[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The first man who attempted to do a systematic survey of American accents in the early 20th century categorised them on the basis of how people pronounced the three words "marry", "Mary", and "merry". In British English those three words have distinctly different vowel sounds, but in most American accents two of the three - or even all three! - use the same vowel.

Yep, they all sound the same when i saw them! They all have the "air" sound in there.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

As a late teenage, I and a friend used to have grand times when we were in public places, listening to people talking Spanish behind us in lines, and then speaking back and for between us in broken German, which the Spanish speakers didn't know. The sudden silence and nasty looks were priceless. How dare we talk in a language they didn't understand. (Which was what they were doing....)

dh and I had a habit of speaking Navajo to one another in public (especially to figure out tips- he needed help but didn't want the waitress to know what he was asking me about ) Sometimes our conversation gets a bit raunchy and when we went back to the Navajo rez last spring, all it took was one offended look from a grandma for me to realize "whoops! now we are around people who actually understand us!"

I also have a tendency to use Hawaiian with the kids in public, especially if a little 'correction' is needed. we don't see a lot of Hawaiian speakers in public, but sometimes we are surprised when someone speaks to us in Hawaiian. But it's great fun to eavesdrop on Hawaiian speaking public gossipers who assume I don't speak Hawaiian. With three blond, blue-eyed kids, and lighter skin, I don't look like I would speak it.

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

That's why my English is a bit better than passable. Though my spelling is still horrible (in any language, especially in Dutch), my understanding of the language is fair. I even dreamt in English when I stayed in the US and couldn't remember half of the Dutch words when I talked to my mother on the phone.

I have that problem transferring from Hawaiian to English. The structure of the Hawaiian language is totally different from English, and the thought is very different as well. it's one thing to speak and converse and live in one language or the other, but it takes a bit more brainpower to convert the English thinking in the Hawaiian thinking and vice versa. Most other languages I'm familiar with in speaking (Norwegian, German, Spanish) have the subject/predicate-- noun/verb thing going on, but Hawaiian (and Navajo) have a totally different structure that truly reflects the cultural differences. After a full day of meetings or teaching in Hawaiian, it's hard to switch back to English. sometimes I find myself struggling for words in my native tongue (English) because the Hawaiian words pop up much quicker.

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

I think the best time to learn a language is as a child (generally speaking.) Some countries offer that option (or it may be mandatory) in the younger school grades. I think that's fantastic. But to my knowledge (which is often lacking) the US still doesn't do that, except in the cases of "English as a second language" to those children in American schools that don't speak English. Seems unfair to use resources to teach it one way and not the other; that is to say to teach foreign speaking children English, but to not teach our English speaking children another language.

I teach in a Hawaiian Immersion school, meaning that all instructions in grades k-4 is given in the Hawaiian language only, and about 45 minutes / day is devoted to English in 5th grade and it increases a bit as you go up. I know there are a few other immersion models out there. There are very very few native Hawaiian speaks (in terms of being born into the language, and that being the primary language in the home); there is the Manaleo (native speakers) contingent that is now very advanced in age and the numbers are quickly dwindling, and there are the children being born now whose parents went through Hawaiian immersion programs growing up and are raising their children from birth on as bilingual, and the numbers are growing, but it's still a struggle.

I totally agree that it's easier to learn another language as a child. I think it's a shame that, in the US, it's far more common to have foreign languages offered first in middle school, if not waiting until high school. I knwo there are some schools around the US that do some form of immersion or partial immersion or something else, but I don't know how many there are. I look at my own kids, and I'm so glad they have the ability to think and express themselves and communicate in two languages, and that, hopefully, they should be able to learn other languages more easily later in life.

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

One thing you learn while learning another language, is not only the language, but you will also pick up a bit on the culture. Most often, the scenes depicted in the learning books are about the country the language is from (at least, good study books). But most importantly, you learn that there are other languages, other cultures.

In graduate school, I wrote paper after paper talking about language and culture and the inability to separate the two of them. The books written in Hawaiian are often telling cultural stories. The 'Olelo No'eau (wise sayings) are so much richer in Hawaiian than they are translated to English. They are also a big window into the culture of Hawai'i.

Originally Posted by cassidym

An interesting phenomena I noticed while I lived in Germany (Stuttgart und Berlin) was this:
The more German beer you drink, the better you speak German. Must have something to do with the hops.

Works with Hawaiian too-- any type of beer will do I think it has something to do with relaxing you enough that you let go of your uncertainty and out comes the stuff you really do know, you just couldn't always think of under stress. Fairly early on, I was at a bar with some colleagues who had gone through the 4 year immersion college program, plus had been teaching for probably 15 years in Hawaiian. Quite capable speakers. Having only taken thrice monthly classes for about 14 months before starting my new career as a Hawaiian immersion teacher (essentially mostly self-taught), I was understandably intimidated. After a few beers, I'm told (I didn't experience it this way) I was jabbering on and on pretty fluently in a very loud voice.

Another interesting thing is that my fluency in Hawaiian and my slight knowledge of Navajo are mostly to do with speaking and listening, while my small abilities in German and Norwegian are more to do with reading and writing. I was participating in a Norwegian forum for a while as a good way to review and practice my language skills. Both Hawaiian and Navajo strike me as much more klutzy when written rather than spoken.

This also begs the question : what defines fluency? What makes one fluent? there are plenty of Native English speakers I don't consider fluent in English. Are you automatically fluent in your native language? is fluency defined by your ability speak a second language equally as well as your native language? to speak it enough to be understood? is it just speaking, or does it also have to do with reading and writing?

Sorry so long-winded... language is a bit of a passion of mine....