new thread
Well i'm an American who only knows 1 langugae fluently. I would like to know why in English speaking countries they only get taught 1 language. In Europe kids must learn at least a 2nd and in most case even a third. When I was in high school in Michigan, to graduate you needed 0 foreign language credits this is a shame, and most colleges don't really teach you how to speak the language, My mom has a BA in French and Spanish, and she can't speak French worth crap, and she isn't totally fluent in spanish. There are many times where I wish I was taught spanish or german and French.
So people from other countries and Americans, Tell us the reason why Americans generally only know 1 language, besides people of immigrants.
Honestly Kenneth, you give Brits too much credit. We are equally as lazy with languages as Americans. In fact there's a joke I like to remember in this situation.
Q) What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A) Bi-lingual
Q) What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
A) Tri-lingual
Q) What do you call someone who speakes one Language?
A) English!
I am a rarety amongst Brits, because I'm one of the small percentage of our population who speak a second language. My Spanish is pretty fluent, and this isn't thanks to any great education, its thanks to living in Spain since I was 8 years old.
My French is basic, but my understaning of the language is better than my spoken efforts. So I get by with French speakers, all be it very slowly.
The fact is that in neither Britain or the States do they take foreign languages seriously, yet in Spain speaking English or another foreign language is prerequisite for about half the jobs which are available in the country. Hence people take it a lot more seriously.
Given that something like only 10% of American's hold passports, how likely is it that you'll ever need to use a foreign language? Particularly if most of you never leave your shores, I appreciate that America is a damn big place, so I mean no disrespect by that comment, only to say that really, whats the point in learning French or Spanish or German if you never leave home?
On a side note... Whats really screwed up at the moment is that Britain is currently enduring one of its worst spells of International relations with France since before the signing of the Entendre Cordial, yet we have our first Prime Minister in over 50 years who speaks French.
Well to me a passport is an insurance policy in case things ever get bad in America. Every where you go in America you can find spanish being spoken, so I don't see why people aren't inclined to learn that language. I have tried, but generally I like the german language better.
I think you make a few valid points, Sorted, and must say you almost make America look like a great place to live in the sense that people from Brittain may go to Spain, Frenchmen may go to Denmark, Finnish to Russia, all for vacations but here in America you go from Pennsylvania to Texas, Montana to Tenessee, Georgia to Mississippi and it's vacation enough. Or even go from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to Gettysburg Pennsylvania and that's a great vacation in it's self. Sorry, just getting patriotically sentimental. As for most of the world either speaking English or knowing it as a second language that inclines me to believe that it is the inevitable destiny of America and Brittain to rule the world one day. Perhaps throw in Germany but lately they've been a bunch of wusses. They used to be all ready to fight but since the sixties or so...eh.
This actually helps the tourist industry here in the United States. LOTS of people speak English as a second language, and they can come here to vacation and understand everything.
To sum it all up, my friend, God bless America. And Britain too. And the rest of the world. BUT most importantly America, we could use it right now what with the corruption in all of our political systems. We have such a dark side to our great country. One day we'll rid the corruption of this country but I fear that the guilt of this land shall be purged away with nothing short of bloodshed.
And a little while later you'd be there in your dinky little outfit ready to re-enact it...
Well, for one thing English is one of the most widely used languages.
If I stuck with my native language (danish) I could only speak with a small fraction of the people on earth (Denmark has a population of around 5-6 million)
Because of this, we have to learn English (is taught from 4th grade in school).
In 7th grade you have to choose between taking a French or German class. You can opt-out of those classes, but it will have consequences for your further education.
Also most movies and computer programs are in English, so we use it from a very young age (in my case from around when I was 6) and get used to it, so it's just as if having two languages was entirely natural.
Holland is just like this... they also pick up BBC broadcasts from across the channel, so the Dutch are taught English from TV if not from school.
Hollywood is one of the greatest language schools on earth. :-)
Yes, but don't feed our ignorance! English is a world language, and most movies are in English, but any time that you wish, you can switch to Danish. We can, for the most part, not follow you when you switch.
Now, who has most of the "power"?
Robert
Well, of course you're right.
If I did want to talk about someone in danish, I still needed to be careful though. Words like 'idiot' or 'imbecile' are latin-based and thus understood by most people :)
Not that I make a habit of caling people stuff like that.
How do you say Hello in Denmarkian (I know it's 'Danish' but I like how Denmarkian sounds)?
Hello = Hej (pronounced similar to hi) or hallo.
Thanks. I have a bird on my computer and it's name is Sunny. What I have just said is completely irrevalent.
In Canada, we have two official languages, English and French. I think they stopped doing it so early, but I remember taking French before grade one. I took it every year until grade 9. I dropped it because I wanted to take other courses. It's very rare to find other languages taught. I was looking around to study German, but would have to travel 45 minutes every day out of town to school.
Growing up, my best friends were French and spoke both fluently. Both of them ended up trying to help me study for my exam.
There are french television stations and I still watch them once in a while...like a familar movie...
I live in the UK, which is an english speaking country, but I am fluent in two different languages; English, and Welsh. I used to be pretty good in German too, but since forgotten most of it :(
My mother is very fluent in German, and is reasonably fluent in Spanish also. So you don't have to be in an English speaking country to be fluent in only 1 language, although Welsh is my first language, and English is my second.
In Europe kids must learn at least a 2nd and in most case even a third. When I was in high school in Michigan, to graduate you needed 0 foreign language credits this is a shame, and most colleges don't really teach you how to speak the language, My mom has a BA in French and Spanish, and she can't speak French worth crap, and she isn't totally fluent in spanish. There are many times where I wish I was taught spanish or german and French.
Couldn't you choose Spanish, German or French?!?! If we share the basic understanding that high school is for 16 years old and college is for students up to 18 or 19 years old, there should be a range of language courses for you to choose.
Rydym yn siarad Gymraeg, iaeth fy'n ngwlad. Os unrhyw berson yma yn deall fi? Yr rheswm fi'n siarad I hunain, ddim yn golygu synwir o gwbl.
Why do most people from metric countries only know one system of measurement?
Bill
Isn't that the truth? Kilometers, miles, what's the conversion rate?!
I know that one mile is circa 1.6km
Thus 1km must be 1/1.6 = 0.625 miles.
Dealing with foreigners you need to know some of this. Miles is just random knowledge, but when dealing with people online one needs to know how a foot or an inch is.
Especially when measuring long hair, right, everyone?!
JE, in her meager attempt to bring this thread back on topic. :-)
Because Metric is much easier, everything works in powers of 10 -In constrast Imperial Measurements are a pig to remember, most kids in Britain these days can't tell you how many inches in a foot, yards in a mile or lbs in a tonne. (In fact I'm not sure I can...)
Sorted
My point of course was if you are using something that is easy for you and more people are using it than anything else, why learn something else? A lot of English speakers reason that way.
I think we're going to be moving to metric by default within a generation. What's happened here now is that the school system doesn't seem to be teaching the English system anymore. Remember how they used to hammer us with word problems? They don't bother with that now. Perhaps it's because they don't want to waste time teaching something that *might* change in the future. Or it doesn't fit conveniently into the concept/language based math programs that are popular now. At the same time, they aren't teaching the metric system, because we *might*not* change.
So the middle schools are full of students who have no conception what a measuring system is, or why anyone would want to measure anything. They no longer know how many feet are in a mile, nor can they tell you what unit you use to measure distance between cities. They can't even tell you why we call a 'meter stick' a meter stick!.
Sorry. Breathe.
I really do wonder. In the 1980s they started such a move, and polls of voters came back so negative toward the idea that politicians ran from the metric system faster than they run from an investigative reporter. All the road signs in California that show both miles and kilometers are now very old.
Metric units catch on where there's a need. Most Americans hate fractions, and we now have 28 grams in the ounce and 25 millimeters in the inch, the way most people see it. "28 grams in an ounce" works very nicely into a system where the next step up is the just-as-illogical "16 ounces in a pound". [grin]
On the other hand, I can't imagine any American housewife ever feeding anything to her family that is sold by the "kilo". The only thing that comes in kilos here is illegal drugs. That unit brings up images of that, and it is likely forever tainted.
It's "hours", isn't it? [wink]
"Meters" measure stuff. Is it because the stick is used to "measure stuff"?
The tenacity of the old units is probably intertwined with the tenacity of the English language, which has, unlike with most languages, always been driven by the masses, not by those "at the top". Units like "miles" are deeply buried in our culture. All together now, cue The Who: I can see for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers... [choke]
The only way to stamp out the old units is to pave them over. Make the "yard" 100 cm long. Make the "mile" have five furlongs instead of eight. Then people can use the old words and metric at the same time.
Bill
(Who discovered the metric units for temperature, distance, and mass a long time ago, but who still can't figure out how to tell time in metric....)
ROFLMAO That is hilarious !!!! I hope you and Larry are enjoying your vacation. Absalom
Hmm your quite right, this is a common but poor justification for not learning another language, the reasoning only holds if you stay in your own backyard. I think mesmerised has already pointed out that even a saunter into cyberspace requires a knowledge of Imperial and Metric systems. If you travel to Britain, Ireland, the US or Canada then if you only know metric measurements then your screwed. Just as a Brit, or American is if he travels abroad without another language.
I'm sure you appreciate this yourself and are just putting across an alternative perspective. But this kinda reasoning only works if you never leave home.
Sorted
Unfortunately, if you never leave home, you really don't have any opportunity to learn a foreign language here. Although they begin teaching it in middle schools in some systems, the students may only be getting fifteen 40 minute lessons a year, which is not better than nothing. The students never get the feeling that a foreign language is a medium of communication, rather than a series of pointless intellectual exercises to be avoided as much as possible. Even the local university, which grants a major in Spanish, concentrates strictly on literature. Only one conversation class is required, and no one becomes fluent without travel.
I spent three weeks in Santiago de Compostela at the University two summers ago, through an exchange program with the local university. In my group were some students who were ready to graduate with degrees in Spanish. They hung out together in English bars, and I ordered shots for them.
They are by now probably Spanish teachers.
Olé!
Sounds like Peggy on 'King of the Hill'!!
I don't accept the premise. Clocks, for example, are almost entirely not metric, but I'd venture to say that most people in metric countries know how to read a clock.
Oh, Kenneth, though it is not a hair topic, you've touched on a topic dear to my heart. I am a language teacher. I teach Latin, but I also work in Spanish, Hebrew and Greek. This is such an important issue. Largely, we don't emphasize multi-lingualism because we expect the world to speak English. It's part of a kind of imperialistic attitude that Brits and Americans share, consciously or unconsciously.
And, most of the world does function in English. Here's the problem with that for us: when those who are not from America or G.B. don't want us to understand them, they simply change languages.
And we are left . . . in our ignorance.
Robert
Well I also heard some French people don't think like they have to learn a second language, because French use to be in English's Position as far as important languages.
The lack of knowledge of a second language in the U.S. and G.B. has not been entirely due to laziness, but a lack of necessity (there is a difference!). The vast expanse of the British empire and their presence in key trade locations made English an easy, if not necessary, language to learn throughout the world for trade (GB had a strong presence in North America, the Pacific, Hong Kong, Australia, India, and Africa). The rise of the U.S. as a superpower in the 1900's solidified this position for the English language. Today, it is commonly accepted as the international language of business. Companies with international business often translate from a native language to English, then to the destination language, as English is so common. Spanish is a close second, for many of the same reasons. I'm not sure, but I believe Spanish is actually the most common first language in the world?
One unusual thing I observed a few years ago travelling through Europe. After visiting Sweden, Italy, and then arriving in Germany, I became accustomed to most everyone speaking English. The last destination on my stay in Germany, however, was in part of the former East Germany. Typically, only those about 20 years of age and younger spoke English, the rest had learned Russian as their second language, so things were a bit more difficult for me there.
Seems obvious, but the most widely spoken first language is Chinese Mandarin.
Just an observation, but I think you can say that Mandarin is the language spoken by more people in the world as their native language, but not as the most widely spoken language. I think English is the most widely spoken--that is spoken in more places than any other.
Robert
Mostly because everyone in India speaks English, albeit not as their first language. I think there are more English speakers in India than everywhere else put together.
The reasons why have been explained by the other posts, but I'm a American who speaks spanish (best friend growing up was Columbian), have a knowledge of Latin and Greek (was homeschooled, and was part of the curriculum) and am now learning conversational Mandarin Chinese (just for the heck of it).
Living in the southern U.S. it has come in handy to know Spanish.
Without reading anyone else posts yet...you'll get my complete opinion.
The United States is a lot larger than Europe altogether. The US may be diverse, but the country mainly speaks English, however, in Europe, it is made up of a rich, dense cultures that are packed closely. It is important in Europe to be able to communicate easily back and forth. As well, we are often isolated from other societies. We don't generally get news casts or other media in other languages, which you would more easily get in Europe.
That's what I think. To become totally fluent, you have to be living there.
May you could have other languages to post. It would help you if you want to learn and open up the board to other people?
In Europe English is the primary (native) language of less than 15% of the Europe's population (that is the proportion of the UK population out of the Europe's total). However, considering its widespread worldwide use (thanks to the late British Empire) and the significance of the US as Europe's main trade partner, in most European countries English is taught in elementary school as 1st foreign language. Other languages taught in European schools are French and German, usually as 2nd foreign language in high school or college. In the former Soviet block (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and - in a lesser degree - Romania) Russian was the primary (and often the only) foreign language taught in schools.
In Romania, due to its traditional cultural ties with France, French is more widespread than English.
In Germany and France there are relatively few English speakers (and they tend to dub the movies in German or French rather than subtitling them...) - I think that it has to do with the dominant status these two countries had (and still have in many regards) in Europe. In Austria it's easier to get along by speaking English, at least in hotels, restaurants and shops.
Denmark: virtually everybody speaks English, and you can enjoy your favourite movies (in theatre or on TV) with their original soundtrack (cartoons and children's movies are dubbed though). English is taught in the Danish schools starting with the 2nd or 3rd elementary grade.
Sweden: many English speakers, though not so many as in Denmark.
A Linux Longhair
Luckily, a lot of the time you can get the original soundtrack on cartoons as well. I'm going to see Shrek2 later this month, and I sure wouldn't pay to see it in a dubbed version.
Also, 2nd or 3rd elementary grade might be true for private schools, but public schools it's 4th grade.
When I was in school we had a group of American kids come over on an exchange trip. The bulk of the kids that traveled were my age. Or a year older so I lot of them were in my class. They added 6 to our numbers which brought the total to 22. (Yeah small class sizes I know.)
I'm botched a pencil drawing I'd made and decided it was time to start over, so called across the classroom to my mate, and asked if he had a Rubber.
The American kids burst out laughing. In the US a "Rubber" is a Condom, but when we say "rubber" in the UK we mean erazor. Nowadays most brits are aware of the double meaning. But in a classroom full of 13 year olds back in 1992, none of my classmates could understand why the American exchange students were laughing.
Another note, one of these kids was car-pooling (americanism) with me, I told him to put his bag in the boot. He had no idea what I meant until I translated "boot" to "trunk".
My Point, you can see the grounds for misunderstanding between two people who speak the same language, how back do you think this could get when you speak completely different languages.
You should never turn your nose up at the opportunity to learn something new. Especially something that will help you understand and communicate with others.
Sorted
OMG, I wasn't aware of the double meaning! lol I don't think anyone else in my classes are too!
Bokura makaieniada ikainda. Sokuda sosinimuno da. Mamaoru dekimono-no tomo ni makerarenai! Minna, mitete kurre!
Ivix
atashi mo?
This is fantastic! Native Alabamian (dyslexics)! :-D I kid of course.
