Question:
Sometimes I feel like English should really be considered *two*
languages, written English and spoken English -- a kind of diglossia,
I guess. Thus, when people are reading aloud a passage of written or
"High" English, they are merely *translating* the text into spoken or
"Low" English. From here we could proceed to explain the
incongruities in words like "lead"/"led" by saying that the present-
and past-tense forms of the verb differ in both "High" English and
"Low" English, but the name of the metal carries the shape of the
present-tense verb in "High" English and the shape of the past-tense
verb in "Low" English. (It is of course possible to *write* "Low"
English, as when one uses a system like the IPA; and presumably it is
possible to speak "High" English as well.)
Answer:
There's a lot in that, Daniel. A while back I was part of a thread
discussing German-speaking learners of English. When my German
speaking students encounter a contraction such as "I'm" in a text - say
in a dialogue - which they're reading aloud, they always insist on
speaking it as "I am". German speakers are used to a language with
'high' and 'low' forms, and tend to make judgements about the 'quality'
of the language they encounter - and many seem to think using a
contraction like 'can't' in writing is evidence of 'low', uneducated
language.
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