Life /
Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]
Paulina et al, my prior point was that here in the States, typically if someone is hired as a French instructor at any prestigious language school, they must speak basically a perfect, native French. As far as the teaching of English is concerned, no such standard applies any longer.
That's what you say, I don't really know if that's really the case.
Which universities are you comparing exactly?
Or are you writing only about language schools?
Btw, if it's true I can imagine it's due to the fact that English is a lingua franca of our times. It is taught everywhere to really great numbers of people and so really great numbers of teachers are needed and so the level is lower. I think it's natural and has nothing to do with double standards. If the French language was the language of global communication nowadays I can imagine it would be butchered in the same way all over the world :)
Many whom I've met who "teach" English have noticable foreign accents and are often blithelly unfamiliar with Anglo- American culture, banter, word play and essentiallly communicate on a most primitive level, masquerading as "international communication.
Whom are you talking about?
University professors or language school instructors?
Or people in the street?
Even my Polish teachers at highschool had very good pronunciation. I had only one dreadful "teacher" at the very beginning of highschool. We called her "Mrs. Sheep" lol The school didn't have English teachers, I think, at that time, so our librarian did a quick English teaching course and became our English teacher. She would pronounce word comfortable as "komfortejbyl" ;O Even at that time I knew it was very very wrong xD The funny thing was that I was getting worse marks for pronouncing words in the right way ;D That was terrible... But later on, we got real teachers, she went back to the library and such a level for a teacher would be simply unacceptable nowadays in a public school, I can imagine.
As for Anglo-American culture it's even in the language course books so it's obligatory to teach at least the basics (at least at state schools in Poland). And it's the same with teaching other foreign languages at state schools in Poland. And, again, Anglo-American cultures are rather well known in the world.
As for "communicating on a most primitive level"... Your own style in English is so unnecessarily elaborate (or maybe even pretentious) that I I'm not really sure if you're being objective about the level of communicating of your interlocutors. I wouldn't be surprised if you exaggerated, to be honest.
As far as this overused word "obsessing", it's hardly obsessive to kindly ask that if a Pole, German, Swede etc.. tacitly insists that they already know enough English so that an American, say, needn't spend time studying Polish, German or Swedish
I really doubt that anyone ever told you that you don't need to spend time studying Polish or any other language. Most Poles appreciate the fact that a foreigner makes the effort to study their language.
However, if your Polish isn't good enough to communicate easily then they may switch to Polish to make the communication easier in their mind for both you and them. They may even think that they're doing you a favour. Or they just want to practice their English.
If you want to practice your Polish with them then simply tell them about it.
And no, the word "obsessing" isn't overused in your case at all, since you complain about foreigners not wanting to talk to you in their native languages in every freaking language thread on this forum.
is it too much to ask that the English of the foreign interlocutor be at least aesthetic and modest?
What do you mean by "aesthetic and modest"?
Need younger Europeans pretend that their ignorance of higher-level English is adequate enough, more important even than a foreigner taking the time to read Mickiewicz, Goethe or Strindberg in the original?
I'm sorry, Wlodzimierz, but I don't understand this sentence.
It was a nice experience many years back when I met an Austrian accountant who not only knew how to "communicate" in more or less unaccented American English, but could even quote some of the Mickado, chapter and verse!!!
It's natural that people have accents when speaking a foreign language. Not everyone has "a good ear" for langauges. Some students, taught by the same teacher, may speak with heavy accents while others from the same class can have a very good pronunciation and only just a light accent or in rare cases none at all. Not all people are skilled in the same way. I was one of two people in my class, I think, who could get the French "r" more or less correct. My first efforts at getting it right caused giggling from my classmates, but later on they were praising my French pronunciation ;) So it's not so easy, you know.
Also, I don't understand why would you expect from foreigners any knowledge about English opera? o_O The fact that you're interested in opera doesn't mean that all people are. English is a lingua franca, people study it for the sake of communication and they aren't obliged to know about some rather not well known elements of British culture. When you're studying English, you're studying it to communicate with people from many parts of the world, not necessarily with the British or Americans (or Canadians, Australians, etc.).
So there's hope yet:-)
Hope for what?
Not everyone is obliged or has the need to speak English or any other foreign language on a native-speaker level.
It depends on the circumstances.
Also, not everyone has good enough language skills or opportunities to be able to do that in the first place.
I had a British teacher at a language school here in Poland who purposefully used with us some kind of non-accented English (without the British accent). I also had a Scottish teacher once and he was trying to do the same, although we did have some problems with understanding him and getting used to his a bit different pronunciation.
Yes, Wlodzimierz, times have changed. English is used by people all over the world and perhaps the accent with which someone is speaking doesn't matter that much nowadays.
However, if your Polish isn't good enough to communicate easily then they may switch to Polish
*switch to English
