Another Useless Map - How Long Does it Take to Learn a Countries Language

[mc2fool]

I had a similar problem learning Spanish, as reading it was OK, but listening to a native Spanish speaker it was just too fast. They pronounced every syllable so rapidly I just could not follow.

I think that's a problem with any language you're not fluent in; natives just seem to speak really fast. I've heard the same complaint about English when spoken by our natives. I can (well, used to be able to) comfortably chat in Italian one-on-one but put me at a table with a bunch of Italians nattering amongst themselves and I quickly get totally lost.....

[bungeejumper]

I did like German, most of which I have forgotten. I love their homespun adding together words to make new ones. However, there always the problem that you can understand all the words in a sentence but not what they mean, or who is doing what and to whom!

All the right words, but not necessarily in the right order!

I used to teach German, more years ago than I care to recall. You can learn all the cases and gender agreements and so forth, but what will really stop you in your tracks is the Teutonic habit of putting the major verb in a sentence right at the very bitter end.

Which may mean (and it quite often does) that you're three quarters of the way into some convoluted 70-word sentence, and you're hanging in there, just hoping that the final verb is going to be the one you've guessed it's going to be. And if it isn't, you've got to rewind the whole damn sentence in your memory and replay it with the unexpected verb instead.

Sometimes, just to be awkward, the speaker will preface this final verb with "nicht" ("not"), and you might as well have made a cup of tea because the whole meaning of the last forty seconds has been suddenly turned inside out. I have a theory that the enforced national discipline of waiting for that final verb is a key reason why so many famous philosophers have been Germans. And constipated too, no doubt.

English positions its verbs where they actually belong (i.e. at the point in the sentence where they best help the listener to understand what's going on), whereas the German end-of-sentence verb is like training a dog to sit patiently until it gets a biscuit for its obedience.

No question about it, English might have quirky pronunciation (and our sequence of tenses is pretty peculiar), but there's a good reason why the EU still speaks English to itself, and it isn't because they particularly love us these days. French would love to become the world's lingua franca, but it's too damn complicated, and they elide their syllables so much. The realisation that "keskersay" is in fact six words is enough to put any schoolkid off.

BJ


BJ

[doolally]

You can learn all the cases and gender agreements and so forth, but what will really stop you in your tracks is the Teutonic habit of putting the major verb in a sentence right at the very bitter end

BJ

Don't you mean:
]You can learn all the cases and gender agreements and so forth, but what will really stop you in your tracks is the Teutonic habit of the major verb in a sentence right at the very bitter end putting
doolally

[mc2fool]

I used to teach German, more years ago than I care to recall. You can learn all the cases and gender agreements and so forth, but what will really stop you in your tracks is the Teutonic habit of putting the major verb in a sentence right at the very bitter end.

Which may mean (and it quite often does) that you're three quarters of the way into some convoluted 70-word sentence, and you're hanging in there, just hoping that the final verb is going to be the one you've guessed it's going to be. And if it isn't, you've got to rewind the whole damn sentence in your memory and replay it with the unexpected verb instead.

Sometimes, just to be awkward, the speaker will preface this final verb with "nicht" ("not"), and you might as well have made a cup of tea because the whole meaning of the last forty seconds has been suddenly turned inside out.

A while ago I heard a BBC translator talking about live translating Japanese politicans, as apparently in Japanese the verb is always at the end of the sentence, and how she had to "buffer" sentences, speaking out the translation of the previous one while listening to and buffering up the next ... and hoping that they wouldn't get into long rambling sentences, leaving her either to have long pauses and a good memory or trying to guess at what was coming!

No question about it, English might have quirky pronunciation (and our sequence of tenses is pretty peculiar), but there's a good reason why the EU still speaks English to itself, and it isn't because they particularly love us these days. French would love to become the world's lingua franca, but it's too damn complicated...

The victory of English over French as the lingua franca in EU institutions has come about largely 'cos of the joining of the east Europeans (quite possibly 'cos they agree that French is too damn complicated. )

I've met and lived/worked with an awful lot of non-native English speakers in my life, and I think the three biggest problems with learning English seems to be (a) pronunciation, along with its flip side of spelling ("ghoti"!), (b) phrasal verbs ("get ..." etc), and (c) vocabulary, as English is somewhat a bastard language, supposedly Germanic but actually with a mixed up vocabulary with more Latin-rooted words than German ones and sometimes same/similar meaning words from each (thoughtful/pensive), which also feeds back to (a).

OTOH English has a relatively simpler structure than many other languages and, let's face it, we've been lucky: the ubiquity of the British Empire (the sun never set on the British Empire -- God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark ) followed by the pervasiveness of US movies etc, has spread the language far and wide, and reduced the need for us to learn others, of which, as a nation, we seem to be particularly bad at (me included).

As one European once said to me: What do you call someone who speaks two languages ... bilingual, right? And what do you call someone who speaks more than two languages ... a polyglot, right? And what do you call someone who speaks only one language .......... English!

[UncleEbenezer]

And what do you call someone who speaks only one language .......... English!

The English may only speak one language, but they understand a foreign one.

Namely, the lingua franca, American.

Except for the obscure cultural references - c.f. laladonny's jokes.

[Nimrod103]

I've never understood how so many languages have ended up with structures where the verb is the last word. Latin is the same. It is completely illogical. Are the Slav, Chinese or Arabic languages like that?
Also so many languages assign genders to inanimate objects. Why?

AIUI there is a theory that different languages developed so as to prevent outsiders from understanding and integrating.. In other words as an intentional barrier to mutual understanding. Seen in that light, it is understandable why so many languages are fiendishly complicated.

[servodude]

AIUI there is a theory that different languages developed so as to prevent outsiders from understanding and integrating.. In other words as an intentional barrier to mutual understanding. Seen in that light, it is understandable why so many languages are fiendishly complicated.

What are you Babel-ing on about?

[UncleEbenezer]

English positions its verbs where they actually belong (i.e. at the point in the sentence where they best help the listener to understand what's going on), whereas the German end-of-sentence verb is like training a dog to sit patiently until it gets a biscuit for its obedience.

The German verb is the second idea in the sentence. Ich heiße UncleEbenezer. Though of course that could be inverted if, for instance I ask Sind Sie wirklich Bungee-Jumper? It is of course subordinate verbs that at the end go.

[mc2fool]

The whole business of word order in different languages seems less than straightforward! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

[Lootman]

I've never understood how so many languages have ended up with structures where the verb is the last word. Latin is the same. It is completely illogical. Are the Slav, Chinese or Arabic languages like that? Also so many languages assign genders to inanimate objects. Why?

Indeed. Could it be that Anglo-Saxon has become the dominant global culture because of the inherent superiority of the English language?

Or is that too Anglo-centric a view?

[didds]

I've known a few mixed-language couples over the years and it seems to be absolutely normal that, even if they learn each other's languages, their primary language between them is the one they met in.)

a billion years ago when i was playing rugby in Germany, a fellow front row player was French. My French was weak, his English no better so we conversed in German.

Of course we weren't a "couple". Though (me being a tight head prop) he was my hooker....

The great thing about playing rugby in Germany is I learned an awful lot of German idiom and swear words I'd never have learned in my german classes....

didds

[Dod101]

(Except for Greek of course.) But not to mention that the Slavic languages have no less than seven cases.

I think you meant "no fewer than"

In my loft I have quite a few cases too.

And whilst we are it, it should of course be ‘a Country’s language’.


Dod

[UncleEbenezer]

I think you meant "no fewer than"

In my loft I have quite a few cases too.

And whilst we are it, it should of course be ‘a Country’s language’.


Dod

Do you Jocks live upside down?

I'd've expected you to have cases in the cellar rather than the loft!

[scotia]

Could it be that Anglo-Saxon has become the dominant global culture because of the inherent superiority of the English language?
Or is that too Anglo-centric a view?

Probably the opposite - I propose it should be "in spite of the inferiority of the English language"
We populated North America and Australasia - and used our own imperfect language.
We led the world in the industrial revolution, and used the power this gave us to colonialise other large sections of the globe - again imposing our own language. But in all of these language-grabs, it was USA-English that has caused it to be world dominant.
No language that has evolved through the ages is "perfect" - there are always irregularities in the application of the rules - but English seems almost to make a virtue of this. Shouldn't we all adopt Esperanto?
(I have long forgotten qualifications in Latin, French and German - along with native English which I still communicate with)

[gryffron]

A Dutch colleague told me a new neighbour moved in next door. He was from a different region. The two could not understand each other’s Dutch, so they could only communicate in English. I didn’t even know Dutch had accents. Let alone incomprehensible ones. Wouldn’t have thought the country was big enough.

Gryff

[servodude]

A Dutch colleague told me a new neighbour moved in next door. He was from a different region. The two could not understand each other’s Dutch, so they could only communicate in English. I didn’t even know Dutch had accents. Let alone incomprehensible ones. Wouldn’t have thought the country was big enough.

Gryff

Crikey! Wait till you hear about Belgium!?

[Dod101]

And then of course there is China. Many can only communicate via written characters and even then the mainland has used 'simplified' ones for some years whereas Hong Kong (and Taiwan I think) still use the traditional ones.

Dod

[swill453]

I take it the irony of the error in this thread's title isn't being missed?

Scott.

[Nimrod103]

A Dutch colleague told me a new neighbour moved in next door. He was from a different region. The two could not understand each other’s Dutch, so they could only communicate in English. I didn’t even know Dutch had accents. Let alone incomprehensible ones. Wouldn’t have thought the country was big enough.

Gryff

My Dutch speaking Flemish Belgian daughter in law confirms that story. There are at least 4 or 5 accents/languages* in the Netherlands which are mutually incomprehensible. She says Flemish is just a dialect of Dutch, there being no such thing as a Flemish dictionary. But it is sort of comprehensible to Dutch speakers from the Netherlands.

Of course, within Belgium, the French speakers (Walloons) generally don't want to speak Dutch, possibly because many of them can't. And the Dutch (Flemish) speakers would rather speak English, though all of them can speak French.

*native ones, not including immigrant languages

[scotia]

I take it the irony of the error in this thread's title isn't being missed?

Scott.

Dod spotted it yesterday

And whilst we are it, it should of course be ‘a Country’s language’.