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Languages that you feel obligated... | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| PinkCordelia Diglot Newbie Wales Joined 4812 days ago 31 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Welsh | Message 25 of 58 30 January 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Welsh!! Despite (practically?) all adult Welsh speakers in Wales speaking fluent
English it's expected that you'll make an effort if you want a job in teaching or any other public service. The government policy is, I believe, that a first language Welsh speaker should be able to conduct their lives in Welsh without having to resort to English. So schools, hospitals etc. should be able to provide for that. I've got a long way to go but it's nice to tackle a non-Romance language for a change. Although it is ironic that my Welsh boyfriend and his family don't speak a word of Welsh and don't want to. I don't mind being 'forced' to as someone from England but it's very odd that someone Welsh should be made to feel somehow less truly Welsh because they can't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4834 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 26 of 58 30 January 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I want to learn French because by the next winter I will have a house in Paris that I
will use for my vacations and basically, that's almost the only reason why I'm trying to learn French, so yes, I'd say I feel a bit obligated to learn it. I too have mixed feelings about this language. I don't find it ugly but I'm more into other languages... Studying French doesn't thrill me, especially because it's so similar to my mother tongue that I very seldom have the pleasure to find out new and different words, syntax, verb paradigms or anything else... It's all pretty much the same as Italian. And while many people would be encouraged by that, I tend to get bored thus making my progresses very sluggish. As for the pronunciation, I find it a bit stuck-up, highfalutin and redundant... Also the spelling, in my opinion, is a bit redundant and byzantine with all those accents and diphthongs; and while I could listen to people speaking in Hebrew (the other language I'm studying, and that I find very spiritual and almost transcendental) or English (which, in my opinion, manages to be an elegant language without being pretentious) for entire days, I easily get tired of listening to French conversations. Edited by Rykketid on 30 January 2013 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 27 of 58 30 January 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I used to feel obligated to learn Spanish, but that prevented me from actually learning it, as I would rather learn things because I want to. Edited by mick33 on 30 January 2013 at 8:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Presidio Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4582 days ago 39 posts - 150 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, German Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 28 of 58 30 January 2013 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
-- I am going to ignore the rest of what you said about Spanish and Hispanics because you are not qualified to speak on behalf of "most Americans" as far as their opinion on the language or the people. But as far as your opinion on how important learning Spanish could become in the U.S. I must say that you couldn't be more wrong... Currently services in Spanish are not just provided for hospital/medical care and for courtroom/legal services. They are also available when you call a bank or credit card support line, a pharmacy for a prescription, a car rental or airline support line, or an Internet or Satellite/cable support line. In the company I work for I learned that our customer support line pays those who speak Spanish an additional dollar an hour for their linguistic skills. Businesses eat the cost of providing services in Spanish because they know it allows them to tap a large market of consumers in the U.S. that otherwise would not use their services. Your are also ignoring CURRENT EVENTS. Our President and our Congress are working out a plan to give illegal aliens - including over 11 MILLION Hispanics - legal status within the U.S., if not outright amnesty. Do you not comprehend what that means? It means there are SEVERAL MILLION Hispanic speakers that are now going to be able to come out of the shadows and legally access government funded Medicaid. Welfare, and housing, as well as services at hospitals, clinics, doctors offices, emergency rooms, and pharmacies. By the government's own statistics, more than half of these people don't have even a basic grasps of English and will need Spanish Interpreter/Translation services. That number is still in the MILLIONS. That means: - Multiple government agencies are going to have to hire additional Spanish speakers - Every single state Medicaid office is going to need additional Spanish speakers - Every single state Welfare office is going to need additional Spanish speakers - The Depts. of Motor Vehicles in multiple states are going to need additional Spanish speakers - Banks, credit card companies, pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, satellite/cable/Internet providers are ALL going to see their need for Spanish speaking employees inccrease. - Hospitals, doctors offices, clinics, pharmacies, court rooms, lawyers offices, etc. are ALL going to see an increase in the need for Spanish speakers. However... The large increase in need may last for only one generation: http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/reports/82.pdf The surveys show: "fewer than one-in-four (23%) Latino immigrants reports being able to speak English very well. However, fully 88% of their U.S. born adult children report that they can speak English very well. Among later generations that number rises to 94%." So one of two things is going to happen. 1. The fluency in English of the second generation will be so high that the need for Spanish interpreters drops dramatically. -or- 2. The newfound political cloud of the Spanish community will help give Spanish the same status that French has in Quebec and we will be a country forced to provide ALL services, both public and private, in two languages. We shall see... I myself like Spanish. It is not a difficult language to learn and there are enough native speakers here for me to practice with in order to help gain "real world" experience. Of the languages that I feel "obligated" to learn, number one on the list is actually more of a 'relearn' than a learn. I learned German some time ago when I was living in Berlin, Germany. I was able to return to it and expand on it when my wife and I were stationed in Germany years later as Russian Interpreters for the military. My daughter was born in the city of Augsburg, Germany but we finished our tours and left while she was still a baby. Her graduation present from High School this year will be me taking her back to Germany to show her where she was born, and to experience the country of her birth firsthand. So between now and Summer I have to bring my German back up to the fluency I had before. . Edited by Presidio on 30 January 2013 at 11:00pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 29 of 58 30 January 2013 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess it would be German. I somehow felt that as a European one should learn German, and although I
have never managed to get the passionate relationship with it that I have with Spanish or the love I have for Italian or the absolute adoration I have for Greek, I would have learned it again if I had to make the choice again. As for the post belittling the opportunities to speak Spanish in th US I can only shake my head in disbelief. I travelled around the USA for five weeks in the mid eighties, and I spoke more Spanish than English. I doubt that the language has become less relevant as time has passed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4637 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 30 of 58 30 January 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Did you go to Miami/California?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 31 of 58 30 January 2013 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 32 of 58 31 January 2013 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Breton, for the simple reason that if I don't, nobody else will.
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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