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Urban legends about languages... | ||
Tags: Stereotypes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4754 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 65 of 81 22 January 2013 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If I promised my parents to visit a church, they would be wondering what the hell went
wrong. I don't think any realistic parent expects their child to travel abroad and visit the church. At least not where I come from. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4669 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 66 of 81 22 January 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mind you, some knowledge of another language can help you get attention from the local girls. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5345 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 67 of 81 22 January 2013 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Another myth. It works in Germany. People with some curiosity can learn a lot from school based language teaching. Of course, many kids are not interested, but for the ones who are it does work pretty well. And I am sure this is true for some other countries as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6644 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 68 of 81 22 January 2013 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's why he said "mostly" :)
School can help with systemizing what you learn from exposure. That's it. Of course pretty much all countries have SOME successful language learners, but the gauge should be languages other than English (or the most important language of your region). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5345 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 69 of 81 22 January 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, maybe this is another mythological axiom one should not argue about. For all I know, even languages like French, Spanish, Italian or even Russian are taught at German schools with some success, although the exposure before and probably outside of school is not abundant. Some success is a flexible thing, but what I mean is that people who learned these languages at school are well prepared for further studies on their way to fluent proficiency or whatever. In these cases it is clearly the other way round: School gives the system, the basics, in many cases the first and only exposure at all, while further exposure and study will lead the ones who are interested towards their personal goal. Could and should even a quite good educational system like Germany's be much better? Of course, but calling it a total failure is certainly not justified. As an afterthought: Sometimes I think that countries like the US, where languages are taught with much less success (according to the information I get from sites like this one) should modify their language teaching from what they have now to something more demanding, similar to countries like Germany. People who were taught languages at school (beyond some pro forma 101 high school courses) have much better chances to be successful self learners in their later lives. I think many of the learner biographies here on HTLAL can support this idea. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6644 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 70 of 81 23 January 2013 at 1:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Same can be said about most countries, apart from the really poor classes where the teacher tells fun stories from his/her life in L1. But preparing for fluency should not be considered enough.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5345 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 71 of 81 23 January 2013 at 3:09am | IP Logged | |||||
I am not so sure. A more than superficial education in both your native language (very important) and languages in general, if it leads to fluency or not, can serve as the solid and lifelong foundation for whatever you want to achieve in foreign languages. Maybe like a soccer player, who does not yet play soccer very well but has excellent fitness and mobility. You do not think that the linguistic training you have received at school, in Latin, English, I don't know what else, is a big plus for your ambitions as a polyglot? You think people who leave school without a solid preparation are equally well equipped for such high ambitions? Edited by lingoleng on 23 January 2013 at 3:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5381 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 72 of 81 23 January 2013 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Now you see the thing about what we call myths, or even prejudices, is that like it or not they often do build on some sort of foundation. If we think of Italians as late, and Germans as hard working, there is a reason for that. In Norway we actually can have blizzards in August - even though that would be considered a freak incident. I have a friend who had snow on her wedding day. The 12th of June. Sometimes it actually is hard to get out of the house to buy food, and in the morning when it has snowed I have to crawl over a 2 meter tall heap of snow to access the road, and I come out looking like a snowman. And there are more 4WD Subarus here driven by men and women who are very good at driving on ice and snow than most other places. What we need to do, is not to generalize any statement into an iron clad rule, which is applicable to all situations and every person, but still be honest enough to admit that there may be tendencies there. Is it true that every Frenchman is hostile to people whose French is sub standard, expect them to speak fluent French and refuse to speak English when they know it? No. Is there a larger tendency to that sort of behavior in France than in other countries - in my experience there is. I have spoken broken German in Germany, horrible Spanish in Spain, mere smidgens of Greek in Greece, Arabic in Egypt, Hebrew in Israel and Polish in Poland, and screamingly bad Russian in Russia and the Ukraine, and I have always been met with kindness, willingness to help and compliments. Then during the year I lived in France when I went from knowing no French to fluency, I also went from being treated like dirt to being welcomed in with the utmost civility, sometimes even by the same people. I saw literally hundreds of cases, particularly in Paris of foreigners who were treated with contempt by Frenchmen who were themselves monolingual, and I have had colleagues who worked for the international section in my French sister company, who did not understand why I asked them what their foreign languages were. Why would they speak any foreign languages ? They spoke French! Now I see that over time things have changed. Now all my French colleagues speak English, and people speak English at hotels and some shops and restaurants. I do not know from my own experience how beginners who try to speak French are met now, since I am way beyond the beginner phase, but I am really happy to hear reports that learners now have a much better experience. But please remember, that in most myths there is a grain of truth. We just need to remember that a grain is not a barn, and not make tendencies into absolute truths. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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