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Same here, even though I've also been told the Castillian Spanish I learned would be completely useless in any Latin American country. Oy vey.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:30
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Kopijeger posted:
Easy answer, In the French school system English classes are mandatory (either as 1st or 2nd language), Spanish or German classes are mandatory (either as 1st of 2nd language). Italian (and other languages) classes are optional classes for literary students (as 3rd language). There can be a multitude of different 3rd language options, Italian is however the most common third language class in France, I think all school proposes it. My public school only had italian classes available, while a private high school in Paris I knew had Italian and Japanese classes available. I chose German as 1rst language, English as 2nd and Italian as 3rd. So basically the French school system prioritize other languages. In my experience, students snub German hard, because it's hard/ugly/etc... I picked German first because I had German classes in primary school, probably in an effort to get more kids to pick german. I think it worked as in middle school the class quite full, but in high school there weren't a lot left. Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 22:41
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Are there any foreign language maps for regions outside of Europe? I went to the website for those but all they have are European ones.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:41
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steinrokkan posted:Same here, even though I've also been told the Castillian Spanish I learned would be completely useless in any Latin American country. Oy vey. I never really took any courses, I just dove right in and started consuming Spanish-language media, regardless of it being Castilian or Latin American. Other than the accent and all the weird regional slang words, the difference isn't all that big. My method worked in the sense that I can now read basically anything in Spanish, and understand it if they speak clearly, but since I almost never come across any Spanish speakers my conversational skills are poor.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:43
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steinrokkan posted:Same here, even though I've also been told the Castillian Spanish I learned would be completely useless in any Latin American country. Oy vey.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:43
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Don't worry, I'm currently learning ancient Greek, which risks nothing wrt modern usage!!! Also it's a bit like learning Esperanto because the current suicide victim's great-grand-father spoke it briefly.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:49
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steinrokkan posted:Don't worry, I'm currently learning ancient Greek, which risks nothing wrt modern usage!!! I forgot to mention the ancient language option: a choice between Latin and Ancient Greek. but it's completely optional. College has some interesting choice of what they call minority language classes: Berber, Tamil, Nahuatl, Breton, Occitan...
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Aug 9, 2015 22:51
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steinrokkan posted:Same here, even though I've also been told the Castillian Spanish I learned would be completely useless in any Latin American country. Oy vey. That's bullshit. There are probably more grammatical differences between American and European Spanish than between American and British English, but overall it's a comparable situation. And remembering to not use half of the grammatical tenses and modes you learned isn't that hard.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:54
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I've always figured you could converse with most of the (non-asian) world with just English, French, Spanish, and German. Hence I've learned atleast a bit of each, 5 years of french immersion schooling, a semester of weekly spanish classes, and 2 semesters of semiweekly german classes. I'd like to learn Mandarin too but learning a whole different alphabet/writing system is a bit of a hurdle. Anyone have language land coverage maps handy?
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Aug 9, 2015 23:14
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Phlegmish posted:Spanish is perceived as more useful since it is a major world language, whereas Italian is limited to Italy. That was one of the things that motivated me to start learning it a few years ago. And even though it's actually useless to me professionally, in terms of 'personal development' I certainly don't regret it. Italian is waay more fun to speak than any other european language tho. Spanish (the Spain version) sounds throaty and hoarse to me, like not nearly as bad as germanic languages, but by latin languages standards it sounds pretty bad.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:15
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3peat posted:Italian is waay more fun to speak than any other european language tho. Spanish (the Spain version) sounds throaty and hoarse to me, like not nearly as bad as germanic languages, but by latin languages standards it sounds pretty bad. Italian does have a sort of sing-song cadence to it. I can understand that a lot of people like that. As for throaty, nothing is more throaty than the French R.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:20
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3peat posted:Italian is waay more fun to speak than any other european language tho. Spanish (the Spain version) sounds throaty and hoarse to me, like not nearly as bad as germanic languages, but by latin languages standards it sounds pretty bad. 
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Aug 9, 2015 23:23
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3peat posted:Italian is waay more fun to speak than any other european language tho. Spanish (the Spain version) sounds throaty and hoarse to me, like not nearly as bad as germanic languages, but by latin languages standards it sounds pretty bad. Accept the fact that you are Slavic, or die. Also anybody who had to memorize Goethe or Schiller knows that German is a beautiful, rhyming language. (Either that or playing Gabriel Knight 1)
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Aug 9, 2015 23:36
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Kurtofan posted:In my experience, students snub German hard, because it's hard/ugly/etc... I picked German first because I had German classes in primary school, probably in an effort to get more kids to pick german. I think it worked as in middle school the class quite full, but in high school there weren't a lot left. German isn't ugly at all, I've always thought that was bullshit. I'm pretty sure the problem is just that some people still automatically conjure up images of jackbooted SS officers screaming orders when they think of German. Any language is going to be ugly if that's the sort of association you make. It reminds me of that rage comic that was floating around a few years ago, where they listed the word for 'butterfly' in different languages. It had the German guy screaming 'Schmetterling' at the end, as if we were naturally supposed to consider that a harsh/ugly word. Thing is, when you look at the actual pronunciation it is arguably smoother and softer than 'mariposa' or 'papillon'. I would say Spanish in particular is actually a harsher language in comparison. People are simply transposing their stereotypical view of German culture onto the language, and the same goes for the Latin languages that are inevitably seen as being more 'romantic'.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:37
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Phlegmish posted:Schmetterling Try pronouncing that in whatever tone while not sounding evil
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Aug 9, 2015 23:40
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Right, the Germans led the Romance period, and were critical in inventing critical culture, but because the English have no idea how to pronounce Schmetterling, they are ridiculed.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:40
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steinrokkan posted:Accept the fact that you are Slavic, or die. I heard they say 'da' for yes. Yeah, it's basically a Slavic language.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:42
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awesome-express posted:Try pronouncing that in whatever tone while not sounding evil It's extremely easy, actually. In comparison - British English sounds like a language invented by a six year old moron, and it's shocking any colonial nation accepted this infantile language in any extent.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:42
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"My Struggle" - look at that, all of those harsh consonants, ambiguously placed and pronounced. Compare to the simple elegance of "Mein Kampf" - like champagne tripping off the tongue in comparison.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:46
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English is just kind of a bland, mushy language, not really noteworthy in any sense. I don't find it to be particularly ugly or beautiful, but that could just be because I'm so used to it. As for 'infantile', I do have to say that it sort of resembles the way my two-year-old niece speaks, but that's probably mostly due to the very peculiar way that the letter R is pronounced in English.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:58
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Phlegmish posted:I heard they say 'da' for yes. Yeah, it's basically a Slavic language. Interestingly, Slovenians say "ja" for yes.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:02
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Also that in british english all their slang sounds like what a kid would call something xe didn't know the true name of - wheelie bin etc.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:04
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Speaking of crimes of the English language...
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Aug 10, 2015 00:06
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Omelette du Fromage posted:Also that in british english all their slang sounds like what a kid would call something xe didn't know the true name of - wheelie bin etc. You are right, except the "xe" part, which is a terrible attrocity.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:08
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Disco Infiva posted:Interestingly, Slovenians say "ja" for yes. And the Slovenes are the Germans of the Slavic world (edging out even the Czechs), so that just proves my point.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:08
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The Slovenes invented Leibach the band, they can't complain about their language.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:09
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All indo-european languages use consonants in a dumb way, like -ck what is that poo poo. There's just too many of them. Words should be at least 50% vowels.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:12
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doverhog posted:All indo-european languages use consonants in a dumb way, like -ck what is that poo poo. There's just too many of them. Words should be at least 50% vowels. Цврц.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:16
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Lets add some maps to the language chat. ps English will outlast the other spoken languages!
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Aug 10, 2015 00:24
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Phlegmish posted:but that's probably mostly due to the very peculiar way that the letter R is pronounced in English. South-Eastern British English and most of the antipodes has a strange way about that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-B0pOpGMnQ
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Aug 10, 2015 00:24
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Trabisnikof posted:Lets add some maps to the language chat. We have no data about what languages they speak in China and Japan.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:34
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What the hell is up with Malta? English is an official language. Also French is an official language of Luxembourg.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:41
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Trabisnikof posted:Lets add some maps to the language chat. Writing system, right?
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Aug 10, 2015 00:42
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Trabisnikof posted:Lets add some maps to the language chat. Writing systems presumably, with green being latin, red being cyrillic, and blue being arabic, and dark gray being hangul. The other colors are bit mysterious to me though. India is lumped together with Laos? Ethiopia with greece?
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Aug 10, 2015 00:44
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Presumably, black is "other"
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Aug 10, 2015 00:45
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Is this politically loaded because northern cyprus is the same color as greece?
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Aug 10, 2015 00:47
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my dad posted:Writing system, right? Correct! With Bonus Key: 
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Aug 10, 2015 00:50
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I'm guessing brown is both Latin and Cyrillic, light blue is both latin and Arabic maybe? Black is the unique cases of Amharic, Armenian, Hebrew, and Georgian (and Greek, slightly less unique). I would love to know how light green is defined, though. edit: yay I got it
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Aug 10, 2015 00:50
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ghengilhar posted:What the hell is up with Malta? English is an official language. Also French is an official language of Luxembourg. It's not actually about foreign languages but about those that aren't one's mother tongue.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:51
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loving animals in China, they were never colonized, and now they don't even know what an alphabet is. Time to nuke them to correct the historical mistake.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:53
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