Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English
As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words.<p>Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough, there is a very sudden phase change where people around you go from "you speak pretty good English" to "you speak amazing English" with nothing in between — all of a sudden you're perceived as a peer, and you choice of vocabulary then sets you apart. Ever since I've noticed this I've been trying to make my vocabulary "worse" by incorporating more mundane words into it.<p>1. <a href="https://msburkeenglish.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/uncleftish-beholding-aka-atomic-theory.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://msburkeenglish.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/uncleftis...</a>