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Forum
-> Relationships
-> Manners & Etiquette
my mama
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 Fri, Nov 15 2019, 11:03 am
| amother [ Firebrick ] wrote: | I have a hard time teaching the concept of proper word order to ELL students. Some of their Yoda-like constructions are pretty funny.
Because native English speakers absorb proper syntax rhythms without ever explicitly learning the rules, resources on the topic are hard to find. I recently found a book for international students that explains some of these rules. I hope it proves useful. So far I've discovered some concepts I've never learned, such as the fact that "going to" and "will" have different meanings. I thought they were interchangeable. |
What is the name of this book?
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amother
Apricot
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 11:57 am
| Laiya wrote: | Every single group, subgroup, demographic, etc "butchers" language because language is constantly evolving. Ebonics has its own internal usage rules that govern it. Learning its structure and how it evolved may change your opinion of it.
People have also looked down on Yiddish, saying that Yiddish is a corruption of German; why can't they just speak proper German? In truth, both modern German and Yiddish evolved from Old German. They evolved separately, and Yiddish of course has other influences (Slavic, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.). Since language is constantly evolving, it's not really accurate to point out any particular group's dialect and call it wrong, uneducated, butchered, etc. |
This is it! Ever since Migdal Bavel humans have been speaking in different languages, dialects, pidjins, patois, and Creoles. Maybe there is a universal written English. But I haven't seen any universal dialects or standards of conversational English.
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miami85
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 12:15 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | | But why would you want to purposely use incorrect grammar to protect your linguisms? To me, teaching your kids to use "eat by" is the same kind of thing as a certain other culture allowing its kids to "axe" them a question. I get using hebrew/yiddish phrases over equivalent english ones (e.g., pesach instead of passover), but I don't get using incorrect grammar if you know better and are already using English. |
I don't use it often, I personally think I only say "we slept by the Cohens" (b/c you can be put up BY a person)etc. You eat AT a restaurant but you eat BY the table, So we ate BY the Cohen's table.
By that token even the term "sleepover" is correct in English, but doesn't make any more sense. To sleep "Over" someone's house.
I can think of so many more egregious errors "axe" drives me crazy.
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miami85
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 12:15 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | | But why would you want to purposely use incorrect grammar to protect your linguisms? To me, teaching your kids to use "eat by" is the same kind of thing as a certain other culture allowing its kids to "axe" them a question. I get using hebrew/yiddish phrases over equivalent english ones (e.g., pesach instead of passover), but I don't get using incorrect grammar if you know better and are already using English. |
I don't use it often, I personally think I only say "we slept by the Cohens" (b/c you can be put up BY a person)etc. You eat AT a restaurant but you eat BY the table, So we ate BY the Cohen's table.
By that token even the term "sleepover" is correct in English, but doesn't make any more sense. To sleep "Over" someone's house.
I can think of so many more egregious errors "axe" drives me crazy.
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amother
OP
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 2:13 pm
| miami85 wrote: | | I don't use it often, I personally think I only say "we slept by the Cohens" (b/c you can be put up BY a person)etc. You eat AT a restaurant but you eat BY the table, So we ate BY the Cohen's table. |
Um, sorry, but you don't "eat BY" a table.
You eat AT a restaurant, and you eat AT someone's table (or AT someone's house). It's literally the same.
You could be "hosted by the Cohens for Shabbos lunch," of course.
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amother
Lemon
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 2:27 pm
| miami85 wrote: | I don't use it often, I personally think I only say "we slept by the Cohens" (b/c you can be put up BY a person)etc. You eat AT a restaurant but you eat BY the table, So we ate BY the Cohen's table.
By that token even the term "sleepover" is correct in English, but doesn't make any more sense. To sleep "Over" someone's house.
I can think of so many more egregious errors "axe" drives me crazy. |
Lol I always assumed it was sleepover because you stay OVER night 
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amother
Salmon
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Fri, Nov 15 2019, 4:00 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | I'm a BT and it fascinates me that so many frum people use phrases like "eat by" and "stay by." This includes many people who were born in America, were raised by American-born native English speaker parents, and have strong secular educations (attended prestigious universities, grad degrees), etc. A lot of these people aren't even super-yeshivish types who are constantly speaking "yeshivish-ese" (e.g., "mamesh this, mamesh that").
I know that these phrases come from a literal translation of the Yiddish. But it's obviously not correct English grammar, and I'm sure most of these highly educated people know that it's not correct grammar. I just find it really strange that frum folks have managed to keep with this usage. I get why frum folks would want to retain various Yiddishisms / Hebrewisms, I don't get why, if they're already speaking English, they would want to use incorrect English. |
I figured out a long time ago not to correlate intelligence with local dialect. mirtzeshem bei dir.
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chanatron1000
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 7:19 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | Um, sorry, but you don't "eat BY" a table.
You eat AT a restaurant, and you eat AT someone's table (or AT someone's house). It's literally the same.
You could be "hosted by the Cohens for Shabbos lunch," of course. |
Actually, no. When you eat at a table, you are near the table. When you eat at someone's house, you are in the house.
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WhatFor
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 7:54 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | | To be fair, most normal people think that someone speaking Ebonics is uneducated and unsophisticated. On that basis, I wonder why anyone would want to be like these other ethnic groups and butcher English. |
"Most normal people"? You mean people who think the way you do? In linguistics there's the concept of "nonstandard English", and each kind is considered a perfectly valid form of English. Using "by" in a particular community can be perfectly valid in that community's nonstandard English.
Respectfully, it sounds ignorant to ask "Why would anyone want to be like those other ethnic groups and butcher English." To do so is to ask, "why doesn't our community hide it's shameful history of not having been born in the red, white, and blue because all that ethnicity in our speech is embarrassing to me?"
Yiddish is a language with a rich history of Jews being persecuted from one country to the next. It's the language of survivors. There's nothing shameful about having Ashkenazi ancestors whose parents spoke Yiddish in their hometown, either because they weren't permitted to assimilate or to preserve their own identities.
Fwiw, I always thought that "by" wasn't a translation, but literally the word "ביי", which in Yiddish is "at". So it's just speaking yinglish. When people speak a language mixed with some words from another, it just tells me a bit more about their history than I would have known if they hadn't. And it also tells me that there's a higher chance that they're bilingual than not, because they were probably raised in a home where a language other than English was spoken.
Uneducated or unsophisticated is assuming there is only one right way to speak English in the United States.
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amother
OP
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 8:44 pm
| chanatron1000 wrote: | | Actually, no. When you eat at a table, you are near the table. When you eat at someone's house, you are in the house. |
Sorry, but no.
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chanatron1000
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 8:46 pm
| amother [ OP ] wrote: | | Sorry, but no. |
I find it very strange that you sit inside the table or stay next to the house.
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Geulanow
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 9:00 pm
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An expression that I couldn't stand is "if you will". I took a course where the teacher would frequently use this phrase when he was giving an example. I used to want to yell out "and if l won't".
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Amelia Bedelia
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 9:53 pm
| Geulanow wrote: | | An expression that I couldn't stand is "if you will". I took a course where the teacher would frequently use this phrase when he was giving an example. I used to want to yell out "and if l won't". |
Can you explain?
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penguin
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 10:28 pm
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I was noticing today that small children will use "mine" instead of "my". And it's not necessarily because their parents speak Yiddish (mein). I think they're just mixing up "it's mine" and "it's my x".
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Amelia Bedelia
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Sat, Nov 16 2019, 11:34 pm
| penguin wrote: | | I was noticing today that small children will use "mine" instead of "my". And it's not necessarily because their parents speak Yiddish (mein). I think they're just mixing up "it's mine" and "it's my x". |
Or people say, "it's mine's."
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amother
Cerulean
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Sun, Nov 17 2019, 1:59 am
| watergirl wrote: | | Also - “in the mood of”. It kills me. |
What’s wrong with that phrase?
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amother
Silver
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Sun, Nov 17 2019, 2:34 am
| amother [ Cerulean ] wrote: | | What’s wrong with that phrase? |
Nothing is morally wrong with it, but in standard English, one is in the mood to, or for, something. "In the mood of" just doesn't exist.
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myname1
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Sun, Nov 17 2019, 2:38 am
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I think it's because this phrase means exactly what we want it to mean. If I say "I'm staying at the Schwartz's house," it doesn't imply a relationship with them. Sounds more like just a hotel room. If I say "I'm staying by Schwartz," it sounds more like a personal connection. So I would say we feel or want to feel that closeness. And with eating, "I'm eating at my parents' house" sounds like a restaurant. "I'm eating with my parents" doesn't specify location. "I'm eating by my parents," at least to those familiar with the lingo, implies I'm their guest and we'll be together.
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chanatron1000
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Sun, Nov 17 2019, 2:42 am
| amother [ Silver ] wrote: | | Nothing is morally wrong with it, but in standard English, one is in the mood to, or for, something. "In the mood of" just doesn't exist. |
If people use the phrase, it exists in their vernacular. It is absurd to impose standard English on people.
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amother
Silver
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Sun, Nov 17 2019, 3:12 am
| chanatron1000 wrote: | | If people use the phrase, it exists in their vernacular. It is absurd to impose standard English on people. |
Who's imposing it? It's fine to use nonstandard English in a subculture where that's the vernacular and everyone understands you.
If you can't switch over to standard English when you are outside your group, you're going to come across as uneducated, just like someone who "axes" a question. Whether you care about that is up to you.
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