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Reasons for studying some small languages | ||
Tags: Norway | Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 9 of 39 10 February 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is a bit puzzling. It is true that there are practically noone from your country in Norway, but if I go to my local shop, I hear Polish every day. A lot of them have come first to work, and send money home to their families, but end up bringing their families here. Otherwise you are right in several of the points you bring up. And I understand that most people do not think of the smaller languages, particularly if they are going to do one language only, but for people on this forum, who do several, learning Norwegian or Swedish might end up being the best investment of time, money and effort they ever made. 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 10 of 39 10 February 2012 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just learn languages I like, whatever the usefulness - if I was going by number of speakers, I would need to learn Hindi, and that language I just don't fancy.
But eventually there'll be a good language mix for me, I hope. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4704 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 11 of 39 10 February 2012 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It has indeed occurred to me that speaking Dutch might help a bit if I were ever to try
to settle in the Netherlands. However, it still seems all a bit easier said than done! Because many of the countries you named (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, etc.) have excellent education systems, it seems to me that there's no strong incentive to hire a foreigner for a skilled job when a homegrown worker will do just as well. If the foreigner hasn't learned the language to a very high level, getting a skilled job can be even more difficult. Other country-specific strictures may complicate things even more. For example, if you are not an EU citizen and a Dutch company wants to hire you, they must prove that they've already put out a call open to all Dutch (and EU) citizens and found no EU citizen more capable for the job than you. I don't want to say that learning a "small" language for purely economic purposes is not a good plan, but it's just something to think about. Edited by Hekje on 10 February 2012 at 5:31pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 12 of 39 10 February 2012 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
This lack of skilled labour would seem to be of national importance to Norway, and probably to many of the other smaller-language countries. It seems that comments on this topic point to the difficulty in learning the language of the country as part of the problem. If this is all true, then one might conclude that the commercial language learning industry is not providing sufficient language teaching. The reasons are probably: too expensive market too small not readily available not readily available outside the country beginning-level-only courses and material poor quality other? If this is the case, it would seem that the governments of the countries in need of the skilled labour would be very interested in developing freely available, high quality and comprehensive language learning courses and material on the Internet. Instead, it appears that countries are probably protecting their language teaching commercial companies at the expense of the needs of the country itself (skilled labour). I am only familiar with the Dutch language situation where the governments involved do little or nothing through government institutions, such as public broadcasters, to teach their national languages. The large countries and language groups are providing quality language learning courses and materials. The best example is Germany. Are there any examples of these sorts of national initiatives in the smaller-language countries that are the subject of this thread? If not, why not? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 13 of 39 10 February 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
This may apply for a European, but for an American, it's highly unlikely, if not impossible. A while back, I looked at what it would take as an American to legally move to Norway. It's just about impossible. Places like Ireland and Italy have provisions in place to allow for people with grandparents (and even great-grandparents, sometimes) from their respective countries to be able to live and work legally there. I was hoping Norway had the same sort of provision, but they don't. While I didn't speak Norwegian back when I was looking into this, I do speak it now. I don't think I'd have any better chance of legally staying in Norway now than then. The other important factor, of course, is work. What I do for a living - translation/interpretation - probably doesn't qualify as skilled labor either, so I don't really bring anything of value to the table. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 10 February 2012 at 5:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 39 10 February 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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most people study humanities because it is easier.
That's not true. Those who move to Norway learn the language. For others there is very little chance to get a job there. I don't believe you need a lot foreigners because you can always hire them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 39 10 February 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not sure I understand what you find untrue about that sentence but I'll try to make
my post clearer. Cristina said there were plenty job opportunities for exemple for engineers. That is where my point went-too many europeans study humanities instead of more difficult fields, such as engineering, and therefore they have trouble finding job even if they know the language. There is only limited amount of sociologists, psychologists, art historians, etc. each market can feed. I don't take language as purely a part of humanities, even though it belongs there officially, I'd say it is more of a "soft skill". A very needed one because it is true that without it, you are very unlikely to get a job. But it is not true that "Those who move to Norway learn the language." That is the point of Cristina's first post-there are currently many Spaniards in Norway who know neither Norwegian nor high-level English and foolishly hoped to find a job there. "I don't believe you need a lot foreigners because you can always hire them." As Cristina said, Norway could do with more people in some fields. And I believe that the fact that you can hire them is usually closely tied with the need for them. Noone can afford to hire people they don't need (the exception being the overgrown bureaucracy not only in Czech Republic :-) ) And there is the difference between the kind of need "we'll die without them" and the kind "yeah, we could do with a few more." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 39 10 February 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is very true. Globalization is not really total since we still basically have trading blocs. In this case it's quite costly for an American (and a Canadian) to find a job in the EU since they would be placed at the back of the line because of the priority given to citizens of the EU. The reverse applies too when you consider how much of a pain it is to get a green card (even for the friendly Canadians north of the border). Hekje also touches on this prioritizing in labor markets as organized by the flag on your passport rather than the experience or qualifications. There's also the problem for people in certain skilled work since standards or even equipment are different. For example, electricians in North America face different standards and need country-specific certification even though the underlying physics is the same anywhere you go (Canada and USA use the same voltage for general wiring (120 V, 60 Hz) but have certain differences in their wiring standards). As to learning "small" languages for working purposes, you probably know that I'm skeptical of learning any language, "big" or "small" in the hope of landing an imaginary/hypothetical future job in an environment where some language is spoken. I've seen my share of marketers/fans who try to convince me to learn X because of the potential to "reach out" (*blech* annoying corporate expression *blech*) to Y million customers/"eyeballs" (*blech* another annoying corporate expression *blech*). Here it was once German, then it was Japanese, then it was Russian, and now it's either Mandarin or Spanish. Enough with this merry-go-round! Pick a market, develop some skills and just f$%^$n' work on it! This isn't to say that it's not far from my mind, but after much work experience, I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off honing or developing new professional capabilities in the "home base" and then looking for a job at a multinational with an office in my home country. Once there I could work my way into being posted to a branch office/plant or subsidiary in a country where one of my target languages are used. Anyway, I'm more than happy to be studying stuff that interests me. I'm under no illusions that a job in my field based somewhere in Finland or Eastern Europe is in the offing in the forseeable future. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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