Incorrect Pronoun Use
AmberEyes
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Joined: 26 Sep 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,438
Location: The Lands where the Jumblies live
Very good point. That's true. I've said the expression:
"Give us a hand!"
A lot because I've heard this saying on TV and understand what it means.
I've used this phrase when I've needed help moving a heavy object.
"Us" here refers to "I" or "me".
This was learned behaviour. This isn't how my family normally talks.
I love collecting other people's phrases lol
However, the use of colloquial dialects is frowned upon in English assignments, unless the writing is a monologue, for a "local" audience, poetry or characters' dialogues in a story.
Broadsheet Newspaper reports are usually written in Standard English (unless someone's opinion is being quoted). Standard English is the "base" language taught in schools.
If people from different regions with different dialects meet up it can be very confusing and a bit of a "culture shock".
In these situations I've found Standard English helpful, but that doesn't stop people criticising my pronunciation of some words though. Some of the vowel sounds are different depending on where you live. Some people defend their vowel sounds and regional tongues very fiercely indeed!
Interestingly, speakers of ASL show this kind of wrong learning, even though the sign for "I" is pointing at yourself, and the sign for "you" is pointing at the other person. The mistake is usually sorted out without too much trouble.
AmberEyes
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Joined: 26 Sep 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,438
Location: The Lands where the Jumblies live
I found learning English very hard when I was little.
The following may be true for others too. I believe that learning style has something to do with it.
I've realised that my difficulties weren't because I was stupid, but that my focus was in the different place to the other kids. Hence, My focus was therefore in a different place to what the teacher's expected.
I didn't know at first that I had to chat to the other children or the teachers to learn things or that that was even required. I was oblivious to this for some time because the physical environment was so interesting.
I was fascinated with the details in surrounding environment. These details seemed to distract me from other people. These other people I was distracted from included the teachers. Hence I didn't pick up the "rules" from the teachers as easily, if at all, because I didn't focus on the people.
So in English class, I seemed to learn about the shape of the windows, the wood-grain on the desk and the patterns in the carpet. Everyone else learned about comprehension in the story by chatting to their desk neighbours or the teacher.
What if there are two kinds of learning:
-Learning from the physical environment
-Learning from other people talking to you
I seem to be very strong at the former and weak at the latter.
The former is great for independent scientific investigation and original creative writing.
However, most school learning environments, particularly for young children are set up to be "people focussed". Lone exploration and investigation are not encouraged. Kids have to find partners, work in small groups or sit in a circle to learn things. Kids are given knowledge by the teacher and other students.
I still learn best from the physical environment I'm in rather than by listening to other people. I only tend to ask other people for help as a last resort. I read books and research topics to learn things. I look up information on CD ROMs. I like to watch documentaries where the shots are focussed on nature and the people are just incidental or narrating. I like looking at lecture slides focussed in on the physical environment too.
On fieldtrips, I've often become upset because I've wanted to get into the "nitty gritty" of logging and anlaysing the physical enviroment, only to find that people are sitting around chatting or asking the group leaders:
"What do we do now sir?"
When I've known exactly what to do, planned out what I was going to do in my own head, but was unable to do so because some of the leaders like to have a social "warm-up" bonding session and insisted that everyone "group-up".
Perhaps I would have learned to read and learn grammar better, if I had been alone in a room with toy letters or had done exercises on a CD-ROM. Perhaps every so often, one adult could have come in and facilitate what I was doing and help make it fun. Perhaps even with a small group of children, not a large class-size. Perhaps we even could have had a letter treasure hunt in the playground or something each of us exploring alone.
sartresue
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Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Age: 69
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,313
Location: The Castle of Shock and Awe-tism
The following may be true for others too. I believe that learning style has something to do with it.
I've realised that my difficulties weren't because I was stupid, but that my focus was in the different place to the other kids. Hence, My focus was therefore in a different place to what the teacher's expected.
I didn't know at first that I had to chat to the other children or the teachers to learn things or that that was even required. I was oblivious to this for some time because the physical environment was so interesting.
I was fascinated with the details in surrounding environment. These details seemed to distract me from other people. These other people I was distracted from included the teachers. Hence I didn't pick up the "rules" from the teachers as easily, if at all, because I didn't focus on the people.
So in English class, I seemed to learn about the shape of the windows, the wood-grain on the desk and the patterns in the carpet. Everyone else learned about comprehension in the story by chatting to their desk neighbours or the teacher.
What if there are two kinds of learning:
-Learning from the physical environment
-Learning from other people talking to you
I seem to be very strong at the former and weak at the latter.
The former is great for independent scientific investigation and original creative writing.
However, most school learning environments, particularly for young children are set up to be "people focussed". Lone exploration and investigation are not encouraged. Kids have to find partners, work in small groups or sit in a circle to learn things. Kids are given knowledge by the teacher and other students.
I still learn best from the physical environment I'm in rather than by listening to other people. I only tend to ask other people for help as a last resort. I read books and research topics to learn things. I look up information on CD ROMs. I like to watch documentaries where the shots are focussed on nature and the people are just incidental or narrating. I like looking at lecture slides focussed in on the physical environment too.
On fieldtrips, I've often become upset because I've wanted to get into the "nitty gritty" of logging and anlaysing the physical enviroment, only to find that people are sitting around chatting or asking the group leaders:
"What do we do now sir?"
When I've known exactly what to do, planned out what I was going to do in my own head, but was unable to do so because some of the leaders like to have a social "warm-up" bonding session and insisted that everyone "group-up".
Perhaps I would have learned to read and learn grammar better, if I had been alone in a room with toy letters or had done exercises on a CD-ROM. Perhaps every so often, one adult could have come in and facilitate what I was doing and help make it fun. Perhaps even with a small group of children, not a large class-size. Perhaps we even could have had a letter treasure hunt in the playground or something each of us exploring alone.
It is me topic
Interesting analysis. Amber.
I know when I was a kid I felt so depersonalized I referred to myself often in the third person. Now I just say: "It is me, Susan." I still tend to talk around myself, but try to consciously use the pronoun "I" when speaking. There is no problem with written correspondence.
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I always dreaded hearing the orders, "Get into groups," or, "Find yourself a partner." Particularly the former. Firstly, I was always the last person anyone else wanted to work with, and I ended up having to be added to a group by the teacher and spend the rest of the session watching the others alternately giggle at or ignore me. Secondly, it annoyed me that I had to work in a group, when I wanted to settle down by myself with the allocated project and often already had ideas about what I wanted to do with it.
AmberEyes
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Joined: 26 Sep 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,438
Location: The Lands where the Jumblies live
This also happened to me too.
The teachers at High School couldn't figure out why someone like me, who frequently attained high marks, was unable to find a group to work in and needed to be shepherded into one.
I watched a TV programme several years ago about boy's and girl's learning styles. The programme noted that boys talked in a straightforward fashion and liked to be challenged with problem solving activities. It was observed that girls liked to chat in groups and liked discussions/group-work activities. The programme commented that if boys and girls were taught in separate sex classes with boys experimenting and girls chatting, all of the students would learn better. Hence the programme seemed to imply:
-Boys should learn from the physical environment.
-Girls should learn by chatting with other people
The thing is, I can't chat very well and I'm a girl. I think I'd have been better off in the boy's group doing independent investigation. The activities and environmental exploration the boys did sounded like real fun. I shudder to think how I would have underachieved if I'd been put in the girls' method group like the programme suggested. Likewise, I've met boys who are brilliant at team-work and discussion, but terrible at solo experiment projects.
The lesson of this folks is that not all boys and girls are the same or learn in the "expected" way.
It's interesting to note that most teachers especially those who teach very young children, are female. I stress that most female teachers are caring, helpful and lovely. However, this does mean that the teaching methods usually centre around group cooperation at the expense of individual discovery. This is because many female teachers unsurprisingly opt for a more feminine teaching/learning style. Unfortunately this means that some of the boys and differently wired girls lose out on learning.
Last edited by AmberEyes on 08 Dec 2008, 2:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
That's why I brought up the info about hindi and arabic. Could you imagine a little boy being brought up by his mother, and using the wrong conjugation, effectively always calling himself a girl?
Some time ago I happened to read an article touching the issue of Polish transsexual children’s additional problem which is their often being shouted at by their parents for using the wrong endings of verbs and as a result referring to themselves as representatives of the opposite sex, members of which they actually feel.
Here where I live the verbs in the past tenses and future tense continuous have different forms for both sexes.
Here where I live the verbs in the past tenses and future tense continuous have different forms for both sexes.
I believe Polish family names also change ending depending on whether a male or female uses them? Men give their surname with the -ski ending, but women use -ska?
Here where I live the verbs in the past tenses and future tense continuous have different forms for both sexes.
I believe Polish family names also change ending depending on whether a male or female uses them? Men give their surname with the -ski ending, but women use -ska?
Yes. Mr Kowalski’s wife isn’t Mrs Kowalski but Kowalska. Mr Kwasniewski – but Mrs Kwasniewska. Mr Nowakowski – but Mrs Nowakowska.
That's why I brought up the info about hindi and arabic. Could you imagine a little boy being brought up by his mother, and using the wrong conjugation, effectively always calling himself a girl?
Some time ago I happened to read an article touching the issue of Polish transsexual children’s additional problem which is their often being shouted at by their parents for using the wrong endings of verbs and as a result referring to themselves as representatives of the opposite sex, members of which they actually feel.
Here where I live the verbs in the past tenses and future tense continuous have different forms for both sexes.
I once tried to learn a little polish.(I still have the book and tapes.) That shows how much I kept up on it. I don't know if I EVER knew that. Danish, English, French, German, Spanish don't have that feature. And I wasn't talking about nouns. I think perhaps EVERY language has THEM. But VERBS!?!?
AmberEyes,
I used to believe to some degree that males and females had different ways of thinking, etc... I guess it was due to lack of experience, and what others said. But I don't act like many males do(By that, I mean I am not into sports, agressive, etc...), and I have known females that don't act like most females. Still, it IS amazing how some females just follow a pattern that they don't seem to be taught.
That's why I brought up the info about hindi and arabic. Could you imagine a little boy being brought up by his mother, and using the wrong conjugation, effectively always calling himself a girl?
Some time ago I happened to read an article touching the issue of Polish transsexual children’s additional problem which is their often being shouted at by their parents for using the wrong endings of verbs and as a result referring to themselves as representatives of the opposite sex, members of which they actually feel.
Here where I live the verbs in the past tenses and future tense continuous have different forms for both sexes.
I once tried to learn a little polish.(I still have the book and tapes.) That shows how much I kept up on it. I don't know if I EVER knew that. Danish, English, French, German, Spanish don't have that feature. And I wasn't talking about nouns. I think perhaps EVERY language has THEM. But VERBS!?!?
.
For example if at some point in the past you were performing some action and now, describing it to others you want to emphasize that action was unfinished, you, for you are a man have to say: robilem (I was doing), czytalem (I was reading), spiewalem ( I was singing), while, I female would say in this situation that I robilam, czytalam or spiewalam something. The different endings of the verbs because of a gender of the speaker.
If this action has been completed you would say: zrobilem, przeczytalem, zaspiewalem (I did, I read, I sang) while I would express it saying that I zrobilam, przeczytalam, zaspiewalam. The different endings again.
In case we are planning to perform said activities in the future – the same situation with the endings of the verbs occurs, the different ones for each of us. When you want to inform me about your plans, you tell me: Bede robil (I’ll be doing), bede czytal (I’ll be reading), bede spiewal (I’ll be singing). I, as a woman, would need to add an additional ending to those verbs while referring them to myself – robila, czytala, spiewala.
http://www.polishforums.com/polish_past ... 034_0.html You, Americans are deprived of those small grammatical pleasures, your language seems so.. poor but to tell the truth I strongly suspect now you are very glad learning Polish doesn’t belong to necessities .
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