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Countries good at 2nd foreign language? | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5032 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 41 27 July 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If not mentioned already, I have to say that a lot of people in the Netherlands speak some German, but not at a really impresive level. Though it varies a lot from person to person.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 34 of 41 28 July 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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German is fairly well understood passively by most people here. My parents have no
problem reading it and watching German television (my mother used to not get many channels as a kid, so she watched the German TV growing up, without formal training - and she understood that without any problems). I am pretty sure the level of actual spoken German varies, and I know people (like my brother) who have taken it for years and can't utter a word in it, but it's well understood I'd say. But that's also because it's so similar to Dutch 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Edudg Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4671 days ago 16 posts - 28 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Italian, English, French, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Swedish | Message 35 of 41 28 July 2012 at 3:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the info.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fabrizio Pentaglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 103 posts - 157 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French, SpanishB2, Portuguese | Message 36 of 41 28 July 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Seriously, I've nothing against the German-speaking community in Belgium, but its political and social weight seems to be equal to zero if compared to the others. That being said, what I'm trying to point out here is that this part of the country is so low representative of Belgium that the claim "We're a trilingual nation" is simply unreal. I don't honestly care if their constitution says it is not, my personal experience tells me I'm right, let's be honest... :) Anyway, weirdly enough, the so (unfairly) unrated German-speaking community is probably the place where most languages are spoken: German and French seem to be the least, and while English is probably a compulsory subject in every school, the linguistic proximity of German gives people an extra advantage when it comes to Flemish. Not bad at all for a community of 75.000 people :) Edited by Fabrizio on 28 July 2012 at 7:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 37 of 41 28 July 2012 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My experience is that the Flemish tend to speak more languages than the Walloons. I am
excluding Brussels because Brussels is a microcosm of its own. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LeadZeppelin Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5021 days ago 59 posts - 85 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 38 of 41 30 July 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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I spent 6 months in Wallonia. From my experience, the students all knew English pretty
well, but the adults definitely weren't as well versed in English. I still met multilingual people all the time. Even, as someone mentioned, homeless people who can speak several languages. I definitely also got the impression that the Flemish were quite a bit better at foreign languages. They also seemed kind of peeved at the Walloons in general, because they have to learn French, but the Walloons never learn Dutch. I only met one person from the Germany-speaking part. He was born there then moved to Wallonia and considered German and French native languages, and spoke English really well as well as at least one or two others well enough. I noticed that a lot of people preferred other languages to English. For example, my roommate loved Spanish and its culture, having done an Erasmus there. So despite studying English for 10 years and Spanish for 2 years, his Spanish was much much better, because that's what he liked to practice. And this wasn't an isolated case, because almost all the students do an erasmus, and most can't go to an English speaking country, so it's not uncommon to find people like my roommate who speak another language much better than English. In closing, I can't believe the negative comments about Wallonia! Liège has some of the nicest people ever! I miss that place so much it hurts. :) -- Everyone knows that Americans suck at languages. I bet some of you wouldn't even believe how bad it is though. I'll tell you about how my foreign language education was. The earliest we could start learning a language was about 14 or 15. Our high school offered one language: Spanish. We could take I and II and that was it. This was also totally optional, so a lot of people graduated high school never taking a single foreign language class, period. Because, why take a semi-difficult class when you could take something easy? In university, I wanted to minor in Spanish. But my major didn't require a minor, because it had more subjects than a normal major. So after a year I quit Spanish, because it was seriously just completely extra work for no reason. Instead of being encouraged to take a foreign language, it was effectively doing the opposite. Granted, all of this depends where you grow up. I've met Americans with 6 years of French, for example. They seem to be the lucky ones. I grew up in a small town in the middle of the country. In fact, there are plenty of people who look down on you for knowing a second language in America. I can't really explain it. They think it's too intellectual or something. I had an American friend in Belgium who, when he was leaving, made a going away party event on Facebook, and wrote the event in French. One of his American friends saw it, and gave this reply: ¨some of us still speak out native tongue¨ (this is super weird, but it won't let me misspell the word tongue. Seriously, HTLAL?) If you'll notice, there are two mistakes in that sentence of 8 words. Americans can't even get one language and often times dislike that you might speak more than one. It's seriously a mess. Edited by LeadZeppelin on 30 July 2012 at 1:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6618 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 39 of 41 07 August 2012 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I know I'll sound like a broken record saying this, but one measure that I'd use to measure language talent is where there are 2 or more VERY different languages spoken in a region. I think we here tend to overestimate the value of learning English or Spanish and don't really look closely at people who go off the beaten path and learn something different. How many Europeans for example work at learning a Celtic language or Modern Greek as a second language? Or look at Russia and China where the surrounding countries like Georgia and Mongolia speak very difficult languages.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 41 07 August 2012 at 8:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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And I will probably also sound like a broken record when I say that there is no such thing as an easy
language. Not if you want to do it well. I know how much work it took me to learn each one of my languages, all of which are supposedly "easy " languages. Had they been as easy as people make them out to be, I would have assumed we all would juggle 5-6 languages at least. Those who go for difficult languages like Mandarin or Japanese will have my fullest respect, but it does not make me respect learners of other languages less. Anyhow, this was not the point of this particular thread. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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