Lover of languages: It might sound strange that someone would hope to learn about the English language in Switzerland. But that's exactly what University of Fribourg linguistics professor, Peter Trudgill, has been doing for nine years.

Summary

---

Expat Profile

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Lover of languages: It might sound strange that someone would hope to learn about the English language in Switzerland. But that's exactly what University of Fribourg linguistics professor, Peter Trudgill, has been doing for nine years.

If you say in Swedish that your hostess's smorgasbord is "devilish good," she may be offended, since words having to do with the devil are serious swear words in Sweden.

If a New Yorker pronounces the word "car' without saying the "r", his listeners will assign him a working-class background, but if an Englishman in Bristol says "cah" instead of "car," people assume he belongs to the middle class.

These examples are reminders that a particular word or accent is, per se, no better or worse than any other, Instead, different ways of speaking have the values that we give them. The study of language as it is formed and evaluated by society is called sociolin...

See the full content of this document

---