BS: English as taught in Nordic countries

Subject: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Tunesmith
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 11:08 AM

When learning to speak English in schools in Nordic countries, what version of the English accent is taught? BBC English(RP)? American English? And, is the accent taught standardised throughout the school system i.e. dictated by education authorities.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 02:09 PM

As an embassy brat, it was my experience that all English [as a foreign language] classes taught in any European school system taught European, that is British, English. I remember losing points for spelling things the American way. No idea if Nordic countries do it any differently...

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 02:28 PM

I have seen American spellings in communications sent out to parents by teachers in an English school. If the teachers teaching our children don't know the difference what hope is there for people trying to learn English as a second language?

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Tunesmith
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 02:52 PM

Of course, European children will probably learn English English in the classroom but then pick up so much American English via movies and popular music. I was talking to a young German woman in London recently and she used the word "gotten", and was then surprised when I told her that that word isn't used in the UK.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 03:04 PM

however it occurs in[ ill gotten gains]

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Mr Red
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 03:40 PM

I have seen American spellings in communications sent out to parents by teachers in an English school.

Word spellchecker? Browser? People don't know so they trust them, and don't know to install the right lexicon. My Firefox steadfastly refused to spell in English. But you can install English (United Kingdom) or remove it. But despite moving American down (not default) but you cannot remove it.

As I understand it, gotten was common in one area in the UK, I think West Country, and that is how it has gotten to America. I would say - think Mayflower, but reality there is not strictly West Country. And doesn't it come naturally to a tutophone?

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 04:29 PM

"Gotten" used to be in Scots - Burns used it. I've never heard it here, though.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: meself
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 04:46 PM

I used to play the tutophone in my primary school band - but nothing came naturally to it - other than your basic 'toot'.

'Gotten' is certainly common, if not standard, in Canadian English. Our grammatical guides always insist that it is archaic, at best, and to be tolerated only in that spirit in which one tolerates a peculiar old relative, but in actuality, it is very widely used. By me, anyway. Maybe Charmion will chime in.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Allan Conn
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 04:48 PM

Gotten is used in the Scottish Borders all the time. I suspect throughout much of the rest of Scots speaking Scotland too. Simy not true to say it isn't used in the UK.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Allan Conn
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 05:12 PM

Saying that I remember when working for LS Starett in Jedburgh in the late 70s we had a Norwegian youngster called Nils work with us for a few months supposedly to immerse himself in English. He spoke standard English well when he arrived but after a few months we had him saying A'll see ee at eer houss at hauf seeven.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 05:46 PM

Like 'gotten' there is also 'proven'. For example, where I would say that something has proved useful, people in North America or Scotland, and maybe Ireland, might say that it has proven useful.
I would use 'proven' as an adjective, for example when describing something as 'a proven remedy'. There, 'a proved remedy' would be clearly wrong.

And then there is the Scottish legal verdict: Not proven.
This was described to me as meaning 'We know you did it but we can't prove it.'

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 06:05 PM

"Gotten", in AmE, is the regular past participle. "Got", however, survives in "have got" as a strong form of "have". "I have gotten several complaints about you" introduces other people's complaints; "I have got several complaints about you" introduces my own complaints.

"Proved" is the regular English past participle. "Proven" originally belonged to the Scottish "preve" (prove, proven), but because of the familiarity of the Scottish verdict "not proven", it has wormed its way into English & American English.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 06:21 PM

We have noticed an American accent used in Norway and Iceland.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 08:44 PM

"This woman has to be gotten to a hospital."

"A hospital? What is it?"

"It's a big building with patients, but that isn't important right now..."

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 01:52 AM

I've used "gotten" all my life though not very often. I don't know where I picked it up from.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 05:23 AM

When I was at primary school we were discouraged from using the word "got", never mind "gotten". It was seen as poor english.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 06:30 AM

Discouraging the use of 'got' could have been to encourage you to use, for example, 'I have' instead of 'I've got', or to expand your vocabulary - using 'acquired' or 'obtained'.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 07:34 AM

"I have a brand new combine harvester and I'll give you the key..."


...Nah, doesn't work...

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 08:41 AM

"I've gotten a brand new combine harvester and I'll give you the key..."
doesn't work either.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 09:58 AM

"I've taken ownership of a brand new combine harvester and I'll give you the key..."

Nearly but not quite...

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 10:16 AM

“English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag bearer, opsimath, eremite, feudal, still-reactionary: Rawlinson End.”

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 10:42 AM

Skarpi? We need your opinion on this one.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: meself
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 10:55 AM

When I was a kid, collecting and trading baseball and hockey cards was popular among boys. In the schoolyard, there would often be one boy shuffling through his collection, and one or two potential traders watching carefully, and, as the cards were briefly shown, saying, "Got it - got it - got it" - until, eventually, "Don't got it!", at which point a trade might be considered.

I don't recall our teachers ever trying to enforce it, but there was a discouragement of 'get/got' in the old grammar/usage/style guides. It seemed to be considered vulgar, perhaps in part because of its Biblical sense.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Charmion
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 12:01 PM

My first husband was Norwegian. He was taught enough British-style English in school to launch himself into becoming truly fluent, starting with Mad magazine and Gibbon's stamp catalogue and evolving through every imaginable form of pop culture -- especially British football on television and in newspapers -- to a PhD in political philosophy at the University of Toronto. His spoken English was mid-Atlantic, with mixed British-American-Canadian vocabulary and Norwegian articulation. He was equally fluent in French, and his Swedish and German were only marginally less perfect.

As for "gotten" -- how else can you be misbegotten, or have ill-gotten gains? Variant dialectical form strikes again!

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 12:31 PM

American English, especially Midwestern English (or so they say) preserves archaic forms because the majority of English immigrants in early times came from Protestant regions north and east of London where people simply talked like that. There's a name for that region, but I can't recall it.

gotten
proven
hidden
snuck
mad, meaning angry
leapt (pronounced lept)
swam
dreamt (pronounced dremt)

There are probably more. In England this is considered 17-Century language.
==============
"I've got" is standard. "I got" to mean "I have" is not standard. However, "I went to the grocery store and got a pound of apricots" is okay, because here "got" is the past tense of get, not of have.

I used to have a neighbor who was an avid gardener, and one day her little daughter said to me, "She gots too much plants." Cute!

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 12:37 PM

Well, getting and begetting are not quite the same thing, are they?

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 12:47 PM

Is 'swam' seventeenth-century and archaic? I know there are people who would say 'we swum in the river', but they mean either 'we swam' or 'we have swum'.
Similarly, people say 'the ship sunk' instead of 'the ship sank' or '... has sunk', or '... has been sunk'.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 01:13 PM

............
hidden
snuck
mad, meaning angry
leapt (pronounced lept)
swam
dreamt (pronounced dremt)

There are probably more. In England this is considered 17-Century language.

Not in this part of England.

I hate 'gotten'; I would accept but probably not use 'proven"; I might or might not use 'snuck'; the rest are just ordinary, everyday words that I would use all the time.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 01:44 PM

Leeneia, what do you imagine English people say instead of "hidden" if, according to you, we consider it to be archaic 17th-century language.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 02:56 PM

That was just a guess. Wrong, apparently.

I've remembered the place. East Anglia. Is that actually a district, or is it a sort-of region, like the Midwest?

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: meself
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 03:24 PM

"I hate 'gotten'" - I wouldn't recommend Canada as a travel destination, then. You'll be very unhappy here.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Howard Jones
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 03:51 PM

England is too small to distinguish between districts and regions. East Anglia is a distinctive part of the country, but it's only about 150 miles from London to the Norfolk coast. In that journey you'd pass through at least four areas with with recognisably distinctive accents and dialects (Estuary English, rural Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk), and countless more local variations which are probably noticeable only to locals or experts in language. When people moved around less, there was a noticeable physical difference between "pudden-head" Angles from Suffolk and Norfolk and "coffin-head" Saxons from Essex.

I grew up in Essex (not far from where the Mayflower pilgrims gathered) and I use all the words Leeneia listed, with the exception of "snuck", which I think of as American usage rather than associating it with the 17th century. I'd use "mad" in the sense of being angry but not quite the way Americans do, as a direct alternative to angry, but in phrases like "so-and-so drives me mad".

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Murpholly
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 04:28 PM

I went and putten putten when I should have putten put.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 04:51 PM

I grew up in South Wales, and have gotten used to using most of these words.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 05:16 PM

Let's just celebrate the diversity of the English language, go with the flow and revel in the colour and character of our speech, wherever in the world we live. I'll always rail against ignorant degradation, such as alternate for alternative and disinterested instead of uninterested, and against the downright pretentiousness of horrors such as albeit, prior to and on a daily basis. Otherwise, English is simply wot English speakers speak, and to hell with the grammar police.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 20 - 07:30 PM

Right on, Steve. Several years ago I found a library book with a title something like "Forms of the English Language." It was remarkable, describing much-altered English from all around the world, places where I'd never assume English was spoken. (I am not talking about pidgin.)

The author took the passage from the Bible where Jesus drives devils out of a man and into some swine, and then he showed how it reads in all these languages. I remember that one form used "sens" for "chains." Sens doesn't look similar, but when read aloud it seems quite reasonable.

I tried to find the exact title of the book, but no soap. Our public library is closed, so I can't just go to the 420's and see if the book is still there.

Discovering these forms of English is like discovering long-lost cousins around the globe.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Gurney
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 12:08 AM

I was looking at my Collins dictionary, and they have a list of consultant professors in the cover page.
Australian, British regional, Canadian, Caribbean, East African, Indian, Irish, New Zealand, Scottish, South African, West African. BUT not American. Nor yet Nordic.   It is a 1993 printing.

The general consultant is/was a Brummie.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Allan Conn
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 03:10 AM

Re Doug's comments about the list of supposed archaic words. That they are mostly just everyday words in his part of England! I'd say exactly the same in regard to here in Scotland too. For instance the word "mad" is used all the time to mean "angry". Sometimes just itself or often some other word to accentuate if further. For example "hopping mad".

Concise Scots Dictionary - gives various definitions of the word mad including - infuriated, besides oneself with rage, angry, annoyed.

Just a very common everyday word.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 04:48 AM

what about instantiate ?

In my immersion into computer programming over more than 40 years - I had never come across it. It seems to be rather recent and specific to programming.
It means, FWIW, the act/process of setting the precedent. In programming - of declaring (in some way) the variable. I always declare, but even if you don't it can be instantiated by giving it a value (the first time you do). Until then it is not found or null or in some way a bug.

Value can be anything like text or an object (think filing cabinet)

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Howard Jones
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 06:42 AM

In my experience, most Europeans speak English with an accent which comes from their own language. I know some who have lived in Britain for decades and are fully fluent, but who speak with a French or German or Italian accent. The most difficult professional relationship I have had, in terms of intelligibility, was with the manager of a Japanese business in Scotland whose accent was a mixture of Japanese and Glaswegian. I usually had to ask him to put the matter in writing.

For the relatively few for whom this is not the case, I would say they usually speak with an American rather than British accent. The influence of American films, music and TV is too strong. For that matter, American usage is increasingly common among young British speakers. One that particularly irritates me is the use of "alternate" instead of "alternative" which loses a useful nuance.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 07:53 AM

What irritates me is the use of 'post' instead of 'after' or 'since'. It is alright as a prefix, such as postwar, but not on its own as a separate word.

I recently discovered why people keep using 'impact' as a verb in place of 'affect' - it is simply because they are confused between 'affect' and 'effect' so they just use 'impact' instead.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 08:13 AM

Beware of incorrect past tenses that have snuck into the language is from the same place as Avoid clichés like the plague.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 08:40 AM

Somehow, 'snuck' sounds much more sneaky than 'sneaked'.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 09:09 AM

I suppose you used "alright" on purpose, Jos... ;-)

But what's with all this "pre" malarkey? You don't book or order. You pre-book and pre-order. You can even pre-sell your book on Amazon!

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 09:20 AM

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 10:40 AM

I think you may be fighting a losing battle with 'pre-book' and 'pre-order'. They seem to have filled a required niche.
They seem to cover a meaning that, because of special privilege, you are committing to buy, or book, something before it is generally available to the public.
As soon as tickets become available for the London Palladium pantomime I will book my seats. Thanks to being on their mailing list I get the option to pre-book them.
I am waiting for the next instalment of a book series to be published. Once the book is published I can go online and order a copy. Once a publication date has been established I can go online and pre-order it, or I can wait for the publication date to occur and then just order it.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: meself
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 10:42 AM

What really annoys ME is when ..........

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 01:03 PM

To get back to the original question, if Norwegians are learning English with a British accent, which of the many British accents is it?
It's surprising how many there are.

I think accents are good, and they help make life interesting. However, I think we should all try to keep our English understandable to other English speakers. This may simply mean slowing down.

Recently I clicked on a video where a young Australian mother shared her child-rearing troubles in a class. I couldn't understand anything she said. To me it seemed as if she was trying to hide from the world in a cocoon of beaten-down, poverty-stricken speech. Her hair and clothes were nice, but her speech said, "You can ignore me."

I've heard Australians before, but her case was extreme.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 01:39 PM

Pre-book, pre-order ... pre-prepare?

No kidding. Apparently, that's what the nice people at the supermarket do when they pack up a hot meal for a customer to take home.

And military logisticians are forever "pre-positioning" things at airheads (that's a place, not a person) so they can be loaded efficiently when the strategic transport (very big airplane) arrives.

Subject: RE: BS: English as taught in Nordic countries
From: Jos
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 02:33 PM

Presumably, along with whatever accents they happen to hear, the Nordic speakers will hear ubiquitous expressions like "Just because ... doesn't mean ..." and will think it is correct because they rarely hear "Just because ... it doesn't mean that ...".