Seriously thoughtful Learning a new language

[Lady Blue]

Sadly, I speak only English.

When I was in the 3rd grade we had a teacher who had previously been a college teacher. Why she was teaching 3rd grade at that time, I never knew.

Anyway, she was teaching the class how to speak (and write) Latin. It wasn't part of the curriculum, but in those days, as long as the other studies didn't suffer, parents and faculty didn't care.

It was amazing how much Latin we learned that year because of the way the teacher integrated it into the rest of the day. When she spoke in English, she would then say the same thing in Latin, and had the children do the same. It was such a shame that by the middle of the following year, with no one to converse with in Latin, as the old adage goes: "if you don't use it, you lose it." So true.

As a youngster, I used to be real good at picking up accents. I could mimic pretty much any accent I heard and sound genuine (as if it were my native accent.) I have since lost that ability.

I took 2 years of French in high school, which I think was pretty much a waste. In all that time they never got into the conversational part of the language, a poor strategy I feel. We were taught the gramatical rules of the language, the accent grave, ague, etc., the gender of words and articles, etc. We could say that we "put the pencil on the desk," or "the book on he chair," or other such fragmented usage, but not much else we could use. And once again, without others to use the language with on any regular basis, most of what was learned was forgotten.

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.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

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.

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.

[MickeyC]

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.

[Lady Blue]

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.

The more beer you drink, the better your eyesight gets too . . .

[krisk]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

And I have to admit that making "English" the official language in the US is still a going concern. And one I am absolutely against. There is no doubt that English is the dominant language of the US, but I never want it made the "official" language of the US, anymore than I would ever want *any* religion made the official religion.

When that happens, the US becomes much smaller. And very insignificant.

oh I completely dissagree. "The Official Language of a Country should be that in which its Constitution is Written." (and as far as I know that is a direct quote of me, circa 1985 in the Officers Lounge in Friedberg Germany.

without one official language, issues become incredibly unwieldly with "official and legal translations", interpreters, and so on. I worked as a paralegal for my Dad for awhile in College. he had a wrongful death case in Ireland and the hoops we had to jump through to get documents translated was hell. all the attornies and judges spoke English, but the official language of the court was Irish.

I've seen so many other situations where legally mandated translations into spanish, french, hmong, chinese, tibetan.... ahhhh! it just gets NUTS!

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by krisk

oh I completely dissagree. "The Official Language of a Country should be that in which its Constitution is Written." (and as far as I know that is a direct quote of me, circa 1985 in the Officers Lounge in Friedberg Germany.

In the UK, we don't have a Constitution. Where does that leave us - sign language?

[krisk]

in your case, go back to the Magna Carta

[rlparker]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Differences in vowel sounds are what principally differentiate one "accent" from another...

I recently finished reading Cryptonomicon. When one of the protagonists first went to England, the other men in a meeting kept referring to woe-to-hice. It took the protagonist a while to realize they were referring to him; his name was Waterhouse.

Originally Posted by HarryT

...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.

I'm in the southern U.S. I just said all 3 words aloud (why are my co-workers are looking at me a bit stranger than usual ) and, yep, they all come out about the same.

Originally Posted by cassidym

...The more German beer you drink, the better you speak German....

Or maybe it's, "the more German beer you drink, the better you THINK you speak German"

[ravenne]

Originally Posted by Alphapheemail

.....

Goal: perfect greek, and french. Then attack Portuguese

Attacking Portugal? Always a good idea!!!!

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.

Definitely! Hops activates the brain cells that are responsible for language skills. If you drink a lot of it you end up speaking the most advanced form of German: so called yodelling.

[Verencat]

Originally Posted by ficbot

So I would rather focus my efforts on improving my French as much as I can. I have thought about posting a little in the French forums here (I wold love to do some ebook reading in French) but have been shy. I know my writing is not as good as my speaking is, and I don't want the actual French people to feel like I am interrupting their 'real' conversations with my 'learning French' issues.

Hey! Think of all of us writing in the English forums and fearing to use the wrong word or to make a spelling mistake that can completely change the meaning of what we write! (Each post - despite what everyone might think - takes me forever to write because I re-read 5 times, then spell check, then re-read, post and edit almost every time (suddenly remembering a conversation between Kaz and DGMa about paranoia))

Come to the French forum pleeeeeeaaaasssseeeee! I'm just getting familiarized with it, we could navigate through it together!


Personally, I'm a Francophone that started to learn English in school at the age of eight - English classes in Québec are mandatory until university. Most people I know who took exactly the same classes as me don't speak or write English, since the classes focused on grammar, and I think I succeeded a little better thanks to an unhealthy curiosity - my parents listen to tv in English, and they spoke English when they didn't want me to understand something when I was a kid, it drove me crazy, so I worked to change that state of things.

Then I went to college and took Spanish and German classes. Spanish I still can speak enough to get me through some conversations, but German just left me a year after I stopped the classes, since I never got the chance to practice (and that is going to change thanks to MR and Ravenne!!! )

When I studied sociology in university, I took an Arabic class for fun with The Ex, who has Lebanese origins, but in a whole semester, we only got to learn the alphabet, calligraphy, numbers and about 20 basic sentences. He forgot everything in about 2 months and it took me about 4 to be alphabetically clueless, but I remember phonetically 2-3 sentences.

While we're on the issue of language learning: I read that speaking and reading more than one language keeps the brain healthier and diminishes impact of Alzheimer, or at least pushes it back a few years. Start learning!

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

And I have to admit that making "English" the official language in the US is still a going concern. And one I am absolutely against. There is no doubt that English is the dominant language of the US, but I never want it made the "official" language of the US, anymore than I would ever want *any* religion made the official religion.

When that happens, the US becomes much smaller. And very insignificant.

I don't know about the language thing, but there will never be an official religion unless they change the Constitution and that would take an Act of Congress (which will never happen).

I lived in South Florida for 8 years. The language barrier can be very frustrating. My only thought would be that if I were moving to a foreign country where the majority speaks a particular language, I would make every attempt to learn that language. There are many people who move to the US who don't believe they should learn English. Whether it is the "official" language or not, it is the "unofficial" language of the country. I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent to replace road signs, etc. in multiple languages. I wouldn't expect a non-English speaking country to replace their signs if I moved there.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by kazbates

I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent to replace road signs, etc. in multiple languages. I wouldn't expect a non-English speaking country to replace their signs if I moved there.

The below is a road sign in English and Welsh (as is the law in Wales). Unfortunately, the council e-mailed the English text to their interpreter and got an out-of-office reply in Welsh. Not being Welsh speakers they went ahead and used it anyway. The Welsh says something like, "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated"!

Glad we're paying for that!

[Abelturd]

Originally Posted by Verencat

When I studied sociology in university, I took an Arabic class for fun with The Ex, who has Lebanese origins, but in a whole semester, we only got to learn the alphabet, calligraphy, numbers and about 20 basic sentences. He forgot everything in about 2 months and it took me about 4 to be alphabetically clueless, but I remember phonetically 2-3 sentences.

While we're on the issue of language learning: I read that speaking and reading more than one language keeps the brain healthier and diminishes impact of Alzheimer, or at least pushes it back a few years. Start learning!

Besides my native language, I actively use only English; I was taking classes in German when I was in high school and back then I used to watch a lot of german programs on TV; telly actually helps one's vocabulary tremendously.
Then I lost contact with German, because I didn't need it.
I went through several phases, when I wanted to take up Spanish and Russian, but I've never gotten around to work on them systematically, so I forgot even the little I'd picked up.
By now, the situation hasn't changed, I still plan on learning new languages, because I see them as bridges to new cultures. Personally, I have no need to learn them, other than my interest in getting to know new countries and cultures and this makes it pretty hard to motivate oneself for systematic work.

I'd like to ask people who fluently speak more than one foreign language - how do you maintain your skill in an environment, where you don't come into contact with that particular language? Because it always leaves my mouth hanging open when I hear of people who fluently speak and are capable to read books in 3 or 4 foreign languages; it has to require a great deal of effort and time to maintain prowess in all of them, hasn't it?

Btw. the sign above is awesome, I had a good laugh.

[Jaro]

I am from slovakia a part in 95 split czekoslovakia. I reading czek (more books). In school i was learning rusian and in TV loking ORF(german). When the socialism ended I lern a little bit english.So I read czek, german, rusian, english but its a hell when i have to speek or write with them and very litle people understand slovak here on the forum.
I like it here anyway.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Jaro

I am from slovakia a part in 95 split czekoslovakia. I reading czek (more books). In school i was learning rusian and in TV loking ORF(german). When the socialism ended I lern a little bit english.So I read czek, german, rusian, english but its a hell when i have to speek or write with them and very litle people understand slovak here on the forum.
I like it here anyway.

Jaro, I have been to Slovakia three times this year (work), to Kosice. Most people there seem to speak English very well - you included. It's certainly a lot better than my Slovak!