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Speaking English- a poorer retirement | ||
Tags: Press Article | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 25 of 33 24 February 2013 at 9:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But this isn't the question he is addressing. Essentially what he does (statistically) is take similar persons in the same country countries and divides them into the two types of language types based on their mother tongue. Then he measures whether their choices such as savings differ systematically. That is much different from measuring whether poor people would be better off if they learn English. Edited by newyorkeric on 25 February 2013 at 2:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 26 of 33 24 February 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In case anyone's interested, Chen appeared on TED last year to summarize orally his findings.
Like op-eds, the comments that accompany the presentations are usually much more enlightening and thought-provoking than the presentation which in my view has been increasingly putting style and platitude over substance when it comes to TED What reinforces my skepticism of Chen is this comment by "Joseph Wright":
EUROTYP was a project from the Max Planck Institute's Department of Linguistics and the data was gathered from questionnaires with the aformentioned Östen Dahl being the author of the questionnaire for tense and aspect. In addition to all of the comments which question the categorization of future-time reference for various languages as used (and unblinkingly followed) in Chen's study, Dahl's own reservations on how Chen used his research are interesting to say the least. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4300 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 27 of 33 25 February 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Then of course the results are going to differ not because of the language but because of the countries those two people are living in. Did he do a result on Mandarin peakers in China vs Taiwan or Singapore or Hong Kong? Or how about comparisons between English speakers in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada? My point was that for one person to learn a language,there always has to be an underlying reason ( and it's not usually for fun). Usually it's for economic reasons or for prestige. I mean, if knowing that language will give you a bleak outlook why bother? Also, I think his using Mandarin is a very poor example. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 28 of 33 25 February 2013 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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wber, the point that Chen's trying to make is that there's a connection between your propensity to save and whether your native language explictly marks future tense in conjugation. He says next to nothing about why people learn foreign languages.
However, you can probably see that Chen has been criticized heavily by linguists, and as far as I know no linguistics journal will deign to publish his paper. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 33 25 February 2013 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sorry, wber, I made an important typo. He makes statistical comparisons of similar people from the *same* country. Lol, that was probably the most misleading typo I could have made... Edited by newyorkeric on 25 February 2013 at 2:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4300 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 30 of 33 25 February 2013 at 3:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Okay. Either way, I'd probably still say the same thing. Spending/saving habits are not tied to language but the environment. What about social strata? Rich will save more than the poor, but they will also spend more. I also don't agree with his choice of language because, a lot of Asian languages, Language= Nationality=Ethnicity=Culture. This doesn't apply with English. That's why a lot of people are so shocked when a white person ( or even a white-looking person) who might have been born in that country can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese etc...fluently. That rule doesn't apply with English. It's no big deal for us to see Indian, Asian,Arabic, African people speaking fluent English. We treat it like it's nothing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 31 of 33 25 February 2013 at 4:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/go.html Verbix.com says that "is going" is present (progessive) indicative. Of course, you can also refer to it as the (simple?) future tense. However, I think you could make the argument that we English speakers know on some level that our "present selves" will be in the future or whatever.
I used a question mark because I wanted to show that I was making a suggestion to the person I quoted. You can easily tell someone "We're having snow on Tuesday" and use it as a statement. I hear that sort of declaration all the time (thankfully, it's mostly been wrong this season).
Those are pretty much the same thing.... I'm not trying to offend you, so don't take this the wrong way, but what part of the US are you from (or are you perhaps a visitor)? Here in my area of the east coast "A storm's coming tomorrow" (Usually preceeded by "they say") is much more common then asking "The sun's out tomorrow?" For that I'd expect to hear "Are they calling for sunshine tomorrow?" Edited by Darklight1216 on 25 February 2013 at 4:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 33 25 February 2013 at 5:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
He incorporates all this into his analysis. Edited by newyorkeric on 25 February 2013 at 5:11am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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