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Disliking English | ||
Tags: "Louche" Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LeadZeppelin Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5021 days ago 59 posts - 85 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 73 08 November 2013 at 3:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say that older people are rarely going to switch to English with you if you make a mistake in their language.
But 20-something students are very likely to do it. I speak French well but still had it happen to me all of the time. After inquiring, they usually just wanted to practice their English with a native. To which I would respond, "go to America to do that, I traveled all the way to your country, speak French to me!" They might not have even perceived an accent from you, but when you're traveling around and spending a lot of time in hostels, etc., usually the first question asked is, "where are you from?" But nothing is stopping you from lying about your origins. I told people I didn't speak English when they tried the switch. That really does work. And again, I've never had someone over 30~ switch to English on me. I think the phenomenon of a person hearing an accent and immediately switching to English is pretty much exclusive to young college-aged kids who just want to practice with a native. Also, I think a lot of you native English speakers are forgetting how much work that you DID put in to learn it. Or was I the only one who had English grammar classes, English literature, reading classes, composition classes, speech classes, etc. since before I can even remember? I remember lots of homework, lots of time spent reading books, lots of poor test scores, and lots of failure. Nothing is free. :) Edited by LeadZeppelin on 08 November 2013 at 3:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4290 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 34 of 73 08 November 2013 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Certainly I did grammar for English since I was in primary school. I remember doing
drills in homework for the "strong verbs" past participles in English: buy, bought see, seen eat, eaten write, written etc.; before this some students said, "I eated today" and such. I remember the teacher asking every few weeks, "What are the four types of sentences? whereto we respond, "Declarative, demonstrative, interrogative, imperative" and repeat times five. I still remember the five asking words: how (purpose), what (thing), why (reason), where (location), when (time), followed by pages of homework exercises in primary school. Also, in an endquote that ends the sentence, the full stop must be within the quote followed by the quotation marks and no full stop for the main clause, viz., "Quotes end as such." (instead of "Quotes end as such.". or "Quotes end as such".) It is unsurprising that I need grammar in foreign languages to learn properly, or else I will end up in a disorganised mess and unable to form simple sentences. Returning to the switch, this may sound odd, but nowadays if someone switches to English, I say, "No English, cannot speak" or something and say that I am from any random place, especially from one of the languages that I have lesrnt, e.g. Chile, Singapore, French Guiana, Macau, etc. Then they have to reswitch into the other language. I remember reading about how complicated this became in Montréal, that they even had a term for it, called "le switch". I have been to Montréal around five times, and each time I count the "le switch" at around ten times per holiday. So, if I pretend to not be an Anglophone, I doubt anyone would try to still switch or insist in English. But if that happened, I suppose that I would continue to pretend to be confused or not understand. Edited by 1e4e6 on 08 November 2013 at 4:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 35 of 73 08 November 2013 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||
Also add SOV, V2, and verbs added in a reversed order at the end of sentences after using an auxiliary. English should have more complex syntax lacking inflection but no! I may start sneaking in to-be for certain verbs and will look at the list of pronominal adverbs and try to reintroduce them to the masses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 73 08 November 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Since people have been saying that they're happy that they didn't have to go through the nightmare of learning English, I thought I might give my two cents:
It sure wasn't a nightmare for me to learn English. Sure there were some points of aggravation along the years, but English content is so easy to immerse oneself in that learning it for me was super easy. I started learning English at the age of seven, not formally but by playing Pokémon Yellow on the Game Boy Color (no games back then were localized into Finnish). It was such good training, your Pokémon have moves and when you click on a move you see what it does; that game single-handedly taught be the words growl, leer, whip, tail, thunder, shock, slam, etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 37 of 73 08 November 2013 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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If world events had worked out differently and English was just a language spoken on an island in the north sea, I wonder if so many people would proclaim just how "easy" it was to learn?
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 38 of 73 08 November 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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If the British pride in history and the worldwide dialectal span had been less then it might have been possible to construct a spelling which wasn't as aberrant as the present one, and then English would have been easy. Alas, really efficient spelling reforms only seem to be possible with a change of alphabet, as in Turkish and Indonesian.
As it is, it is undeniably easy to learn the English morphology, and if you systematically try to learn verbs with their prepositions (i.e. as you learn idioms) then even that hurdle is surmountable. So English definitely has a flat lerning curve, and it is understable that people who just learn enough to get by find it easier than for instance Irish. But ultimately things level out: every language is precisly so difficult that its native speakers can speak it, but not so easy that they all speak it equally well. If a language is too difficult it won't spread, and if it is too easy somebody will take steps to complicate it - for instance with a plethora of superfluous words - like the words for flocks of different animals, which all have special terms in English. My only grievance with English is that it tends to replace other languages, and that those who have learnt English and nothing else are so proud of this that they blare English sentences out everywhere. And globalists who can't stand that a Danish institutions have Danish names are also on my black list. You can't blame a company in London for having an English name and for advertising its products in English, but when a Danish company does the same (directed at a Danish audience) then my first thought is that their PR agency must be populated by complete morons since they believe they can impress me with their English. Edited by Iversen on 08 November 2013 at 10:33am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 39 of 73 08 November 2013 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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English has much more verbal forms in active usage than German. English vowels are tough.
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| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 40 of 73 08 November 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Those animal group names aren't really followed so much yet. But it does seems natural we could have them as
many analytical languages in Asia don't have gender but classifier systems, giving each object a classifier. Some in Chinese are: ben(root) for books tiao(thin rod) for fish and slender objects ti(topic/issue) for questions dui(to be correct) for couples I still feel intimidated by all those things German has over English, modal particles and complex word order still strike me as odd, that we don't have them to the same degree. I also would like to mentions the passival, where did that ever go? We replaced it yes, but it could find another purpose as German has impersonal passives. Who keeps on stripping English yet keeps German so stark in detail? Edited by Papashaw on 08 November 2013 at 6:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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