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What is a non-mainstream language for you | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4693 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 17 of 71 12 August 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged | ||
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China (my locality) :-
1, English 2, Japanese 3, Korean, German, Spanish 4, Everything else 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 71 12 August 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Sweden, nobody would find it strange if somebody had studied a fair share of German/French/Spanish (they are offered at any high school). Some might have studied a bit of Russian (which used to be available in high school), Italian (one of the options nowadays)... Latin/Classical Greek (still available, I believe).
While Mandarin is probably considered super-exotic, it's still big enough to be offered in high school. Japanese is somewhat popular among kids, and Thai for travellers. No matter how "popular", they're still non-mainstream. Anyone who'd study anything outside this small circle of ~10 languages would be considered a language geek. At best, people have a tiny idea of where the language is spoken, and its possible relationship with other languages. I once got the question "Oh, so you're saying that Portuguese and Spanish are related!?". (Hint: neighbouring countries!) And: "So once upon a time we spoke the same language here in Scandinavia!?" Oh, the humanity. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 12 August 2012 at 3:20pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5839 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 71 12 August 2012 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Germany it's mainstream to learn the "Big Four" languages English, French, Spanish and Italian. And Latin has its position as a traditional school language at grammar schools (Gymnasien).
Any language beyond these 5 languages is already regarded as exotic: My languages Dutch, Esperanto, Danish, Turkish and so are Portuguese and Russian. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 12 August 2012 at 4:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 20 of 71 12 August 2012 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the Netherlands, English is pretty much a given. German is extremely common too and
many people will know a bit of it due to school - I think almost everyone has studied a few years of German, though how much they remember is up to the age and the educational level of the person. French is taught too and a lot of Dutch people holiday there. Coming across someone who speaks French isn't common, but it wouldn't be something out of the ordinary and it is taught in schools. Latin/Ancient Greek are for people who did gymnasium, but it's also not looked at strangely. There are some other options. In Frisia, there's the obvious Frisian. Spanish is gaining ground a little nowadays, but overwhelmingly schools offer German and French, so it'd be more exotic - but a lot of people go on holiday there too, so again Spanish wouldn't raise that many eyebrows. Turkish and Arabic will get you an automatic assumption as someone who hangs around with the enormous populations of immigrants from Turkey/Morocco in the country. Anything else will brand you as exotic, though people will understand if you learn something like Italian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 21 of 71 12 August 2012 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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How would I define 'mainstream' if I were to rewrite a dictionary? ;)
Keeping it simple: -First, sheer number of speakers. -Second, area covered (including diaspora or otherwise) Going a bit further: -How important is it in any given general area? (expect, say, Latvian to be referred to as 'mainstream' in Latvia and surroundings but not in Africa) If 'mainstreamness' were all I care for in my language studies I'd need to add Mandarin and French (and possibly Portuguese, Arabic or Swahili) to my TL list and I could probably drop Japanese and German to be a 'mainstream' world citizen that can move freely without too many worries. But life is not unusually more complicated than that. As you can imagine, anything other than English and French is clearly non-mainstream in Spain, with German and Italian still being non-marginal. But I thought we had discussed what 'the big four' were for everyone at HTLAL some time ago? Edited by mrwarper on 12 August 2012 at 2:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 71 12 August 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes we have discussed "the big four", I think I opened that thread myself, but this time I was interested in a
bit beyond these, and look at what is beyond the 5-10 most common languages. I sometimes see Korean referred to as mainstream, and in Norway that is so beyond mainstream that it is hardly in the stream at all. I was therefore interested in knowing whether it was the Americans who were special, or whether we were just old fashioned. From the answers I get, I suspect that at least in the Western Hemisphere we are pretty much the norm. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4630 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 71 12 August 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I totally forgot to mention Korean earlier. Here it is certainly much less mainstream than Japanese and Mandarin, but there are some areas where there are plenty of Korean native-speakers, or people of Korean heritage. Tagalog and Cebuano have a bit of a presence here, but I'd say that studying them as a non-native speaker is definitely not mainstream. In Paraguay (at least when I was growing up there), Portuguese was pretty mainstream, as many immigrants spoke/speak the language, and because of the country's proximity to Brazil. Still, most Paraguayans I knew were bilingual in both Guarani and Spanish (or monolingual in Guarani, especially in rural areas), and didn't look much at other languages. Therefore, despite it's "mainstream" status, it was on the lower end of the scale. German and Italian are other languages spoken by some communities, though they were not mainstream. Same goes for a number of other indigenous languages of Paraguay. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cmmah Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 4523 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Irish | Message 24 of 71 12 August 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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The only languages that are really taught (in schools anyway) in Ireland are Spanish, French, Irish and you'll
occasionally get German or Italian. Some schools offer Russian or Mandarin as non-exam subjects, because they realise the usefulness but don't want to risk getting 'low marks', that'll drag the school average down. Polish, Romanian and a few other languages with a large diaspora in Ireland are sometimes offered, but only to native speakers. If you mention that you study any language other than those I mentioned, you'll get some funny looks. Even Portuguese is considered 'exotic', You should see the looks people give me when they see my Norwegian books lying about. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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