Brits don't speak foreign languages

On 11/29/2011 10:11 PM, David Hatunen wrote:
On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:35:31 +0000, Bert wrote:

Why? Languages other than English are taught in the public schools,
although many Americans never have need or opportunity to speak anything
other than English.

Not quite: *most* Americans never have need or opportunity to speak
anything other than English.

But considering the current ethnic makeup of the US population we have a
*lot* of Americans who speak Spanish. Living in Tucson even I can muster
up enough Spanish to get around in Mexico. In my life I've had a lot of
friends who could speak Italian or Polish. Many Americans are more bi- or
multilingual than a lot o people want to give them credit fo

I may be wrong, but my personal impression was that a number of
Americans were extremely anti-Spanish in the sense that - speak what you
like in Mexico but don't speak Spanish in the United States.

Fact is, though, most Americans can get along fine with just English.
Most of the Mexicans here speak quite fluent English as well as Spanish.
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. I was Ok in France, but have the aid of some
ability in French.

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:39:26 +0100, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote in post :
:

A recently published study tells that 64% of all the Britons can speak
only English.

Years ago on a German newsgroup someone suggested: "Everyone in the
world should speak at least four languages: The regional language, the
national language, one national language of a neighbouring country, and
English." An Englishman chipped in: "That's all very fine, but in my
case that would be English, English, English and English." They're just
applying the suggestion.

great!


--
Tim C.

On 29/11/11 21:39, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Markku wrote
in :

A recently published study tells that 64% of all the Britons can speak
only English.

Years ago on a German newsgroup someone suggested: "Everyone in the
world should speak at least four languages: The regional language, the
national language, one national language of a neighbouring country, and
English." An Englishman chipped in: "That's all very fine, but in my
case that would be English, English, English and English." They're just
applying the suggestion.

And yet in India it is just about a requirement...

Everyone speaks their local language, some Hindi, some English and
probably some Urdu/Hindustani.

--
William Black

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

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, it
helps one better understand the thinking of people who grew up in another
culture, NOT English-speaking, it's good intellectual exercise, and it's a
LOT more fun for many people than math, for instance. 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.

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

"Erick T. Barkhuis" wrote:
Wolfgang Schwanke:

Years ago on a German newsgroup someone suggested: "Everyone in the
world should speak at least four languages: The regional language,
the national language, one national language of a neighbouring
country, and English."

In Cologne, everyone speaks three languages:
deutsch, kölsch, und üvver-andere-Lück.

I know a bit about the second, but what's the third? I can follow a fairly
strong Kohlpott or Schwäbisch accent, but not the actual dialect 8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

Erilar:

"Erick T. Barkhuis" wrote:
Wolfgang Schwanke:

Years ago on a German newsgroup someone suggested: "Everyone in
the world should speak at least four languages: The regional
language, the national language, one national language of a
neighbouring country, and English."

In Cologne, everyone speaks three languages:
deutsch, kölsch, und üvver-andere-Lück.

I know a bit about the second, but what's the third? I can follow a
fairly strong Kohlpott or Schwäbisch accent, but not the actual
dialect 8-)

German, Colognese, and About-Other-People

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.

--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona

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).

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.

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.

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?

--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:37:04 +0100, Martin wrote:

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

*** Then
by night train to Copenhagen where neither my French nor my GErman did
any damn good, but, of course, most of the Danes spoke English.

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

Do the younger ones?

My Finnish is almost nil, having left the Finnish quarter of my hometown
when I was a wee one. And since older Finns aren't likely to speak
Finnish, I was once able to struggle through a short conversation with an
older Finn by using German.


--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:33:57 +0100, Tom P wrote:

On 11/29/2011 10:11 PM, David Hatunen wrote:
On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:35:31 +0000, Bert wrote:

Why? Languages other than English are taught in the public schools,
although many Americans never have need or opportunity to speak
anything other than English.

Not quite: *most* Americans never have need or opportunity to speak
anything other than English.

But considering the current ethnic makeup of the US population we have
a *lot* of Americans who speak Spanish. Living in Tucson even I can
muster up enough Spanish to get around in Mexico. In my life I've had a
lot of friends who could speak Italian or Polish. Many Americans are
more bi- or multilingual than a lot o people want to give them credit
fo

I may be wrong, but my personal impression was that a number of
Americans were extremely anti-Spanish in the sense that - speak what you
like in Mexico but don't speak Spanish in the United States.

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.

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".
--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona