problem; that variety is thriving, prestigious to the point that your likely next king (prince William) speaks it, it’s slowly displacing RP’s role as standard due to societal changes, and it has enough of an international presence that even some L3 muppet across the globe might use it as reference pronunciation. It is not at risk of being displaced, not even lexically.
What is part of the problem is that SSB is cannibalising other varieties spoken in the islands. You can literally see it in those maps:
Source for those maps.
In layman-friendly words: the speakers of those local varieties aren’t “urrm” (arm) or “sliver” like some American “youruberr”. They’re saying “ahm” (arm) and “splinter” like mid-high class Londoners.
(And the only exception in those maps that shows a feature from SSB being displaced instead of displacing is the [ɑ:]→[a] usage in “last”, that still has nothing to do with typically American [æ].)
Before you complain about including phonological data instead of just lexical one, given that your new claim was about “words and expressions”: when it comes to language displacement, both walk side-by-side.
Your “as a” = “I’m expecting you to be gullible trash and «chrust me»” backfires badly here. It shows that, as a layman, you’re perhaps in the worst position ever to get a clear picture of what’s happening, for three reasons:
I stopped reading here as Brandolini’s Law is a thing.
How is that?
So what you’re saying here is that American media is, in fact, threatening Scots albeit indirectly?
What was it you said earlier about native English sneakers putting words in each others mouths?
Nice ad hominem.
I’ll use spoiler tags to reduce visual clutter for other posters.
comparing old claim vs. new claim
Here’s your old claim: “This is exactly what is already happening with Scots and American English”. This was uttered as a reply to “I don’t think that some sort of “international English” would be a threat to the local varieties that you mentioned”.
As such, in the context you were initially saying the same as American English is a threat to Scots, and any sort of «international English» dialect would be the same.
Now here’s your new claim: “I was specifically referring to Scots words and phrases disappearing from use and even British English words being replaced with americanisms [SIC].” You’re shifting the claim from a “general threat” to “words and phrases”, and “Scots” to “Scots and even British English”.
As such, yes, you are shifting the goalposts. (Not that it matters as I debunked both the old and new claims.)
So what you’re saying here is that you’re functionally illiterate?
Seriously. Learn to read dammit. I’ll even help you out.
Spoonfeeding time
Prevent SSB from displacing other varieties from the equation, and Scots survives; perhaps adopting one or two American words, but that’s no biggie, vocab comes and go. Remove American media from the equation, and Scots still meets a sticky end because it’s still being cannibalised by other British varieties.
As such, no, American media is not even an indirect threat in this case. It might be to AAVE or Appalachian, dunno; but not to Scots.
The threat is from whatever is whatever “a Brit” is expected to speak when being “a proper Brit”; formerly RP, nowadays SSB. It’s ultimately that meme of “national identity”, not global matters.
I was not putting words in your mouth. I was highlighting that this is an implication of what you said. What I was contemplating, back then, was that Anglos might do something like this:
further reasoning
Two different cans of worms; in one you’re looking for the implications of what another person said, in another you’re making shit up.
But let’s play with the later a tiiiiny bit. If I were to do the later, here’s how it would sound like:
"You’re blaming American media because you don’t really care about Scots; Scots is just a convenient sacrificial lamb for you nationalists to find some overseas threat to your Reich and its Reichsprache [heil
the queenthe king!]. That nationalism is also the reason why you’re treating American English and British English as if they were dialects, as you nationalists hate when people notice internal variation of your languages. «Noooo! We’re an united Folksreich! One British English, One British People!».…I’m not doing it though. I do have grounds to call you illiterate, disingenuous, or even potentially an irrational, as you’re clearly unable to follow a simple reasoning. However, I don’t have the ones to call you a nationalist. But it should give you an idea of what I originally meant by putting words onto the others’ mouths.
Side note: in that quote you’re diverting the focus and distorting what someone else said. Should I take it as a sign that the concept of intellectual honesty is a bit too complex for you?
No, that is not an argumentum ad hominem. If you want to call out fallacies, at least learn to identify them, otherwise you’ll vomit stupid shit like this.
why this is not ad hominem
An ad hominem here would be “your claim is incorrect because you are a layman”. That is not even remotely close to what I did; instead I wrote a big wall of text, with reasoning and sourced data showing that your claim is incorrect. There’s argumentation there, not just a “u layman than u’re arguement is invalid lol lmao”.
I’m highlighting that you’re a layman and listing those three points to show why “as a native” is not a valid way to strengthen your own claim. It’s shitty reasoning; I could’ve said instead that it’s a combo of appeal to authority and anecdotal evidence (it is, both), but simply calling out fallacies is less useful for people reading this than saying why they’re bad.
Here comes the cherry on the cake:
Let’s pretend for a moment that your claims weren’t completely bollocks, and that you aren’t totally scapegoating American media for what’s a shitty phenomenon that would happen even without it. No, let’s pretend that it’s incontestable truth.
Even then, you still consistently failed to use this to back up your original claim, that boils down to a hypothetical “international English” being a threat towards Scots.
If anyone reading this wants to defend the claims that the muppet above is backing up, be my guest, and I’ll be happy to reply you, as long as you have basic reading comprehension and aren’t disingenuous (unlike the poster above). However, I’m not going to bother further with him.
You seem to have become rather upset. As you began by decrying the behavior of native English speakers online, I’m disappointed to see that you yourself are now resorting to insults. I’m going to disengage until you can discuss this matter calmly and rationally, at which point I’d be delighted to revisit the topic.