If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#161
|
|||
|
|||
Brits don't speak foreign languages
Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-12-07 12:34:19 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: Dan Stephenson wrote in news:2011120618332497938-stephedanospam@maccom: I have heard of German being very different from one side of the country to the other, The most extreme dialects are Swiss German on one end of the scale, and Low German - the dialect spoken on the North Sea/Baltic Sea coasts - on the other end. They are absolutely incomprehensible to each other, but both are considered dialects of German. Do all the people know High German, to inter-communicate? Still, given a national television presence, I would have thought that would smooth out the language differences. I have had conversations with people who call it "book German" or something like that 8-). Since that's what I speak, that's generally what I'm replied to in, but I hear German I find difficult or impossible to follow, too. -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad .. |
#162
|
|||
|
|||
lingua anglica Brits don't speak foreign languages
David Horne wrote:
Erilar wrote: David Horne wrote: Martin wrote: On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 21:58:19 +0000, (David Horne) wrote: [] And there's OSX... Anagram of SOX, innit? Anagram of 'never bothered installing anti-viral software, never had one yet' I think. I had a problem with my office macbook a few weeks ago. The 'p' key stopped working (and a few others it has to be said.) Problem was, my password had a p in it. Have you tried cleaning the keyboard? I think I spilled something on it. Actually, I know I did. The college doesn't really support macs but they have consultants, so someone picked it up from my office on the Thursday, slipped the hard drive into a replacement (this only takes a minute) and I had my own back on Monday with a new keyboard casing and bezel... I was impressed with the service (though it would have been paid for...) Oh, that's very nice. I avoid that by having a keyboard cover, but then I have a separate keyboard-- much easier on old wrists. -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad .. |
#163
|
|||
|
|||
European languages Brits don't speak foreign languages
On 2011-12-09 18:34:32 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:
In Switzerland the opposite is true. People speak dialect almost all the time, even in school, in university lectures, radio and television. They all learn standard German in school at one stage and they all can read, write and speak it perfectly, but I understand it feels almost like a foreign language to them. Now this is most unusual, because aside from television resulting in norming, the distances involved are quite small even compared to the relatively "small" other European countries. Do the Francophone Swiss speak some kind of French Academie version of French, and the Italianate Swiss speak some kind of Italian? same of that other Romance language in Switzerland whose name I forget. Do you suppose this degree of isolation is simply the tradition of European history? As an American, there is a lot of movement, relatively. I have lived in Alaska, Colorado, Lousiana, Connecticut, went to grad school in New York, and now live and work in the great state of Texas. Go Cowboys! -- Dan Stephenson http://web.mac.com/stepheda Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too) |
#164
|
|||
|
|||
Bayernish Brits don't speak foreign languages
On 2011-12-09 16:58:09 -0600, Erilar said:
Dan Stephenson wrote: On 2011-12-07 12:34:19 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: Dan Stephenson wrote in news:2011120618332497938-stephedanospam@maccom: I have heard of German being very different from one side of the country to the other, The most extreme dialects are Swiss German on one end of the scale, and Low German - the dialect spoken on the North Sea/Baltic Sea coasts - on the other end. They are absolutely incomprehensible to each other, but both are considered dialects of German. Do all the people know High German, to inter-communicate? Still, given a national television presence, I would have thought that would smooth out the language differences. I have had conversations with people who call it "book German" or something like that 8-). Since that's what I speak, that's generally what I'm replied to in, but I hear German I find difficult or impossible to follow, too. I have heard the Bavarians have the strongest "accent". Is that true? or is it just a reflection of Bavaria being an independent kingdom (and to a degree, in language) until unification? Are Bavarians more understandable by Austrians nearby, or e.g. people from Brandenburg or Hesse? -- Dan Stephenson http://web.mac.com/stepheda Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too) |
#165
|
|||
|
|||
Bayernish Brits don't speak foreign languages
Dan Stephenson:
On 2011-12-09 16:58:09 -0600, Erilar said: Dan Stephenson wrote: On 2011-12-07 12:34:19 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: Dan Stephenson wrote in news:2011120618332497938-stephedanospam@maccom: I have heard of German being very different from one side of the country to the other, The most extreme dialects are Swiss German on one end of the scale, and Low German - the dialect spoken on the North Sea/Baltic Sea coasts - on the other end. They are absolutely incomprehensible to each other, but both are considered dialects of German. Do all the people know High German, to inter-communicate? Still, given a national television presence, I would have thought that would smooth out the language differences. I have had conversations with people who call it "book German" or something like that 8-). Since that's what I speak, that's generally what I'm replied to in, but I hear German I find difficult or impossible to follow, too. I have heard the Bavarians have the strongest "accent". This is something you should define, first. I currently live in a German region called Grafschaft Bentheim, where multiple versions of "Grafschafter Platt" are spoken. When I moved here, I was almost fluent in "Hochdeutsch" (regular German) with a small accent from the Cologne area. My native tongue is Dutch. Now, guess how much I understood of the dialect spoken by my neigbours at first? No, it's less. Or try and have locals from Ostfriesland and Cologne sit at a bar table, drink a beer, and have a conversation, each using their own heavy dialect. I am quite sure that they will hardly understand each other, unless they both try and speak regular German. -- Erick |
#166
|
|||
|
|||
European languages Brits don't speak foreign languages
On 12/10/2011 10:57 AM, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Dan wrote in news:2011121008241764603-stephedanospam@maccom: On 2011-12-09 18:34:32 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: In Switzerland the opposite is true. People speak dialect almost all the time, even in school, in university lectures, radio and television. They all learn standard German in school at one stage and they all can read, write and speak it perfectly, but I understand it feels almost like a foreign language to them. Now this is most unusual, because aside from television resulting in norming, the distances involved are quite small even compared to the relatively "small" other European countries. Yes the Swiss case is somewhat special. The phenomenon of a strong distinction between dialect and standard language is called diglossia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia There are some other instances in the world, e.g. in Greece where they have a high brow register "Katharevousa" ("pure language") which is intentionally constructed to be similar to Ancient Greek, and an everyday register "Dimotiki" ("folk language"). A similar example from the German speaking world is Luxembourg. The country is officially trilingual: German, French, Luxembourgish. The Luxembourgish language is really the local dialect of German which is the mother tongue of the locals. But they've gone one step further than Switzerland: They defined an orthography for it which is intentionally different from German, and declared it a separate language, even though in adjacent regions of Germany, Belgium and France the same language is spoken, but there it's considered just another dialect of German. Besides Luxembourgish, the country also uses standard German in the media, and French for official and legal purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Luxembourg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourgish_language Do the Francophone Swiss speak some kind of French Academie version of French, and the Italianate Swiss speak some kind of Italian? They have their local dialects and regional usages just as anywhere else, but the strong separation between dialect and a standard language that is felt as "foreign" doesn't exist there. same of that other Romance language in Switzerland whose name I forget. Romontsch. It's almost exclusively spoken in Switzerland, so the situation doesn't arise there. Do you suppose this degree of isolation is simply the tradition of European history? Well the Swiss case is special. Most national languages of today originated from a patchwork of closely related dialects. When nation states formed, standard languages were kind of artificially invented by scribes (or in some cases, the dialect of the capital was choses as standard). With the spread of mass media, those standards languages spread out and eventually evened out and absorbed the dialects. This happened in the German speaking world just as in other language communities. German speaking Switzerland is special because it did not take part in the process of evening out and absorption, when it happened in Germany and Austria. Yet the Swiss think of themselves as German speakers, they call their dialects "Berntüütsch" (= "Bern Deutsch") or "Züritüütsch" (= "Zurich Deutsch"). All their newspapers are printed in standard German, television news are in standard German (but not most other shows), and Swiss writers have contributed to the German speaking literature. The main reason for this peculiar development is probably the fact that Switzerland became an independent nation with a strong sense of identity a long time ago, but for a number of reasons could not bring itself to declare its dialect(s) a separate language like Luxembourg did. Do not the two forms of Norwegian [Bokmål ; "book language") and Nynorsk; "new Norwegian"]. have equal status? -- James Silverton, Potomac I'm *not* |
#167
|
|||
|
|||
Bayernish Brits don't speak foreign languages
Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-12-09 16:58:09 -0600, Erilar said: Dan Stephenson wrote: On 2011-12-07 12:34:19 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: Dan Stephenson wrote in news:2011120618332497938-stephedanospam@maccom: I have heard of German being very different from one side of the country to the other, The most extreme dialects are Swiss German on one end of the scale, and Low German - the dialect spoken on the North Sea/Baltic Sea coasts - on the other end. They are absolutely incomprehensible to each other, but both are considered dialects of German. Do all the people know High German, to inter-communicate? Still, given a national television presence, I would have thought that would smooth out the language differences. I have had conversations with people who call it "book German" or something like that 8-). Since that's what I speak, that's generally what I'm replied to in, but I hear German I find difficult or impossible to follow, too. I have heard the Bavarians have the strongest "accent". Is that true? or is it just a reflection of Bavaria being an independent kingdom (and to a degree, in language) until unification? Are Bavarians more understandable by Austrians nearby, or e.g. people from Brandenburg or Hesse? Well, I've heard Germans from other parts of the country claim the Bavarians are the hardest to understand 8-). Modern Hochdeutsch is closer to the dialects in the middle of the country, but then, Luther's translation of the Bible into German was into middle German, which encouraged others to read and write that dialect as a result. -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad |
#168
|
|||
|
|||
European languages Brits don't speak foreign languages
In Switzerland the opposite is true. People speak dialect almost all the
time, even in school, in university lectures, radio and television. They all learn standard German in school at one stage and they all can read, write and speak it perfectly, but I understand it feels almost like a foreign language to them. Now this is most unusual, because aside from television resulting in norming, the distances involved are quite small even compared to the relatively "small" other European countries. All it takes is a political boundary and people will persuade themselves that their whole culture is different from that of their neighbours. Along the border between England and Scotland, dialects used to shade into each other indistinguishably. Over the last 50 years, as England and Scotland have drifted further apart politically, the dialects have developed a sharp national boundary - the Scottish side modelling its speech on Edinburgh and the English side on Newcastle. There is a bus that zigzags a few miles each side of the border on its way from Galashiels to Berwick and you can hear which side of the border you're on by the passengers' accents as they get on and off. Before WW2 you wouldn't have heard anything like that. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland mobile 07800 739 557 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin |
#169
|
|||
|
|||
Greek language European languages Brits don't speak foreign languages
On 2011-12-10 09:57:42 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:
Dan Stephenson wrote in news:2011121008241764603-stephedanospam@maccom: On 2011-12-09 18:34:32 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said: In Switzerland the opposite is true. People speak dialect almost all the time, even in school, in university lectures, radio and television. They all learn standard German in school at one stage and they all can read, write and speak it perfectly, but I understand it feels almost like a foreign language to them. Now this is most unusual, because aside from television resulting in norming, the distances involved are quite small even compared to the relatively "small" other European countries. Yes the Swiss case is somewhat special. The phenomenon of a strong distinction between dialect and standard language is called diglossia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia There are some other instances in the world, e.g. in Greece where they have a high brow register "Katharevousa" ("pure language") which is intentionally constructed to be similar to Ancient Greek, and an everyday register "Dimotiki" ("folk language"). In my last trip to Greece, I stayed at the Kalamaki Beach Hotel south of Corinth (nice hotel by the way, for those similarly picky people out there) and the barman was American, rather, a Greek immigrant who recently returned from America after living there 30 years. What he said, is that modern Greeks cannot understand the ancient Greek at all. Or rather, they could "read" it but could not understand it. I interpreted this to be similar to how we can "read" Latin but do not understand it. Was he referring to that Katharevousa, do you suppose? If so, it sounds like something pretty rare. -- Dan Stephenson http://web.mac.com/stepheda Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too) |
#170
|
|||
|
|||
LuxemGermench European languages Brits don't speak foreign languages
On 2011-12-10 09:57:42 -0600, Wolfgang Schwanke said:
A similar example from the German speaking world is Luxembourg. The country is officially trilingual: German, French, Luxembourgish. The Luxembourgish language is really the local dialect of German which is the mother tongue of the locals. I read somewhere something to the effect, that Luxembourgish is for common speech, and between German and French, one is for all the media and one is for the workplace. Similar to "Spanglish" here in southwestern USA, I bet there is a lot of LuxemGermench in Luxembourg. As an American who only knows tourist-sufficient foreign languages, I'm fascinated how people can know and be fluent in so many languages! -- Dan Stephenson http://web.mac.com/stepheda Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too) |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Learning Languages | higginster | Europe | 3 | November 10th, 2006 10:40 PM |
What other languages | Lava | Europe | 99 | January 29th, 2006 03:12 PM |
A site for learning to speak a different foreign words | [email protected] | Europe | 8 | August 26th, 2005 07:37 PM |
Speak Any Foreign Language? | [email protected] | USA & Canada | 0 | August 25th, 2005 07:09 AM |
Learn Foreign Languages Online Free | Rodolfo | Latin America | 0 | October 19th, 2003 04:05 PM |