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monolingualism in Scandinavia | ||
Tags: Scandinavia | Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 17 of 19 02 July 2012 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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A nice article in which they indicate the fluency of Scandinavians may be overestimated:
''Studies show that even students who believe they have an excellent grasp of the language often have major difficulties learning through English. One Swedish study found that physics students taught using English asked fewer questions, answered fewer questions and stopped taking notes.'' http://www.thelocal.no/page/view/nowegians-sick-of-english-i n-adverts-report 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| KimG Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 4978 days ago 88 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Portuguese, Swahili | Message 18 of 19 03 July 2012 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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My thoughts on this goes partially both ways, we ARE good at learning, and using English, we just don't learn it all the way, Norwegians seem to stop learning English at some point, floating at a confortable level believing they are wery good.
One of the first oddities I noticed about our use of English, is Scandinavians seem to thing English make more sense than our own native languages; up until a certain level of English skill, we tend to think English is less ambiguous, unclear and all words got a more presise meaning than in the Scandinavian languages. That issue follows people all the way to the University studies, too, imho even ppl with doctor degrees got that issue. :p 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 19 of 19 03 July 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Quite interesting when you consider (from what I have read) that historically the English had a reputation abroad (in mainland Europe mainly), for (how can I put this politely?), saying one thing, and meaning another, and doing it with the utmost sincerity. (I'm English, so I suppose I can say that). Clearly, it's not the language, but how it is used. One of my favourite writers is George Orwell. Not just his novels, but his essays (many of which are online), are masterpieces of clear writing, whether you agree with him or not, and he is sometimes deliberately provocative; but you always know what he means. But there are also many examples around of muddleheaded, confused English, the meaning of which is anything but clear. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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