Multilingual Americans: A rare breed???
David Goldman
Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
or doctors??!
Peter T. Daniels
How many school districts still teach, let alone require, foreign
languages any more?
Colleges were eliminating foreign language requirements for graduation,
let alone admission, 30 years ago when I was applying. (I'd had French,
Latin, and German, and not by choice, in an Episcopal school in New
York City.)
I don't know the statistics on foreign language study, let alone
multilingualism. There's even a barrier to "natural" multilingualism in
that the children of immigrants very often wanted to have nothing to do
with their parents' languages, and the third generation must struggle
to learn their ancestral languages.
Statistically, the multilingual American is certainly far less common
than multilinguals from nearly any other country. Most of the people in
the world probably speak two or three languages routinely. But not
Americans.
Not long ago I came across a note published in 1910 that there was a
sizable Manx community in Cleveland (or possibly Cincinnati). The Manx
language might not have died out if the xenophobic American attitude to
foreign languages had not been so strong and pervasive a century ago.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Chris Korff
In article <68ehsn$1...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
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>From: "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net>
>Newsgroups: sci.lang.translation,sci.lang
>Subject: Re: Multilingual Americans: A rare breed???
>Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 17:45:35 -0500
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--snip--
>How many school districts still teach, let alone require, foreign
>languages any more?
Most teach the usual Spanish (also available on Sesame Street) and French.
Newsweek reported that when I was in my 4th year of high school Russian ( in
a Capital District suburb) in 1982, there were only 5000 students in the US
enrolled in high school Russian classes.
In 1990, the number had "jumped" to 15,000.
My (public) school at the time, offered 5 years of Russian, German, French,
and oh yeah, Spanish. Also four years of Latin.
It was one of *five* schools in New York State to offer Russian.
David Goldman
>Not long ago I came across a note published in 1910 that there was a
>sizable Manx community in Cleveland (or possibly Cincinnati). The Manx
>language might not have died out if the xenophobic American attitude to
>foreign languages had not been so strong and pervasive a century ago.
>--
>Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Isn't utterly ironic that a nation that has given the world a vast
communications medium via TV, Internet, Cinema, etc. is the nation
that cannot appreciate the value of communicating with others in their
own language. As a further irony, the world is gobbling up English
everywhere.....
Scott Hollinger
Because so few Americans are multilingual. That makes you unusual.
People are impressed with you like they are with triplets.
There are cultural, historical, and geographical explanations for
Americans' monolingualism.
Scott
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On Wed, 31 Dec 1997
17:45:35 -0500, "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net>
in <68ehsn$1...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net> wrote
|the children of immigrants very often wanted to have nothing to do
|with their parents' languages, and the third generation must struggle
|to learn their ancestral languages.
My father's older siblings did not want their parents to speak
Norwegian in the home, and consequently grew up monolingual. At
the same time, the pressure to -- and the rewards for --
learning English and assimilating into the mainstream culture
were tremendous. My Grandpa did not like being a "greenhorn'.
It was more important that everyone learn English *here*; the
other languages could take care of themselves *there*.
|Statistically, the multilingual American is certainly far less common
|than multilinguals from nearly any other country. Most of the people in
|the world probably speak two or three languages routinely. But not
|Americans.
I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
something that pays much better.
I know I am offending some people, but it's the bare bald truth.
Nearly everyone else learns English as their first second
language -- mostly as a matter of economics. Even if they rarely
encounter native English speakers, the Japanese businessman and
the Egyptian businessman will do their business in *English*.
In the usual course of things, Americans have learned we do not
have to learn a foreign language to compete in the world market.
The only language Americans seem to see *any* economic benefit
in is Spanish -- and this is the language that is indeed
routinely taught in US high schools.
--
Mark Odegard.
My real address doesn't include a Christian name.
Emailed copies of responses are very much appreciated.
eda...@cts.com
In <34aab578...@news.erols.com>, da...@erols.com (David Goldman) writes:
>Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
>it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
>5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
>with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
>when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
>multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
>or doctors??!
Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
liable to wind up in another country.
--
Show me a cultural relativist at thirty-thousand feet
and I'll show you a hypocrite -- Richard Dawkins
Edmond Dantes eda...@cts.com
http://www.users.cts.com/crash/e/edantes
Steinar Midtskogen
[Mark Odegard]
> I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
> opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
> marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
> the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
> something that pays much better.
I think the things one picks up by learning foreign languages are just
more difficult to put a price tag on. They are not necessarily less
valuable.
> I know I am offending some people, but it's the bare bald truth.
> Nearly everyone else learns English as their first second
> language -- mostly as a matter of economics. Even if they rarely
> encounter native English speakers, the Japanese businessman and
> the Egyptian businessman will do their business in *English*.
Alas.
Risking too to offend some people by generalising I say that this
reluctance is linked to the self-centredness, the monoperspective,
among Americans, which is a odd thing, I think, since the country is
mostly a nation of immigrants. "How is it living an entire life in a
foreign country" this American would wonder at me.
(of course, every nation contemplates its own navel, some more than
others in certain respects)
Learning at least one foreign language is good for them.
--
Steinar Midtskogen, stud.scient. informaticae; http://www.ifi.uio.no/~steinarm/
Osloae - Noruegia - 59°57'55" ad boream, 10°44'25" ad orientem, 615' supra mare
dico uaccas pennatas in orbibus ualde eccentricis circum Venerem noctu reuolui.
nonne mirabile est quod omnibus insciis tantas nugas latine scriptitare possum?
John Woodgate
In article <34aab578...@news.erols.com>, David Goldman
<da...@erols.com> writes
>Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
>it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
>5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
>with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
>when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
>multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
>or doctors??!
It's a profound subject, based on the literature of 'How the West was
Won' etc. The founding and development of the US appeared to depend more
on physical prowess and inborn sense than academic knowledge and, in
particular, knowledge of other cultures. Such non-Anglo-Saxon cultures
that did exist in US tended to be isolationist. Consequently, anyone who
did not speak 'American' as a first language was regarded as a member of
an inconsequential minority, however unjust that may have been.
It is only in the later 20th century that a significant proportion of US
citizens have found it prudent to acquire a second language, or more. Of
course, any American can aspire to learn many languages: tradition has
it that the first five are the most difficult!
--
Regards, John Woodgate, Phone +44 (0)1268 747839 Fax +44 (0)1268 777124.
OOO - Own Opinions Only. The first glass for thirst, the second for
nourishment, the third for pleasure and the fourth for madness.
JPKIRCHNER
Mark Odegard. wrote:
>I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
>opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
>marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
>the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
>something that pays much better.
I have found economic benefit to learning *Czech* and none to learning French,
German or Spanish. The benefit lies in the fact that Americans who speak an
"esoteric" language are so rare that once you can speak one, opportunities open
up that you wouldn't even have guessed were there. A friend of mine had the
same experience with Russian back in the days of the USSR. People had told him
Russian and Ukrainian would be economically useless to him and that he should
study French or Spanish instead. He persisted in Russian, and after
graduation, while his Romance-speaking classmates were doing nothing involving
their languages, he was being recruited for various sorts of international jobs
that involved his Russian.
So people's idea of what sort of foreign language brings one economic benefit
is very often completely backwards.
>I know I am offending some people, but it's the bare bald truth.
>Nearly everyone else learns English as their first second
>language -- mostly as a matter of economics. Even if they rarely
>encounter native English speakers, the Japanese businessman and
>the Egyptian businessman will do their business in *English*.
But the most important thing to notice is that these people study English to a
much higher level of competence than a typical American who learns a foreign
language. By age 14, a Swedish kid can understand English well enough to burst
out laughing at an American joke (even a play on words) with absolutely no
comprehension gap. Typically, a 16-year-old American who takes honors Spanish
can't understand much natural spoken Spanish, and can't form complex verbal
sentences himself. One reason Americans do not get much utility out of their
foreign languages is that they don't learn them to a level that is useful to
begin with.
>In the usual course of things, Americans have learned we do not
>have to learn a foreign language to compete in the world market.
Well, not exactly. As I said, Americans usually do not learn their foreign
languages to the degree necessary to exploit the economic opportunities that
escape them as monolinguals. The other problem is that, considering the dismal
level of proficiency students graduate with, companies find it's easier to
teach Spanish or Chinese to an engineer or accountant than to teach engineering
or accounting to a Spanish or Chinese major. Companies want employees with
foreign language proficiency, but they tend to send their specialists to learn
the foreign languages rather than hire a foreign language major and train him
in a technical or business specialty. Most *serious* adult ed language classes
where I live are full of engineers sent by their companies to take the courses,
and onsite foreign language instruction for business people is a booming
business here.
>The only language Americans seem to see *any* economic benefit
>in is Spanish -- and this is the language that is indeed
>routinely taught in US high schools.
And yet, Americans see economic benefit to Spanish even where it doesn't exist.
I teach required linguistics courses to undergrad education students as well
as to certified teachers going back for their master's. These are mostly
people certified to teach in Michigan or planning to become so. To the extent
that any of them have had a foreign language, it has almost always been
Spanish. Yet not one of them uses Spanish at work or for any economically
beneficial purpose, simply because it is rare in Michigan to encounter a
linguistically unassimilated Hispanic. There is a great shortage of teachers
here, as well as medical personnel, who can speak Arabic, Russian or Polish,
but education majors reject these languages as "not useful", and continue to
study Spanish and not use it. The Arabic and Russian classes at the colleges
here go begging for students, while zillions of people who had Spanish in high
school and college happily speak English to the Hispanics they encounter. The
utility of Spanish is overhyped in many parts of the country.
James Kirchner
Rhialto
>Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
>dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
>because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
>liable to wind up in another country.
Some would say this is a typical example of american lack of
geographical understanding (^_^). European countries are smaller than
the USA, true, but not *that* small. Only Monaco, Vatican and
Leichtenstein reach the ludicrously small proportions you imply. Or do
you have *very* long legs?
dont flame me, this isnt a serious opinion (^_^)
+------------------------------------------------+
|Rhialto |
|
|I know you understand what you thought I said, |
|but I'm not sure you understand that what you |
|thought I said is not what I meant to say. |
+------------------------------------------------+
SPAM filter in operation
remove all x from address
rhialto at easynet dot co dot uk
Harlan Messinger
Steinar Midtskogen <stei...@ifi.uio.no> wrote:
>Risking too to offend some people by generalising I say that this
>reluctance is linked to the self-centredness, the monoperspective,
>among Americans, which is a odd thing, I think, since the country is
>mostly a nation of immigrants. "How is it living an entire life in a
>foreign country" this American would wonder at me.
>
>(of course, every nation contemplates its own navel, some more than
>others in certain respects)
>
>Learning at least one foreign language is good for them.
>
>--
>Steinar Midtskogen, stud.scient. informaticae; http://www.ifi.uio.no/~steinarm/
>Osloae - Noruegia - 59°57'55" ad boream, 10°44'25" ad orientem, 615' supra mare
>dico uaccas pennatas in orbibus ualde eccentricis circum Venerem noctu reuolui.
>nonne mirabile est quod omnibus insciis tantas nugas latine scriptitare possum?
Am I mistaken, or are you not even here pandering to Americocentric
Americans, by describing your altitude as 615 feet as opposed to some
number of meters? Or is a single prime used in Norway and/or elsewhere
to signify meters--something I've not observed before?
Mark Odegard
**Note Spam Trap below** On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 13:36:01 -0000,
"Rhialto" <rhix...@easynet.co.ukx> in
<68g8ki$cck$1...@apple.news.easynet.net> wrote
|>Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
|>dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
|>because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
|>liable to wind up in another country.
|
|Some would say this is a typical example of american lack of
|geographical understanding (^_^). European countries are smaller than
|the USA, true, but not *that* small. Only Monaco, Vatican and
|Leichtenstein reach the ludicrously small proportions you imply. Or do
|you have *very* long legs?
|
|dont flame me, this isnt a serious opinion (^_^)
Americans (and Europeans) are well-aware of just how large the
United States is. What Americans sometimes forget, however, is
just *how small* the European nations are by comparison, and (in
absolute terms) just *how* large the US is. In the US, you can
drive for five hours and still be in the same state; in Europe
you're likely to have driven through five countries in that
time. Boston Mass. to Moscow Idaho is about the same distance as
Boston, England to Moscow, Russia. Boston to San Diego is Calais
to the Urals or Berlin to Kabul.
The lower 48 of the United States is essentially as big as the
*whole* of Europe. We have about as many people in our one
country as does the whole of the EU in their countries! We can
drive for days and days and never encounter any other language.
Many Americans have never even met a non-native speaker, and
most have no practical dealings with such persons. This is not
true for Europeans, especially in recent years. About the
closest Americans get to a foreign language are the trilingually
labelled food packages coming from within the NAFTA area.
European countries really are *that* small, at least in
comparison to the immensely-sized United States. And nearly all
of it is monolingually anglophone.
Charles Belov
Well, then what is the point of studying history or political science? There
are potential economic benefits of learning a foreign language:
1) Marketing or providing customer service to people who feel more comfortable
speaking that language.
2) Working for the diplomatic corps
3) During negotiations, being able to "eavesdrop" on people who think you
can't speak their language (although you have to anticipate this one and not
give away that you have this ability)
4) As with any other field of study, teaching others the same subject
5) Internationalizing software
However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
Charles "Chas" Belov
ch...@cabelov.removethis.com (remove the "removethis.")
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/4294/ (MIDI/World Rock site)
http://www.cabelov.com/ (Professional/Creative site)
Mark Odegard wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
> opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
> marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
> the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
> something that pays much better.
>
<snip>
Sander van Malssen
NOTE THE ANTI-SPAM TRAP writes: [I can't help it. :-)]
> The lower 48 of the United States is essentially as big as the *whole*
> of Europe. We have about as many people in our one country as does the
> whole of the EU in their countries!
Here you seem to underestimate the high density of population in Europe
(or lack thereof in the US of course, depending on your point of view).
The EU has about 365 million people, which is about a 100 million more
than the US I think. I don't know the total for all of Europe, but I
think it's in the 500 million ball-park.
But otherwise, yes, we do have a lot more different languages packed
closely together, and especially in a small country like mine
(Netherlands, 15M) I don't think it's possible to do secondary education
without doing at least a few foreign languages. I for one started out
with English, French, German, then added Latin and Greek, and did final
exams in English and Greek, which was the minimum at my school.
Cheers,
Sander
--
Sander van Malssen -- s...@kozmix.ow.nl -- http://www.cistron.nl/~svm/
* The 1-2-5 Page: http://www.cistron.nl/~svm/music/ *
Phil Herring
In article <34ac052f...@news2.means.net> Mark Odegard, marko...@ptel.net writes:
>[...] In the US, you can
>drive for five hours and still be in the same state;
I think that's an exaggeration, unless you take a very indirect route via
tiny back roads, rather than use the interstate. Based on my own
experiences driving in the USA, five hours will get you to the Canadian or
Mexican border from *most* of the lower 48 states. US states tend to be
quite small [1] - roughly the same size as the countries of Europe.
ObLanguages: Australia is also crammed full of migrants, and multilingual
people tend to be rare. This has many causes, but the most important is the
fact that everyday life won't usually bring you into contact with
non-English-speaking people. This is changing slowly - for example, with
the rise of the tourist industry, some Asian languages have become popular
at high schools. But languages still aren't generally mandatory in our
education system.
[1] Unlike Australia, which also lacks interstates. Driving from my home
town of Wollongong to the western border of NSW takes over 12 hours at
legal speeds. And NSW isn't anything like the biggest Australian state.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1997 Phil Herring. This article may not be reproduced for profit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <8367o4m...@oskoreia.studby.uio.no>,
Steinar Midtskogen <stei...@ifi.uio.no> wrote:
>[Mark Odegard]
>
>> I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
>> opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
>> marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
>> the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
>> something that pays much better.
>
>more difficult to put a price tag on. They are not necessarily less
>valuable.
In a metaphysical sense, it's impossible to "put a price tag" on any
experience. What is the worth, in dollars and cents (or ECUs or yen or
whatever) of a weekend with a good friend? Of sipping a fine wine on a
terrace with a seaside view? Of being in the stands of a dramatic hockey
playoff game between the USA and Canada?
Nevertheless, all these experiences (and more) *do* have price tags. You
look over the ticket prices for transport to the city where your good
friend lives, calculate your expenses (including time absent from work or
chores), and decide whether you can really afford that weekend or not.
The same with the wine, the hockey game, learning taichi from a world-
reknown sensei, downloading computer games from distant websites, and
thousands of other things.
All Mr. Odegard is saying is that if it were really renumerative to learn
foreign languages in the USA, more people would invest in doing it. There
are always fanatics who will indulge their pleasures despite the financial
loss (for some people, no price--even $1,000 to a scalper, $450 plane
tickets, etc.--is too much to pay to catch that playoff came in person),
but most of us behave rather moderately and rationally in making our
financial decisions. If the Web were to disappear tomorrow, there would
still be people out there who would blow huge chunks of their income on
hardware and software to create Web pages. But they would be a select few
and the millions of people today who are plowing time and energy into
learning how to exploit that resource would be plowing it into something
else instead.
So it is with foreign languages. If the human delight with learning them
was equal to the delight provided by blowing away virtual aliens or
guffawing at cartoon kids cussing each other out, half this country would
be polyglot. If the financial rewards were comparable to what they are
for knowing a word processor, same deal. But neither of these is the case
so USAmericans don't learn foreign languages. What is so damn hard to
understand about this? Why are we compelled to have to continually
explain to everyone in the free world how the market works? (Actually,
most people I've met have a pretty sound understanding how the market
works; it usually takes pointy-headed intellectuals to misunderstand the
basic facts of human existence.)
>> I know I am offending some people, but it's the bare bald truth.
>> Nearly everyone else learns English as their first second
>> language -- mostly as a matter of economics. Even if they rarely
>> encounter native English speakers, the Japanese businessman and
>> the Egyptian businessman will do their business in *English*.
>
>Alas.
>
>Risking too to offend some people by generalising I say that this
>reluctance is linked to the self-centredness, the monoperspective,
>among Americans, which is a odd thing, I think, since the country is
>mostly a nation of immigrants. "How is it living an entire life in a
>foreign country" this American would wonder at me.
I would agree with you if it weren't for the fact that I personally know
several (and have read stats concerning millions) of self-centred "mono-
perspectual" Americans who have devoted no small amount of time, effort,
and money to learning a given foreign language when they saw concrete
benefits from it. It doesn't matter of these benefits were mainly
quantitative (such as my cousin learning Spanish because his company
wants to increase its share of Mexican clients) or qualitative (my sister
learning the same language to communicate with her monolingual Iberian
mother-in-law); when they're apparent, motivation materialises, just as it
does everwhere else in the world. Why not look for concrete, quantitative
geopolitical and economic factors first before you start making chauvin-
istic cultural generalisations and positing qualitative differences be-
tween peoples that may, in fact, not be there? I hear all about how
isolationist and self-centred we USAmericans are compared to sophisticated
and international Europeans and yet--strangely--I've haven't exactly had
a hard time meeting intolerent, monolingual Europeans.
>(of course, every nation contemplates its own navel, some more than
>others in certain respects)
Precisely!
>Learning at least one foreign language is good for them.
Sez you. The nuns at my grade school thought learning proper penmanship
was good for us, so they spent time which could have been used on Latin
(or COBOL or civics or cooking or a thousand other things someone some-
where would've considered "good for us") teaching it too us.
Now, since humans are not entirely rational actors and the market
is far from perfect, it's always possible that the USAmerican disinterest
in becoming multilingual exceeds the disincentives to do so, but I haven't
seen proof of it.
--
Daniel "Da" von Brighoff /\ Dilettanten
(de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
/____\ gegen die Kunst!
Harlan Messinger
Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
>In article <34ac052f...@news2.means.net> Mark Odegard, marko...@ptel.net writes:
>>[...] In the US, you can
>>drive for five hours and still be in the same state;
>
>I think that's an exaggeration, unless you take a very indirect route via
>tiny back roads, rather than use the interstate. Based on my own
>experiences driving in the USA, five hours will get you to the Canadian or
>Mexican border from *most* of the lower 48 states. US states tend to be
>quite small [1] - roughly the same size as the countries of Europe.
Not so. I live in Virginia a few miles from Washington, D.C. Virginia
is small by comparison with the REALLY big states out West, yet it
takes a good eight hours to get to Bristol on the Tennessee border,
and about nine or ten to Canada, and let's not even discuss driving to
Mexico from here. From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, within
Pennsylvania, is five hours. Los Angeles to San Francisco is six or
seven hours, and that's not even half the length of California. From
New York City to Canada is about five hours; anything south of there
is longer. The only states from which you can get to Mexico in under
five hours are the states that border it (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona
and California) and maybe Nevada. Of the remaining states, you can't
get to Canada in five hours (without grossly exceeding the speed
limit) from Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, or any state south of the
line formed by Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland--a total
of 18 states more than five hours from Canada and Mexico. And there
were more before the speed limit was raised.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68hqje$jq0$1...@wyrm.its.uow.edu.au>,
Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
>In article <34ac052f...@news2.means.net> Mark Odegard, marko...@ptel.net writes:
>>[...] In the US, you can
>>drive for five hours and still be in the same state;
>
>I think that's an exaggeration, unless you take a very indirect route via
>tiny back roads, rather than use the interstate. Based on my own
>experiences driving in the USA, five hours will get you to the Canadian or
>Mexican border from *most* of the lower 48 states. US states tend to be
>quite small [1] - roughly the same size as the countries of Europe.
YMMV. Five hours won't quite get me from Chicago (IL) to St. Louis (MO),
which is literally just across the bridge from Illinois. Five hours from
there will get me to Kansas City (KS) but not quite across the Oklahoma
border. He never said that you could drive five hours in *any* direction
without leaving a state and he certainly never said anything about how
many states that this was true of. His statement is absolutely true as
written.
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On 2 Jan 1998
04:31:42 GMT, Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> in
<68hqje$jq0$1...@wyrm.its.uow.edu.au> wrote
|In article <34ac052f...@news2.means.net> Mark Odegard, marko...@ptel.net writes:
|>[...] In the US, you can
|>drive for five hours and still be in the same state;
|
|I think that's an exaggeration, unless you take a very indirect route via
|tiny back roads, rather than use the interstate.
Omaha to Scotts Bluff, NB is 425 miles, more than five hours,
most of it on I-80. Philly to Pittsburgh, PA is about 300 miles,
an easy five hours, also by interstate. Other states are just as
big.
Getting back onto topic:
|ObLanguages: Australia is also crammed full of migrants, and multilingual
|people tend to be rare. This has many causes, but the most important is the
|fact that everyday life won't usually bring you into contact with
|non-English-speaking people.
This is exactly my point about the US. You may hear Spanish in
the larger cities, and in New York you still get a melting pot,
but on the whole, most Americans have little to no contact with
non-native English speakers.
|This is changing slowly - for example, with
|the rise of the tourist industry, some Asian languages have become popular
|at high schools. But languages still aren't generally mandatory in our
|education system.
I suspect The Australians are of the same opinion as Americans.
Where is the economic benefit? Why should they spend about an
hour a day for four years to become passably fluent in a
language they are unlikely to *ever* use in everyday life?
Almost every job you might train for can be done without
knowledge of any other language: all the textbooks and technical
manuals are in English.
If you are hoping to attract Japanese tourists, yes, you need to
have Japanese speakers about, much as 5-star hotels anywhere
have staff fluent several languages. Hawaii also gets Japanese
tourists, and Japanese is heard there.
eda...@cts.com
In <34AC6479...@cabelov.removethis.com>, Charles Belov
<use...@cabelov.removethis.com> writes:
>However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
>current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
This just shows your ignorance on the subject. The most vociferous
group pushing to get rid of bilingual education were the imigrant
parents of the children stuck in those programs.
Their only agenda was the future sucess of their children which they
know is contingent on being able to speak English.
JPKIRCHNER
Mark Odegard wrote:
>The lower 48 of the United States is essentially as big as the
>*whole* of Europe. We have about as many people in our one
>country as does the whole of the EU in their countries! We can
>drive for days and days and never encounter any other language.
And this even affects our concept of what a native language is. English
speakers do not have a national language, in the sense people in "small
countries" (I'm talking about a population of 15 million or less) experience
it. Americans see English as far as they look associate it with many different
flags and nations, whereas people of "small nations" may have all their
national history within a five-hour drive, may see their most famous actors and
writers in the bar or walking down the street, and tend to understand their
national language as the speech of something we'd almost think of as an
extended family. I know that in Czech and Slovak -- as well as in some other
small countries, I'm sure -- the words for "we", "us" and "our" are used in
speech, literature and headlines as shorthand for "people of our nation", or
more accurately something like "people who speak our language". The assumption
is that if you can read the page, you must be one of them. English speakers
don't do this; they use a national adjective for the purpose, and there's never
an assumption that English ability implies insider status.
>European countries really are *that* small, at least in
>comparison to the immensely-sized United States. And nearly all
>of it is monolingually anglophone.
Another issue in Americans' failure to learn second languages is that there's
no logical choice of a second language to take. With the economic dominance of
the US, and the status of English as an international language already,
non-English speakers have clear choices as to what language to learn. First
would come English, and after that French or some regionally dominant language,
like German or Chinese. Americans don't have this clearcut choice, so the
tendency is to choose the language of one's ancestors (which for more and more
Americans is not possible) or the one that is "easiest", which is reputed to be
Spanish, but others claim to find German easier.
JK
JPKIRCHNER
Mark Odegard wrote:
>However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
>current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
Yes, many Americans tend to be xenophobic (but to see true xenophobia, live a
while in Eastern Europe), but the attempt to ban bilingual ed is not evidence
of that xenophobia, even though many xenophobes may participate in it. First
off, there's a clear achievement gap between kids who get put into bilingual ed
(often against the objections of their parents, and sometimes even though
they're monolingual English speakers) and kids who don't get any, and secondly,
you'll have to explain the large-scale participation of Hispanics in the
movement to ban it. Are these Hispanics paranoid about an invasion of Spanish
speakers?
JK
Peter T. Daniels
Phil Herring wrote:
>
> Mark Odegard, marko...@ptel.net writes:
>
> >[...] In the US, you can
> >drive for five hours and still be in the same state;
>
> I think that's an exaggeration, unless you take a very indirect route via
> experiences driving in the USA, five hours will get you to the Canadian or
> Mexican border from *most* of the lower 48 states. US states tend to be
> quite small [1] - roughly the same size as the countries of Europe.
>
Others have taken care of the factual nonsense of this claim. But the
usual answer--to the Texas rancher boasting it takes all day to drive
across his property--is, "Yeah, I had a car like that once, too."
>
> [1] Unlike Australia, which also lacks interstates. Driving from my home
> town of Wollongong to the western border of NSW takes over 12 hours at
> legal speeds. And NSW isn't anything like the biggest Australian state.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34AC6479...@cabelov.removethis.com>,
Charles Belov <use...@cabelov.removethis.com> wrote:
>Well, then what is the point of studying history or political science? There
>are potential economic benefits of learning a foreign language:
>
>1) Marketing or providing customer service to people who feel more comfortable
>speaking that language.
What is the number of people living in the USA who feel more comfortable
speaking a language besides English? What percentage of these would
strongly prefer to be dealt with in this other language? How much more
would they be willing to pay for the product or service or how much
farther would they be willing to travel to in order to be dealt with in
this language?
Trust me, if the demand in the USA for saleclerks, service representa-
tives, etc. who could speak foreign languages were high, the supply would
exist. The supply *does* exist (keep an eye peeled for the "se habla
espa~nol" signs next time you're in the city), it's just in keeping with
the (relatively small) demand.
>2) Working for the diplomatic corps
Which employs how many people and pays how well compared to other
professions? When they hire people, are they more interested in their
language skills or their negotiating skills?
>3) During negotiations, being able to "eavesdrop" on people who think you
>can't speak their language (although you have to anticipate this one and not
>give away that you have this ability)
This is, admittedly, a hard benefit to quantify. But are suggesting that
no one in the cutthroat world of American business has thought of it?
Furthermore, since you admit that keeping the talent secret is essential
to its advantages, how would we know how common it is?
>4) As with any other field of study, teaching others the same subject
Do you have ANY IDEA what the market for foreign language teachers is
like?
>5) Internationalizing software
Again, what suggests you that we don't already have as many--if not more--
software-internationalisers than we need? And who makes more money: Them
guys what translates the manuals or them guys what writes the code.
Maybe if more people who contribute to this newsgroup had taken some basic
courses in economics instead of spending as much time as they did learning
foreign languages, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
>current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
Witness the current California education system. I'd be more likely to
label them paedagogiophobic than anything else.
Robert Schoenberg
Rhialto wrote:
>
> >Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
> >dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
> >because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
> >liable to wind up in another country.
>
> Some would say this is a typical example of american lack of
> geographical understanding (^_^). European countries are smaller than
> the USA, true, but not *that* small. Only Monaco, Vatican and
> Leichtenstein reach the ludicrously small proportions you imply. Or do
> you have *very* long legs?
>
> dont flame me, this isnt a serious opinion (^_^)
> |Rhialto |
> |
> |I know you understand what you thought I said, |
> |but I'm not sure you understand that what you |
> |thought I said is not what I meant to say. |
> +------------------------------------------------+
> SPAM filter in operation
> remove all x from address
> rhialto at easynet dot co dot uk
the Soviet Union made everyone study one foreign language or another.
Their currency had the essential information spelled out in enough
languages for any literate citizen to be included. On the other hand,
how many forms of Chinese would you expect a Uighur tradesman to know?
Americans speak English only -- as a rule -- for more than one reason:
-fear of prejudice. Polish, Spanish, and Mingo have fallen out of many
families' traditions out of a fear of marginalization.
-cutbacks in education funding. I've forgotten most of my schoolboy
French, but have gone on to become a Russian translator because I was
exposed to my natural abilities early on.
-the abandonment of grammar in general. We've been told by "experts"
that English grammar is a waste of time. That's a load of (@%#^), but
we won't go into that. If we can't compare English adjectival elements
to German technical participial elements, it slows us way, way down.
-We're too busy on the job to pass on valuable family traditions. My
father was Danish, but he was so exhausted when he came home from work
that he just didn't have the energy to pass Danish on to me. I speak
four languages at one level or another, but can't communicate with most
of my relatives!
-Technoculture. We're to the point that we seem to consider statistics
more valid than anecdotal evidence. That's rubbish, too, but we just
don't respect information that can't slip through a reductive,
bureaucratic filter on it's way up the ivory tower. Engineers are
better than librarians--or so we're constantly advised as we grow up.
I could go on, but I've got to get rolling. Happy New Year!
Bob Schoenberg
Herman Rubin
In article <EM60v...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff <de...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>In article <34AC6479...@cabelov.removethis.com>,
>Charles Belov <use...@cabelov.removethis.com> wrote:
>>Well, then what is the point of studying history or political science? There
>>are potential economic benefits of learning a foreign language:
>>1) Marketing or providing customer service to people who feel more comfortable
>>speaking that language.
>What is the number of people living in the USA who feel more comfortable
>speaking a language besides English? What percentage of these would
>strongly prefer to be dealt with in this other language? How much more
>would they be willing to pay for the product or service or how much
>farther would they be willing to travel to in order to be dealt with in
>this language?
The number is fairly large, but with the exception of Spanish, those
in this category are fairly well localized.
...................
>>5) Internationalizing software
>Again, what suggests you that we don't already have as many--if not more--
>software-internationalisers than we need? And who makes more money: Them
>guys what translates the manuals or them guys what writes the code.
Much software almost requires knowing some English. For better or worse,
English has become the international language of the world, and not by
design.
...............
>>However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
>>current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
>Witness the current California education system. I'd be more likely to
>label them paedagogiophobic than anything else.
There is little evidence that multilingual education, especially as
usually practiced, does any better than teaching them enough English to
learn in that language. Americans moving to foreign countries either
put their children in schools for English speakers, which often do
little to move to the foreign language, or the children get, usually in
addition to classwork in the foreign language, a small amount of help
or even instruction in the basics of that language.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Martin Hilvers
"Rhialto" <rhix...@easynet.co.ukx> writes:
>>Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
>>dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
>>because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
>>liable to wind up in another country.
When I went to school I had to learn three foreign languages (german,
french and english). In the course of my 'career' I had to pick up three
more (spanish, nepali and indonesian) but it takes practise to keep it
alive so the last two wore off quickly. The result is that I can make
myself understood in five languages and when I am in say, Sweden, I can
speak with almost any Swede; in english.
When it comes to a global language, english does have a head start, as
shows the use of internet. Some may say that chinese or spanish are more
widely spoken but english is still the language of the technology wise
more advanced countries.
...
>Some would say this is a typical example of american lack of
>geographical understanding (^_^). European countries are smaller than
..
From the time of the gulf war I remember that some (most) 'americans'
(=from the USA) did not know where Iraq was; somewhere east of Florida
They could not point it out on a globe.
MH
Martin Hilvers
jpkir...@aol.com (JPKIRCHNER) writes:
>Mark Odegard. wrote:
...
>But the most important thing to notice is that these people study English to a
>much higher level of competence than a typical American who learns a foreign
>language. By age 14, a Swedish kid can understand English well enough to burst
>out laughing at an American joke (even a play on words) with absolutely no
>comprehension gap. Typically, a 16-year-old American who takes honors Spanish
>can't understand much natural spoken Spanish, and can't form complex verbal
>sentences himself. One reason Americans do not get much utility out of their
>foreign languages is that they don't learn them to a level that is useful to
>begin with.
Correct, my 10 year old son learns basic English from, would you believe,
watching English language cartoons on TV, comparing
the the spoken English with the written subtitles in Dutch. He now follows
most of 'The Simpsons' on the BBC (without the subtitles) and plays
adventure games on the computer, with English text.
MH
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68jgrp$4...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Robert Schoenberg <Native-t...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Some would say this is a typical example of american lack of
>> geographical understanding (^_^). European countries are smaller than
>> Leichtenstein reach the ludicrously small proportions you imply. Or do
>> you have *very* long legs?
>>
>> dont flame me, this isnt a serious opinion (^_^)
>I can agree and disagree with that. Russia is larger than the US, but
>the Soviet Union made everyone study one foreign language or another.
Really? I know all non-Russian speakers were forced to learn Russia.
What foreign languages were native Russian speakers compelled to learn?
>Their currency had the essential information spelled out in enough
>languages for any literate citizen to be included. On the other hand,
>how many forms of Chinese would you expect a Uighur tradesman to know?
Depends--what parts of China does he trade in?
>Americans speak English only -- as a rule -- for more than one reason:
>
>-fear of prejudice. Polish, Spanish, and Mingo have fallen out of many
>families' traditions out of a fear of marginalization.
German fell out of my family because of prejudice--not on behalf of
"native" Americans (as the locally-born English speakers called themselves
then) but of my German-speaking relatives themselves. They were so
appalled that my great-grandfather debased himself by marrying an *Irish*
*Catholic* that they snubbed her at every family function. One of the
ways they did this was by speaking exclusively German, which she didn't
understand at the time. As a result, she forbade the speaking of German
in her house and my grandfather never learned it to pass it on to us.
Some groups really have no one but themselves to blame for their own
marginalisation.
>-cutbacks in education funding. I've forgotten most of my schoolboy
>French, but have gone on to become a Russian translator because I was
>exposed to my natural abilities early on.
And why did you forget that French? Because there was no real need or
opportunity to use it. That's the really important factor. One needn't
learn a foreign language in school and, indeed, much of the world does
not.
>-the abandonment of grammar in general. We've been told by "experts"
>that English grammar is a waste of time. That's a load of (@%#^), but
>we won't go into that. If we can't compare English adjectival elements
>to German technical participial elements, it slows us way, way down.
That's only one way to learn a language. Early-age immersion is much more
effective than grammar translation (which can only be taught at a later
age, once children are able to handle grammatical concepts). I was doing
a damn fine job of teaching my friends' infant son German until I had to
leave for Germany. He didn't need to have the slightest idea what a
participle was; I just talked at him naturally until he started talking
back.
>-We're too busy on the job to pass on valuable family traditions. My
>father was Danish, but he was so exhausted when he came home from work
>that he just didn't have the energy to pass Danish on to me. I speak
>four languages at one level or another, but can't communicate with most
>of my relatives!
We residents of First World nations, as a whole, presently have more
leisure time than almost any other human group at any other time in his-
tory. It's not that we don't have the energy to pass on languages, we
don't have the inclination. The 4 hrs. or so a day that an average USA-
merican family spends in front of the TV together would be more than
ample for such tasks--hell, in most major cities, they could be watching
TV in a foreign language.
For some reason, they choose not to. As I've said elsewhere, part of the
reason is economic, but part is also attitudinal. Something we language
enthusiasts tend to forget is that most people just don't enjoy learning
language very much. The proof? People everywhere do a phenomenal job of
mastering acquired languages *when they need to*. But it's difficult,
time-consuming work. Most people don't become black belts in taekwando or
blue ribbon chefs either, for the same reasons.
>-Technoculture. We're to the point that we seem to consider statistics
>more valid than anecdotal evidence. That's rubbish, too, but we just
>don't respect information that can't slip through a reductive,
>bureaucratic filter on it's way up the ivory tower. Engineers are
>better than librarians--or so we're constantly advised as we grow up.
It all depends on the application. If you're not willing to be reductive,
you're never going to be able to discuss anything, not even your immediate
experiences. I certainly don't see how we can be expected to answer a
question like "Why don't Americans learn languages?" without any reference
at all to hard data. (Though I'm making a valiant attempt to!)
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On 2 Jan 1998
in <68jms7$2...@solair1.inter.NL.net> wrote
|From the time of the gulf war I remember that some (most) 'americans'
|(=from the USA) did not know where Iraq was; somewhere east of Florida
|They could not point it out on a globe.
Geographical ignorance is not limited to Americans. Ask A German
or a Netherlander where Iowa is (it's about three times larger
than Switzerland). The Rhineland-Palatinate or Holland are about
the size of some US counties. I suspect both Europeans and
Americans are *equally* vague about where Benin is.
Europeans are good at knowing the whos, whats, wheres, whens and
whys of the nations that constitute the EU. Americans are
similarly good at the w^5s of the United States (and oftentimes,
Canada too).
The point I have been trying to make is that the US is *huge*,
as huge as Europe in many ways, but in terms of language, the
hugest of any first world nation. I suspect more gets published
in a day in English that gets published in, say, Czech or
Finnish in a month (maybe even a year). All the books, all the
technical manuals are published *first* in English, just for
*our* benefit. The larger other languages get the most critical
books almost as fast -- but only the most critical; the other
stuff may languish for years if translation occurs at all. The
compelling economic or professional reasons for learning a
foreign language are (usually) absent for native speakers of
English.
I am the first to concede how unfair this is. I also concede
that nearly any other European language would have probably been
a better choice for a "world language".
English is the world's first language. From the US point of
view, Spanish is the second language, and this is the one that
most Americans who do learn a foreign language study. Those who
poo-poo Americans' ability at other languages tend to
underestimate just how functional we can be when we need to be
*in Spanish*. Fact: Europeans *don't* study Spanish as their 2nd
or 3rd language (it'll be English first, then either French or
German).
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68jnig$3...@solair1.inter.NL.net>,
Martin Hilvers <mhil...@solair1.inter.NL.net> wrote:
>jpkir...@aol.com (JPKIRCHNER) writes:
>
>>Mark Odegard. wrote:
>...
>>much higher level of competence than a typical American who learns a foreign
>>language. By age 14, a Swedish kid can understand English well enough to burst
>>out laughing at an American joke (even a play on words) with absolutely no
>>comprehension gap. Typically, a 16-year-old American who takes honors Spanish
>>can't understand much natural spoken Spanish, and can't form complex verbal
>>sentences himself. One reason Americans do not get much utility out of their
>>foreign languages is that they don't learn them to a level that is useful to
>>begin with.
>
>watching English language cartoons on TV, comparing
>the the spoken English with the written subtitles in Dutch. He now follows
>most of 'The Simpsons' on the BBC (without the subtitles) and plays
>adventure games on the computer, with English text.
other than English, more USAmericans would learn them. In fact, I've
known several who have taken on the daunting task of learning to read
Japanese because the manga they enjoy is rarely, if ever, translated.
There's actually a popular magazine ("Mangajin") devoted to this crowd.
A major factor in my German fluency is the comic books of Ralf Koenig.
Unfortunately, when's the last time a European network produced something
of the calibre of "The Simpsons"?
Accents
I know all non-Russian speakers were forced to learn Russia.
>What foreign languages were native Russian speakers compelled to learn?
>
Main foreign languages in Russian (USSR) schools were:
German, French, English, Spanish
If you live in Latvia, or Ukraine, etc you also study Latvian, Ukrainian,
etc + Russian + one of the above languages, but also...
In many schools along the borders pupils also studied Finnish, Polish,
Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese... and probably other languages
As weell there are schools and even Kindrgardens where kids speak/study
foreign language and every subject in foreign language, not in Russian.
Regards
Val Brednev
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68ehsn$1...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>David Goldman wrote:
>>
>> Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
>> it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
>> 5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
>> with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
>> when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
>> multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
>> or doctors??!
>
>
>languages any more?
>
>Colleges were eliminating foreign language requirements for graduation,
>let alone admission, 30 years ago when I was applying. (I'd had French,
>Latin, and German, and not by choice, in an Episcopal school in New
>York City.)
>
>I don't know the statistics on foreign language study, let alone
>multilingualism. There's even a barrier to "natural" multilingualism in
>that the children of immigrants very often wanted to have nothing to do
>with their parents' languages, and the third generation must struggle
>to learn their ancestral languages.
>
>Statistically, the multilingual American is certainly far less common
>than multilinguals from nearly any other country. Most of the people in
>the world probably speak two or three languages routinely. But not
>Americans.
[snip]
I thought that, too, but what meagre statistics I was able to scrounge up
belie it. Crystal's _Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language_ has
a page devoted to estimates of the number of speakers of English as a
first and second langauge for various countries. He admits that many of
the estimates are vague at best, but I happen to know from what I've read
elsewhere (e.g. summaries of the USAmerican and Canadian censuses) that
most of the first world figures are fairly reliable.
The data, based on 1990 censuses and population estimates, include the
following percentages for speakers of English as a first language in the
respective countries:
Canada: 60%
USA: 88%
Australia: 90%
New Zealand: 93%
Ireland: 95%
UK: 98%
The number of non-English speakers in each country(with the exception of
Canada) is very low, so we can basically assume that the majority of
those without English as a first language are at least bilingual. So, far
from being the least monolingual country, the USA almost leads the pack of
English-speaking nations.
Ireland could be the leader depending on your definition of "multi-
lingual". Every citizen is forced to study the Irish language for more
than a decade, but the number I've met who could actually *use* their
Irish is small and I think the number who have it as a home language has
dropped below 20,000.
Frankly, I'm surprised at how poorly the UK--with its significant
indigenous minorities and immigrant population--stacks up. I'd have to
have a look at the UK census to see how they went about asking about
language use.
Lastly, it's important to note that this doesn't repudiate much of what
Mr. Odegard has said about USAmerican exposure to foreign languages. Most
speakers are concentrated in urban areas and a few rural districts (e.g.
upstate New Hampshire and Vermont, the Mexican border, etc.) where the
majority of citizens never encountre them.
Vladimir Menkov
In article <68jgrp$4...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Robert Schoenberg <Native-t...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Russia is larger than the US, but
>the Soviet Union made everyone study one foreign language or another.
It is true that several years of a foreign language were required for
HS graduation. Every Russian secondary school (i.e. a school with
instruction in Russian) would offer at leass one foreign language; in
my case, it was German, English and French in one school, and the
other had German and English. Naturally, languages like Ukrainian or
Lettish would also be offered in Russian schools outside Russia.
However, it seems to me that the average degree of the knowledge of
foreign languages among Russians in Russia (and even within compact
Russian-speaking areas outside Russia) is not appreciably higher than
among Anglos in the USA. You see, having to take a language in school
does not guarantee any degree of proficiency, after all: I have had
some 6 years of middle-school/high-school German + 1 year of college
German, and still can hardly use the language at all. (This, I believe
is mainly result of little independent practice, which in its turn is
due to little motivation). In fact, even Russians living in
North-Eastern Estonia or in Almaty (former Kazakh capital, which used
to have predominantly expat Russian population in the '70s) would very
rarely speak Estonian or Kazakh, respectively.
This comparison seems to indicate that people don't take foreign
language study seriously if they belong to a nation large enough that
anything you'd normally want to read or to listen to is already
available in your language, which is the case both with Anglos in most
of the English-speaking countries and with Russians in Russia. Am I
right that, similarly, a German or a Frenchman is (statistically) much
less likely to be fluent in a foreign language than a Dutchman, a
Czech, or a Dane?
On the other hand, non-Russian schools in most Soviet republics
(i.e. schools with instruction in Lithuanina, Georgian, Uzbek etc.)
would offer a lot of Russian as a mandatory subject. In fact, the
amount of Russian as foreign language instruction was so large that
the Lithunian or Georgian equivalent of the US K-12 curriculum
(elementary school + middle school + high school) would take 11 years,
while it would be only 10 years in a Russian school. (Until the mid-80's,
when both times were increased by one year).
By the way, this example can be thought of as an argument in the US
"bilingual education" debate. Nobody could seriously deny that the
education of an Estonian or Armenian HS graduate (after his 11th
grade) was as good as that of a Russian HS graduate (after his 10th
grade); on the other hand, this Estonian or Armenian would be
proficient in Russian well enough to be able to study in a university
in Russia (if he chose to) without experiencing any language
handicap. This all was at the cost of _one_ extra year of secondary
school. Which means that if instead of today's money-wasting Mickey
Mouse implementation of "bilingual education" in California and
elsewhere (where students, according to newspaper reports I've read,
commonly learn neither English nor Spanish not math well), anybody
decided to become serious about offering real _choice_ to the student
population and set up a parallel K-12 (well, K-13) school system with
serious instruction in all academic subjects being given in Spanish,
Mandarin, or Yiddish all the way + a decent amount (one year's worth)
of English language instruction (grammar instruction, immersion
method, or whatever is supposed to work best), its graduates should
know their math, history, or civics as well as their English-school
counterparts, and they also will have enough English skills to go to
an Anglo university if they wish to. (Of course, AFAIK _all_
universities in the USA teach their general-curriculum subjects only
in English).
BTW, AFAIK something similar -- a number of schools with instruction
in German or Danish all the way -- existed in the upper Midwest in the
past, but they were destroyed during the anti-German witch-hunt
campaigns during and just after WWI.
>Their [USSR] currency had the essential information spelled out in enough
>languages for any literate citizen to be included.
15 languages, i.e. the official languages of all member states.
Actually, I suspect that I was among very few people who
could at least identify which language was which :-)
Incidentally, it seems that my Chinese friends are no better in
identifying all the languages used on Chinese (PRC) currency.
--Vladimir
Peter T. Daniels
I don't see why you're talking about English-speakers.
It also looks like you think I said that the USA is the least
monolingual Anglophone country, but what I said is that the USA is
nearly the most monolingual country in the world. (North Korea probably
takes that dubious prize.)
I'm talking about virtually everyone in Subsaharan Africa (everyone in
all of Africa as long as we recognize that Arabic "dialects" aren't the
same language as the Standard Arabic heard on the radio, which is
fairly close to Classical Arabic), virtually everyone in Asia
(especially if education in China gets everyone to speak Mandarin or
Putonghua alongside their local Chinese language--an artist who
recently traveled throughout the country documenting the vernacular
scripts confirmed that the minority-language speakers usually speak
both the local Chinese and the national language as well) except maybe
Korea and Vietnam ... your 6 Anglophone countries don't count for much
against the nearly 200 countries in the world; going by population, of
course, the number of multilinguals far swamps out the number of
monolinguals.
Peter T. Daniels
Vladimir Menkov wrote:
>
> serious instruction in all academic subjects being given in Spanish,
> Mandarin, or Yiddish all the way
I think it's safe to say that *no one* born in the United States is a
native speaker of Yiddish.
Unfortunately you could never get a state legislature--that's where
curriculum decisions ultimately come from, though they are largely
funded and implemented locally--to approve parallel public schools with
non-English instruction.
Vladimir Menkov
In article <68ml0c$6...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,...
>I think it's safe to say that *no one* born in the United States is a
>native speaker of Yiddish.
Well, I was not completely serious mentioning Yiddish in line with
other languages spoken by large groups of people in this country.
However, the census data indicate that more than 210,000 people in the
USA spoke that language in 1990; out of them only than 60,000 did not
speak English "very well". (See the data
http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/us-st-yi-1990.html and
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/language/table5.txt. BTW, the
Yiddish for "web site" is apparently "Webblot"). Mainly, of course,
they are older people, often foreign-born; but it seems to me that
Yiddish is still a living language in large communities (thousands of
people) in New York State, particularly in Brooklyn and in Rockland
County, and children there acquire it in childhood (probably, along
with English). Admittedly, the text of ads and posters I have seen in
Williamsburg and Crown Heights appears to be strongly influenced by
English loanwords.
Incidentally, the Yiddish-speaking Hasidic communities often run their
(non-governmental) school systems; in Brooklyn, you can see yellow
school buses carrying kids to Yeshiva This-or-That all time. I have
no idea though if those schools use Yiddish as the medium of
instruction to any extent at all.
>Unfortunately you could never get a state legislature--that's where
>curriculum decisions ultimately come from, though they are largely
>funded and implemented locally--to approve parallel public schools with
>non-English instruction.
You are right, no doubts; this, after all, would be considered a
political decision. It would be interesting to see what would happen a
good "school voucher for private schools of your choice" plan were
introduced in some state like Florida, CA, or NY, blurring thereby the
border between public and private schools. If a bunch of immigrant
(or would-be emigrant) parents set up a school like that in Miami, LA,
or NYC, would the local authorities allow it to accept vouchers,
provided the school satisfies other requirements (curriculum criteria,
subject matter tests for graduates etc.)? One would think that
children should have the right to use their vouchers to learn about
evolutionary biology in Vietnamese if they have the right to use them
to learn about the "creation science" in English :-)
--Vladimir
JPKIRCHNER
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>>1) Marketing or providing customer service to people who feel more
comfortable
>>speaking that language.
[snip]
>Trust me, if the demand in the USA for saleclerks, service representa-
>tives, etc. who could speak foreign languages were high, the supply would
>exist. The supply *does* exist (keep an eye peeled for the "se habla
>espa~nol" signs next time you're in the city), it's just in keeping with
>the (relatively small) demand.
In the metropolitan area where I live, there aren't any "se habla espanol"
signs. At least I've never seen one. In any case, even where there's a demand
for competently multilingual people, the supply could be sucked up by other
professions where there's greater money to be made with those skills. This
isn't only true in America. In the small Czech resort town where I lived for a
few years, the clerks in the Bata store regularly had to deal with speakers of
all nationalities. One of the monolingual clerks told me, "You know,
management wants us to learn languages and languages, but frankly, people who
speak perfect English or German don't work at Bata!"
And don't forget, you don't need terrific fluency to deal in retail. Witness
the fact that pidgin languages were originally -- and still are -- used for
trade purposes.
>>2) Working for the diplomatic corps
>Which employs how many people and pays how well compared to other
>professions? When they hire people, are they more interested in their
>language skills or their negotiating skills?
Once I was in the top third of candidates who took the US foreign service
written exam, who then made it to the eight-hour oral exam. Never during
either exam was I asked whether I spoke a foreign language, and I wouldn't have
been surprised if I wouldn't have been even if I'd made it to the later
interview stage. The US foreign service teaches you the languages after they
hire you, and they don't hire that many people anyway. And what high school or
liberal arts college teaches Igbo or Luganda, let alone Serbian? The foreign
service has no use for fifty zillion kids who took Spanish. If you've got the
personal qualities they look for, you're smart enough to learn the language(s)
they put you to. Same with the military.
>>3) During negotiations, being able to "eavesdrop" on people who think you
>>can't speak their language (although you have to anticipate this one and not
>>give away that you have this ability)
>This is, admittedly, a hard benefit to quantify. But are suggesting that
>no one in the cutthroat world of American business has thought of it?
>Furthermore, since you admit that keeping the talent secret is essential
>to its advantages, how would we know how common it is?
Besides, it would be only minutes before the people on the other side of the
table figured things out. Companies don't keep stuff like that so clandestine.
>>4) As with any other field of study, teaching others the same subject
>Do you have ANY IDEA what the market for foreign language teachers is
>like?
>>5) Internationalizing software
>Again, what suggests you that we don't already have as many--if not more--
>software-internationalisers than we need? And who makes more money: Them
>guys what translates the manuals or them guys what writes the code.
In some cases the translators would. But at the same time, people have no
business internationalizing software into languages they are not native
speakers of. If you do, you get something like the Czech version of Microsoft
Word or Windows 95 that has a lot of "internationalized" commands that native
Czechs laugh at. Companies get English-fluent foreigners to internationalize
their stuff.
>Maybe if more people who contribute to this newsgroup had taken some basic
>courses in economics instead of spending as much time as they did learning
>foreign languages, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>>However, it is my position that the US is xenolinguaphobic, as witness the
>>current attempt in California to ban bilingual education.
>Witness the current California education system. I'd be more likely to
>label them paedagogiophobic than anything else.
Exactly!
Jamie
David Goldman
Vladimir: Ihr farshteit zehr gut a sach inyonim vos hobben zu tuen mit
der Yiddishe shprach! A groyse Yasher Koach!
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68mkdv$6...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
>>
It's who I had stats handy for.
>It also looks like you think I said that the USA is the least
>monolingual Anglophone country, but what I said is that the USA is
>nearly the most monolingual country in the world. (North Korea probably
>takes that dubious prize.)
[rest deleted]
I understand what you said, I'm merely suggesting that the USA is not as
close to garnering the title as you seem to think it is. Without half
trying, I found four nations arguably more monolingual. A serious survey
could uncover others: Portugal, I would imagine, as well as those South
American nations with small indigenous populations (like Chile and El
Salvador).
What this really boils down to is how literally one wants to take your
"nearly". I read that as "in the top three" instead of "in the top ten"
or "in the top ten percent".
Matthew Montchalin
Somebody wrote:
>>>that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
>>>5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie
Polar commented:
>I've always wondered about this apparently hybrid word. The original
>French is "camaraderie". This translates to "comradeship".
Wow! Okay, I learn something every day! I had thought that camaraderie
was just an attempt at francifying "Kamraderei" or something- But
referring to my Oxford English Dictionary, I find that the word relates
not to a "co-marauding" of thieves abandoning themselves to a dark
fellowship in banditry (you know, like the evolution of latro from that of
a soldier in Classical Latin, to that of a brigand in Late latin, but
here, more in a revolutionary rabble-rousing sense), but rather (and this
is the important part) to those who are as bunkmates in a row, that is,
as fellows bedding in a common chamber (in a "soldiering" sense, more or
less).
On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past the French to have coined the
word "maraud" from "camarade" . . . The Oxford English Dictionary
indicates that "maraud" didn't penetrate the German languages until around
the 17th Century...
--
At enim vela pendent liminibus grammaticarum scholarum, sed non illa magis
honorem secreti quam tegimentum erroris significant. -Confessiones St. Aug.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <19980104025...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>tives, etc. who could speak foreign languages were high, the supply would
>>exist. The supply *does* exist (keep an eye peeled for the "se habla
>>espa~nol" signs next time you're in the city), it's just in keeping with
>>the (relatively small) demand.
>
>In the metropolitan area where I live, there aren't any "se habla espanol"
>signs. At least I've never seen one.
YMMV. "Se mluvte ^ce^stina"?
>In any case, even where there's a demand
>for competently multilingual people, the supply could be sucked up by other
>professions where there's greater money to be made with those skills. This
>isn't only true in America. In the small Czech resort town where I lived for a
>few years, the clerks in the Bata store regularly had to deal with speakers of
>all nationalities. One of the monolingual clerks told me, "You know,
>management wants us to learn languages and languages, but frankly, people who
>speak perfect English or German don't work at Bata!"
This seems like a temporary situation to me. Under state communism,
relatively few English and German speakers travelled to Bohemia. (Yes,
there were East German tourists, but they didn't come in anything like the
current numbers and, frankly, they didn't have much money to spend.)
Czechs were not encouraged to study these languages (IIRC, they were all
required to take Russian first and foremost) and, besides, without capi-
talism, the concrete benefits to them were meagre. As with every other
product in the command economy, the production of linguistic skills had
nothing to do with the actual or potential demand.
This all literally changed overnight. Now there are millions of rich
German- and English-speaking tourists and no one to serve them in their
languages. Demand for instruction, particularly English instruction, is
outstripping supply. However, as the Czechs get richer and finish
overhauling their education system, knowledge of foreign languages will
increase. Soon, it will be such a banal commodity that even lowly shop
clerks in Bata will possess it.
There have been few, if any, such artificial controls on the linguistic
skills market in the USA. If there are underserved markets here, by gum
someone's going to figure that out soon and makes pots of money. It seems
to me that, in general, multilingual service providers who deal with
linguistic minority communities here tend to come from the communities
themselves. That is, it's more cost-effective for a Czech-speaker to
learn medicine than for a medical professional to learn Czech. (Of
course, even cheaper is for a Czech-speaking doctor to set up shop over
here, which happens often enough.)
The real losers in this situation are members of poor, undereducated
minority communities who can't produce their own professionals and can't
attract others to take an interest in them. Fortunately, as their
children almost always grow up bilingual (or even monolingual in
English), their lot is a temporary one.
>And don't forget, you don't need terrific fluency to deal in retail. Witness
>the fact that pidgin languages were originally -- and still are -- used for
>trade purposes.
True, and goodness knows I heard enough pidgin German during my last trip
to Poland!
[rest deleted because we seem to agree on all other salient points]
Mark Rosenfelder
In article <68mkdv$6...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>takes that dubious prize.)
>
>all of Africa as long as we recognize that Arabic "dialects" aren't the
>same language as the Standard Arabic heard on the radio, which is
>fairly close to Classical Arabic), virtually everyone in Asia
>(especially if education in China gets everyone to speak Mandarin or
>Putonghua alongside their local Chinese language--an artist who
>recently traveled throughout the country documenting the vernacular
>scripts confirmed that the minority-language speakers usually speak
>both the local Chinese and the national language as well) except maybe
>Korea and Vietnam ... your 6 Anglophone countries don't count for much
>against the nearly 200 countries in the world; going by population, of
>course, the number of multilinguals far swamps out the number of
>monolinguals.
Well, no, not really. A conservative estimate would be that the number
of monolinguals safely tops the number of bilinguals; and the US's 90%
monolingualism is not particularly unusual.
By region-- the vast majority of Latin America is monolingual in Spanish
or Portuguese. To be sure there's lots of Amerindian languages... but
only about 18m speakers *total*. And for that matter about 2.5m Quechua
speakers and 2m Guarani speakers are monolingual.
Europe has many languages but that doesn't always translate to many
bilinguals. France is 94% monolingual, Spain 68%, Belgium 85%.
Russian speakers are overwhelmingly monolingual.
In Asia, you might think India would be a hotbed of multilingualism; but
it isn't. In 1961 90% of the population was monolingual. In China, as
you point out, everybody is taught Mandarin-- but 70% of the population
speaks a Mandarin dialect to start out with. Koreans and Vietnamese are
usually monolingual, as you point out, and I'll add the Japanese. (There
are of course Koreans and Chinese in Japanese, but in very small numbers;
and Ainu is pretty much dead.)
Africa I'll grant you, and I don't know how many Indonesians really speak
Bahasa Indonesia.
The figures above come from Francois Grosjean's _Life with Two Languages_.
Combining them with population figures from my almanac, I'd count roughly
256m monolinguals in North America, 436m in Latin America, 300m in Europe/
Russia, 2228m in Asia, 26m in Oceania. Total, 3246m out of 5665m or 57%.
And this is undoubtedly low, since I'm counting no monolinguals at all
in all of Africa and in many parts of Asia.
Michel
Scott Hollinger wrote:
>
> Because so few Americans are multilingual. That makes you unusual.
> People are impressed with you like they are with triplets.
>
> There are cultural, historical, and geographical explanations for
> Americans' monolingualism.
>
> Scott
Very true, like the fact that the USA is an uncivilised country which
hates the rest of the world. I think by being quadrilingual I cease to
be USAmerican except by accident of birth, citizenship, and temporarily
residence.
JPKIRCHNER
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>I'm talking about virtually everyone in Subsaharan Africa (everyone in
>all of Africa as long as we recognize that Arabic "dialects" aren't the
>same language as the Standard Arabic heard on the radio, which is
>fairly close to Classical Arabic), virtually everyone in Asia
>(especially if education in China gets everyone to speak Mandarin or
>Putonghua alongside their local Chinese language--an artist who
>recently traveled throughout the country documenting the vernacular
>scripts confirmed that the minority-language speakers usually speak
>both the local Chinese and the national language as well) except maybe
>Korea and Vietnam ... your 6 Anglophone countries don't count for much
>against the nearly 200 countries in the world; going by population, of
>course, the number of multilinguals far swamps out the number of
>monolinguals.
Your North African example brings up another point: In almost every old-world
country, people routinely have to learn a second, "standard" dialect of their
own native language, which may or may not be other social group's native
dialect. (Often, however, as in Arabic or Czech, the standard dialect is a
sort of reconstructed language that is not spoken natively by anyone, or in
German or English for example, it began as a dialect spoken by no one but later
became the native speech of certain social groups.) Anyway, the requirement to
become bidialectal in one's native language to function in the larger society
is routine and unquestioned in most countries I've ever been to, but in the USA
it causes great political hysteria.
JK
Michel
Europe than Italian is. Whereas Spanish is not too popular in the
northern countries it does have some popularity in France, more so than
in Portugal where it is none too popular for historical reasons. I would
think that there would be similar historical resentments against
learning German in France and French in Germany.
Michel
Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
>
> marko...@ptel.net (Mark Odegard) writes:
>
> >absolute terms) just *how* large the US is. In the US, you can
> >drive for five hours and still be in the same state; in Europe
> >you're likely to have driven through five countries in that
> >time.
>
> Not very likely. Maybe if you pick a route through Holland, Belgium,
> Luxemburg, France and Germany, you could manage that.
>
> But most of us live in "medium sized" countries, such as Germany, France,
> UK, Italy, Spain ... who take 10 hrs or more to cross. Or how about Russia? :)
France and Spain seem to take forever to cross. I have survived too many
long train rides through Castilla La Mancha, Europe's closest equivalent
to Nebraska and Kansas in its flatness and boredom of landscape - of
course its far smaller, as the US wasteland of nothingness is probably
larger than the entirety of Spain. Italy also might take forever, but is
much more enjoyable to cross, with the possible exception of the Tuscan
coast or the brief train ride between Palermo and Trapani. ( However the
Sicilian coast from Messina to Palermo is one of the most beautiful
train rides in all of Europe. ) Germany despite its length is not that
wide, relatively speaking, so other nations are always close by.Actually
I've never been awake on a train passing through the area from
Marseilles to Perpignan, or going through Calabria, as I took overnight
trains from Nice to Port Bou and from Napoli to Palermo, which crossed
the strait of Messina at Villa San Giovanni, Calabria...Greek and
Portuguese trains are nasty but the scenery is quite pretty.
>
> >We have about as many people in our one
> >country as does the whole of the EU in their countries!
>
> Yet, the EU isn't even close to contain all of Europe.
>
> --
> wo...@techno.de+wo...@berlin.snafu.de+http://www.snafu.de/~wolfi/+IRC:wolfi
> dreaming of the queen visiting for tea. you and her and i and lady di
> the queen said i'm aghast, love never seems to last however hard you try
> and i replied that there were no more lovers left alive, noone has survived
JPKIRCHNER
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>>In the metropolitan area where I live, there aren't any "se habla espanol"
>>signs. At least I've never seen one.
>YMMV. "Se mluvte ^ce^stina"?
No, they don't say "Mluvi se cestina" either. I live in Michigan, which
doesn't even make it into the top ten in the US for Hispanic population but
contains the largest Arab-speaking concentration outside the Arabic world.
It's very rare to meet an unassimilated Spanish speaker in Detroit, although in
areas where there are high concentrations of Arabic, Russian and Polish
speakers who are not fluent in English, the signs and brochures in federal
offices are still in English and Spanish. This supports my contention that
government bilingual policies do not have communication as their goal, but the
promotion of Spanish as a preferred second language.
>This seems like a temporary situation to me. Under state communism,
>relatively few English and German speakers travelled to Bohemia. (Yes,
>there were East German tourists, but they didn't come in anything like the
>current numbers and, frankly, they didn't have much money to spend.)
In the scheme of the overall East European economy, they had plenty to spend,
and they did come to shop in great numbers, because Czech stores were more
stocked. They also came as tourists, because the town I was in was a famous
spa (Marianske Lazne, aka Marienbad).
>Czechs were not encouraged to study these languages (IIRC, they were all
>required to take Russian first and foremost)
They were not encouraged to take English, but German was required of almost
everyone in West Bohemia. It's extremely common to find people there who were
educated under communism but speak German and no Russian (although in the case
of the latter it's often for lack of will).
I should mention also that after the fall of communism so many foreign language
teachers got vacuumed by the private sector out of the school system that they
had language "teachers" who were basically learning in pace with the kids.
>and, besides, without capi-
>talism, the concrete benefits to them were meagre. As with every other
>product in the command economy, the production of linguistic skills had
>nothing to do with the actual or potential demand.
And this is exactly why the US does not produce enough fluent speakers of
foreign languages even to fill market demand. American schools are socialist
institutions insulated from market pressure. Take the situation in ESL: The
area where I live has a dire shortage of ESL teachers and an abundance of
people with advanced linguistics degrees to meet the demand. Linguistics grads
are generally very effective ESL teachers (although the best ESL teachers are
history majors from the University of Michigan, as I found out managing an ESL
school overseas). The school systems suffering the shortage have been lobbying
the state to make an MA in linguistics de facto ESL certification, but the
teachers' union won't allow it, so certified teachers who know nothing about
ESL are assigned to teach it. Secondly, a friend of mine who is the ESL god in
Detroit (immigrants literally arrive in the country already knowing his name
and where his class is) has 11 years of union seniority and pulls in incredible
amounts of students, ergo money for the school system. Nonetheless, every term
he has to fight for his ESL position against non-ESL teachers who have more
system seniority than he does. A couple times he's been banished to some
Siberia-type position teaching a subject he's not qualified to, until an upper
administrator steps in and has him rehabilitated due to the amount of dough he
generates. This is exactly how socialism operates.
>There have been few, if any, such artificial controls on the linguistic
>skills market in the USA. If there are underserved markets here, by gum
>someone's going to figure that out soon and makes pots of money. It seems
>to me that, in general, multilingual service providers who deal with
>linguistic minority communities here tend to come from the communities
>themselves.
I think I made this point in another post. Anglophone Americans who learn
foreign languages are often as not competing with perfectly bilingual native
speakers of English and the other language.
>That is, it's more cost-effective for a Czech-speaker to
>learn medicine than for a medical professional to learn Czech. (Of
>course, even cheaper is for a Czech-speaking doctor to set up shop over
>here, which happens often enough.)
This another point I made elsewhere in a corporate setting. Companies find it
more effective to teach an engineer Spanish than to teach a Spanish major
engineering. Foreign language skill in and of itself is not a good
qualification for employment, no matter what your high school counselor told
you the employment possibilities for foreign language majors are. A friend of
mine who speaks excellent Russian and wants to switch to private-sector
employment is finding this out the hard way.
>>And don't forget, you don't need terrific fluency to deal in retail. Witness
>>the fact that pidgin languages were originally -- and still are -- used for
>>trade purposes.
>True, and goodness knows I heard enough pidgin German during my last trip
>to Poland!
It's even effective in the US. In a community near me there is a
well-established, full-blown pidgin English with a Slavic substrate. (I'm not
kidding. It's a true pidgin as linguists classify them.) This language has
been spoken for generations, and if you get an ESL student who already speaks
it fluently, it's a sure bet they won't progress to standard English, because
the pidgin meets all their communication needs with the outside world.
>However, as the Czechs get richer and finish
>overhauling their education system, knowledge of foreign languages will
>increase. Soon, it will be such a banal commodity that even lowly shop
>clerks in Bata will possess it.
Much as in Hamburg and Amsterdam even the street derelicts can speak like
perfect British gentlemen.
Jamie
Peter T. Daniels
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> >nearly the most monolingual country in the world. (North Korea probably
> >takes that dubious prize.)
>
> I understand what you said, I'm merely suggesting that the USA is not as
> close to garnering the title as you seem to think it is. Without half
> trying, I found four nations arguably more monolingual. A serious survey
> could uncover others: Portugal, I would imagine, as well as those South
> American nations with small indigenous populations (like Chile and El
> Salvador).
>
> What this really boils down to is how literally one wants to take your
> "nearly". I read that as "in the top three" instead of "in the top ten"
> or "in the top ten percent".
Looks more like a problem with "language" and "dialect" again. Perhaps
all Portuguese have the same standard language, but how many of them
speak it natively? Do Portuguese dialect and standard differ
sufficiently that StPo has to be studied in school (as with "Italian"
and "French")? If so, I call that multilingualism. (But I'm interested
more in the billions of people outside the First World.)
There is no mathematical definition for "nearly"; 3/200 = 1.5%; 10/200
= 5%. Are those numbers "nearly" the same in our context? (Counting
countries is less good than counting people for this question.)
Traduloc
>Not as a second but definately as a third. Spanish is more popular in
>Europe than Italian is. Whereas Spanish is not too popular in the
>northern countries it does have some popularity in France, more so than
>in Portugal where it is none too popular for historical reasons. I would
>think that there would be similar historical resentments against
>learning German in France and French in Germany.
>
There is no political resentment in France against learning German, or in
Germany against learning French. Still the learning of these two languages
plays a different role in each of these two countries.
In Germany, learning French is typically an option. You learn English as the
language of technology and international communication. You learn Latin for
science, history, "sound cultural stuff", and most of all, as the starting
point for learning more languages. French is learnt as the language of refined
culture, the neighbouring country with the "pleasant lifestyle" etc. i.e.
mainly from a touristic and liberal arts perspective.
In France learning German means that you belong to the intellectual upper
class. The perspective is mostly cultural and historical. German plays roughly
the role which is Latin's domain in German schools. You have to learn to master
the grammar, train yourself in analysis and structured thinking etc... It is
not really important whether you are able to speak it in real life. In French
schools German is also misused as a selection criterion. The best pupils are
those who "survive German and Math". English is learnt for the same reasons as
in Germany. Spanish and other languages are just options.
I am not aware of the statistical numbers in France, but for Germany I have
seen statistics (several years ago) stating the 35% of the German population
has a linguistic background of more than 3 years of English at school (or
equivalent), 15% were at this level for French, and 5% for Latin! All other
languages had been learnt to this degree only by less than 1% of the
population. Today the percentage for English must be considerably higher, for
French and Latin probably less, for the rest I am ignorant ;-)
The school system that I find best in Europe, is the Dutch one, where everyone
studies English, AND French, AND German for many years . This doesn't overly
stress anyone, but makes the Netherlands the country in Europe where big
international companies have their headquarters, because there they can easily
find multilingual staff.
The approach of the very pragmatic and realist Netherlanders should give some
of the ideological anti-linguistists something to think about. IMHO everyone
who has got enough brains for university studies, is also able to learn at
least half a dozen foreign languages besides his/her professional activities.
Of course it is best to start at an early age, and have thoroughly studied at
least two or three languages until you enter university...
J. Kanze
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
|> In article <34AC6479...@cabelov.removethis.com>,
|> Charles Belov <use...@cabelov.removethis.com> wrote:
|> >Well, then what is the point of studying history or political science? There
|> >are potential economic benefits of learning a foreign language:
|> >
|> >1) Marketing or providing customer service to people who feel more comfortable
|> >speaking that language.
|>
|> What is the number of people living in the USA who feel more comfortable
|> speaking a language besides English? What percentage of these would
|> strongly prefer to be dealt with in this other language? How much more
|> would they be willing to pay for the product or service or how much
|> farther would they be willing to travel to in order to be dealt with in
|> this language?
Perhaps more significant here: how much money do they have to spend.
|> Trust me, if the demand in the USA for saleclerks, service representa-
|> tives, etc. who could speak foreign languages were high, the supply would
|> exist. The supply *does* exist (keep an eye peeled for the "se habla
|> espa~nol" signs next time you're in the city), it's just in keeping with
|> the (relatively small) demand.
Annecdotal, but one of the rare places where bilinguism is a must in
France is pharmacists in Alsace. Many older people don't speak French,
or don't speak it well, and older people are typically the ones that
need medicine.
--
James Kanze +33 (0)1 39 23 84 71 mailto: ka...@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, 22 rue Jacques-Lemercier, 78000 Versailles, France
Conseils en informatique orientée objet --
-- Beratung in objektorientierter Datenverarbeitung
J. Kanze
eda...@cts.com writes:
|> In <34aab578...@news.erols.com>, da...@erols.com (David Goldman) writes:
|> >Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
|> >it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
|> >5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
|> >with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
|> >when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
|> >multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
|> >or doctors??!
|>
|> Because, except for a few savants, learing a language as an adult is
|> dificult. Europeans start to learn languages as children, largely
|> because if you talk a wrong turn on the way to the store you are
|> liable to wind up in another country.
I don't believe this, at least not as it stands. Learning a language
requires two things, time and motivation. Both are typically easier to
have as a child, especially time.
I think the main reason for American monolinguism is a lack of
motivation. As many have pointed out, there is no financial incentive,
and as you point out, most Americans don't come into enough contact with
other languages to even realize that they exist.
Scott Hollinger
> > There are cultural, historical, and geographical
> > explanations for Americans' monolingualism.
>
> uncivilised country which hates the rest of the world.
Woah! Beginning to flame a little...
> I think by being quadrilingual I cease to be USAmerican
> except by accident of birth, citizenship, and temporarily
> residence.
...and tendency for self-aggrandizement...
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, when's the last time a European network produced something
> of the calibre of "The Simpsons"?
Well, since you have such *high* standards, nothing the *rest of the
world* could produce could ever come close.
BTW, not everyone thinks the Simpletons is so screamingly funny.
When Americans stop thinking they define the calibre of everything,
Europeans will stop looking down on them.
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> What is the number of people living in the USA who feel more comfortable
> speaking a language besides English? What percentage of these would
> strongly prefer to be dealt with in this other language? How much more
> would they be willing to pay for the product or service or how much
> farther would they be willing to travel to in order to be dealt with in
> this language?
Have you never heard of the tourism industry? Strangely enough, no
matter how hard you may look the number of proficient foreign language
speakers in the US tourism industry is minimal.
And, no, all tourists do *not* speak American, no matter how loud
Americans shout.
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
> merican family spends in front of the TV together would be more than
> ample for such tasks--hell, in most major cities, they could be watching
> TV in a foreign language.
>
> For some reason, they choose not to. As I've said elsewhere, part of the
> reason is economic, but part is also attitudinal.
You can say that again. I would compare it with watching the
"international" news on US TV. Basically, if there are no Americans
there, it didn't happen. The rest of the world simply doesn't exist, or
if it does, it must be somewhere below Texas.
(I'm talking about the *average * American here, I also know some
"non-average" Americans) When I tell people I'm from Switzerland, they
ask if I speak "Swiss" or if I speak "Swedish" or quite simply ask me
where it is. At one time I just replied that I was from Europe. The
answer was ALWAYS "Ah, cool!". No-one ever stretched the question
further. If I'd said I was from New York it was the same thing. My
impression was constantly that they merely thought "I don't know it
(Europe) so it doesn't matter. It's not worth asking because I won't
understand the answer."
My sister met an American woman in Australia (where she lives). When she
explained that our family was from Britain, the woman asked her if there
were any beaches in Britain. My sister, somewhat astonished and biting
her lip, answered that, naturally, Britain had beaches since it was an
island. The woman merely replied, "Oh, really? Well, my husband would
have known that - he did geography." And that was *England*. What would
she have said about Switzerland!
I really don't want to sound anti-American, and I don't consider myself
to be. However, I don't believe you when you come up with all these
excuses why Americans don't learn foreign languages. I believe it's just
because they don't think the rest of the world is important enough. If
it doesn't speak English it just doesn't count.
Latin America is at your doorstep. French-speaking Quebec is next door
(and, no, they aren't all bilingual - far from it!). There are millions
of foreign visitors each year from non-English speaking countries... And
it is not economically viable? Of course not, if you insist enough the
minorities will give way.
martyn ecott
Mark Odegard wrote:
>
> Geographical ignorance is not limited to Americans. Ask A German
> or a Netherlander where Iowa is (it's about three times larger
> than Switzerland). The Rhineland-Palatinate or Holland are about
> the size of some US counties. I suspect both Europeans and
> Americans are *equally* vague about where Benin is.
But that is not the only issue (and, as my grandmother used to say,
"Size isn't everything"). It's more a question of international
significance.
> Europeans are good at knowing the whos, whats, wheres, whens and
> whys of the nations that constitute the EU. Americans are
> similarly good at the w^5s of the United States (and oftentimes,
> Canada too).
I don't agree at all. Ask a New Yorker to point out Iowa and she'd have
to look twice, too!
>
> Fact: Europeans *don't* study Spanish as their 2nd
> or 3rd language (it'll be English first, then either French or
> German).
Not fact. Spanish is often the first foreign language in some regions of
Britain. It is often the first foreign language in France.
Martin Hilvers
>>>language. By age 14, a Swedish kid can understand English well enough
...
>>Correct, my 10 year old son learns basic English from, would you
believe, watching English language cartoons on TV
...
>
>I believe it. If there were more good material available in languages
>other than English, more USAmericans would learn them. In fact, I've
>A major factor in my German fluency is the comic books of Ralf Koenig.
>Unfortunately, when's the last time a European network produced something
>of the calibre of "The Simpsons"?
> (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
> /____\ gegen die Kunst!
It would be a good thing if the German TV people would quit dubbing of
almost every foreign TV series or movie in German. Can you imagine John
Wayne saying; 'Haende hoch oder ich schiesse!"
The original version would improve a German's English too :-)
(There was an original version of the 'Rocky Horror Show' on N3 the other
day though)
The practise of dubbing will continue as long as the 'dubbing actors' earn
their living with it. They certainly do not consider themselves as
'Dilettanten' but as 'Kunstler'.
MH
John Woodgate
In article <34B073...@swbell.net>, Scott Hollinger
<escr...@swbell.net> writes
No, that's not an un-American activity (;-)!
--
Regards, John Woodgate, Phone +44 (0)1268 747839 Fax +44 (0)1268 777124.
OOO - Own Opinions Only. The first glass for thirst, the second for
nourishment, the third for pleasure and the fourth for madness.
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On Mon, 05 Jan 1998
17:00:43 +0100, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> in
<34B103...@ebu.ch> wrote
|I really don't want to sound anti-American, and I don't consider myself
|to be. However, I don't believe you when you come up with all these
|excuses why Americans don't learn foreign languages. I believe it's just
|because they don't think the rest of the world is important enough. If
|it doesn't speak English it just doesn't count.
This states it rather baldly. It's not that if "it doesn't speak
English it just doesn't count"; rather, it's "if it counts it
does speak English".
Nearly everyone else learns English! I know its rather rude of
me to expect *everyone* in Europe to have some English (and I
really do know better), it's that if I really do need to
communicate, an English speaker is nearby: this is not true in
the US (except maybe for Spanish).
English is ubiquitious. Everyone speaks better English than you
speak their language.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34B0FC...@ebu.ch>, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>>
>> of the calibre of "The Simpsons"?
>
>world* could produce could ever come close.
>
>BTW, not everyone thinks the Simpletons is so screamingly funny.
De gustibus non disputandum est. I'm very interested in hearing what
European comedy programmes you'd recommend. So far, nothing I've seen on
French, Spanish, German, or Italian television has left me begging for
more. There's certainly nothing out there I would go to the trouble of
intensively studying a language in order to fully appreciate. I would
ascribe it to the language barrier if citizens of these countries them-
selves didn't tell me they found no local productions worth watching
either.
>When Americans stop thinking they define the calibre of everything,
>Europeans will stop looking down on them.
And most Americans still won't care either way.
--
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <19980104113...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
[much deleted. my thanks to Mr. Kirchner for correcting my misap-
prehensions about the language situation in the Czech Republic.]
>>and, besides, without capi-
>>talism, the concrete benefits to them were meagre. As with every other
>>product in the command economy, the production of linguistic skills had
>>nothing to do with the actual or potential demand.
>
>And this is exactly why the US does not produce enough fluent speakers of
>foreign languages even to fill market demand. American schools are socialist
>institutions insulated from market pressure.
[much about the shortcomings of the USAmerican school system deleted]
Accurate though they are, you remarks only apply to the USAmerican
*public* schools. Although the educational market in the States is far
from perfectly free, the government does not have a monopoly on it.
Numerous options--including moving to live in a better school district, a
tremendous array of private schools, and home schooling--exist for those
willing to invest in them. Why don't more people do this so that their
children might learn foreign languages? As I pointed out before, the
rewards seem too marginal to justify the expense.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34B0FD...@ebu.ch>, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
>>
>> speaking a language besides English? What percentage of these would
>> strongly prefer to be dealt with in this other language? How much more
>> would they be willing to pay for the product or service or how much
>> farther would they be willing to travel to in order to be dealt with in
>> this language?
>
>Have you never heard of the tourism industry? Strangely enough, no
>matter how hard you may look the number of proficient foreign language
>speakers in the US tourism industry is minimal.
So this is what has prevented foreign tourism from attaining any
importance in the USAmerican economy whatsoever!
Obviously, the tourists who choose to come here are resigned to speaking
English. If they preferred being served in other languages, they'd patro-
nise only those establishments here that offered them, which would then do
more business. Multilinguals would be able to charge more for their
services, which would make their status more enviable and boost the market
for foreign language teaching.
This system that allows this to take place is called "market capitalism."
Despite what people say, it really does work more often than it fails.
>And, no, all tourists do *not* speak American, no matter how loud
>Americans shout.
And, thus, those of them who are really bothered by shouting Americans
vacation elsewhere (or go on package tours here sponsored by travel
agencies from their homelands) and, apparently, entrepeneurs here don't
miss their money.
MMG
JPKIRCHNER wrote:
Snip...
>And yet, Americans see economic benefit to Spanish even where it doesn't exist.
> I teach required linguistics courses to undergrad education students as well
> as to certified teachers going back for their master's. These are mostly
> people certified to teach in Michigan or planning to become so. To the extent
> that any of them have had a foreign language, it has almost always been
> Spanish. Yet not one of them uses Spanish at work or for any economically
> beneficial purpose, simply because it is rare in Michigan to encounter a
> linguistically unassimilated Hispanic.
Not true! I've taken Spanish from 5th grade through undergrad and became quite
fluent. I work in Michigan as an optometrist and have seen several "unassimilated
Hispanics" as patients; I get a lot of referrals based on this knowledge.
Besides, my speaking Spanish allows me to converse with a lot more people than
Russian or Czech would. I can see where knowing an eastern European language might
help to boost ones career in certain fields but this shouldn't discount a knowledge
of Spanish. It is predicted that at the current rate of growth of the Hispanic
community, the US will have to become a bilingual nation in the next century. (and
it's not going to be english/russian or english/czech)
> There is a great shortage of teachers
> here, as well as medical personnel, who can speak Arabic, Russian or Polish,
> but education majors reject these languages as "not useful", and continue to
> study Spanish and not use it.
What do you base this "not use it" on??? I use it, several colleages of mine use
it. When applying to join panels of insurance companies, a knowledge of Spanish is
quite beneficial.... It is quite common that it be used in the auto industry when
communicating with colleagues in Mexico and Spain...I have several friends at Ford
that do work in Mexico where a knowledge of Spanish is mandatory. Basically, if a
person takes any language in high school for 4 or more years and then additionally
in college, they will more than likely use it in their careers or travels.
Unfortunately, the majority of language studiers don't go beyond 2 or 3 years in
high school then forsake it. This includes Polish and Russian. (I do some work in
Hamtramck Michigan where Polish and Russian are taught in high school)
> The Arabic and Russian classes at the colleges
> here go begging for students, while zillions of people who had Spanish in high
> school and college happily speak English to the Hispanics they encounter. The
> utility of Spanish is overhyped in many parts of the country.
What's with the anti-Spanish bias??? It has infinite more uses than Arabic and
Russian in this country...
>
>
> James Kirchner
--
--
|\/\/\/|
| | Gero arte!
| |
| (o)(o) M. M. Garin
C _) e-mail: sla...@rust.net
| ,___|
| /
/____\
/ \
Mike Wright
Michel wrote:
>
> Scott Hollinger wrote:
> >
> > Because so few Americans are multilingual. That makes you unusual.
> > People are impressed with you like they are with triplets.
> >
> > Americans' monolingualism.
> >
>
> Very true, like the fact that the USA is an uncivilised country which
> be USAmerican except by accident of birth, citizenship, and
Funny. I've seen little evidence of "the USA" hating the world (strange
way to anthropomorphize an entire country that is full of people with
roots in other countries that they love--from Ireland to Mexico to
Slovakia to Egypt to Vietnam to Pakistan), but I've seen lots of
evidence of people who hate the USA--including some who are stupid
enough to go on living here.
> temporarily residence.
So, when are you leaving?
--
Mike Wright
http://www.scruz.net/~darwin/language.html
______________________________________________
"Welcome to reality. It's a fuzzy, uncertain business.
I think Descartes got it wrong. It's not 'I think, therefore I am.'
It's 'I am, therefore I don't know.'" --Ken Fair
Scott Hollinger
> I live in Michigan, which doesn't even make it into
> the top ten in the US for Hispanic population but
> contains the largest Arab-speaking concentration
> outside the Arabic world. It's very rare to meet
> an unassimilated Spanish speaker in Detroit, although
> in areas where there are high concentrations of Arabic,
> Russian and Polish speakers who are not fluent in
> English, the signs and brochures in federal offices
> are still in English and Spanish. This supports my
> contention that government bilingual policies do not
> have communication as their goal, but the promotion
> of Spanish as a preferred second language.
Promotion? I think you ascribe way too much intentionality to the issue.
It seems to me something more like this:
"Hey, Joe, we got a lotta guys comin' in here dat don't speak English.
You got anything we can give 'em?"
"Yeah, Dave. Here's some stuff we got printed up dat ain't in English."
JPKIRCHNER
martyn ecott wrote:
>There are millions
>of foreign visitors each year from non-English speaking countries... And
>it is not economically viable? Of course not, if you insist enough the
>minorities will give way.
There's another real-world difficulty you're not facing in this and your
previous post about the tourism industry. English is the dominant world
language, so in many non-English-speaking countries it can suffice to have an
English and a French speaker in a tourist facility to talk to almost anyone who
might come. What you're asking Americans to do, provided you don't want
foreign tourists confined to ethnically homogeneous groups when they come to
us, is to featherbed each tourist facility with people who can speak every
language they might come into contact with. So the car rental booth at a US
airport, or a hotel reception desk, would need to be equipped with someone who
speaks Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese,
and a host of other languages. Do you want to pay the resultant hike in rates
necessary to pay all these people's salaries?
This is very much like the mentality I run into when I visit some country where
I can't speak the language, or when I talk to a foreign tourist here and am
told "it's not fair" that those people work hard for years to learn my
language, but that we don't learn theirs. I already can function in French,
German, Spanish, Swedish, Czech and Russian to some degree, but if I run into a
Japanese, I'm told it's not fair that I don't speak Japanese. Greeks tell me
it's not fair that I haven't had to learn Greek. I can't learn every damn
language in the whole world!
The US isn't the only place that has this problem. Despite having quite a
number of people who study foreign languages, it seemed to me on four trips to
Hungary that almost no one in a tourist contact position speaks a foreign
language. The passport controllers are monolingual Hungarians, as are the
customs officers, the ticket sellers in the train stations and the shop clerks.
English didn't work there, German didn't work there, French didn't work there,
Slovak didn't work there. Not even Russian did.
I took a plane with LOT Polish airlines from Chicago to Warsaw, and only one
flight attendant professed to be able to speak English. She spoke quite
fluently, but when she gave announcements over the PA, I could never tell if
she was speaking English or Polish.
And if you want to see monolingual arrogance that makes Americans look like
amateurs, observe the German tourists in West Bohemia every summer.
>(I'm talking about the *average * American here, I also know some
>"non-average" Americans) When I tell people I'm from Switzerland, they
>ask if I speak "Swiss" or if I speak "Swedish" or quite simply ask me
>where it is.
A Briton once told me that he was repeatedly asked -- in ENGLISH -- by people
he met in the Philippines what language is spoken in England. A girl I taught
in the Czech Republic was working as an au pair in England, and asked an
educated Jamaican how many years he'd had of English.
>At one time I just replied that I was from Europe. The
>answer was ALWAYS "Ah, cool!". No-one ever stretched the question
>further. If I'd said I was from New York it was the same thing. My
>impression was constantly that they merely thought "I don't know it
>(Europe) so it doesn't matter. It's not worth asking because I won't
>understand the answer."
Well, how about my friend's stepson who graduated from high school in Portland,
Oregon, and thought Alabama was a city in the state of Georgia?
>My sister met an American woman in Australia (where she lives). When she
>explained that our family was from Britain, the woman asked her if there
>were any beaches in Britain. My sister, somewhat astonished and biting
>her lip, answered that, naturally, Britain had beaches since it was an
>island.
There are island countries that have no beaches to speak of.
>The woman merely replied, "Oh, really? Well, my husband would
>have known that - he did geography." And that was *England*. What would
>she have said about Switzerland!
She may have confused it with Swaziland. Again, this problem isn't peculiar to
Americans. I gave tests to Czech high school students, and they had no idea
where Hong Kong was. When I gave them cities in the US, they usually put Miami
somewhere in Brazil, Sao Paulo in California, and Los Angeles precisely where
New York really is. I thought they'd do better if I gave them cities only a
few hours away from where they live, but then I was told that Munich is on the
northern coast of Germany, directly across the Danube from Hamburg. Another
girl, a couple weeks before her English graduation exam, wrote me an essay
claiming that the United States consists of 19 independent nations and a number
of colonies ruled by Britain, France, Holland and Portugal. She claimed to
have gotten this from a geography book.
And the best one is all the Europeans who will argue to the death against
Americans' contention that the US has only 50 states. They'll insist our
country has 51.
JK
JPKIRCHNER
martyn ecott wrote:
>When Americans stop thinking they define the calibre of everything,
>Europeans will stop looking down on them.
I always thought Europeans believed they defined the calibre of everything, and
*that's* why they look down on us. After all, you can't hit a much higher
cultural level than that pan-European favorite Tutti Frutti!
I think the real reason many Europeans look down on Americans is that the
Europeans live among the artifacts of earlier civilizations that were greater
than themselves, and they somehow believe they personally are the people who
brought about these achievements.
JK
Phil Herring
In article <EMC4o...@midway.uchicago.edu> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff, de...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>I don't think USAmericans are much worse than Europeans in this respect.
>As others have pointed out, almost anyplace else in the world, news
>coverage of the territory covered by the USA would *be* international
>coverage.
I disagree. There are many countries that are as parochial as the US, but
land area seems to have nothing to do with it. However, population might;
for example, Australia has a land area almost equal to the contiguous US, a
much smaller population, and much better international news coverage. OTOH,
I don't think that this is solely due to the fact that not enough happens
here to fill up a news bulletin; rather, the cultures of smaller countries
may tend to be more outward-looking, especially when the population is
substantially made up of migrants.
ObLanguage: Australia has a national TV and radio network dedicated to
foreign-language broadcasting. It usually has excellent quality
programming, but rates very poorly, which is probably why you don't see
anything like it anywhere else.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998 Phil Herring. This article may not be reproduced for profit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34B103...@ebu.ch>, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> wrote (in
part):
>(I'm talking about the *average * American here, I also know some
>"non-average" Americans) When I tell people I'm from Switzerland, they
>ask if I speak "Swiss" or if I speak "Swedish" or quite simply ask me
>where it is. At one time I just replied that I was from Europe. The
>answer was ALWAYS "Ah, cool!". No-one ever stretched the question
>further. If I'd said I was from New York it was the same thing. My
>impression was constantly that they merely thought "I don't know it
>(Europe) so it doesn't matter. It's not worth asking because I won't
>understand the answer."
I must say, this paragraph has me very confused. What kind of reaction
are you expecting? Are you used to being fawned over because of your
place of origin? As you say, you'd've gotten the same reaction if you'd
replied, "New York". Coincidentally, it's also the same reaction I
generally get from Europeans when I tell them where I'm from[*] (or what I
get from anyone if I tell them what I do for a living, how old I am, etc.)
Do you think being a European in the USA is somehow less banal than being
a USAmerican in Europe?
[*] Re: Comparative geographical ignorance
Generally, that is. One common exchange went like this:
Deutsch/e: Where are you from in the USA?
Me: St. Louis.
D: Oh, in the South.
Me: Errr...
Peter T. Daniels
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Generally, that is. One common exchange went like this:
>
> Deutsch/e: Where are you from in the USA?
> Me: St. Louis.
> D: Oh, in the South.
> Me: Errr...
>
"St. Louis is far enough south to be cultured, and far enough north not
to be hick." --native of Belleville, Illinois, ca. 1972.
Peter T. Daniels
> |to be. However, I don't believe you when you come up with all these
> |excuses why Americans don't learn foreign languages. I believe it's just
> |because they don't think the rest of the world is important enough. If
> |it doesn't speak English it just doesn't count.
>
> This states it rather baldly. It's not that if "it doesn't speak
> English it just doesn't count"; rather, it's "if it counts it
> does speak English".
>
Which proves that language isn't logical--because those two statements
are logically equivalent; and, at least for Mark, they have different
meanings.
martyn ecott
JPKIRCHNER wrote:
>
Companies find it
> more effective to teach an engineer Spanish than to teach a Spanish major
> engineering. Foreign language skill in and of itself is not a good
> qualification for employment, no matter what your high school counselor told
> you the employment possibilities for foreign language majors are.
Foreign language skill (or any language skill) in itself is useless
anywhere. No-one can get by on language knowledge alone. You always need
something else, whether it is teaching, translating. As I have said
before (in other terms), just because you speak a foreign language you
won't necessarily be a good teacher, just because you speak a foreign
language you won't necessarily be a good translator, just because you
teach a foreign language well it doesn't automatically make you a
translator.
That's not the issue. To take your example of the engineer being taught
Spanish or Russian. Just imagine if he *already* had Spanish or Russian.
*Then* he really *would* have great career chances!
(snip) it's a sure bet they won't progress to standard English, because
> the pidgin meets all their communication needs with the outside world.
Just depends what qualifies as "the outside world" to them, doesn't it?
> Much as in Hamburg and Amsterdam even the street derelicts can speak like
> perfect British gentlemen.
>
An obtuse statement if ever there was one.
Martyn
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> European comedy programmes you'd recommend.
It's a question of taste as far as I am concerned.
So far, nothing I've seen on
> French, Spanish, German, or Italian television has left me begging for
> more. There's certainly nothing out there I would go to the trouble of
> intensively studying a language in order to fully appreciate.
But there again, if you don't understand you *aren't* going to
appreciate it in the first place, are you? So how could you possibly
know?
I would
> ascribe it to the language barrier if citizens of these countries them-
> selves didn't tell me they found no local productions worth watching
> either.
Oh yes, *everyone* loves US programmes, don't they? Like everyone loves
muzak... Trouble is, you get it whether you really want it or not.
Proportionally, I would argue that there isn't much quality programming
coming out of the USA. There is just simply much more.
And when there are good comedy series from Britain, for example, even
then (despite their being in English) they are re-made for the US
market. A successful French film (Trois Hommes et un Couffin) *has* to
be remade for the US market (Three Men and a Baby). Why? just tell me
that. I would say that there is just too much foreign about it for
American audiences to even understand.
I would argue that non-US exposure to US culture makes non-Americans
aware of US realities (we understand what's going on even if some of the
elements are "foreign"), but that it doesn't work the other way around.
Even if there are many people with roots elsewhere they quickly (one or
two generations) become unable to understand much of the culture of even
their "homelands". Everything is seen through American eyes, compared to
US reality and imprinted with Americanism. Everything foreign is exactly
that, foreign and too foreign to be understandable.
>
> >When Americans stop thinking they define the calibre of everything,
> >Europeans will stop looking down on them.
>
> And most Americans still won't care either way.
Ignorance is bliss.
Martyn
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> >Have you never heard of the tourism industry? Strangely enough, no
> >matter how hard you may look the number of proficient foreign language
> >speakers in the US tourism industry is minimal.
>
> So this is what has prevented foreign tourism from attaining any
> importance in the USAmerican economy whatsoever!
So you think "good" is enough? Then you don't understand "market
capitalism".
> And, thus, those of them who are really bothered by shouting Americans
> vacation elsewhere (or go on package tours here sponsored by travel
> agencies from their homelands) and, apparently, entrepeneurs here don't
> miss their money.
>
Fortunately there is more to America than Americans!
Martyn
martyn ecott
JPKIRCHNER wrote:
>
> martyn ecott wrote:
>
> >There are millions
> >of foreign visitors each year from non-English speaking countries... And
> >it is not economically viable? Of course not, if you insist enough the
> >minorities will give way.
>
> There's another real-world difficulty you're not facing in this and your
> previous post about the tourism industry. English is the dominant world
> language, so in many non-English-speaking countries it can suffice to have an
> English and a French speaker in a tourist facility to talk to almost anyone who
> might come.
But that is *not* reality. Even as a British-English speaker I have
often had difficulties making myself fully understood. Why because the
tourists catered for were all Americans. And I defy you to find
French-speakers in the standard tourist facility anywhere. I once had a
colleague say to me "we went into the Air France offices in S.F. and
*no-one* spoke French!"
>
> The US isn't the only place that has this problem. Despite having quite a
> number of people who study foreign languages, it seemed to me on four trips to
> Hungary that almost no one in a tourist contact position speaks a foreign
> language. The passport controllers are monolingual Hungarians, as are the
> customs officers, the ticket sellers in the train stations and the shop clerks.
> English didn't work there, German didn't work there, French didn't work there,
> Slovak didn't work there. Not even Russian did.
But that was not what I was claiming. Even the most common world
languages are totally ignored. And I agree about Hungary - they don't
even use the "international" words.
>
>
> And if you want to see monolingual arrogance that makes Americans look like
> amateurs, observe the German tourists in West Bohemia every summer.
Exactly. Not all Germans and Scandinavians speak English.
>
> >(I'm talking about the *average * American here, I also know some
> >"non-average" Americans) When I tell people I'm from Switzerland, they
> >ask if I speak "Swiss" or if I speak "Swedish" or quite simply ask me
> >where it is.
>
> A Briton once told me that he was repeatedly asked -- in ENGLISH -- by people
> he met in the Philippines what language is spoken in England. A girl I taught
> in the Czech Republic was working as an au pair in England, and asked an
> educated Jamaican how many years he'd had of English.
>
> >At one time I just replied that I was from Europe. The
> >answer was ALWAYS "Ah, cool!". No-one ever stretched the question
> >further. If I'd said I was from New York it was the same thing. My
> >impression was constantly that they merely thought "I don't know it
> >(Europe) so it doesn't matter. It's not worth asking because I won't
> >understand the answer."
>
> Well, how about my friend's stepson who graduated from high school in Portland,
> Oregon, and thought Alabama was a city in the state of Georgia?
>
> >My sister met an American woman in Australia (where she lives). When she
> >explained that our family was from Britain, the woman asked her if there
> >were any beaches in Britain. My sister, somewhat astonished and biting
> >her lip, answered that, naturally, Britain had beaches since it was an
> >island.
>
> There are island countries that have no beaches to speak of.
But that was not the point. From her answer it was obvious that she did
not even know Britain was an island.
>
> >The woman merely replied, "Oh, really? Well, my husband would
> >have known that - he did geography." And that was *England*. What would
> >she have said about Switzerland!
>
> She may have confused it with Swaziland. Again, this problem isn't peculiar to
> Americans. I gave tests to Czech high school students,
I'm not talking about high-school students but about "fully qualified"
adults.
and they had no idea
> where Hong Kong was. When I gave them cities in the US, they usually put Miami
> somewhere in Brazil, Sao Paulo in California, and Los Angeles precisely where
> New York really is. I thought they'd do better if I gave them cities only a
> few hours away from where they live, but then I was told that Munich is on the
> northern coast of Germany, directly across the Danube from Hamburg. Another
> girl, a couple weeks before her English graduation exam, wrote me an essay
> claiming that the United States consists of 19 independent nations and a number
> of colonies ruled by Britain, France, Holland and Portugal. She claimed to
> have gotten this from a geography book.
>
> And the best one is all the Europeans who will argue to the death against
> Americans' contention that the US has only 50 states. They'll insist our
> country has 51.
>
Some of us would argue that you have many more - Puerto Rico, Chile,
Iraq, Haiti, to name but a few. Whether they are "officially" US states
is another question.
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Deutsch/e: Where are you from in the USA?
> Me: St. Louis.
> D: Oh, in the South.
> Me: Errr...
We're talking countries here, not towns... I wouldn't dare tell people
even that I work in Geneva, for all its international significance, let
alone that I live in Lausanne...
Martyn
HAYALES
>Subject: Multilingual Americans: A rare breed???
>From: da...@erols.com (David Goldman)
>Date: Wed, Dec 31, 1997 16:16 EST
>Message-id: <34aab578...@news.erols.com>
>
>Why is it that monolingual or possibly even bilingual Americans find
>it incredulous that a fellow American can be multilingual? I work with
>5 foreign languages, and usually only detect comraderie on this issue
>with Europeans! Do people think Americans' brains work differently
>when it come to languages? Why should people be more impressed about
>multilingual Americans than they are about talented actors or athletes
>or doctors??!
>
One word: Arrogance.
As for me, I wouldn't read "Don Quijote" in any language but Spanish. And I
wouldn't read Sheakespeare in any language but English. Now, put a price tag on
that, amigo.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68s7bu$7fa$1...@wyrm.its.uow.edu.au>,
Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
[good points concerning USAmerican and Australian news broadcasting
deleted]
>ObLanguage: Australia has a national TV and radio network dedicated to
>foreign-language broadcasting. It usually has excellent quality
>programming, but rates very poorly, which is probably why you don't see
>anything like it anywhere else.
You don't? Ontario supports the exact same type of station, with program-
ming in Italian, Chinese, Greek, etc. Chicago has a similar channel,
though it is not government owned and operated. (It's my local source for
Korean soap operas and Polish music videos.)
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Yes, I'm well aware of that. If you'll reread the above exchange, you'll
see that my country of origin has already been established and my inter-
locutor is one of the uncommon ones who hasn't just said "That's cool" or
decided to harangue me about my government's foreign policy.
(And, incidently, my "town" of origin has a number of inhabitants greater
than a quarter the population of Switzerland.)
I have to ask you again: What kind of reaction do you think your Euro-
pean origin should elicit from people you meet? And how do you think it
should vary based on the country of origin of your interlocutors?
Ivan ALO.COM>
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
> [good points concerning USAmerican and Australian news broadcasting
> deleted]
>
> >ObLanguage: Australia has a national TV and radio network dedicated to
> >foreign-language broadcasting. It usually has excellent quality
> >programming, but rates very poorly, which is probably why you don't see
> >anything like it anywhere else.
>
> You don't? Ontario supports the exact same type of station, with program-
> ming in Italian, Chinese, Greek, etc. Chicago has a similar channel,
> though it is not government owned and operated. (It's my local source for
> Korean soap operas and Polish music videos.)
>
> Daniel "Da" von Brighoff /\ Dilettanten
> (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
> /____\ gegen die Kunst!
There are also several (3-4) stations in Detroit that broadcast
foreign language (other than English) programs. One is Arabic and I
believe that I have heard one that sounds to me to be Eastern European.
I don't know what their audience is like, but they have been there for
several years. One is at 560 on the AM dial.
Ivan T.
Mark Rosenfelder
In article <68slf7$f...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Mark Odegard wrote:
>> 17:00:43 +0100, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> in
>> |excuses why Americans don't learn foreign languages. I believe it's just
>> |because they don't think the rest of the world is important enough. If
>> |it doesn't speak English it just doesn't count.
>>
>> This states it rather baldly. It's not that if "it doesn't speak
>> English it just doesn't count"; rather, it's "if it counts it
>> does speak English".
>
>Which proves that language isn't logical--because those two statements
>are logically equivalent; and, at least for Mark, they have different
>meanings.
So much the worse for logic. I can see two differences between the
statements: 1) they make different claims about the underlying causality;
2) they reverse topic and comment.
Not that I agree with them. The implication is that Americans think that
New Zealand "counts" (whatever exactly that means) and Japan doesn't,
which strikes me as absurd.
Despite their deplorable attitudes, Americans do about $300 billion worth
of trade (that's exports only) with non-English speaking countries.
The fact is, unpalatable to language lovers such as ourselves as it is,
for business you don't need to have language knowledge; you can rent it.
Far from being an advantage, language ability can actually be a liability
for an executive. Suppose you've learned fluent Chinese; this may help
you become manager of your company's Far East operations. And then
prevent you from rising higher. The company doesn't want to lose someone
so obviously fitted to his position. A monolingual English speaker
doesn't have this limitation, and can be promoted higher!
Esperanto League N America
NOTE THE ANTI-SPAM TRAP writes in a recent posting (reference <34aad886....@news2.means.net>):
>
>I am not against teaching foreign languages -- just the
>opposite. At the same time, however, as an American I see only
>marginal economic benefit in learning a foreign language; for
>the time spent learning one, you could pick up skills in
>something that pays much better.
>
The same argument could dissuade students from learning history, music,
religion, etc. There is more to decision-making than economic benefit.
BTW this is also the crux of USAmericans' advantage in many international
fields: they can study the subject at hand in their native language,
while most students need to master a foreign language and then compete
against others who use English natively.
--
Miko SLOPER el...@esperanto-usa.org USA (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la http://www.esperanto-usa.org fax (510) 653 1468
Centra Oficejo de la Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A. Write to above address or call: 1-800-ESPERANTO
Esperanto League N America
Steinar Midtskogen <stei...@ifi.uio.no> writes in a recent posting (reference <8367o4m...@oskoreia.studby.uio.no>):
>
>Learning at least one foreign language is good for them.
>
It is as valuable as travel! People who only know their home country
have not experienced the variey of human experience. People who speak
only one language hear and express the world through limiting filters.
Monolingualism is a curable disease.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34B1F8...@ebu.ch>, martyn ecott <ec...@ebu.ch> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>>
>
>> >matter how hard you may look the number of proficient foreign language
>> >speakers in the US tourism industry is minimal.
>>
>> So this is what has prevented foreign tourism from attaining any
>> importance in the USAmerican economy whatsoever!
>
>So you think "good" is enough? Then you don't understand "market
>capitalism".
Can you furnish any proof at all the the USAmerican tourism industry would
be significantly boosted if more of the personnel employed by it spoke
languages other than English? (And I mean real proof, not anecdotal
evidence.)
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <68tkga$4s...@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com>, Ivan <SAME> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>>
>> Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
>> [good points concerning USAmerican and Australian news broadcasting
>> deleted]
>>
>> >ObLanguage: Australia has a national TV and radio network dedicated to
>> >foreign-language broadcasting. It usually has excellent quality
>> >programming, but rates very poorly, which is probably why you don't see
>> >anything like it anywhere else.
>>
>> You don't? Ontario supports the exact same type of station, with program-
>> ming in Italian, Chinese, Greek, etc. Chicago has a similar channel,
>> though it is not government owned and operated. (It's my local source for
>> Korean soap operas and Polish music videos.)
>
>foreign language (other than English) programs. One is Arabic and I
>believe that I have heard one that sounds to me to be Eastern European.
>I don't know what their audience is like, but they have been there for
>several years. One is at 560 on the AM dial.
I was speaking specifically of TV stations, as I assume Mr. Herring was.
If you want to talk radio, there are at least two full-time exclusviely
Spanish-language stations on the FM dial alone. (I haven't listened to
the AM stations much, except to catch Deutsche Welle from time to time.)
Similarly, there are two full-time commercial (NOT state-supported, like
the Australian and Canadian stations previously mentioned) Spanish-
language TV stations in the Chicago area as well. I'm not sure whether
Channel 23 (what we like to call the "All-Foreign Station") receives
public monies or not; considering how little the so-called "public
stations" get, I doubt it. There are even more foreign-language stations
available with cable service, including one full-time Korean network.
(I wonder who these networks cater to since, as we know from reading this
thread, no USAmericans learn foreign languages.)
Esperanto League N America
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes in a recent posting (reference <EM56y...@midway.uchicago.edu>):
>
>So it is with foreign languages. If the human delight with learning them
>was equal to the delight provided by blowing away virtual aliens or
>guffawing at cartoon kids cussing each other out, half this country would
>be polyglot.
Most folks with a reasonable level of education know a bit
of algebra and geometry, but not because they found delight in that
study, but because math was a required course throughout their school
years. There was once a requirement of learning languages, but it
seems to have fallen away.
Alas!
> If the financial rewards were comparable to what they are
>for knowing a word processor, same deal. But neither of these is the case
>so USAmericans don't learn foreign languages. What is so damn hard to
>understand about this?
There are other factors besides delight and economics. Especially if
you consider that the optimum time to learn languages is during
childhood, when most educational decisions are made for the student,
not by the student.
> Why are we compelled to have to continually
>explain to everyone in the free world how the market works? (Actually,
>most people I've met have a pretty sound understanding how the market
>works; it usually takes pointy-headed intellectuals to misunderstand the
>basic facts of human existence.)
>
Then there are the flat-headed "intellectuals" who people school-boards
and make abysmal decisions which cripple students and condemn them to
lives languishing in monolingualism.
Phil Herring
In article <EMDB7...@midway.uchicago.edu> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff, de...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <68s7bu$7fa$1...@wyrm.its.uow.edu.au>,
>Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
>[good points concerning USAmerican and Australian news broadcasting
> deleted]
>
>>ObLanguage: Australia has a national TV and radio network dedicated to
>>foreign-language broadcasting. It usually has excellent quality
>>programming, but rates very poorly, which is probably why you don't see
>>anything like it anywhere else.
>
>You don't? Ontario supports the exact same type of station, with program-
>ming in Italian, Chinese, Greek, etc. Chicago has a similar channel,
>though it is not government owned and operated.
How are these stations funded? FTR, SBS is mostly government-funded (according
to their web site at www.sbs.com.au). And how do they do in the ratings?
>(It's my local source for
>Korean soap operas and Polish music videos.)
An acquired taste, I'm sure :)
Phil Herring
In article <EMDBs...@midway.uchicago.edu> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff, de...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>I have to ask you again: What kind of reaction do you think your Euro-
>pean origin should elicit from people you meet? And how do you think it
>should vary based on the country of origin of your interlocutors?
When I meet a Swiss, I generally ask them what part of Switzerland they're
from - Italian-, German- or French-speaking. For me, this shows that I am
politely interested in their nation of origin, and that they can feel
halfway confident telling me that they are from Geneva (or Lausanne, or
wherever) without me responding with "huh?"
This is similar to the question that I ask people from the USA. Instead of
saying, "where are you from?" (which will inevitably elicit "the united
states", like that tells me anything I didn't know from their accent) I
ask, "what part of the states are you from?" That way I might get them to
say, for example, "Milwaukee", so then we can then talk about beer, and
_Happy Days_, and neat stuff like that :)
Phil Herring
In article <68tkga$4s...@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> Ivan, @ writes:
>There are also several (3-4) stations in Detroit that broadcast
>foreign language (other than English) programs. One is Arabic and I
>believe that I have heard one that sounds to me to be Eastern European.
>I don't know what their audience is like, but they have been there for
>several years. One is at 560 on the AM dial.
Single-language community radio and TV stations are fairly common in most
western nations. However, the multicultural broadcaster to which I referred
broadcasts to a national radio and TV network in a lot of different
languages, which is not the same thing.
Rob Rodgers
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>I was speaking specifically of TV stations, as I assume Mr. Herring was.
>If you want to talk radio, there are at least two full-time exclusviely
>Spanish-language stations on the FM dial alone. (I haven't listened to
>the AM stations much, except to catch Deutsche Welle from time to time.
There are local (DC Metropolitan area) stations that broadcast foreign
programming (not in English). As a kid, I used to watch the Chinese
dramas at 11pm because I thought the black foam rubber axes they would
battle with were hilarious.
Keep in mind that cable is practically universal in the US, and that
means that even Iranian TV* finds a home on US televisions.
>(I wonder who these networks cater to since, as we know from reading this
>thread, no USAmericans learn foreign languages.)
:b
Rob Rodgers
Phil Herring <rev...@uow.edu.au> wrote:
>Single-language community radio and TV stations are fairly common in most
>western nations. However, the multicultural broadcaster to which I referred
>broadcasts to a national radio and TV network in a lot of different
>languages, which is not the same thing.
Considering population sizes and area, I'd say it's fair to compare US
locals and cable channels to "national" broadcasts in most other
countries.
JPKIRCHNER
Ivan T. wrote:
>There are also several (3-4) stations in Detroit that broadcast
>foreign language (other than English) programs. One is Arabic and I
>believe that I have heard one that sounds to me to be Eastern European.
>I don't know what their audience is like, but they have been there for
>several years. One is at 560 on the AM dial.
Well, I used to listen to the German programs on them in 1973, so we're already
talking 25 years. I think they've been broadcasting much longer than that with
various adaptations to new immigrant communities.
JK
JPKIRCHNER
MMG wrote:
>Not true! I've taken Spanish from 5th grade through undergrad and became
quite
>fluent. I work in Michigan as an optometrist and have seen several
"unassimilated
>Hispanics" as patients; I get a lot of referrals based on this knowledge.
My dentist sees the same phenomenon with Romanians. Does this mean there's a
significant unassimilated Romanian population? No. It means the Romanian
community has adopted him as "their" dentist.
>Besides, my speaking Spanish allows me to converse with a lot more people than
>Russian or Czech would.
Not in the Detroit area. I don't know if you're aware that there's such a huge
Russian population here now that they're having to give crash Russian courses
to hospital nurses. At Beaumont Hospital, they've had to have bilingual
flashcards made just to make basic communication possible between doctor and
patient. I had to take someone to their emergency room a couple years ago, and
among the considerable number of people filling their rather large emergency
waiting room, only the people I came with were not speaking Russian or some
other Slavic language. And the number of Russians has only grown since then.
I bump into a few new Russians a month on the street here in the eastern
suburbs, but I've only encountered one non-English-fluent Hispanic in the past
three years.
>I can see where knowing an eastern European language might
>help to boost ones career in certain fields but this shouldn't discount a
knowledge
>of Spanish.
Spanish is simply not that common in this part of the country. I'd say you
probably have a disproportionate concept of how common it is based on your
contacts, just as I may have a distorted view of the prevalence of Russian
based on mine. I have to say that I know exactly where to find people to
practice Russian with, but when I was learning Spanish, I didn't have such an
easy time. I therefore lost much of it through lack of use.
>It is predicted that at the current rate of growth of the Hispanic
>community, the US will have to become a bilingual nation in the next century.
(and
>it's not going to be english/russian or english/czech)
This is a distorted assumption based on the fact that people making this
prediction assume all these Hispanics will have Spanish as their first
language. I've read refutations of this that claim that Hispanics are
assimilating linguistically just as fast as any immigrant group before them,
but that the impression that they aren't is caused by the fact that new waves
of Hispanics keep coming. When my grandmother was a kid she went to German
schools in the US, there were German newspapers and entire German-speaking
towns all over the US. You could live your whole life here knowing only German
at that time. It was considered such a "threat" that use of German was even
outlawed in many states. Where's the German language now?
>What do you base this "not use it" on???
I'm basing it on the fact that these students of mine don't use Spanish in
their teaching jobs, and while there is a need for Polish, Russian or Arabic in
the schools where they teach, they don't study them, because Spanish is "the
most useful" even when you don't use it.
>Basically, if a
>person takes any language in high school for 4 or more years and then
additionally
>in college, they will more than likely use it in their careers or travels.
>Unfortunately, the majority of language studiers don't go beyond 2 or 3 years
in
>high school then forsake it. This includes Polish and Russian.
EXACTLY MY POINT! WE AGREE!
>> The Arabic and Russian classes at the colleges
>> here go begging for students, while zillions of people who had Spanish in
high
>> school and college happily speak English to the Hispanics they encounter.
The
>> utility of Spanish is overhyped in many parts of the country.
>What's with the anti-Spanish bias??? It has infinite more uses than Arabic
and
>Russian in this country...
I don't have any anti-Spanish bias. I just resent the accommodation of one
linguistic group, when others are not being similarly accommodated. What good
is are bilingual English-Spanish signs and brochures in government offices in
Dearborn or Hamtramck or any other large non-Spanish-speaking foreigner
enclaves all over the country? Not much, but you still find them there. I
consider this to be official promotion of a preferred linguistic minority, and
THAT'S what bugs me. It would bug me no matter what the language was.
JK
JPKIRCHNER
martyn ecott wrote:
>That's not the issue. To take your example of the engineer being taught
>Spanish or Russian. Just imagine if he *already* had Spanish or Russian.
>*Then* he really *would* have great career chances!
That's true, but just try to tell that to a typical American high school kid
who's picking out his classes for next year. He (and maybe even his parents)
will insist that he won't need a foreign language because he wants to be an
engineer. It's this whole weird narrow focus here in the States that thinks
the best way to a rewarding career is to study that subject only and not to
attain any "extraneous" skills. It's that mentality more than any kind of
jingoism that accounts for Americans' unwillingness to learn foreign languages.
It's analogous to my classmates who used to bitch about having to take life
drawing, because they couldn't see how it would help them be a successful
graphic designer.
>Just depends what qualifies as "the outside world" to them, doesn't it?
Absolutely!
>> Much as in Hamburg and Amsterdam even the street derelicts can speak like
>> perfect British gentlemen.
>
>An obtuse statement if ever there was one.
You've obviously never been approached at night by a drunken German or Dutch
vagrant who stumbles up to you and asks for change for booze in English that
sounds like Prince Charles.
JK
Alexis Rosoff
On Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:02:07 GMT, marko...@ptel.net (Mark Odegard)
wrote:
|> The only language Americans seem to see *any* economic benefit
|> in is Spanish -- and this is the language that is indeed
|> routinely taught in US high schools.
this is definitely true, but other languages are becoming increasingly
common, especially Chinese (usually Mandarin is taught, but sometimes
Cantonese as well).
As for foreign-language education in schools, passing a state foreign
language exam is required in New York for all students desiring the higher
level Regents diploma (there is, or was when I was in HS 5 years ago, an
opt out provision requiring something like 5 art courses as a substitute)
and will soon be required for all students.
It used to be called the {Spanish, French, Italian, etc} Three Years exam
but is now taught over 4 years, from grade 7 or 8 till 10 or 11, depending
on the district. The university-level Advanced Placement course is then
offered in some schools.
It's unfortunate that it's not offered before grade 7 in most schools,
because it would be easier to learn (I know that my Spanish, despite
studying it for 5 years at school and 1 course a year at university, is
just not that good), and taking two foreign languages is impossible aside
from the special case of one modern language and 1-2 years of Latin in
grades 11-12. Some schools in New York City offer more flexible
programmes, but then again there is much more variety in
primary/intermediate school curriculum structure there, since a form of
school choice is in effect.
I'm a student at SUNY, and foreign-language competency to the level of
passing either the state Regents or city test is required at entry. I
don't know how common such requirements are, although most decent
universities require foreign languages for a B.A. and many B.Sc. degrees
(B.Eng. gets exempted from a lot of the liberal-arts requirements).
Alexis
-*- Alexis Rosoff -*- ICQ# 6689686 -*- http://www.li.net/~alexis
|\ _.,,---,._ `No man is an island, entire of itself;
/, `.-'`' -. ;-;;._ Every man is a piece of the continent,
|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' a part of the main.'
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) -- John Donne
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> >D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
> >>
> >
> >> >matter how hard you may look the number of proficient foreign language
> >> >speakers in the US tourism industry is minimal.
> >>
> >> So this is what has prevented foreign tourism from attaining any
> >> importance in the USAmerican economy whatsoever!
> >
> >So you think "good" is enough? Then you don't understand "market
> >capitalism".
>
> Can you furnish any proof at all the the USAmerican tourism industry would
> be significantly boosted if more of the personnel employed by it spoke
> languages other than English? (And I mean real proof, not anecdotal
> evidence.)
>
you must be able to provide real proof yourself...
martyn ecott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> (And, incidently, my "town" of origin has a number of inhabitants greater
> than a quarter the population of Switzerland.)
>
Oh, we're a size-queen, are we. I find it very strange that you should
think you can pull rank on me just because you live in an overcrowded
stinkhole.
> I have to ask you again: What kind of reaction do you think your Euro-
> pean origin should elicit from people you meet?
*They* were the ones to ask me. I wasn't forcing any irrelevant
information on them.
Martyn
martyn ecott
JPKIRCHNER wrote:
>
> martyn ecott wrote:
>
> >That's not the issue. To take your example of the engineer being taught
> >Spanish or Russian. Just imagine if he *already* had Spanish or Russian.
> >*Then* he really *would* have great career chances!
>
> That's true, but just try to tell that to a typical American high school kid
> who's picking out his classes for next year. He (and maybe even his parents)
> will insist that he won't need a foreign language because he wants to be an
> engineer. It's this whole weird narrow focus here in the States that thinks
> the best way to a rewarding career is to study that subject only and not to
> attain any "extraneous" skills.
There I cannot agree with you. Your American university approach is so
much broader than in most countries, which should allow you to combine
almost anything. I have friends who did just that: computer programming
with German; physics with French... Try fitting a foreign language into
a British university engineering course and you wouldn't even make it
with a shoe horn. In many ways saying that everything is possible in the
USA is very true. It is - and even if it isn't in your home megapolis
then it will be in the one down the road.
>
> >An obtuse statement if ever there was one.
>
> You've obviously never been approached at night by a drunken German or Dutch
> vagrant who stumbles up to you and asks for change for booze in English that
> sounds like Prince Charles.
How sure were you that it wasn't Prince Charles, or another member of
the royal muffins? They have to pay tax now, you know.