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Badger of Basra posted:I remember last time this was posted in here someone was incredulous that they didn’t have a classification for Luxembourgish Do they not? It would be identical to German and Dutch in terms of learning curve. It’s also odd that Luxembourg is colored Germanically, when French is a far more important language for a diplomat in Luxembourg to speak. Phlegmish posted:No, you will never be able to master a foreign language quite to the same extent as the one you speak natively. By definition I will never be a native English speaker, because I wasn't raised in English as a child. It will always be foreign to me. FWIW your writing is, to me, idiomatically perfect and indistinguishable from posting by native English speakers. There are only a couple posters here whose posts are very substantially idiomatically “off” to me, in contrast to eg national Reddits which are frequently largely in English, but with significant and frequent semantic mistakes. It probably also helps that forums are informal and a lot of "mistakes" in formal writing are irrelevant, like ending a phrase in a preposition is totally fine in all but the most formal of formal English. Same for many complex tenses, like "if I was a rich man" would sound fine to the ears of 99% of native English speakers… and probably like 75% of people would say it out loud as such. (It should be "if I were a rich man".)
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May 11, 2024 16:34
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My own English is quite limited in certain domains. Like half the stuff in my kitchen I don't have English words for, because it's never been relevant for me, practically or through media. My music theory vocabulary is mostly English though because I learned it on the internet
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May 11, 2024 16:41
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Saladman posted:(It should be "if I were a rich man".) Thank you.
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May 11, 2024 16:43
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BonHair posted:Like half the stuff in my kitchen I don't have English words for 
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May 11, 2024 16:45
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Subjunctive posted:Thank you. Amazing.
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May 11, 2024 17:20
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Saladman posted:Same for many complex tenses, like "if I was a rich man" would sound fine to the ears of 99% of native English speakers… and probably like 75% of people would say it out loud as such. (It should be "if I were a rich man".) The subjunctive mood is indeed basically dead. (I feel like I might have had an easier time learning English if the tense/aspect distinction was made explicit by the teachers, rather than having teachers go "there are 3 past tenses and one of them has 'present' in the name")
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May 11, 2024 17:34
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OddObserver posted:The subjunctive mood is indeed basically dead. 
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May 11, 2024 17:42
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 Police per capita https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6939731/map-the-most-heavily-policed-countries-around-the-world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers  
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May 11, 2024 19:28
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Saladman posted:Same for many complex tenses, like "if I was a rich man" would sound fine to the ears of 99% of native English speakers… and probably like 75% of people would say it out loud as such. (It should be "if I were a rich man".) And even this is false, the only reason you think "was" is wrong is because 300 years ago some aristocrat assholes decided that English should follow Latin grammar instead of whatever those poor peasants actually spoke. "If I was a rich man" is a perfectly valid, grammatically correct sentence that every native speaker uses.
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May 11, 2024 19:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:
Why is Crimea buddying up with Alaska?
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May 11, 2024 19:44
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In grammar, an error repeated often enough for a long enough time ceases to be an error.
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May 11, 2024 20:48
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Bongo Bill posted:In grammar, an error repeated often enough for a long enough time ceases to be an error. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ImRMJX68s
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May 11, 2024 20:57
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Grammar is just a weapon in the arsenal of the class war
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May 11, 2024 21:14
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Saladman posted:Do they not? It would be identical to German and Dutch in terms of learning curve. It’s also odd that Luxembourg is colored Germanically, when French is a far more important language for a diplomat in Luxembourg to speak. Why the person who took the published numbers and put them on a map decided to color the 'no data' countries the way they did is  /badmaps
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May 11, 2024 22:33
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The politically-loaded maps thread loves Luxembourg and will talk about it at every available opportunity. It is known. Luxembourgish is in a unique place (for Europe) because it is still being passed down from generation to generation, mostly because it is the language of instruction for (very) young children in public schools, and is still used informally by a large percentage of the population, while at the same time they prefer to use French and/or German in more formal settings. It unfortunately does make sense for the U.S. State Department to disregard the language, since Luxembourg itself barely uses or enforces it in official contexts. Their muddled linguistic policies are completely baffling to me from my (Flemish) point of view, but it starts to make more sense when you realize they're coming at it from the opposite direction. They've always perceived Prussia/Germany to be the bigger threat for historical reasons, and have therefore strategically promoted both French and their local dialect as a counterbalance. It is one of the few truly multilingual areas of Europe, which is certainly commendable, but these situations tend not to be stable in the context of modern nation-states. Even with primary education being partly in Luxembourgish, the massive and continuous influx of foreigners has to be taking its toll. Sure enough: 
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May 11, 2024 23:53
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TIL Luxembourgish exists.
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May 12, 2024 00:25
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Re: English as a 2nd language, like Phlegmish I don't consider myself to be truly bilingual because to most native speakers I still have a slight foreign accent (though most Americans will think I'm British when they hear me speak). We might be too hard on ourselves though, I had a colleague from Singapore whose first language was Singaporean English and she told me she considered me a native speaker, so eh. Re: Finnish, I'm a bit of a language freak and Finnish is the hardest language I ever tried to learn by far, even harder than Arabic and Russian. Part of it is indeed that it isn't an Indo-European language, but I don't think that's the full story since Arabic isn't an Indo-European language either and I found the "system" of Arabic grammar and vocabulary easier to figure out. It probably did help that Arabic has a lot of English and French loanwords and that there are many words of Arabic origin in languages I already knew.
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May 12, 2024 12:07
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Re: English as a 2nd language, like Phlegmish I don't consider myself to be truly bilingual because to most native speakers I still have a slight foreign accent (though most Americans will think I'm British when they hear me speak). We might be too hard on ourselves though, I had a colleague from Singapore whose first language was Singaporean English and she told me she considered me a native speaker, so eh. You're bilingual my friend. An accent does not preclude being bilingual. 99% of non native speakers will have an accent their entire life if they learned the language after like 14 years old. Edit: "foreign" accent yes I know everyone has an accent etc
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May 12, 2024 14:05
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steinrokkan posted:Grammar is just a weapon in the arsenal of the class war  The sole reasonable use of grammar as a weapon is to fight fire with fire. "Literally" has become an example of a contranym, and this lady is actually less cool than a teen because she doesn't know that words like inflammable have done this for, likely, the entire history of language.
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May 12, 2024 20:53
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Muscle Tracer posted:
Merriam-Webster's definition of inflammable does not include the opposite meaning of it's original definition, their definition of literally does. Also don't poo poo talk Jane Fonda.
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May 12, 2024 21:34
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Air Skwirl posted:Also don't poo poo talk Jane Fonda. Barbarella sucked rear end. Not enough maps.
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May 13, 2024 04:53
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Re: English as a 2nd language, like Phlegmish I don't consider myself to be truly bilingual because to most native speakers I still have a slight foreign accent (though most Americans will think I'm British when they hear me speak). We might be too hard on ourselves though, I had a colleague from Singapore whose first language was Singaporean English and she told me she considered me a native speaker, so eh. I think that if you have a better grasp of the English language than four of the last five U.S. presidents, you have to consider yourself bilingual.
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May 13, 2024 07:40
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Air Skwirl posted:Merriam-Webster's definition of inflammable does not include the opposite meaning of it's original definition, their definition of literally does. "Inflammable" has never formally meant "not flammable," and it isn't a contronym like "literally." In Latin, there were two distinct prefixes rendered as in-, one from the PIE root *ne, the other from PIE root *en, that converged morphologically; the latter generally referred to a capability (i.e. the ability to be set on fire), the former to the negation of something. This led to some confusion already in among ancient Latin speakers, but "inflammable" comes from the former root and has always just meant "capable of being set on fire." In modern English the word for "not flammable" has always been "nonflammable."
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May 13, 2024 08:03
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Also in colloquial use "literally" is just an intensifier and is only incidentally used to mean "figuratively." For instance, when someone says "I'm literally so tired," they're just using the word to emphasize how tired they are, and it doesn't carry any figurative meaning. When someone says "I'm literally dying," they are using it figuratively, but if you asked why they used the word there they would probably simply say to emphasize the figurative phrase.
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May 13, 2024 09:12
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Pope Hilarius II posted:Re: English as a 2nd language, like Phlegmish I don't consider myself to be truly bilingual because to most native speakers I still have a slight foreign accent (though most Americans will think I'm British when they hear me speak). We might be too hard on ourselves though, I had a colleague from Singapore whose first language was Singaporean English and she told me she considered me a native speaker, so eh. In English I have a Flemish, or rather specifically Brabantian accent as well (yes you can actually tell which part of modern-day Flanders someone is from based on their accent while speaking English, it is historically that diverse despite there only being eight people). I don't think that's what determines whether or not you can be considered bilingual. For me personally, what drives home that English is not my native language, even if I use it almost every single day, is that I sometimes struggle to come up with the right word in offline situations that involve a specific vocabulary. Plants, birds, tools and utensils, things like that. That's because they were taught to me in Dutch during my formative years, or rather I passively absorbed them through that language, and I don't think you can ever fully compensate for that except on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, there might not even be a proper English equivalent because it's specific to Flanders/Belgium, the Dutch language, or this part of Europe more generally. That said, using a more pragmatic definition of bilingualism, the ability to smoothly and (at least mostly) correctly communicate and convey ideas in both languages, it's obvious that you pass with flying colors, and the same can be said for nearly every non-native speaker that still posts on this forum.
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May 13, 2024 10:29
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The Finns sprinkle in false cognates and malapropisms occasionally just to keep us guessing.
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May 13, 2024 10:58
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Phlegmish posted:In English I have a Flemish, or rather specifically Brabantian accent as well (yes you can actually tell which part of modern-day Flanders someone is from based on their accent while speaking English, it is historically that diverse despite there only being eight people). I don't think that's what determines whether or not you can be considered bilingual. For me personally, what drives home that English is not my native language, even if I use it almost every single day, is that I sometimes struggle to come up with the right word in offline situations that involve a specific vocabulary. Plants, birds, tools and utensils, things like that. That's because they were taught to me in Dutch during my formative years, or rather I passively absorbed them through that language, and I don't think you can ever fully compensate for that except on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, there might not even be a proper English equivalent because it's specific to Flanders/Belgium, the Dutch language, or this part of Europe more generally. People have those gaps in their native language too. I don’t know the words for any non-edible fish in English, nor do I know the name for most plants, or like any bird that’s not a penguin. I know way more of these words in French, because when I grew up in the US I lived in a burning fire swamp insect infested hellscape that forbids going outside except for one week in spring and one week in fall, and now in Europe I’m outside 7 months of the year and actually care what things are called. E: I actually probably know about the same number of birds and fish in French and English, but definitely for plants I know way more words in French, especially garden store and flower shop plants. My French accent is very good (clearly not native, but unclear from where) and my vocabulary is excellent, but my grammar is terrible because I never write in French.
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May 13, 2024 12:44
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I always went by the "they can understand me" rule of speaking a language. Everyone has an accent, even native English speakers.
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May 13, 2024 13:32
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:I always went by the "they can understand me" rule of speaking a language. Everyone has an accent, even native English speakers. "Can people understand me?" is the first level at like B1/B2, and it's fine if it's for tourism or whatever. If you actually live in a region or household or work environment where that language is spoken, "Can I fully* express myself?" becomes more important, which is more like C1. *discounting things like poetry, that many people wouldn't even be able to do in their native language without significant training.
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May 13, 2024 13:55
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I think a better word for your continued lack of self-confidence in your english competence is "fluent" since like you clearly got a decent amount of understanding in the language in text form to say and understand complex things, but fluency is a much more subjective judgement and is more relevant in spoken form than written. Grammar is also the much more functional and straightforward part of the language to learn, while there's no real simple way to get more vocabulary other than brute force going through lists of words and trying to input them into your brain en masse.
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May 13, 2024 14:39
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Saladman posted:"Can people understand me?" is the first level at like B1/B2, and it's fine if it's for tourism or whatever. If you actually live in a region or household or work environment where that language is spoken, "Can I fully* express myself?" becomes more important, which is more like C1. I mean you seem pretty fluent to me. I was trying to give you confidence, nobody is perfect.
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May 13, 2024 14:51
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Saladman posted:"Can people understand me?" is the first level at like B1/B2, and it's fine if it's for tourism or whatever. If you actually live in a region or household or work environment where that language is spoken, "Can I fully* express myself?" becomes more important, which is more like C1. As a man, I will never be fully fluent in any language, as I am incapable of expressing my feelings.
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May 13, 2024 14:51
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Violence is a language, you’ll be set there
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May 13, 2024 14:52
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May 13, 2024 14:52
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My level of fluency is basically 'anything non-scientific'. This is an exaggeration, but it is a very good point raised earlier regarding what you might call domain-specific terminology that rarely comes up in prose or casual conversation. I'm sure linguists have an actual real official term for this. Anything regarding math for example is a crapshot whether I understand in English. Doesn't help that my brain did not find mathematical notation worth sticking in the long-term memory banks during university, so even though I did great with it at the time it is all long since gone by now. Luckily rarely relevant.
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May 13, 2024 15:05
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The correct anglicization of Bosporus is Oxford.
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May 13, 2024 15:49
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think a better word for your continued lack of self-confidence in your english competence is "fluent" since like you clearly got a decent amount of understanding in the language in text form to say and understand complex things, but fluency is a much more subjective judgement and is more relevant in spoken form than written. Reading writing speaking and understanding spoken language are all separate skills to be honest. I can read Spanish just fine with maybe having to look up a big long word but I usually can figure it out from context. Understanding spoken language I can’t even understand simple stuff. It never clicked for me but all the Spanish lessons I took in high school and college are still kicking for reading
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May 13, 2024 15:51
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Guavanaut posted:The correct anglicization of Bosporus is Oxford. 
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May 13, 2024 15:51
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Both names for a place where a cow crossed.
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May 13, 2024 16:01
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Guavanaut posted:Both names for a place where a cow crossed. Chief Heifer of the The Cow Crossing Empire
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May 13, 2024 16:05
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