Broken English Definition and Examples

Broken English is a  pejorative term for the limited register of English used by a non-native speaker. Broken English may be fragmented, incomplete, and/or marked by faulty syntax and inappropriate diction  because the speakers knowledge of the vocabulary isnt as robust as a native speaker, and the grammar has to be calculated in the persons head rather than coming out naturally, almost without thought, like a native speakers words would. â€Å"Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English, says American author H. Jackson Brown Jr. It means they know another language.† Prejudice Language How linguistic prejudice manifests itself: A study published in the International Journal of Applied Linguistics in 2005 showed how prejudice against people of non-Western European countries played a role in whether a person classified a nonnative speakers English as broken. Neither does it take a scholar to look at the portrayal of Native Americans (as well as other nonwhite peoples) in movies and their stereotypical broken English to see the prejudice inherent there. By extension, opponents of establishing a national language for the United States see introducing that type of legislation as promoting a form of institutional racism or nationalism against immigrants.   In American English: Dialects and Variation, W. Wolfram noted,  [A] resolution adopted unanimously by the Linguistic Society of America at its annual meeting in 1997 asserted that all human language systems—spoken, signed, and written—are fundamentally regular and that characterizations of socially disfavored varieties as slang, mutant, defective, ungrammatical, or broken English are incorrect and demeaning. For example, it is used as a comic device to poke fun or ridicule, such as this bit from TVs Faulty Towers:   Manuel:  It  is  surprise  party.Basil: Yes?Manuel:  She no here.Basil: Yes?Manuel:  That is  surprise!(The Anniversary,  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹Fawlty Towers, 1979) Neutral Usage H. Kasimirs take on it in Haphazard Reality contends that broken English is a universal  language: There exists today a universal language that is spoken and understood almost everywhere: it is  Broken English. I am not referring to Pidgin-English—a highly formalized and restricted branch of B.E.—but to the much more general language that is used by the waiters in Hawaii, prostitutes in Paris and ambassadors in Washington, by businessmen from Buenos Aires, by scientists at international meetings and by dirty-postcard pictures peddlers in Greece. (Harper, 1984) And  Thomas Heywood terms that English itself is broken because its got so many pieces and parts from other languages:  Our English tongue, which hath  ben  the most harsh, uneven, and  broken  language of the world, part Dutch, part Irish, Saxon, Scotch, Welsh, and indeed a  gallimaffry  of many, but perfect in none, is now by this secondary means of playing, continually refined, every writer striving in  himselfe  to  adde  a new flourish unto it. (Apology for Actors, 1607) Positive Usage Pejorative though it may be, the term actually sounds nice when William Shakespeare uses it: Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music, and thy English   broken; therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in  broken English:  wilt  thou  have  me? (The King addressing Katharine in William Shakespeares  King Henry V)