Joseph Conrad seems worth mentioning here. He didn't start to learn English until his twenties, but he wrote what many consider some of the most striking and memorable prose in the language. In some ways, his "accent" adds to the distinctiveness of his writing; critics have noted that he subtly blends rhythms and syntactical patterns from  Polish and French  into English. I would say that his language background probably didn't do  much for his grammatical correctness in English, but it did contribute to his grammatical creativity or flexibility--that is, his ability to imagine and use grammatical structures that are "out of the way" but effective in a particular rhetorical situation.

Brian
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 10:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Who does it right, continued

From: Dianne E Loyet <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Who does it right, continued
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, August 13, 2009

Dear Brad:

This is an intriguing question, but one with no simple answers because of the vast number of variables involved.

My own experiences are illustrative of the difficulty in determining how people become (or fail to become) articulate speakers and writers. I am one of five children who ate dinner with the same two parents and attended the same schools throughout childhood. Of those five children, two are articulate professionals, two are mechanics with no particular speaking and writing skills, and the fifth is a computer science professional who nearly flunked college because he could not pass French if his life depended on it. (One of the mechanics dropped out of high school in his fifth year).

I attribute my own language skills to personal interest and a Catholic grade school education with an emphasis on grammar. From the time I was able to check out books at the library, I looked for books about other countries and languages. I studied my sister's French and Latin books on my own before I could study foreign languages in school. My Catholic grade school used a set of English books which required students to diagram compound complex sentences and conjugate verbs in English.

In spite of the fact that my language skills benefited a lot from my Catholic school's emphasis on grammar, most of my classmates forgot everything they were exposed to at the earliest possible moment, and as a group they were no more articulate in speech or writing than our high school classmates who (had) attended other grade schools.

My own husband and children add to this puzzle. My husband's skills are primarily spatial in nature; he's a geographer and a computer scientist. His grammar is atrocious in speech and writing, and his spelling is appalling. My children, on the other hand, seem very interested in language. They love the TV show _Word Girl_ on PBS. They love to experiment with new words and expressions. Their spelling is great, and it seems to be effortless. My daughter (who is only 6) says things like, "If I were a giraffe . . . " Wow! Imagine a 6-year-old saying that.

So, most of my classmates did not benefit from the same grade school education that I did, and my children do not seem to speak or write like their father, in spite of the fact that they share dinner with him every day.

As I said at the outset, this issue is intriguing, and far from simple.

Dianne

~~~~~~

How very, VERY interesting. Complicated, isn't it?

One thing that comes to mind from your experience is that those who listen to a foreign language at the dinner table and then learn English in school may retain ways of speaking and writing that may never leave them. Said another way, if you hear English at the dinner table, it will not guarantee fluency but if you hear a foreign language at the dinner table, you are more likely to be impaired in speaking English. Sort of a one-sided thing. Your brothers heard what you heard but there were no takers.

Something akin to learning to speak. I have read that if you learn a foreign language from a native speaker before you are six years old, you may be able to speak the second language without an accent. If you learn it later, you are doomed to carry the accent of your native tongue, however slight, forever. Witness the afore-mentioned Henry Kissinger. He has been able to intellectually dominate his adopted language but has not been able to rid himself of his accent. He may not have tried, needles to say. He doubtless values being seen as an expert, and, as everyone knows, "an expert is someone from out of town."

Maybe we'll hear from some others who have experience or input. And maybe I can find out how Michael Wilbon did it, if he knows. Maybe he just does it and doesn't know how or why. Nah, I take that back. He'll know.

Many thanks, Dianne.

.brad.14aug09.


----- Original Message -----
From: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]<[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>>
Date: Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:29 am
Subject: Who does it right, continued
To: [log in to unmask]<[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>


> Pull up any Michael Wilbon commentary in the Washington Post and you
> will see articulate, logical, almost-error-free prose. It would be
> interesting to know his background. His parents surely spoke English
> at the dinner table and he surely went a long way in school, but there
> may have been something else.
>
> Lots of writers' parents spoke English at the dinner table and lots of
> writers graduated from college and lots of writers still make a mess
> of it, to one degree or another. Wouldn't it be interesting to know
> what that other element is, if indeed it exists, even randomly?
>
> Henry Kissinger is one of the most articulate users of the English
> language and he lived in Germany for the first 13 years of his life,
> where his parents spoke German, whence the noticeable accent.
>
> What makes the difference? Can it be isolated and understood?
>
> I started this to send it to a single interested party but maybe
> others will have a thought or two, so I'll send it to the list.
>
> .brad.13aug09.


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