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Kennel posted:It's not actually about foreign languages but about those that aren't one's mother tongue. The only problem is that the map is titled foreign languages people consider the most useful... As an official language, English is not a foreign language in Malta.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:54
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Trabisnikof posted:Correct! That's kinda politically-loaded, too, what with grouping "Brahmic-derived" but not "Phoenician-derived" ;-)
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Aug 10, 2015 01:09
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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, to me, sounds almost intentionally ridiculous, like someone making a funny face, except the face is a language.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:20
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ghengilhar posted:The only problem is that the map is titled foreign languages people consider the most useful... As an official language, English is not a foreign language in Malta. That's semantics at best. What language do you think you'd get if you asked an anglo-canadian "which foreign language is most useful?"
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Aug 10, 2015 02:00
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vintagepurple posted:That's semantics at best. What language do you think you'd get if you asked an anglo-canadian "which foreign language is most useful?" Chinese
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Aug 10, 2015 02:03
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vintagepurple posted:That's semantics at best. What language do you think you'd get if you asked an anglo-canadian "which foreign language is most useful?" It might be semantics but it does draw the point that the question itself is asked poorly.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:00
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steinrokkan posted: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. As a Chinese I agree.
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Aug 10, 2015 04:33
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Didn't the communists try to switch everyone to pinyin at some point?
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Aug 10, 2015 04:41
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They discussed it but never actually did anything. Pinyin is an excellent thing though and I can't imagine how people learned Chinese without it (most didn't lol).
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Aug 10, 2015 05:04
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Grand Fromage posted:They discussed it but never actually did anything. Pinyin is an excellent thing though and I can't imagine how people learned Chinese without it (most didn't lol). Honestly it seems like a better writing system all around than actual chinese characters, if you go into beep boop what is culture mode. I have only a basic command of mandarin though.
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Aug 10, 2015 05:10
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vintagepurple posted:Honestly it seems like a better writing system all around than actual chinese characters, if you go into beep boop what is culture mode. I have only a basic command of mandarin though. Not an expert but based on the godawful gameshows that appear on Chinese TV there are some limitations in so far as there are words which are identical even in tone which pinyin can't differentiate but characters can. This is not an argument for not switching to pinyin mind you as the exact same issue appears in English and spoken Mandarin.
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Aug 10, 2015 05:14
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vintagepurple posted:Honestly it seems like a better writing system all around than actual chinese characters, if you go into beep boop what is culture mode. I have only a basic command of mandarin though. It's really not, good luck telling words apart that only differ by one accent on a vowel (if that). Also in Beijing at least, traffic signs and the like are literally all written using both hanzi and pinyin (for place names) or English (for directions and so on). It's honestly impressive considering, Paris is the tourist capital of the world and practically everything is only in French. Kassad fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 05:57
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Phlegmish posted: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. Also, Hitler had a throat condition that made his German less than perfect. Also, in most cases when German appears in English works of fiction, they use a harsh "r" sound that nobody in Germany ever uses, it sounds ridiculous even to us. It's a smear campaign against our beautiful language  And for all the poo poo we get for German supposedly being a difficult language, at least you only need to take a look at a word to know how it's pronounced. In contrast to the arbitrary pronunciation of English words. (And why the gently caress do you drop the "o" from pronounciation??)
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Aug 10, 2015 06:15
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Barudak posted:Not an expert but based on the godawful gameshows that appear on Chinese TV there are some limitations in so far as there are words which are identical even in tone which pinyin can't differentiate but characters can. This is not an argument for not switching to pinyin mind you as the exact same issue appears in English and spoken Mandarin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZLkcFns8Ks I'm sorry, it's the other one.
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Aug 10, 2015 06:18
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Barudak posted:Not an expert but based on the godawful gameshows that appear on Chinese TV there are some limitations in so far as there are words which are identical even in tone which pinyin can't differentiate but characters can. This is not an argument for not switching to pinyin mind you as the exact same issue appears in English and spoken Mandarin. Also there are other Asian languages like Vietnamese and Korean which have tons of homophones but use an alphabet without any problems.
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Aug 10, 2015 06:19
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Kassad posted:It's really not, good luck telling words apart that only differ by one accent on a vowel (if that). Grand Fromage posted:Also there are other Asian languages like Vietnamese and Korean which have tons of homophones but use an alphabet without any problems. There are tons of people that complain about learning English for these exact reasons. English is terrible with this poo poo.
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Aug 10, 2015 06:58
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Aliquid posted:There are tons of people that complain about learning English for these exact reasons. English is terrible with this poo poo. English is not even remotely on the same level when it comes to homophones. For example, yi has 338 possible characters, shi has 153. Everything in Chinese is a homophone. Korean/Vietnamese/Japanese have similar issues since the majority of their vocabulary comes from Chinese.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:05
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How prominent are spelling mistakes in Far East languages among the general population? It seems like the vast majority of English-speaking people don't know the proper expression of plurals, as well as having common misspellings of homophones. edit something I found particularly refreshing was diving into Nigerian Pidgin, which flows really well and makes absolute sense spoken aloud. i say swears online fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 07:08
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My students forget how to write characters or don't know the characters to write a word pretty often. They all have Chinese dictionaries to look them up when they write since remembering the several thousand common ones is a tall order even for a native speaker. Typing is easier since you enter pinyin and choose the characters from a little interface. Remembering how to read a character is easier than remembering how to write it.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:14
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Grand Fromage posted:Typing is easier since you enter pinyin and choose the characters from a little interface. Whoa, what are fast keyboard skills like with that system?
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Aug 10, 2015 07:23
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Aliquid posted:Whoa, what are fast keyboard skills like with that system? I'm bad at it so it's hard to judge. Students are always amazed at how quickly I type but I'm not sure if it's because it's English or because you can type English faster than pinyin. I imagine there are different input programs and some might be faster than others. This is what the native Windows 8 one looks like:  I can hit the 1 key and it puts in that hanzi. The other ones are different wo shis, but it's guessing that the first one is the most likely. In this case it's correct.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:29
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Grand Fromage posted:Korean/Vietnamese/Japanese have similar issues since the majority of their vocabulary comes from Chinese. And there are the native words that collide with Chinese ones, for even more fun, and native pronunciations of Chinese words coexisting with Chinese pronunciations of Chinese words, and other assorted insanity.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:29
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b0lt posted:And there are the native words that collide with Chinese ones, for even more fun, and native pronunciations of Chinese words coexisting with Chinese pronunciations of Chinese words, and other assorted insanity. Yep, Korean's the one I know but you'll often get things like bang and sil are both "room", but one is Chinese and one is Korean. It's like how you'll get two words for one thing in English but one is French and one is German.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:30
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Kassad posted:It's really not, good luck telling words apart that only differ by one accent on a vowel (if that). Presumably though, speakers can differentiate these from context, and thus could do so in written language as well? (as a native french speaker, french is the ideal language and no one should need anything else to natvigate the glorious capital  )
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Aug 10, 2015 07:37
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vintagepurple posted:Presumably though, speakers can differentiate these from context, and thus could do so in written language as well? I'm admittedly thinking about this from the perspective of a non-native speaker, it seems like using characters would be easier even if it's a slog to learn them all. Obviously a native speaker would have an easier time. Also the whole idea reminds me of the USA still using imperial units instead of metric ones: switching is a possibility but way too much effort to be considered. Except even more so. vintagepurple posted:(as a native french speaker, french is the ideal language and no one should need anything else to natvigate the glorious capital L'exception culturelle!
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Aug 10, 2015 08:26
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In writing, generally the different words have different characters. So there are 338 characters that are pronounced yi. It's not like Japanese where one kanji can have 20 readings and there is literally no way to tell which is correct, you just are presumed to know. There are multiple reading characters in Chinese but very few. But you get situations like 要, which can mean both want and must but you just have to guess from context.
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Aug 10, 2015 08:41
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Phlegmish posted: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. Oh I know that, I just love how German sounds, I wish I had kept studying it but I preferred to focus on English.
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Aug 10, 2015 08:46
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vintagepurple posted:(as a native french speaker, french is the ideal language and no one should need anything else to natvigate the glorious capital Tell that to the dude in the booth at Gare du Nord where they sell museum passes. He seemed to understand my attempts to speak the ideal language, but would not deign to reply in the same. And then there were a few who assumed that a foreigner like me cannot understand something as simple as "Merci, monsieur".
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Aug 10, 2015 08:58
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A Buttery Pastry posted:How do you know? Have you tried them all? Would also like to know what you mean by throaty and hoarse Germanic languages. You better not just be substituting Dutch and German for Germanic. Dutch to me is the stereotypical prototype Germanic language, when they speak it's like they're trying to spit at you. German is like barking. Scandinavian languages are like a cat in heat meowling outside your window when you're trying to sleep. English is a lil better, but only because half of its vocabulary are French words.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:00
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Aliquid posted:There are tons of people that complain about learning English for these exact reasons. English is terrible with this poo poo. French is an even worse offender in this regard. They will have fifty different nouns and verb tenses that all sound exactly the same. Even some of my French-speaking colleagues get confused and cannot properly pluralize certain words or distinguish between the passé composé and the infinitif. They will write things like 'je suis venu te cherché'.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:02
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Kurtofan 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). I was a bit surprised at how early you start with English in France now, we're supposed to start teaching it in CP (6 years old) and I've been encouraged to do nursery rhymes and songs in English with my kindergarten class next year. With all that English you'd think the average Frenchman would speak it better  Kurtofan posted:College has some interesting choice of what they call minority language classes: Berber, Tamil, Nahuatl, Breton, Occitan... I worked at a high school a few years back that had Gallo as an option, that was kinda neat.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:05
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3peat posted:English is a lil better, but only because half of its vocabulary are French words. Yes, clearly that must be the reason. It's why English-language pop music has so little success with its preponderance of Germanic words, people much prefer to listen to beautiful and romantic academic dissertations. Of all the pseudo-scientific bullshit explanations in this thread, that one takes the cake.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:14
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Soviet Commubot posted:I was a bit surprised at how early you start with English in France now, we're supposed to start teaching it in CP (6 years old) and I've been encouraged to do nursery rhymes and songs in English with my kindergarten class next year. With all that English you'd think the average Frenchman would speak it better I had English classes in CM1 (9 years old), mostly it was stuff like arbre=tree and the like, nothing really major. I heard the problem was that language lessons were too academic, not enough emphasis put on dialogue, speech...
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Aug 10, 2015 09:25
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These last two pages have convinced me that all language is bad and should be banned. I'm still working on an interpretive dance to convey that sentiment though.Phlegmish posted:Yes, clearly that must be the reason. It's why English-language pop music has so little success with its preponderance of Germanic words, people much prefer to listen to beautiful and romantic academic dissertations.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:31
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Phlegmish posted:French is an even worse offender in this regard. They will have fifty different nouns and verb tenses that all sound exactly the same. Even some of my French-speaking colleagues get confused and cannot properly pluralize certain words or distinguish between the passé composé and the infinitif. They will write things like 'je suis venu te cherché'. And a huge chunk of English speakers don't know the difference between "you're" and "your" or the three forms of "there". There are idiots that speak every language. French is super easy to understand in context even if the words sound the same. A bit harder to write, sure, but overall still way easier to learn than English.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:48
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Kopijeger posted:Tell that to the dude in the booth at Gare du Nord where they sell museum passes. He seemed to understand my attempts to speak the ideal language, but would not deign to reply in the same. And then there were a few who assumed that a foreigner like me cannot understand something as simple as "Merci, monsieur". Sometimes in France I'll have a totally fluent conversation with someone in French, then turn to my husband and speak to him for a second, and then the person starts speaking to me in English once they've realized I speak that too, and their English is always worse than my French (I'm 100% fluent, native speaker). They generally just want to be polite/practice the language themselves. It's especially common in super touristy places (and the booths at Gare du Nord sure would qualify) because the French have a reputation for refusing to understand people who speak English/being rude to people who speak English, so I wouldn't be surprised if the dude actually got told by his boss to reply in English no matter what.
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Aug 10, 2015 09:53
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Soviet Commubot posted:I was a bit surprised at how early you start with English in France now, we're supposed to start teaching it in CP (6 years old) and I've been encouraged to do nursery rhymes and songs in English with my kindergarten class next year. With all that English you'd think the average Frenchman would speak it better Foreign language teaching in an academic context is rarely sufficient by itself as long as it's not reinforced outside of that context as well. Even in French-language schools in Brussels, where Dutch is compulsory, people usually graduate without knowing more than the basics - if even that. The level of the classes is simply too low, by necessity. It's what happens when you have such an insular culture where, for example, everything on television is dubbed. People just don't come into spontaneous contact with foreign languages, and even if they do they generally have no real interest in absorbing them. I have witnessed French speakers consistently go out of their way not to learn Dutch and/or English even though it would very clearly represent an enormous professional advantage to them and make their lives easier in general. They simply refuse to leave their comfort zone even for a second, which I find utterly baffling. It's really all about mentality and if you don't want to learn a language, there are always a million bullshit excuses you could come up with - it's too hard, it's useless, I'm too old, I don't have a knack for languages, etc. However, this also means that you have ambitious and driven people making a decision to master a language, or have their children master it, and consciously pursuing that goal in the most efficient manner possible. In the context of native French speakers in Belgium, that means sending your children to a Dutch-language school or enrolling at a Flemish university. They usually come out speaking excellent Dutch and being properly bilingual, whereas most Flemings speak middling French at best. It is interesting to see that knowledge of Dutch is gradually turning into a sociological marker for them, the way knowledge of French used to be in Flanders. I have heard that some people in France are finally starting to take English seriously, as well. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 09:57
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Phlegmish posted:Yes, clearly that must be the reason. It's why English-language pop music has so little success with its preponderance of Germanic words, people much prefer to listen to beautiful and romantic academic dissertations.
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Aug 10, 2015 10:00
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Kurtofan posted:I had English classes in CM1 (9 years old), mostly it was stuff like arbre=tree and the like, nothing really major. Yeah, too much writing and not enough speaking. That's theoretically supposed to have changed since at least the 2008 official curriculum but a lot of teachers just keep going the way they were. I did observe a class of CM a few months back who could spontaneously string together simple sentences but that was in a Diwan school so they were already bilingual, which probably helps.
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Aug 10, 2015 10:02
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HookShot posted:And a huge chunk of English speakers don't know the difference between "you're" and "your" or the three forms of "there". There are idiots that speak every language. French is super easy to understand in context even if the words sound the same. A bit harder to write, sure, but overall still way easier to learn than English. That's the thing, they're not necessarily idiots, it's just that written French is so unintuitive and unphonetic compared to, say, Spanish. English has the same problem, e.g. with its vowels that seem to be completely interchangeable in many cases.
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Aug 10, 2015 10:09
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