Brits don't speak foreign languages

On 30/11/2011 4:50 AM, Martin wrote:
On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:12:20 -0500, Dave Smith
wrote:

snip

My neighbours OTOH, came to Canada in 1951 and they sound like
they just arrived. Both of them have such strong accents and limited
vocabulary that it is difficult to understand them.

Americans or British? :-)

Italian.

On 30/11/2011 1:53 PM, David Hatunen wrote:

There's a long history of Americans being nasty to immigrants who didn't
use English (even now we have attempts by some groups to make English the
official language of the USA, although it's a bit unclear what an
official language is). I think some Americans are afraid if a group of
non-English speakers is carrying on a conversation they're actually
saying nasty things about them.

I think that it has a lot more to do with the US being a nation of
immigrants who made an effort to assimilate..... newcomers adapting the
majority language, as opposed to newcomers expecting the majority to
accommodate them. Language and other cultural issues can be a major
barriers to friendship and understanding. Just as maintaining a
language can be a source of nationalist pride, using the majority
language is a unifying force.

But in the Southwest there's no particular animus, although that's mostly
because most the Hispanics do use English when talking to us gringos.
Between themselves the Hispanics may use either language or that odd
merger called "Spanglish".


When I was a kid my best friend was German. They generally spoke German
at home, English if addressing me, and usually translating for my
benefit. Here we are 50 years later and they now tend to speak English
even among themselves. A few years ago we stayed with some friends in
Sweden. They all spoke Beautiful English and always spoke in English
when we were around.

Erilar writes:

Doug Anderson wrote:
Living in the US, unless you
have some specific need, learning a language besides English just
isn't the most practical way to spend your time. I'm not saying it
isn't worth doing for other, non-practical reasons. But given the
lack of practical reasons, it is hardly surprising that few Americans
learn other languages besides English.

There are other reasons for learning another language than plans to travel
to a country where it's spoken, and even that doesn't apply too well at the
age one OUGHT to start learning another language.

Yes, I said that in my post. I said it even in the part you quoted.

David Hatunen writes:

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:38:18 -0800, Doug Anderson wrote:

writes:

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 02:15:44 +0000 (UTC), David Hatunen
wrote:

Here in the Southwest a lot of native English-speakers can get by with
Spanish, but it doesn't seem like much of a choice for anywhere east
of the Rocky Mountains save, maybe for southern Florida....

Have you visited New York, Philly, or DC in recent years? 8

Yep. You can hear Russian, Spanish, Hebrew and various Chinese
languages in all those places. But that doesn't mean you need to know
any of these languages to get by in those places, and depending on what
you are doing and who you are meeting, it may be that all of these
languages would end up being useless to you in those places.

Learning to read the Chinese language menu in a Chinese restaurant might
be useful. Or kind of scary.

San Francisco and its nearby suburbs have a lot of spoken languages,
including the ones you list above, but Tagalog is also a common language
there (adjacent Daly City, where we lived, is sometimes called "Little
Manila") along with a few others. Things like pay phone instructions may
be in several languages.

Tagalog! There's one I didn't think of.

David Hatunen wrote:
On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:52:15 +0000, Erilar wrote:

Doug Anderson wrote:
Living in the US, unless you
have some specific need, learning a language besides English just isn't
the most practical way to spend your time. I'm not saying it isn't
worth doing for other, non-practical reasons. But given the lack of
practical reasons, it is hardly surprising that few Americans learn
other languages besides English.

There are other reasons for learning another language than plans to
travel to a country where it's spoken, and even that doesn't apply too
well at the age one OUGHT to start learning another language.
"Practically", learning any language makes another easier to learn
another you may need later,

Big "if" operating there. And I'm not sure learning German or Spanish is
going to help you much if you develope a need to know, say Finnish (I'm
seeing a lot of Indo-Europeancentrism here).

No, I'm referring to having learned another language consciously rather
than by infant immersion. It makes it easier to do it again, though
obviously more so for another language in the same family.

it helps one better understand the thinking
of people who grew up in another culture, NOT English-speaking,

I should think one would have to become pretty fluent in the other
language before it would be of more cultural help than simply reading one
of "Culture Shock" books.

Reading in your native language doesn't help get into the mindset of
speakers of a different language in the same way.

it's
good intellectual exercise,

Well, Doug did say, " I'm not saying it isn't worth doing for other, non-
practical reasons." In fact, he covered most of what you are saying
already.

It's supposed to help ward off Alzheimer's, too. 8-)

and it's a LOT more fun for many people than math, for instance.

I suppose that's true, but the vast majority of people I know don't
consider learning a language to be fun. Some of them do consider learning
math to be fun, but very few learn math just to have fun. It's fun for
them because they're going into a field that uses it, like physics, and
by their nature they find things like math to be fun..


I first started learning German with no expectation
of ever having a "practical" use for it just because I thought it would
be fun. Years later it became part of how I made a living.

Well, there's one case. Are you generalizing your experience to most
other people? And you seem to have been lucky; what if you had learned
Mandarin?

Nowadays that would be rather practical, wouldn't it? 8-). Certainly more
so than the other languages I've studied, which are all dead!




--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

On 29 Nov 2011 16:31:10 GMT, Bert wrote in post :
:

In Markku Gríµ·í±¯os
wrote:

A recently published study

Which?

Definitely not the same survey but these EC results from 2006 are in the
same ball-park:
Summary he
http://ec.europa.eu/languages/langua...-survey_en.htm

Links to the document in the right-hand panel.





tells that 64% of all the Britons can speak only English.

If they don't travel, or restrict their travel to English-speaking
areas, they shouldn't encounter any difficulties.


--
Tim C.

On 01/12/11 13:17, Tim C. wrote:
On 29 Nov 2011 16:31:10 GMT, Bert wrote in post :
:

In Markku Gr��os
wrote:

A recently published study

Which?

Definitely not the same survey but these EC results from 2006 are in the
same ball-park:
Summary he
http://ec.europa.eu/languages/langua...-survey_en.htm

Links to the document in the right-hand panel.

And on reading it the requirement is to be able to hold a conversation
in a language not their own where they do not have to ever resort to
words in their native language.

In which case I'm very surprised that the figures are as high as they are.

--
William Black

Free men have open minds
If you want loyalty, buy a dog...

On Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:57:38 +0000, William Black wrote in post :
:

And on reading it the requirement is to be able to hold a conversation
in a language not their own where they do not have to ever resort to
words in their native language.

In which case I'm very surprised that the figures are as high as they are.

I've been living and working in Germany and Austria since 1985, I still
need to resort to English works. Regularly.

(OK, I haven't tried to formally learn the language, I just picked it up as
I went along. So I should be better than I am)

--
Tim C.

William Black wrote:

On 30/11/11 07:17, David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*) wrote:
William wrote:

On 29/11/11 19:47, David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*) wrote:
William wrote:

On 29/11/11 16:21, Markku Grönroos wrote:
A recently published study tells that 64% of all the Britons can speak
only English.

Well about 10% of the population wasn't born here, so that means that
only 26% of the people born in the UK can speak a foreign language.

As every child who passes through the British school system receives
lessons in at least one foreign language I beg leave to doubt that
survey.

I know it's a century since you've been to school, but even you should
know that learning a language at school doesn't mean you can speak it.


I have addressed this point in another post.

Poorly.


Interestingly nobody else has answered it so I imagine it stands by itself.

As your own position seems to be that learning languages in school is
useless I'm inclined to think that you're digging yourself into a hole.

I never claimed such a thing. I wonder if learning English in school did
you any good.

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)

Tim C. wrote:

On Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:57:38 +0000, William Black wrote in post :
:

And on reading it the requirement is to be able to hold a conversation
in a language not their own where they do not have to ever resort to
words in their native language.

In which case I'm very surprised that the figures are as high as they are.

I've been living and working in Germany and Austria since 1985, I still
need to resort to English works.

So I see.

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)