Brits don't speak foreign languages

On 04/12/2011 12:38, Jack Campin wrote:

Irish is close to dead. The phenomenon you describe does happen with
Welsh, which is very much alive.

Very true, about 40% of Welsh people use it as their first language.

Dan Stephenson wrote:
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.

I don't know about them, but when I was first studying in Germany, a friend
who was German but had just returned from a year studying in Scotland and I
had a tendency to do that at times, often to the amusement of some of the
other foreign and German students who shared a kitchen with us. It reached
the point after over a year there that I had a tendency to use German words
when talking in English.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

William Black wrote:
On 02/12/11 20:42, Erilar wrote:
William 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.


Ah, but I was taught 'English' in school.

The class tends to be called that, true, as if it were a foreign tongue,
but it's more study and correction of than "learning" in the sense of
learning another language.

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

Dan Stephenson wrote:
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.

No, it's a very comfortable cave. Only the furniture is padded. And my
German soon became so un-American that I was not spotted as such very often
by strangers.

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

Martin wrote:

Was Abs Fab shown on Arte a long time ago?

Bodybuilders?

--
(*) 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)

Martin wrote:

On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 21:53:15 +0100, Wolfgang Schwanke
wrote:

"Erick T. Barkhuis" wrote
in :

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?

Since Jesper hasn't answered: Yes, the Scandinavian countries in
general do not dub.

Languages with large populations are dubbed, languages with small
populations are not dubbed.

I wonder why though- I'm not sure it's just financial. All Norwegian
kids programmes I've seen my nieces watching (mostly US cartoons and kid
'sitcoms') are dubbed in Norwegian. And of course, imported 'adult'
foreign programmes to the UK are almost never dubbed for broadcast- the
Danish "The Killing" (1&2) is one current example.

--
(*) 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 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:55:17 +0100, Martin wrote:

On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:24:04 +0000 (UTC), Erilar
wrote:

William Black wrote:
On 02/12/11 20:42, Erilar wrote:
William 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.


Ah, but I was taught 'English' in school.

The class tends to be called that, true, as if it were a foreign tongue,
but it's more study and correction of than "learning" in the sense of
learning another language.
You said
"They may "learn" a different accent, but that's it."

I learnt grammar & spelling in English lessons at school. Nobody
taught accents.

Very learned of you to use the correct verb,

On 2011-12-04 06:38:11 -0600, Jack Campin said:

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.

Irish is close to dead. The phenomenon you describe does happen with
Welsh, which is very much alive.

If it Irish is close to dead, why do they put up those confusing road
signs in Irish?

Anyway -- I once toured through Wales and I recall Welsh-language radio
programs. It was pretty interesting. One gets used to knowing what
French, German, Italian sound like, but Welsh was just.. odd. As if
all the sounds sounded normal, but that I could not understand them!


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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


--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

Martin wrote:
On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:24:04 +0000 (UTC), Erilar
wrote:

William Black wrote:
On 02/12/11 20:42, Erilar wrote:
William 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.


Ah, but I was taught 'English' in school.

The class tends to be called that, true, as if it were a foreign tongue,
but it's more study and correction of than "learning" in the sense of
learning another language.
You said
"They may "learn" a different accent, but that's it."

I learnt grammar & spelling in English lessons at school. Nobody
taught accents.

No one teaches regional accents, but many children come to school with very
pronounced ones.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

In article ,
Erilar wrote:

Martin wrote:
On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:24:04 +0000 (UTC), Erilar
wrote:

William Black wrote:
On 02/12/11 20:42, Erilar wrote:
William 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.


Ah, but I was taught 'English' in school.

The class tends to be called that, true, as if it were a foreign tongue,
but it's more study and correction of than "learning" in the sense of
learning another language.
You said
"They may "learn" a different accent, but that's it."

I learnt grammar & spelling in English lessons at school. Nobody
taught accents.

No one teaches regional accents, but many children come to school with very
pronounced ones.

Tell me about it! About 25 years ago we visited suffolk and could not
understand the dialect! It was a far cry from standard "BBC" English!