This is what English language as 'interface' language has developed into..
Native speakers of English don't teach in Hungarian schools because of the the low salary level. They usually teach in language schools or private schools and some of them might not even have a degree in English. The most extreme case I once heard was that someone made a living of being British (!) living in Hungary socializing with expats, connecting people etc.
...which means in less politically 'correct' terms that English has morphed into a global mishmash, neither Anglo, nor Saxon, nor Celt any longer, but Poglish, Hunglish, svengelska, Japlish etc... into any kind of '-ish' other than ENG-lish LOL
As a younger person than myself, how d'you honestly feel about the 'Alzheimerazation' or schleroticizing of a once proud and beautiful tongue into a pale shadow of its former self, a clone copy robbed of the husk and kernel of the original?!
To amend my remarks only slightly, I can appreciate degrees of language "change", such as Swedish from around 1945-1960 vs. the adaptation of once unheard of slang into the everyday language ('de'/'dem' pronounced as 'dom' and sometimes even written so in youth journals, or dropping of supine forms of most verbs, e.g. 'fick' rather than 'fingo' etc...) as well as idioms from one generation to another.
Then again, there's change and then there's change....for the better or for the worse. Perhaps in fifty years, we'll see 'gonna', 'wanna' and 'shoulda' adopted into as august a tome as the OED. But that's not likely to come anytime soon, hopefully not within my lifetime--:))
They are just contractions Lysko, so what if they make it into the OED? You cannot deny that English has be devolving in complexity since Elizabethan times, and Indo-European languages in general have been becoming less and less complicated for the last 2500 years. It just seems to be the way of the world. As societies become more populous the language becomes debased.
Des Essientes You cannot deny that English has be devolving in complexity since Elizabethan times .... As societies become more populous the language becomes debased.
How nice of you to provide such a good example of your point.
For once, Des Essientes, I agree with you a thousand percent, unfortunately-:))
Perhaps only exposure while still in grade school to prior models of excellence can reverse this trend slightly. Not that I'm suggesting returning to the puff 'n powder wig of the XVII century or dusting off our 'thees' and 'thous', but something's got to be done or we'll all turn into a bunch of linguistic morons, relegated to grunts and groans.
Lysko, it is just the way of the world. There was once an evolutionary theory of language that claimed that languages like organisms grow in complexity as the generations pass, but William "Oriental" Jones discovered that Sanskrit was an Indo-European language and that it was more complex than either Latin or Greek and the awful truth slowly dawned that people from simpler more ancient societies have more complex languages. It makes sense in a way that human intelligence would be directed into linguistic complexity when there was less societal distraction.
How then would you explain the fact that there remain a number of people who still are focused on their language, not from the viewpoint of complexification, but simply that they appreciate the texture and richness available in the English language?
The battle hasn't been lost, actually, the fight hasn't even begun!
I don't think anybody's suggesting that English tenses, anymore than correctness itself, are going the way of the dinosaur! I do think however that linguistic mutations and language decline are two very separate issues which must be kept far apart.
Spelling for example. Because English has a nightmarishly chaotic orthography hardly indicates intellectual complexity to any or greater degree than German sentence length and morphology point to Germans as smarter than most of the rest of us!! LOL
Jones did indeed prove the Sanskrit model. Still, the more complicated a language surely doesn't ipso facto suggest the intelligence of all its speakers.
In the wider society it surely has been lost, Lysko. Take the example of newspapers all of which has dumbed their language down as the decades have passed. Now we inhabit a culture wherein images are (re)produced to describe it, rather than words, and in an image based culture the debasement of language will proceed unabated.
As I've maintained on PF, and perhaps even to excess, this dumbing down is not an entirely progressive trend. As a college professor, I continue to be impressed by how many of my students have started, though my gentle urging, to appreciate the older classic movies, including TV shows, such as Jack Paar and others, when language WAS very much at a premium and intellect was not a four-letter word!
The question of grammatical simplification of languages of which the English language is possibly a perfect example is fascinating. What is that particular moment that pushes an Indoeuropean language to losing its cases and at the same time making it develop definite and indefinite articles which had not existed in it before. A phenomenon which happened in the transition from classical to popular Latin, and one that occured in English as well. Could it ever happen to Polish? I doubt it, but - you know - you never say never.
Indeed, but it's always a pity to leave the topic once it has developed another interesting dimension.
Not that teaching Hungarian or Swedish isn't an interesting topic in itself. It is, and as for Hungarian, the place I can seriously think of as a place for teaching Hungarian is the Hungarian Institute (Instytut Węgierski) in Warsaw in Marszałkowska Street. Anyway, it used to be there once, but it may have been moved to a more modest location, in a similar way as the French Institute was.
Another source of addresses is Gazeta Wyborcza (gazeta.pl) where language schools advertise, particularly on Monday in the paper version.
On the other hand, practically any lamo off the street with a degree from a local university can teach English in prmary schools, although they are scarcely native to the language.
I believe that native US or Canadian-born and educated teachers should be the ones permitted to teach the English language in European schools. This is bureaucratically not feasible
Really? So why don't you give KB2011 advice to go and teach in a primary school e.g. in Bydgoszcz? Or maybe you could come here yourself? Small town kids welcome you.
The most extreme case I once heard was that someone made a living of being British (!) living in Hungary socializingwith expats, connecting people etc.
tell me that it was not a straight male and my orientation of the world will still be in tact.
Cinek, were I twenty-something once again, I'd leave NY in a heartbeat. Family obligations though would make it hard to square upping and moving to Poland, pulling up stakes, as it were, and abandoning my brood simply to take a part-time stint for a pitance in some backwater province!
Opportunities of getting a job in Poland are similar to any other countries. You are taking a good mood, and a positive attitude, plus, of course you neeed to have targets: three per day? You can have a list of companies you want to work for: you go and ask for a job. I can almost assure you foreigners are welcome in Poland. One more thing : it's better to work in a place yuo want to work, not in a place where poeple want you to... Just: it 's better to look for job you want. If you want the job, you'll get it.
