Brits don't speak foreign languages

On 02/12/2011 2:17 PM, Runge 131 wrote:

Most of the Danes I know speak German as well as English.

Very, very few Danes speak better German than English.

I didn't say better.

It would be
utterly silly for an American to use German in Denmark.

True.

I recall overhearing a conversation at the next table in a restaurant in
Copenhagen. From the accents, I gathered that the people were German,
French, Italian and a couple eastern Europeans. The common language they
used was English. At another restaurant we were seated next to some
Germans. The waiter did not speak German so their order was taken in
English. At a restaurant a man at the next table struck up a
conversation with us in English. He was Swedish.

Doug Anderson:

"Erick T. Barkhuis" writes:

Dave Smith:

On my visits to Denmark I was amazed not only at the number of
people who spoke English, but that they spoke it so fluently.

Do the Danes have original movies/series/soaps on TV, with Danish
in subtitles? In other words: are they exposed to their daily
portion of TV-English?

Yes, they do. They also (like everyone) listen to pop music in
English.

I thought so.
In contrast, English and American TV-shows and movies in Germany are
dubbed/synchronized in German language. I am convinced that this is the
main reason why Germans generally hardly speak English (and if they do,
their accent is...errm...interesting). The fact that almost everyone
went to english class at school for several years doesn't mean much
without practice.

On Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:10:43 +0000, Erick T. Barkhuis wrote:

In contrast, English and American TV-shows and movies in Germany are
dubbed/synchronized in German language. I am convinced that this is the
main reason why Germans generally hardly speak English (and if they do,
their accent is...errm...interesting). The fact that almost everyone
went to english class at school for several years doesn't mean much
without practice.

In Finland I noticed that movies from other countries were not dubbed
into Finn but rather used Finnish subtitles, both on television and in
the theaters. This made it easy to watch English-language movies and
programs. But when we went to Germany everything was dubbed into German.
My German isn't good enough for watching a movie, at least not good
enough to actually enjoy the movie. I surmised that, in Finland, with
only about six million people, hiring actors skilled in dubbing probably
just wasn't cost effective, while a big country like Germany could afford
to do it.

On the other hand most Ginns are so fluent in English I wonder that they
bother to even subtitile.



--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona

Dave Smith wrote:
On 02/12/2011 1:30 PM, Erick T. Barkhuis wrote:
Dave Smith:

On my visits to Denmark I was amazed not only at the number of
people who spoke English, but that they spoke it so fluently.

Do the Danes have original movies/series/soaps on TV, with Danish in
subtitles? In other words: are they exposed to their daily portion of
TV-English?

I didn`t watch a lot of television when I was there, though I do recall
watching an English language show dubbed with German.

I previously mentioned my Italian neighbours who arrived here more than
60 years ago and barely speak English and by no means fluent after all
those years. Yet, most of the Danes I spoke with had only a slight accents.

Of course, Danes have a double language advantage: they speak another
Germanic language, while Italian is descended from Vulgar Latin like all
the other "Romance" languages, with different intonation patterns as well,
but the country is smaller, so that speakers of other languages are closer
8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

William Black wrote:
On 01/12/11 19:00, David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*) wrote:
.

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


Probably not.


People who are native speakers of English do not "learn English in school".
They may "learn" a different accent, but that's it.

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

Erick T. Barkhuis wrote:

Dave Smith:

On my visits to Denmark I was amazed not only at the number of
people who spoke English, but that they spoke it so fluently.

Do the Danes have original movies/series/soaps on TV, with Danish in
subtitles? In other words: are they exposed to their daily portion of
TV-English?

Yes- only kids programmes are dubbed (generally.)

--
(*) 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)

On 2011-11-29 15:11:36 -0600, David Hatunen said:

In fact, I get along with English quite well in Germany and Finland, too.
I've not spent much time in Belgium, Denmark and Swede, but English did
me quite well there, too.

A couple years ago I had the opportunity to travel through Norway, and
I was amazed at how well the Norwegians spoke English, and even more
amazed at their lack of accent. It sounded mostly like 'accent-neutral
American English', if you follow my meaning. It got to the point, that
I asked one hotelier, gee, maybe you should just switch to English!
laugh She laughed too. But it really is that pervasive, there. The
Dutch are very English-y too.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-29 12:19:09 -0600, mikeos said:

Even if they don't. In my experience, citizens of most Euro countries
speak better English than I do. For example,in Germany, Holland, all
Scandinavian countries slip effortlessly to English if you start trying
to express yourself in the local language. Even France, although they
pretend that they don't!

When the ferry arrived in Oslo from Denmark, and the border people
motioned me aside for questioning, I carefully remembered what the
barman on the ferry told me: how to say "do you speak English" in
Norwegian.

I rolled down the window, the border person guard to me in a language I
did not understand, I carefully recited "do you speak English" in what
I thought was Norwegian, and the border guard responded: "what? what
did you just say?". In English. Hilarious!
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-29 12:19:09 -0600, mikeos said:

Even if they don't. In my experience, citizens of most Euro countries
speak better English than I do. For example,in Germany, Holland, all
Scandinavian countries slip effortlessly to English if you start trying
to express yourself in the local language. Even France, although they
pretend that they don't!

Something else. I live in Texas in the USA. There are lot of
Spanish-speaking people here, and it is amazing to sometimes hear them
interleave Spanish and English continuously through their speech, so
that half the words in each sentence are in Spanish and the other half
in English. Or one Spanish sentence followed by one English sentence.
Amazing!

Question: for the non-English people in Europe, does this kind of thing
happen, too? I wonder in particular about the Irish who speak the
Irish gaelic language.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-11-29 14:19:47 -0600, Erilar said:

More giggles 8-). However, speaking a language fairly well and being
comfortable doing so don't always coincide. I had been teaching and
studying at the graduate level for well over a decade before I went to
Germany to contonue my studies. I predicted that I was going to have a
nervous breakdown or finally become really comfortable outside classroom
situations in a month or two. Fortunately the second case proved true?

Actually, you are in a padded cell right now and this is all in your head.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)