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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| ferdi Tetraglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 7075 days ago 41 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Turkish, Dutch*, English, German | Message 25 of 67 24 November 2005 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All Belgians are stupid :P at least that is how they are stereotyped....
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| Kveldulv Senior Member Italy Joined 6953 days ago 222 posts - 244 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Italian* | Message 26 of 67 17 December 2005 at 8:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was at school a few days ago, my Italian teacher (Italian is my mother tongue) had just come back from Prague (she doesn't know Czech). By chance she started a conversation about the Czech language and the slavic languages, saying that they are very difficult languages to master and so on, "because there are no roots (I think she meaned latin roots) which can help you to recognize a word".
But then she said that "however, Italian is a very difficult language to master, too" and a classmate added "yes, it's the second most difficult language to master!","our grammar is hard!"... Ahahah... when you know you're right, you'd like to explain that it's not true an so on, but when you see your teacher agree with him, you understand that you can't change their opinion. I would really have liked to teach them something about noun cases, genders, the difficult vocabulary of the Germanic languages... but I and a Russian classmate of mine (he agrees with me) didn't say a word. Conclusion: - my Italian teacher doesn't know nothing about languages but she talks about them. So she can't judge Italian as "one of most difficult of the world" - now most of my classmates think Italian is very difficult (and they'll tell this to many friends and so on) - it's better to know what yuo are talking about (she has to thank the lord I'm a quiet and good guy) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| awb Groupie United States Joined 6874 days ago 46 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 27 of 67 10 February 2006 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't read this whole thread, but here in America, when teachers say grammar, people think (and I would have thought the same a year ago -- before I took up foreign languages) put the comma inside the ending quotation or out? Him and me or he and I? Or something along those lines. Never would they have thought accusative case pronouns or anything.
Furthermore, everyone complains that English is a dreadfully difficult language, but it's really not. They complain about it being inconsistent as far as spelling/pronunciation goes, etc. Of course it's full of idioms, as well. Sure, that makes it somewhat harder.. but it's not like it has the features of German with any declension or noun genders or anything (nothing beyond who/whom and I/me, etc., but those declensions are misused a lot anyway).. My mom was once an English teacher for a year.. and they had her believe it was a hard language too... however, I've come to realize that it's a fairly easy language in all honesty. So yes, I think it could be a psychological thing with people getting caught up in their own language's exceptions.. but I've been able to see past that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7146 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 28 of 67 10 February 2006 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the majority of people who say that English is the hardest language have never seriously learnt a second language. All they see are inconsistencies in English and they get hung up on it.
I did hear a BBC program recently on short wave that claimed there is a register of more than two million English words. Here is the estimated vocabulary of different speakers of English. Shakespeare 30,000 words 12 year old 12,000 words A graduate 23,000 words Most of the 2 million words are specialist words to do with professions or sports or hobbies and would never be used by most people. It doesn't mean, though, that you have more words to learn if you want to speak good English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6867 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 29 of 67 11 February 2006 at 8:52am | IP Logged | |||||
That is not my experience of Brussels. In theory, it's bilingual, but it's French everywhere. The only occasions that I used Dutch was in the Dutch bookshop, and to my cleaning lady, from Flanders. She was very happy to have a chance to use her language in Brussels... For difficult languages, though, here's some examples of my efforts: I found English unbelievably easy. German not quite that easy, French was harder, Arabic still more difficult, and my current project of learning Chinese is the hardest one so far. Timeline: English at 11, German at 13, French at 14, Arabic at 25, Chinese from 60... You draw the conclusions! And I don't think that I ever will dare to try Tamil or Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6861 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 30 of 67 11 February 2006 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a Flemish Belgian (which means Dutch is my mother tongue) and I'm quite tired of stupid French people who laugh at me because I speak French the Belgian way.
The French think that Belgian people are stupid, but they don't realise that they themselves are more stupid when it concerns learning foreign languages. In fact I never met someone from France who mastered a German language fluently, without an accent. In the end French people who laugh at me always come to realise that I speak way more languages than they do... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6867 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 31 of 67 11 February 2006 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I love the Belgian French numerals for 70, 80, 90: septante, octante, nonante, instead of the not very translucent soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt-dix. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6861 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 32 of 67 12 February 2006 at 4:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I prefer septante and nonante too, but I can assure you that I never heard a Belgain say "octante". That's Swiss, I think (or is "huitante" not rather the Swiss word?). In Belgium we say "quatre-vingts", like the French. I also noticed that there are quite a few Belgian-French words that the French don't understand, like "couc au chocolat" (I even don't know the correct spelling, I'm afraid) or "chiclette". In Belgium we also use the word "un g" or "un gsm" for a mobile, where the French seem to prefer "portable" (when I first heard that word I thought it was a laptop :-D) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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