Thunberg is a Swedish resident who speaks English as a second language.
Many 2nd generation immigrants speak better English than 6th generation Australians.
These Australians are not jealous of Thunberg’s speech-competence nor do they necessarily want to speak better than her, instead they have a deep-seated bias against people who speak too well.
Greta’s accomplishment as an elite English speaker is amazing for someone born and raised speaking Swedish in a non-English-speaking country; even more-so that she probably hasn’t spent a lifetime nurturing her English.
Most Australians don’t speak clearly and many don’t speak confidently or functionally and it’s not only tradespeople who are impeded but also politicians, judges, air traffic controllers and doctors - it’s across the board.
You must log in or register to comment.
Greta is a fine speaker, but this article proposes that the reaction to her is caused not by what she says but by how she says it? Ridiculous.
The author is a paid speaking coach, so it looks to me like there’s a conflict of interest here.
- Taleya ( @Taleya@aussie.zone ) 14•11 months ago
Dude, aussies absolutely have a fucked up relation with how well spoken someone is.
Probably from British cunts trying to enforce their views on how others should speak on us for so long.
It’s basically a signifier that you’re some pretentious rich cunt who’s never worked a day in their lives yet gets everything.
- Taleya ( @Taleya@aussie.zone ) English4•11 months ago
…that only works if you’re so far up Britain’s social arse you’re oblivious to realities of Australia.
Australia’s biggest entitled cuntrags speak not with rp, but strine. Gina the hutt is closest you’ll get and even that’s pure aussie
And yet the throngs of snobs in the rich suburbs beg to differ.
Two rich mining scumbags does not a trend make.
- Taleya ( @Taleya@aussie.zone ) English5•11 months ago
Ah yes, the famed well-spokenness of morrison.
You’re all over the place. Which is your cause, pompous british arseholes or affected snobs? 'Cos i gotta tell ya, as someone with unusually precise diction due chiefly to (free, government-paid for the disadvantaged) dental as a kid and a wide vocabulary due to reading everything i could get my hands on at the local (free) library, the idea that intellect and speech are something to deride and indicators of wealth is utter horseshit.
Ah yes, the strine-strucken dialect of Turnbull et al.
It’s the same thing. The class bullshit of Britain gave root to still exists in contemporary Australia. You’ll have to excuse my feeble intellect because I’m not privileged enough to be given free dental nor can I afford to pay for it, so maybe it’s the constant pain I’m in or the teeth I’ve had to have pulled, but any Tom, Dick, or Harry should be capable of understanding the difference between simply using a wide vocabulary and these fucks but I suppose it’s easier to seek offense over understanding.
Just going to point out, that you’re the only one in this thread who sounds offended. You started with the offended tone, I don’t think you get to play that card.
You’re right.
It didn’t make much sense to me, but it’s content. Make of it as you will.
I will admit I enjoyed imagining Rowan Dean from Sky News raving about the quality of her enunciation.
New Matilda had put out some interesting stuff in the past but if this low tier clickbait garbage by Dean Frenkel is the direction they’re going I suppose I should write them off.
Independent Australia also has some questionable articles too lately.
But then ABC is basically terrible and I’m debating whether or not to even bother using them as a source.
That said, I’m not posting these because I agree with it, think of me as a bot just transferring articles and summaries to a link aggregator with minor discernment.
ABC News on the air is okay.
ABC News website? Why? Just… why? Half the time you load it up, every second story is a human interest story about the struggles of being poor, disabled, a woman, or gay. And I don’t mean a mix, I mean they seem to have a different theme for each day of the week. Tuesdays are Poverty Porn day, Wednesday Women’s Woes, Thursdays it’s a slate of disability inspiration porn that’s so saccharine and maudlin that I can’t read it… and I am disabled. Instead of having to pick the news stories that interest me, it’s a struggle just to pick the actual news stories.
Oh damn, now I’m not going to be able to resist categorising each day’s articles into your Icaria-Dewey Decimal System.
That’s only the lead stories that get pushed to you by default on the front page, it’s much better if you make the effort to customise your feed. In any case, cost of living is a big issue right now and those human stories are probably quite important for some readers.
A fairer critique of ABC News would be the clickbait headlines they run on the front page, that are often quite misleading compared to the secondary titles or the articles themselves. For example, there was one today with the headline ‘PM warns there will be no other constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians if Voice fails’, but the actual article title was ‘“Not focused on hypotheticals”: PM not considering other forms of Indigenous recognition if Voice fails’. Those are two quite different statements. And if you actually read the article itself, or watch the Insiders interview it is based on, nowhere does Albanese directly say either of those things. That was actually a line that Speers, who co-wrote this article, asked while questioning Albanese. Somehow that question not being answered directly has been twisted into an assertion from Albanese.
New Matilda had put out some interesting stuff in the past but if this low tier clickbait garbage by Dean Frenkel is the direction they’re going I suppose I should write them off.
Conservatives hate the truth and reality and they hate people who espouse it.
They are insulted by the audacity of her age – a protester who became a worldwide superstar at the age of 15; they’re disoriented by her lack of regard for social niceties and particularly dislike that she’s given airtime and taken seriously. They don’t like her tone and intensity. “How dare you?”
I mean the article starts out on a sensible foot - she’s an awful choice of spokesperson. I probably agree with 90% of what she has to say, but I’m not going to get as far as finding out. I bristle at celebrity at the best of times, never mind when some team of marketing people and managers keep shoving some blunt kid in my face.
Perhaps there is some truth in this article but to call Sweden a non-English speaking country is incorrect. All students study English at school and IMHO speak it better than many Australians do upon graduation. They might not use it everyday but the only barrier to speaking great English I have come across is confidence to do so.