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Why not Spanish as essential? | ||
Tags: Polyglot Academy | Language Importance | L3 via L2 | Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | Choosing a Language | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| 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 81 of 115 10 March 2014 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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German is certainly the big European language but many Germans are also competent English speakers, at
least among the younger generations. Spanish has a large presence in the Americas and a lot of these people are functionally monolingual. Therefore if you go to live in, say, Argentina without knowing any Spanish you are going to fall flat on your face. Even in Spain the English proficiency is relatively low. Basically you need Spanish to participate in the Spanish-speaking world. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4711 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 82 of 115 11 March 2014 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is it that makes Guiana the most important country? ;) Just kidding! But why is it that Brazil is necessarily the most important? Edited by ericblair on 11 March 2014 at 2:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 83 of 115 11 March 2014 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ever heard of the BRICS? The "B" in BRICS stands for Brazil. It's the economy... Edited by iguanamon on 11 March 2014 at 3:54am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 84 of 115 11 March 2014 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Does that really require an explanation? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4082 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 85 of 115 11 March 2014 at 9:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In another thread, a while ago, I was slammed for saying that Portuguese could understand Spanish, and vice versa. Not directed at Mad Max, but HTAL in general for future reference :-\ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4082 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 86 of 115 11 March 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Numbers please. And dont include the hispanic minority in US. US is English based. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 87 of 115 11 March 2014 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's all about the context and connotations. For travel purposes, of course Spanish is more useful world-wide. But potential learners should know that it's not a piece of cake, and especially Portuguese speakers tend to know at least a bit of Spanish so it's not just based on pure similarity. Mad Max, read "Eu não falo português". The fun starts beyond the tourist level :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4711 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 88 of 115 11 March 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have heard of BRICS. I have also read they aren't all they are cracked up to be these days: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af6e8b08-1136-11e2-8d5f-00144feabd c0.html It struck me as odd to me for Falkenstein to call Brazil the biggest and most important country in South America. It is the biggest land wise, but the population is about equal between Brazil and all the Spanish speaking South American countries. If we include Latin America as a whole (so Mexico and South), then the Spanish speakers dwarf the Portuguese speakers rather handily. As for most important, I guess if we only want to define importance by economics, then I still disagree. In terms of GDP of purchasing power parity, Brazil individually ranks only 5th and has never ranked first,historically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_countrie s_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita In terms of GDP not per capita, Brazil is first individually, but is a tad smaller than the Spanish speaking countries of South America taken together. Again, adding Central American Spanish-speaking countries would skew the numbers even more toward Spanish.
Indeed it does, lichtrausch. The context of this conversation is the value of studying a given language over another. Calling Brazil the most important country is, first off, rather insulting to the residents of all the other countries in the area being discussed. If someone called the US the most important country in the world, I doubt everyone would be on board with that claim. However, by the metric of economy, it has been #1 for quite some time. If you agree that the US is the most important country in the world, I guess I won't object to people calling Brazil the most important country in South America. It just seems insulting is all. Additionally, we would need to compare all Spanish speaking countries in South America together against Brazil, not one by one.
Gemuse, the statement was not made by me and you are asking Mad Max for the numbers, but that poster may simply have been referring to this chart provided on the site: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/index.html It shows Spanish being 3rd after English and Japanese with German and French in 4th and 5th, respectively. This site also agrees with his claim and splits them all out specifically by language: http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn13/ Unless you have more recent data to trump his, it looks like we must go point to Mad Max! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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