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Language Xenophobia | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 16 09 March 2011 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Et heureusement qu'il y a des exceptions! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 10 of 16 09 March 2011 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have heard of no such cases in Norway,but after the war German lost a lot of its status as a school language. My mother learned German as her first foreign language before the war, when I grew up in the 70ies everyone had German as their second foreign language, and now, in my daughter's class about 15% is studying German as a second language. If the decline goes much further it will disappear. That would really be sad. German is a language which every educated Norwegian has had some knowledge in, it is a language which is vital to our trade, and it is the language of Göthe and Schiller. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5081 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 11 of 16 15 March 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm from Brazil and I can agree with the part of Brazilians being descent of Europeans,
like German, Polish (I have German and Polish heritage), Russian, Italian.. but I've never heard about a Dutch descent (I've never known one in my life). I'm from the South, where I think the most Germans descent are living. Perhaps because here we have the most blond people of the country. In some cities of my state (far from metropolis) most of the population are bilingual, speaking German and Portuguese as mother tongues, this is a true fact.If you want to open a store, or start a business there, make sure you speak German. I don't know whether people don't want to learn German, but the most of them aren't interested in languages at all and they just go for the most useful ones (and they learn because of obligation), like English and Spanish (the last we understand almost effortlessly). Perhaps I never asked anyone, "do you want to learn German?" but I know two girls really interested in German, even more than English. Being a native speaker of Portuguese, I can understand more than 80% of the Spanish language, that's why I'm not interested in learning it. In my mind it wouldn't worth it. I don't like languages close related to my own. In fact, I've Language Xenophobia, because I'm not interested in Romance languages. The only languages I saw my friends learning are English (obligation, importance), Spanish (those who fail at English try Spanish, but in some cases they prefer Spanish over English), Japanese (anime lovers, otakus) Italian (I've only seen one guy studying it, due to his Italian heritage). Edited by Matheus on 15 March 2011 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5146 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 12 of 16 17 March 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Matheus, Dutch ancestry is very common among Northeastern White Brazilian. They came
before the European Immigrants. But, the Dutch families had adopt portuguese surnames. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 13 of 16 09 April 2011 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What happens here in Brazil is that many Brazilians don't really dare to learn anything too exotic and perhaps most of them don't even see a reason why they would learn a language like German. So, besides English and a few other Romance languages - being Spanish the most common - everything else is simply neglected.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nejimakidori Diglot Newbie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4982 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 16 25 April 2011 at 6:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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In spite of a huge proportion of the Chinese population resenting the Japanese since WW2 and actively marching on the streets every time something occurs between the two countries (remember Senkaku/Diaoyu islands), the second language the most studied in Chinese universities after English is... Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 15 of 16 26 April 2011 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
The Dutch once were very present in Northeastern Brazil. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4964 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 16 of 16 27 April 2011 at 8:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Speaking Russian in Poland is not such an advantage and in fact very few young Poles learn Russian anymore. English, obviously, but German too are more widespread. There's a recurrent joke you'll find in several different versions especially on internet: "mum, I was so patriotic that I failed the German and Russian exams". 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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