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Cat Mattress posted:That one would probably be more useful if it were per capita. Also if it had the right numbers. Switzerland is absolutely not 1-9k.
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Jun 26, 2019 17:33
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Tei posted:With a heatwave comming to europe, maybe is a good idea to post this extremely cool website Nice site.
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Jun 26, 2019 17:38
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Peanut President posted:Honestly english is great because it's so complicated that no one makes fun of bad english anymore, it's just par for the course. Maybe a little ribbing but not like actual anger like you can get for loving up mandarin or french. Jehde posted:English can get fun when you contort it. Like I'dn't've thought contractions could be so useful. CountFosco posted:Perhaps a less value-laden way of phrasing this would be "functional English." Whether English is bad or good depends, of course, on what you're trying to achieve. I, personally, am hoping to use language to achieve social status as befits my magnificent peerage. Am nowing thus sintence will being understanding of other posters, even if take time to and must re-reading it.
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Jun 26, 2019 17:58
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Hey now, trying to turn an adverb to describe the present into a present tense verb is just going too far.  Using it as a discourse marker is still fine.
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Jun 26, 2019 18:37
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Saladin Rising posted:It's honestly kinda impressive that English can still be generally understood even if you mangle the gently caress out of the spelling, grammar, and/or pronunciation: Not really unique to English, tbh.
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Jun 26, 2019 18:45
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my dad posted:Not really unique to English, tbh.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:27
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Pretty sure that in Europe most people who don't speak English still have had enough exposure to it to understand it to some degree. At work I was talking to a truck driver in English and he just said "I don't speak English" over and over again but still was able to follow simple instructions. Maybe he was just reading sign or body language? IMO he understood some english despite his insistence otherwise.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:32
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Saladin Rising posted:I'm curious, would you say it's somewhat universal, or are there certain languages (or language families) that fare better/worse at being still being understandable when spoken/written by someone not familiar with the language? The problem is it's not just the language, it's also the speakers and how used they are to hearing the language spoken improperly. For a personal example, I lived in part of China where Mandarin is not the native language. I mangled the gently caress out of Mandarin all the time and was still understood the vast majority of the time. Contrast to Korea, where if you speak even the slightest bit incorrectly people throw up their hands and proclaim they can't understand a word you say. Some of it is cultural attitude, but I think a lot is how much familiarity you have with non-native speech. English speakers tend to be able to handle it because English is the de facto global language and we hear non-native speakers using it all the time, so pronunciation and grammar have to be quite far wrong before we can't figure out what's going on.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:37
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doverhog posted:Pretty sure that in Europe most people who don't speak English still have had enough exposure to it to understand it to some degree. In the north yes. Partly due no doubt to linguistic similarities among Germanic languages. But other parts not so much.  Being as this is self reported I'd say it's even worse in some areas than the reporters may think. From my experience Cyprus is pretty optimistic, and Greece is HUGELY optimistic.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:43
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I don't think country-wide reporting for that is super useful anyway. Like Italy, if you go to Rome just about everybody is functional in English, then you go down to Naples and good loving luck finding literally anyone who can speak a word.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:45
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Also it helps to come from a small country where it wouldn't be profitable for the media industry to dub everything, so you get to hear a lot of English all the time.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:47
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I'm just gonna say regarding Greece it took me just getting on the wrong bus in Athens to be linguistically stranded.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:48
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System Metternich posted:I like it when languages aren't logical. Give me languages that are like ancient houses: kinda run-down, lived in by tons of different people, the architecture makes no sense because twenty consecutive generations continually built and rebuilt it, the stairs creak, the plumbing is in desperate need of an overhaul but nobody knows where the pipes actually *are*, some say that ghosts are haunting the basement... and people love it to death because of all that Then it collapses and kills you.
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Jun 26, 2019 19:59
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Saladin Rising posted:It's honestly kinda impressive that English can still be generally understood even if you mangle the gently caress out of the spelling, grammar, and/or pronunciation Linguist1 John McWhorter2 is of the avowed opinion that much of this comes from the Viking invasions of England3 resulting in a lot of people learning to speak Old English badly and passing that down, resulting in a somewhat stripped down language, combined with influence from several other languages (he particularly likes Welsh). 1 That probably went without saying. 2 https://twitter.com/JohnHMcWhorter 3 https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944 Grand Fromage posted:Some of it is cultural attitude, but I think a lot is how much familiarity you have with non-native speech. English speakers tend to be able to handle it because English is the de facto global language and we hear non-native speakers using it all the time, so pronunciation and grammar have to be quite far wrong before we can't figure out what's going on. For English, there are also 8-zillion subvarieties people are exposed to in the US alone re: pronunciation, diction, grammar, helping to widen the "how far must you go" chasm.
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Jun 26, 2019 20:26
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Grape posted:In the north yes. Partly due no doubt to linguistic similarities among Germanic languages. But other parts not so much. I want the same self-report map but for spanish in the us.
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Jun 26, 2019 20:29
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Jerry Cotton posted:Most of the people you think (because you're a horrible racist) speak "bad English" speak better English than you ever will. HTH. 'm from the saouth so somewunne who o'ly spiks in ac-shun mouvee quotes spiks bedter english 'n mey
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Jun 26, 2019 20:43
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also wanna meet and not be able to conversate with the <5% of the UK who can't speak english
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Jun 26, 2019 20:44
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Peanut President posted:also wanna meet and not be able to conversate with the <5% of the UK who can't speak english They're probably older immigrants. Where I grew up near Vancouver in Canada every once in a while I would encounter an elderly Punjabi or Chinese person who spoke effectively no English but who would be out doing their thing on the bus or in a shop or whatever.
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Jun 26, 2019 21:13
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Yeah probably. I was hoping more for a pissed of welshman or something "[in welsh] gently caress no I can't speak english and i never will gently caress you"
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Jun 26, 2019 21:16
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Jun 26, 2019 21:33
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I see you North Dakota
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Jun 26, 2019 23:20
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Trabisnikof posted:I want the same self-report map but for spanish in the us. Likewise! Also it’d be interesting to see it broken down by age group. Like Germans > 50 I bet English is a small, significant minority (especially in former GDR) while for Germans < 25 I imagine it’s a good 80%+ with at least basic A2/B1 understanding. Similar for France but with lower numbers. I find it rare to meet under-35 French people who don’t have at least B1 (basic conversational fluency) French, although it might just be my social circles. Definitely in Switzerland I don’t recall ever meeting a 22-35 year old who was born and raised in CH and didn’t speak at least B1 English. And it comes up a lot in my personal life, as I don’t speak conversational Swiss German.
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Jun 27, 2019 00:03
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Kurtofan posted:the only language worth its salt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBbSftQkEMg I'm so sorry. Peanut President posted:Honestly english is great because it's so complicated that no one makes fun of bad english anymore, it's just par for the course. Maybe a little ribbing but not like actual anger like you can get for loving up mandarin or french. The great thing about English is that only the worst shitheads can maintain a prescriptivist attitude whereas a language with artificial bullshit like French breeds them like roaches.
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Jun 27, 2019 05:09
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I for one welcome our soon to be 51st, 52nd, and 53rd States of Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Finland even already doesn't have a proper future tense. Unfortunately Austria has been prohibited from merging with other countries and the Netherlands will soon be underwater, but they will still be States in our hearts.
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Jun 27, 2019 08:04
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Saladin Rising posted:It's honestly kinda impressive that English can still be generally understood even if you mangle the gently caress out of the spelling, grammar, and/or pronunciation: That's not a feature of English, that's a feature of language and reading.
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Jun 27, 2019 08:27
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Are the Finno-Ugric languages genderless in the turkish sense where there straight up is no word for he/her and she/him? Or like english where we just don't have to obsessively decide whether a new kind of furniture has a spiritual vagina/dick?
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Jun 27, 2019 09:12
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Zurakara posted:Are the Finno-Ugric languages genderless in the turkish sense where there straight up is no word for he/her and she/him? Or like english where we just don't have to obsessively decide whether a new kind of furniture has a spiritual vagina/dick? There is no gender pronouns.
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Jun 27, 2019 09:23
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Kennel posted:There is no gender pronouns. Good
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Jun 27, 2019 10:20
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Is knowing English common for the Flemish, or is that strictly a Netherlands thing?
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Jun 27, 2019 10:26
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Finnish is so unfussed and informal with pronouns that in colloquial use you usually call a person "it". Talk about gender neutral.
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Jun 27, 2019 10:47
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Sulphagnist posted:Finnish is so unfussed and informal with pronouns that in colloquial use you usually call a person "it". Talk about gender neutral. Se for human beings, hän for babies, pet animals, professional athletes, and people you don't like.
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Jun 27, 2019 10:50
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galagazombie posted:I for one welcome our soon to be 51st, 52nd, and 53rd States of Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Finland even already doesn't have a proper future tense. Unfortunately Austria has been prohibited from merging with other countries and the Netherlands will soon be underwater, but they will still be States in our hearts. Imagine a roman empire time traveler finding that nobody uses Latin anymore, that is a dead language.
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Jun 27, 2019 11:13
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Tei posted:Imagine a roman empire time traveler finding that nobody uses Latin anymore, that is a dead language. Depends on your definition of „dead“, I’d say. Billions of people speak a Romance language which are direct descendants of Latin, the Catholic Church still uses it for official business, tons of Latin words still survive in our everyday lexicon, especially in the fields of Law and Medicine etc. and in your post alone you’ve used at least seven words that can ultimately be traced back to Latin. If I was the time travelling Roman I think I would be pretty drat impressed tbh, regardless of the fact that nobody speaks it natively anymore
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Jun 27, 2019 11:25
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luxury handset posted:i have a southern accent that comes out when i'm drunk and i had a guy tell me in a bar once (in colorado) that i sounded like a racist and five minutes later was, no poo poo, still sounding off about bigotry and one of his points was that you can't judge people by the way they act and talk probably trying to start a fight
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Jun 27, 2019 11:59
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Tei posted:Imagine a roman empire time traveler finding that nobody uses Latin anymore, that is a dead language. Any Roman Empire time traveler would find millions of nerds trying to lay their best schoolboy Latin on him.
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Jun 27, 2019 13:03
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Tei posted:Imagine a roman empire time traveler finding that nobody uses Latin anymore, that is a dead language. he'd probably be upset that those loving weirdos and their stupid cult in the levant run rome depending on when you grabbed him from
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Jun 27, 2019 13:27
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Also that pants won
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Jun 27, 2019 14:15
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fishmech posted:Any Roman Empire time traveler would find millions of nerds trying to lay their best schoolboy Latin on him. Those time travellers need to hurry up. I imagine that in another 100 years, Latin courses will be almost as niche and unusual as finding classes in Koine Greek. Like in the past 30 years Latin has had a precipitous drop-off in education in Switzerland and, I would guess, most other countries as well. It's been what, maybe 70 years since an educated Englishman would be presupposed to be able to competently read Latin? E: Looks like for America, high school Latin has also dropped quite a bit, dropping to around 6500 AP tests per year, vs around 8000 per year in the mid 2000s. https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2016/2016-Exam-Volume-Change.pdf This drop is even more pronounced when you notice that it's during a massive increase in AP testing generally, and an increase in AP exams for nearly all subjects, often quite massive (e.g. Spanish went from 115k to 180k tests per year). The number of AP students has doubled between 2006 and 2016 for the linked dates in that PDF (to 2.6 million students/year who take at least 1 test). Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jun 27, 2019 |
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Jun 27, 2019 14:24
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The Roman time travellers will just have to suck it up and learn one of our barbaric tongues
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Jun 27, 2019 15:05
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Saladman posted:Those time travellers need to hurry up. I imagine that in another 100 years, Latin courses will be almost as niche and unusual as finding classes in Koine Greek. Like in the past 30 years Latin has had a precipitous drop-off in education in Switzerland and, I would guess, most other countries as well. It's been what, maybe 70 years since an educated Englishman would be presupposed to be able to competently read Latin? When I took "overly long Latin" (that's what it's called because it was six years instead of five) for the student exam, two points deducted was enough to bump a guy from L to E because it was all fit on the curve. Ten years earlier even I probably would've gotten an L instead of the M I got. For comparison's sake I got an L in short Swedish despite having something like six points deducted.
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Jun 27, 2019 15:10
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