Cultivating your English #8: Can lifts be racist?
❤️“Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery."❤️ Amy Chua
Some more great feedback from Daniel, thanks mate! “I feel proud of being in that 2 billion people who speaks "Bad English" perfectly :) My accent will tell a native English speaker that I'm not a native speaker person but I feel proud of speaking "English with a different accent" very well, with very few mistakes :) And I'm in a group bigger than the native speaking group”
This is such a good point- my perspective with pronunciation has always been that “good pronunciation is when there is effective communication”. As Daniel suggests, any native speaker will quickly notice that he is not a native speaker but it’s really not a problem as long as there is free flowing communication.
Here is an interesting 3mins about having a Spanish accent when speaking English: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6721649382178988032-TN5M/
If a native speaker doesn’t make an effort to understand you then it probably means they don’t speak another language. I remember saying to Janet once that when dealing with tricky or unfriendly clients: try saying to them- “please excuse me, English is my 3rd language and sometimes it's difficult for me to find the right words”. You need to try to be patient with their impatience! (Maybe their impatience is really an inferiority complex of only speaking one language 🤣🤣)
Remember that native speakers (and lifts!) often have problems understanding other native speakers too! Here’s 3.5 mins of Scottish comedy genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUTfUmI8vs
Learning new words and expressions is key to cultivating your English, one thing you can do is to organise them.
🌞Challenge🌞
Create a homemade “MyEnglishIsAwesome” wordbank, here are my thoughts on how you could do it:
👉I recommend using Google docs or google sheets so you can access the document on any device you want.
👉Add any new words or expressions to the wordbank as you encounter them.
👉Add words or expressions that you identify as being difficult for you to remember/use correctly or that you find confusing.
👉Next to the entry add a translation, a definition or both, and also whether it's a noun, verb, adjective etc.
👉If it's irregular in any way add an explanation of how (eg begin began begun or 1 mouse, 2 mice.)
👉If there are other forms of the root word add them if you want (eg quick adjective, quickly adverb).
👉If the word has tricky pronunciation you can add a note to help you with this using 2 backslashes // (eg quick = /Kwik/ or fortunately = /for/ /chew/ /nat/ /li/).
👉You can add a context/mini dialogue for confusing things (eg- “I have a degree in philosophy but I have a career in astrology”). As always, the more personal and relevant to you the better.
👉If you have an electronic version you can add a link (eg https://www.linguee.com/english-spanish/translation/backslash.html?cw=369 )
👉Personalise it and make it relevant to you in any way you think might be useful. For example, you could colour code it so verbs are one colour, adjectives another colour, phrasal verbs another etc.
Another website that seems useful is https://www.wordhippo.com/ where you can find lots of help with vocabulary.
Do you have any ideas of ways to grow your vocab? How do you increase your vocabulary? Press reply and let me know!
Thanks for reading and see you in #9!