conuly | I divided by age, and took the first 10 from each group.

Sorry! I think sometimes I'm an intellectual snob. However, on some of the answers I thought too much and worked out situations in my head that would call for multiple answers, and then I had dilemmas over which to pick.

It's not your fault. I guess. You can always feel free to explain the answers you think you thought too much over.

See? And I know I tend towards the prescriptivist viewpoint.

(Realistically, we need to hew to a happy medium, otherwise Webster's will be immortalizing such transience as "twenty-three skiddoo".)

Yeah, I know you do now too. Doesn't mean I have to *like* it. I'll just have to work that much harder at converting you to the forces of light and goodness and linguistic lovechildren!

Add whatever silly things you want to.
Hell remove the letter U the letters PH R E and the letter S, and replace them with nothing, F, ss (as in ass insterad of arse) and ZEEEE

You dont pronounce it ZEEEE by the way.. it's ZED.

Sorry to get a little techy, but this is one of my pet hates. I might be dyslexic, but the next bloody yank tells me ther is no u in colour gets a smacking.

Rantin (Try the Queen's English damn it, the rest of the world speeks it) An

There may or may not be a u in color, but there most CERTAINLY is another e in "there".

Just sayin' :)

*speak. ;-)

I agree for the most part but you are aware of what a mongrel the Queens english is, right?

It's a homogenous, ever-changing, fascinating, illogical language.

I adore it because it does lend itself to change and so many pidgins & dialects.

I'd compare it to good food, personally.

All recipes change over time.

Absolutely. *huge cheesy grins*

Given the state of MY english, I'd have figured that the irony was shining through clearly on that one.

Pesronaly I speak 4 dialects of the language, Amerienglish, 'Strine (australian, coloquial, general), Queens and outer eastie which is a geographical varient common to the area I grew up in. One of the reasons I enjoy net friends from round the world is observing the drift of words from one culture to another.
But in the course of this netting I HAVE noticed a remarkable tendency amongst americans, espically teens, to want to rebut my arguements by correcting my spelling by changing the abovementioned letters.

If the survey had been more general my answers would have lead to a point of "given the probabilities of missunderstanding in circumstances when the same root english word has diametricaly opposed meenings, particulary in the usage of slang and insult, it is important to not only be sensitive to the importance of the language but hte context in which it is used."

For example "bloody Yanks" is actualy a backhanded compliment in 'Strine. The insult in this case is actually "septic tank" (it's full of crap and rhymes with yank). This for reasons of obscurity frequently gets abrivieated to Seppo. If an Australian calls an north american a seppo, they are insulting the pants off you FYI.
I'd also advocate aginst calling any eastie a "prick" as that particualr word when used as an insult is the very worst insult you can use in that dialect.

English is a bloody nightmare of a language. That is why I like it!

For example "bloody Yanks" is actualy a backhanded compliment in 'Strine. The insult in this case is actually "septic tank" (it's full of crap and rhymes with yank). This for reasons of obscurity frequently gets abrivieated to Seppo. If an Australian calls an north american a seppo, they are insulting the pants off you FYI.
I'd also advocate aginst calling any eastie a "prick" as that particualr word when used as an insult is the very worst insult you can use in that dialect.

Yeah, I know.

I think some of my answers were influenced by the fact that people who do not speak "proper English" are usually thought of as being less educated and "dumber" by the public as a whole, and thus are more likely to be discriminated against. And this discrimination can make it hard for people to get jobs and stuff.

Boy, some of those questions were tough to answer :D

Well, I only remember the answers from the first 20 people (pretty much) so you lucked out, I don't remember yours.

And yes, they can be.

In thinking about the results personally, you might also take into account other elements that could have factored into responses.

For example, I wouldn't want multiple massively-different dialects of English to spring up because CAPD makes it so I have enough trouble understanding the single one around me as it is. I'm also largely reliant upon reading for picking up new vocabulary, and considering the language we're talking about is predominantly oral, I'd not only fail to know the literal meanings, I'd be lost regarding the subtler/social meanings.

There's more, but I'm too tired to figure out how to write it. :)

I did actually mention the somewhat disportionate number of non-nt responses, but I didn't find that they varied significantly from the (I assume) nt replies. Of course, that doesn't mean that the reasons for the answers can't be different.

Materials for beginning and remedial reading should be written in the dialects of the children
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Strongly agree
0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)

Agree
5 (15.2%) 5 (15.2%)

I find that very sad. Of course, maybe most people don't realize that the more the written work looks like the spoken word, the more quickly children master speech-to-print, and gain reading fluency. I'm not saying you don't teach any standard English, but for some children early on it's harder to code-switch, especially if they're not doing it verbally yet.

I myself actually don't agree with that statement. Not because I think kids should have to learn one dialect from childhood, but because I realize it might be expensive to actually provide material in all common dialects.

Speaking as someone who's taught in the classroom, I don't think cost has been that prohibitive. One can whip up a powerpoint or worksheet with a child's dialect if you're familiar enough with it. To me, just breaking people into the idea would be a good start. In the meantime, being flexible and open to linguistic differences is most important. I don't think there's enough research out to justify the spending yet, but unless it's tried, we won't get any data either, right?

I'm sort of naive, I guess. It's also my first class dealing with this sort of thing. :) So, my view is pretty well shaped by what I'm given and know thus far.