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Why is English so easy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5823 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes  Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 41 of 78 02 January 2010 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which makes me feel a little guilty; being a native English speaker, I have no trouble reading threads or posting. Major props to all of the non-native English speakers who post here! 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 42 of 78 03 January 2010 at 3:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, the balances just gets a bit unequal. This is why my favourite rant is that the world ought to have a language that is a second language to everyone and super-easy to learn. Anyone wants to hear it...? Not only is Lindsay a wise person, she's got got taste in foreign languages too!
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| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 43 of 78 03 January 2010 at 4:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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cordelia... I'll take a wild guess.... Esperanto? lol :D
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| novemberain Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5846 days ago 59 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC1, Italian Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 44 of 78 03 January 2010 at 5:45am | IP Logged | |||||
Now that we have Na'vi and Avatar is taking over the world, Esperanto stands no chance :) Edited by novemberain on 03 January 2010 at 5:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| koffiegast Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5462 days ago 29 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 45 of 78 03 January 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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English isn't easy,
finding English sources on the other hand is. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 46 of 78 03 January 2010 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Is Na' Vi the same level of difficulty as Esperanto? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 47 of 78 03 January 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am trying to control my urge to start my anti English, pro Esperanto rant... So I'll rant about Hebrew as a substitute
I think the situation in the early days of Israel (with Hebrew) is interesting from a language perspective. NONE of the people who arrived there could speak modern Hebrew per se. Some could read biblical Hebrew. But the modern Hebrew language had been constructed by some people (not sure of the exact details) in order for the new country to have a suitable language. So all the new immigrants had to learn Hebrew when they arrived in Israel; Russian Jews, Polish, German, French, North African and Middle Eastern... Everyone added their flavour to it. Today it is taken for granted as the language of Israel. I think that this was an amazing way of solving the problem of communication in the new country of Israel. Obviously Hebrew was a suitable language for historical and cultural reasons. It had been adopted to become "usable" in everyday situations -- old style biblical Hebrew could not really be spoken in a conversation, I think. Nobody had a distinct advantage really, but started from more or less the same point. The new language helped to tie people from different backgrounds together and create a common identity. See how all this fits in with the EUs situation right now...! The state of Israel still has an absolutely awesome system (ulpans etc) to bring people up to speed in Hebrew for free and very fast after they arrive in Israel. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6591 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 48 of 78 04 January 2010 at 1:20am | IP Logged | |||||
cordelia0507, I'd followed your tip and looked up "ulpan", since in the States I am seeing new immigrants attending government sponsored English language programs and struggling with the language acquisition. So, a reference to something that works very well in this arena is extremely interesting. Unfortunately, Wikipedia seems to be reporting similarly sketchy results for Israel, but then again, that seems to be an expected mean result, no matter what language we are looking at. (Wikipedia article about "Uplan" reads: "The teaching of Hebrew in Israel is in a crisis. A government study has shown that even after five months of intensive Hebrew study at ulpan, sixty percent of new immigrants over the age of thirty cannot read, write or speak Hebrew at a minimum level. The situation amongst the Russian immigrant population is even more dire with seventy percent of immigrants not being able to understand the Hebrew television news.") This, of cause, does not in any way diminish the point you are making about how Hebrew was reconstructed for the purposes of creating a national identity for a new state of Israel. From what I've been reading, Yidish underwent a period of explicit suppression in Israel, while Hebrew was being built up, with the result that Hebrew has been made into a living language and is flourishing, while Yidish is in severe decline, if not on the verge of extinction. Politics is a messy thing as always! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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