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Should this count as a language? | ||
Tags: Programming | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4619 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 25 of 38 26 February 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
But that's just it, kids don't learn a little maths in the schooling system, they learn loads, starting from the first day at school. Maths lessons take place practically every day until they leave. The time devoted to languages is much smaller. Ok, maybe the Dutch and the Swedes hammer English into their youngsters non-stop, but most countries give far less priority to languages in comparison to maths. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nandemonai Diglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4170 days ago 101 posts - 116 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 26 of 38 26 February 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | |||||
It pretty much all depends on what you're taking, in my first year of high school I had actually more foreign language classes than maths (5 hours of French and 2 hours of English compared to 4 hours of maths). Though due my choice to focus more on maths my hours of foreign language classes dropped over time. There are options to have a lot more foreign language class hours than maths, though there aren't as many who go that route. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 27 of 38 26 February 2014 at 9:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah same here. I needed to take some extra maths because the curriculum was so focused on the humanities.
But the point is that relatively to what they retain, kids learn a lot of maths and a lot of L2. It's just that remembering only a little maths is not looked down upon, as long as you can count etc. The L2 equivalent would be "as long as you can communicate", but that's much harder. And it's totally not offtopic because most kids would also not learn to code. Although especially for girls or basically anyone who's not a stereotypical nerd it's good to see what it's really about and that there's no magic there. Edited by Serpent on 26 February 2014 at 9:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4619 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 28 of 38 26 February 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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All skills rust away if you don't actively use them. I got brilliant grades for chemistry at school but haven't thought about it (never mind use it) for 25 years. Now I can hardly remember anything.
Most people need maths skills on a regular basis during the course of their everyday lives so the basic knowledge is kept fresh. Many language learners cease to have contact with the language once they leave school. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 29 of 38 26 February 2014 at 10:32am | IP Logged | |||||
They don't in general, unless you count the new fad of bilingual primary schools. Bilingual education is all the rage now in the Netherlands, there's even one in my town. Of course the only language they ever choose for it is English (I think there are some that do German near the border). But that's a recent trend of the last 5-10 years. It didn't exist before that, and is not de rigueur (and also a small part of the educational system as a whole). But what I find funny is that I live in a village where such a thing exists. You'd think it have some chance of success in Amsterdam, where rich people pay exorbitant amounts of money to school their children in multiple languages, just like they would for a prestigious lycée français, but it's in a suburban town for middle-class bourgeoisie who also want their children to speak English because "educated people speak fluent English" - I guess. I think that low levels of English are becoming more and more a faux pas in the Netherlands, socially. But I think it has to do with the prestige of English - if it was Chinese then people would have jumped on that fad (speaking of Chinese, there's a secondary school in Rotterdam that is teaching their students so they can sing along with the Taiwanese rock band Mayday). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 38 26 February 2014 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since it seems pretty evident that programming languages are not at all comparable to human languages, the
discussion has moved on to the state of teaching or learning of languages in schools. On this topic, I'll make three quick comments: 1. With the exception of what I discuss in my second comment, high school language teaching in North America does not aim to produce speakers or users of the language, A foreign language is a subject just like any other. You study it to get good grades and move to the next level. 2. In my opinion, the only way for school to produce speakers of the language is to make the language the medium of instruction. Tavros speaks of the bilingual education rage in the Netherlands. Variations of this exist everywhere. It may be a year abroad in the target language; the French immersion approach in Canada; or those exclusive international schools - such as the lycées français - that are found in the major cities of the world. In passing, I should point out that there is a certain amount of elitism here. Bilingualism or multilingualism, at least in the English-speaking world, is associated with upper class education. 3. Totally unlike Europe and much of the world, North America, and particularly the US, has very little everyday use for a foreign language. After all, the whole world is learning English. Why bother learning another language? Edited by s_allard on 26 February 2014 at 3:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 31 of 38 26 February 2014 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It was a thing even 15 years ago. But then it was only secondary schools and only for
people at gymnasium/atheneum at the highest level - nowadays you have bilingual schools in all layers of society, and also for primary schools (in Frisia, trilingual Dutch/English/Frisian schools exist). It used to be prestigious, and I was in the first generation of students at my school's programme. Nowadays, it's popping up everywhere and for everyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5529 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 38 26 February 2014 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
The obvious exception to this is Spanish. There are quite a few regions of the US where Spanish is spoken heavily. Parts of Miami are heavily Spanish-dominant, for example, and I once heard a puzzled anglophone from southern California ask, "But don't most people understand basic Spanish, more or less?" I often hear people speaking Spanish on the train in Boston, and I very occasionally run into Spanish speakers with weak English in mid-sized university towns in northern New England. And this isn't just an "elite" issue. For example, it occasionally causes friction between Latinos/Latinas and African Americans in the job market (warning, lots of angry political material behind this link; let's not bring it here to HTLAL):
So there are definitely regions of the US where even B1 Spanish would be a life-long asset, even for people who don't belong to any sort of "elite." And B1 Spanish is certainly within reach of any diligent high school student, given the right support from the school, and the presence of Spanish in the larger community. Edited by emk on 26 February 2014 at 3:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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