I just got this book for Christmas, and I came across a very interesting point. The diffferences between spoken and written language are very different in some languages; and even in English. When one is writing, one tends to use words that would not normally be used when speaking about the same subject.
I was just wondering if anyone knows of languages that have a written language that is close to the colloquial language?
Arabic is a good example of how the two can be very different. In written Arabic, the language is almost totally different then the spoken Arabic. And in French, one can write, "Je ne parle pas néerlandais." But when speaking, one might say, "Je parle pas néerlandais." (Both meaning "I do not speak Dutch")
Perhaps Chinese characters represent the greatest seperation between script and language.
Or even mathmatical operators which exist outside of language as they are pure ideogrammes.
Interesting topic. I never thought much about how much seperation there really is between the spoken and written language.
I think Spanish is supposed to be the closest language in terms of spoken and written word. When people write in Spanish, they say the same things when they speak. I will take Warren's example a bit furher; in written French, one says "nous parlons avec..." (we speak with...). But in spoken French, one would say, "on parle avec..." This is the third person singular, but means the same thing.
I think that I will just learn the written language, and then once I go to France (French is my major at university), I will learn the nooks and crannies of the language. I think that it is always good to learn the standard of a language first before moving on to the spoken language. Plus, people are going to understand you if you speak the written language. If it is French, there is not that big of a seperation, but people will understand you. Even in Arabic, where the written and spoken languages are VERY different like Warren said, people would still be able to understand you. The other way around in conversation might be a bit tricky--if you are used to hearin the standard language and someone is speaking the spoken language, communication becomes harder.
to Clark,
"When people write in Spanish, they say the same things when they speak."
It's true in an academic sense, but it's not always true among the native speakers. Spanish can be tricky as well
There`s great separation between spoken and written russian. Russians study their native language grammatic rules in school for several years and I can say that major of them coudln`t write russian correct. For example milk in russian is "moloko", but nobody pronunciates [moloko], but [malako]. <br><br> And this kind of hints could be met in the most words. So, if you study writen russian and have never heard russian speech it would be definately hard to communicate in real life...
Javier, thanks for letting me know that. I did not think that Spanish was not sperated that much between written and spoken language, but the person who told me this is a white American whose native tongue is English and is married to a Mexican-American whose nativetongue is English--so things might have got a bit confused on his part.
But, this would have made sense as Spanish is supposed to be one of the easiest languages in the world for people to learn.
Now, to get this forum on track with English. As a native speaker of a combonation of British/American English, I cannot say if there is a great deal of difference between spoken and written English. My guess would be that there is not a lot of difference btween them. What would you say?
I think that English is VERY close between the written and spoken language! We speak how we write, and we write how we speak.
English can be quite different, at least when it comes to pronounciation.
Consider:
Written:
I want to go to the store
Spoken (Pronounced, assuming a standard, midwest, colloquial dialect):
I wanna go duh the store
If you doubt that "to" becomes "duh," then say the sentense yourself and tell me if you really say "to" with a "t" or if it sounds more like "duh."
Sometimes "go to" may be pronounced as "go do" instead.
This same phenomenon can be observed in the word "water." Nobody speaking American English really says "waTer," instead it comes out more like "wah-der." British people tend to say it with a T, however, or even in some cases a glottal stop (Cockney), "wa'er."
But if this topic was meant to discuss differences in word usage between written and spoken, then you should pretty much ignore the above examples.
One reason written language may be different, especially since the advent of computers, is the fact that you can go back and change stuff; you can't do that with spoken words :)
Good topic.
Me
spoken and written english are slightly different.
in any language there is a slight difference in spoken and written langauge.
in spoken language everything whatever we talk will give some meaning. and the listener also not particular about the grammatical correctness of the langauge. he is interested only to get the subject.
but whent it comes to written english, everybody will keenly observe all these things. if you make a small mistake, then it will become a big issue.
in my opinion, the person who writes good english, will definitely increase his spoken english skills. this applies to all langauses in the world.
interesting topic!
I have been giving some thought to what "me" wrote. I guess what I meant was not pronunciation, but the correlation between the words used in speech and in written form. An example of what I am talking about would be:
Spoken: I am going to the store.
Written: I am going to go to the store.
I was not talking much about pronunciation, as that varies in most languages. I was talking about the differences in which vocabulary is used between written and spoken forms.
Clark
I think your two examples give different tenses. The first is in present tense and the second is in future.
J, say them out loud, and think about the context: you are at home, telling your wife, or whoever, that you plan to go to the store. They are the same, even though the tense is different.
clark, ur argument is correct!!