Linguistic Ignorance (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Linguistic Ignorance
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pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
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Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

Message 145 of 156

10 August 2012 at 8:35am | IP Logged

Shemtov wrote:

Somebody asked me If I knew the language "Jewish".

Well, Yiddish in Yiddish means simply "Jewish". Maybe there isn't a single Jewish language but some various dialects and languages classified as Jewish.
3 persons have voted this message useful

Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
Studies: Czech, Latin, German

Message 146 of 156

10 August 2012 at 10:32am | IP Logged

I'm sure these have already been mentioned in the thread (but I'm too lazy to look through it all), but the far most common examples of linguistic ignorance I encounter, especially by Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, are:

1) "All Chinese dialects (sic!) sound very different but are written the same way"
2) "Most Cantonese words don't have characters"
3) (After I've pointed out some of the Cantonese characters) "Those aren't 'real' characters"
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5048 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 147 of 156

10 August 2012 at 10:39am | IP Logged

Иврит means Jewish (fem.)
In the Bible the language is called "Jewish".
1 person has voted this message useful

celticpunk
Newbie
United States
Joined 4495 days ago
6 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Welsh

Message 148 of 156

11 August 2012 at 3:27pm | IP Logged

I'm not really surprised by the amount of ignorance regarding the Celtic languages I encounter,but I am saddened by the vitriol leveled at people (like myself) who try to learn any of them. I notice that people who study other minority languages are not ridiculed nearly as often as those who choose to study Irish or Welsh. I suppose that the English believed they did such a good job of stamping out native British/Goidelic languages, there's no reason for anyone living or visiting Britain or Ireland to speak anything but English.

I usually hear:

''They have their own language in Wales?''

or more commonly:

''Where (or what) is Wales?''

or

''Why waste your time with Welsh when you can learn something useful like Spanish?''

or my personal favorite:

''Nobody speaks that (insert any Celtic language) anymore''.

Edited by celticpunk on 11 August 2012 at 3:28pm
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tritone
Senior Member
United States
reflectionsinpo
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French

Message 149 of 156

15 August 2012 at 6:12am | IP Logged

That contemporary European accents/speech patterns are the original, and New World accents(Amer English, Braz Port etc) changed from that.
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Mae
Trilingual Octoglot
Pro Member
Germany
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Speaks: German*, Spanish^C2*, Swiss-German*, French^C2, English^C2, Italian^B2, Dutch, Portuguese
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Message 150 of 156

15 August 2012 at 6:38am | IP Logged

My new personal favourite: "Dutch is a German dialect, like Swiss-German, so why waste
your time to learn it?"
1 person has voted this message useful

berabero89
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4634 days ago
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Speaks: English, Amharic*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French

Message 151 of 156

20 January 2013 at 7:59am | IP Logged

pesahson wrote:

Hekje wrote:

I'm sure a few people here have already seen Daniel
Tammet's TED talk
called "Different ways of knowing". If not,
the link is
here.

There's a part in this talk where Tammet presents the Icelandic word hnuggini
and asks the audience
whether they think it means sad or happy. At best, the audience response is mixed -
perhaps leaning toward
"happy". This is clearly not the result Tammet wanted, and he reveals that most people
think it means "sad",
which is what it means. Apparently, most people are supposed to be able to intuit the
feeling of a word in a
foreign language just by seeing how it's spelled and hearing it aloud.

Wait, what?

1) First, he assumes that there's some kind of objective happy or sad sound to a word.
If that's true, then "happy"
in English, "gelukkig" in Dutch, and "heureux" in French must all look and sound
objectively happy to the
uneducated observer, which they don't. How could they?

2) Second, he assumes that no one's native language would bias them into associating
different sounds and
letters with different feelings than others do.

I don't mean to take away from Daniel Tammet's considerable accomplishments, but it
seems very weird that
someone who has actually learned a few languages would present this falsehood as some
kind of fundamental
linguistic truth.

You might be interested in this article:
languages-missing-link.html?full=true">1
I recommend you do the "Which word sounds bigger" test first that is at the end of the
article.

You also have to remember, though, that the writing system (and selected examples)
could make a difference. For example, if I saw a "k" in a word, I might be inclined to
think that the word I found it in means "pointy" because the letter "k" itself is
angular, while the letter "b" is round, leading the opposite way...
1 person has voted this message useful

zecchino1991
Senior Member
United States
facebook.com/amyybur
Joined 5250 days ago
778 posts - 885 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian

Message 152 of 156

24 January 2013 at 6:47am | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

Иврит means Jewish (fem.)
In the Bible the language is called "Jewish".

But in Hebrew 'ivrit' means 'Hebrew (fem.),' and Jewish is 'yehudi.' The word 'Hebrew' came before 'Jew,' but
some languages never made the transfer and still refer to Jews as 'Hebrew.'

1 person has voted this message useful

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