It's all foreign to me.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:57 am

"English as a lingua franca seems to be a foreign language to anybody (not only non-native but also native) to some extent."

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Yamaguchi-Language.html

Do you agree?

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:38 am

It's not a foreign language to natives if we use any normal criterion such as mutual (in)comprehensibility. A variant that may be slowly diverging would be more like it.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:45 am

It's not a foreign language to natives if we use any normal criterion such as mutual (in)comprehensibility.

But many native speakers have to learn to do that, and so the kind of adjustments they have to make is/are foreign to such people.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:15 am

I see what you mean but "my" Southern English and another person's English As A Lingua Franca are far closer than Flemish and Dutch or Swedish and Danish.

In other words a linguist from another planet would see each pair as variants of the same language. Even though the shifts and tricks needed to communicate well are similar (eg the NS of Southern Standard English has to avoid recherché slang both when talking to someone whose Eng as LF is their second language as well as to someone who speaks Am Eng)