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Spanish in Barcelona

  Tags: Catalan | Spain | English | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
57 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 46 7 8 Next >>


Hencke
Tetraglot
Moderator
Spain
Joined 6895 days ago

2340 posts - 2444 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin
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 Message 33 of 57
10 November 2006 at 2:11pm | IP Logged 
Threads getting sidetracked off topic is a fact of life and not such a bad thing normally. It can end up even more interesting if it is allowed a bit of a life of its own. In some cases, like here, the opposite happens.

I am not sure it is such a good idea to try to reason with an obvious - hmm, hard to express this without resorting to namecalling - ... with someone who will not play according to the same rules and wants the playing field all to themselves, tilted at an angle of their choosing. The "reasonable" civilised tack will only fan the flames and add fuel to the fire. And the only kind of appropriate response might be such as could get you banned from the forum.

I can't help wondering about the rules in these discussions. On the one hand strict policing seems to be in place, threads are closed and further input stopped when discussion and debates get a little heated, sometimes leaving the worst offender with the last word. Other things happen too, like a post of mine that was silently removed from a dicussion recently, I can only assume by the administrator and I am not sure in what way it was deemed inappropriate - while on the other hand you can sometimes see blatantly agressive and hostile behaviour going on and on unchecked over several pages.

Seeing someone, like this "aldo" character, resorting to viscious uninhibited contempt of his discussion partners to prop up his cause, at least to me suggests that his views are on such shaky ground to begin with that there is nothing else available to try to back them up.
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patuco
Diglot
Moderator
Gibraltar
Joined 7016 days ago

3795 posts - 4268 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*
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 Message 34 of 57
10 November 2006 at 4:52pm | IP Logged 
I agree with Hencke. Perhaps we need more moderators to police the forum. After all, one of them, despite his extensive knowledge and experience never comes here any more.

Edited by patuco on 10 November 2006 at 4:53pm

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rafaelrbp
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 7014 days ago

181 posts - 201 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian
Studies: German

 
 Message 35 of 57
10 November 2006 at 5:41pm | IP Logged 
We can't put pressure on the administrator to appear more on this forum. Afterall, he has more than 1800 posts, so suppose he spends an average of 10 minutes on each one (thinking, replying, reading the responses, etc). So:

1800 * 10 / 60 = 300 hours.

Wow, it's possible to learn almost a new language with all this time spent! I know this time was very well spent, as we could discuss and enlight our views on language learning.

Maybe the best solution is to have many moderators, I suppose he can trust on a lot of people here.

1 person has voted this message useful



lady_skywalker
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
aspiringpolyglotblog
Joined 6891 days ago

909 posts - 942 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian

 
 Message 36 of 57
10 November 2006 at 5:50pm | IP Logged 
I think Patuco was refering to Ardashir (who is listed as being the moderator of this sub-forum).

I agree that we could use a few more moderators as it seems unfair to expect the administrator to be monitoring *every* thread. Maybe we should all bring up this matter in the Senior Members forum as that's probably where this particular discussion belongs. :)
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rafaelrbp
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 7014 days ago

181 posts - 201 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian
Studies: German

 
 Message 37 of 57
10 November 2006 at 7:22pm | IP Logged 
aldo wrote:
There simply are not spaces for languages that number under 10 million speakers.


The philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder has said: "Is there anything more precious to a people than the language of its forefathers?"

I would love to go to Spain and be able to speak to everbody in Spanish, but I respect the fact that there are other languages there (and people), like Catalan or Basque. If those languages are going to disappear, that's another story.

The English language could also be split into various unintelligible dialects, with the Spanish influence on USA, variations from Hong Kong, Australia, England, etc. Who knows?
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patuco
Diglot
Moderator
Gibraltar
Joined 7016 days ago

3795 posts - 4268 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*
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 Message 38 of 57
11 November 2006 at 3:08am | IP Logged 
I've opened a new thread in the Senior Members room to discuss some of the points mentioned above.



rafaelbp wrote:
The English language could also be split into various unintelligible dialects

The English spoken in different English-speaking countries is just a variation of the same language. I wouldn't say that they are "unintelligble". As you mentioned, there is a big difference between the languages spoken in Spain since they are actually different languages.
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Captain Haddock
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
kanjicabinet.tumblr.
Joined 6769 days ago

2282 posts - 2814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek

 
 Message 39 of 57
11 November 2006 at 3:25am | IP Logged 
patuco wrote:

rafaelbp wrote:
The English language could also be split into various unintelligible dialects

The English spoken in different English-speaking countries is just a variation of the same language. I wouldn't say that they are "unintelligble".


I assume that Rafaelbp is theorizing about the future. Depending on politics and migration, English might well divide into several languages given enough time. One major pronunciation shift like the one that divided High and Low German could do it.
1 person has voted this message useful



aldo
Triglot
Groupie
Thailand
Joined 6597 days ago

50 posts - 52 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, SpanishB1
Studies: Italian, German, Dutch, Mandarin, Thai, Khmer, Malay

 
 Message 40 of 57
14 November 2006 at 9:04am | IP Logged 
Like a river this thread seeks its own course. What I still hear are people wanting something to be one way when it clearly is not. So let's see, Urdu speakers must learn Nederlands to talk to a country which is very small and nearly 98% of the population speak English at a much higher level than any adult speaker is going to learn in Nederlands as an L69. What purpose does that serve?

The reality is that (and this is stating the same thing over and over--maybe reps will ground it) the one language that everyone learns as their L2 is English. As for speaking in the World I speak Spanish, French, and English so I am pretty able to go anywhere in the World. I use Thai everyday only because I am in that milieu (it has no use for me outside of its geo locked position). I do hope that Mandrian expands or Japanese (however, Orientals have shown their ability to learn English and English speakers have shown their lack to learn Oriental languages--so I doubt the change).

I was hoping for people that had more understanding of languages, methods, etc. I have found that on other web sites--I've not found that here.

Attacking me and trying to get me to defend what is the truth shows the level of experience with linguistics and learning techniques and of pragmatics.


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