One principle of linguistics

I’ve said certain key principles of linguistics should be understood by all fl teachers if not by all teachers, e.g. languages are changed by people learning them in large number in the speech community. The large number of Spanish-speakers learning English gives English-speaking students a lot of exposure to expressions like “The bus barely got here” meaning “The bus just got here” as opposed to the native interpretation “The bus almost didn’t make it.” We can’t predict what features will be taken up as part of the host language, but we can observe when large numbers of non-Spanish-speaking people use pronunciation, intonation, lexical choices, and grammar features characteristic of English language learners with Spanish as a first language.
I’m sure teachers in districts with a large number of Arabic, Russian, or Chinese speakers can give us examples of this, too.

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