I read the editorial written by Elliot Patton in 2012 edition of The English Connection. He's a teacher at the University in Korea and I think he has lived in Korea for a good while enough to understand the details about Korean culture. In his editorial, he was shocked by our using incorrect English all around us. He pointed that sloppy Konglish and grammatical errors can be found easily around us. He made a list of many factors which can be blamed for that and he was concerned that those sloppy and awkward errors might potentially influence the foreign visitors, the foreign investors or even Korean parents who make the enormous investment on their children's English education. At the end he questioned what native English teachers can do to clean up "Konglish".
I wonder why he's so upset and frustrated about it, though his editorial didn't offend me at all. He sounds a little emotional rather than logical. In some point I agree with him. When I happened to see the unappropriate English on the advertisement, T-shirts, or traffic signs, I remembered I felt ashamed. That was more than 10 years ago. Lots of corrections have been done and still going on. Our English is not perfect yet but it's getting better enough not to make the foreigners frown.
Last year one of the TESOL professor showed me a collection of bad English signs seen around the world such as "LADIES ARE REQUIRED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR"(Cocktail lounge, Norway), "PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY"(At a Budapest zoo) We Korean students couldn't find the mistakes at sight but a minute later we checked them out because we knew there must be some mistakes. The fact that Norwegians, Hungarians, Romans and other people who are not native English speakers also make similar mistakes, relieved me as well as amused me.
I know written English requires strict form, advance planning, grammar, punctuation etc. because writing is not transient, and it's formal and logical comparing to spoken English. However, in this globalized world, so many versions of English exist such as Singapore-English, Japanese-English, Chinese-English, Korean-English. I'm not saying that it's OK to use incorrect English but it's more important to send the message appropriately and get it right.
In the near future who will my kids mostly speak English to? Non-native speakers. It depends on the case but our children may have more chance to speak English with non-natives in their business. Their English may not be genuine but still I can say it's authentic. Now it's time to get used to many version of English.
It took for me several hours to organize my opinion, do the draft, self editing, correcting, and reorganize it. If I wrote this in Korean It might take one third of the time that I spent writing this. I'm not still confident with my writing. Please don't be "nit picky" when you happen to find some awkward expressions or some errors in my writing, if you once understand my point.
Last year one of the TESOL professor showed me a collection of bad English signs seen around the world such as "LADIES ARE REQUIRED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR"(Cocktail lounge, Norway), "PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY"(At a Budapest zoo) We Korean students couldn't find the mistakes at sight but a minute later we checked them out because we knew there must be some mistakes. The fact that Norwegians, Hungarians, Romans and other people who are not native English speakers also make similar mistakes, relieved me as well as amused me.
I know written English requires strict form, advance planning, grammar, punctuation etc. because writing is not transient, and it's formal and logical comparing to spoken English. However, in this globalized world, so many versions of English exist such as Singapore-English, Japanese-English, Chinese-English, Korean-English. I'm not saying that it's OK to use incorrect English but it's more important to send the message appropriately and get it right.
In the near future who will my kids mostly speak English to? Non-native speakers. It depends on the case but our children may have more chance to speak English with non-natives in their business. Their English may not be genuine but still I can say it's authentic. Now it's time to get used to many version of English.
It took for me several hours to organize my opinion, do the draft, self editing, correcting, and reorganize it. If I wrote this in Korean It might take one third of the time that I spent writing this. I'm not still confident with my writing. Please don't be "nit picky" when you happen to find some awkward expressions or some errors in my writing, if you once understand my point.
of course i won't be nit-picky about your writing here. i really enjoyed your response, and i think that you make a great point when you describe the ways english(es) change. the one thought i had... perhaps writing is or should be more formal than speech. but the examples in the original article were not addressing formal research or academic writing. the writer was talking about marketing. to me, this is kind of strange, as people in advertising constantly come up with creative new uses of language. ads are meant to give a sensation as much as convey information. so, even those who feel that written english must follow a specific format and register would have a hard time justifying the writer's one sided reaction. thanks so much for the thoughtful post...
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