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British monoglots! | ||
Tags: Monolingual | United Kingdom (UK) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 25 of 43 31 May 2011 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I think a comparison to Mandarin speakers might be fruitful here. Mandarin speakers live in the same country as speakers of many languages that are closely related, which makes the study of them very easy. Many Mandarin speakers move to places where these languages are spoken and live there for decades. The difference is that Mandarin is even more well known in China than English is in Europe. As a result, Mandarin speakers who have learned a different Chinese language are few and far between. I didn't meet a single one during my one year stay in Guangdong, though I met lots of native Mandarin speakers. This is surely a testament to the fact that the vast majority of people won't learn a foreign language unless they really have to. This is not a British or Anglophone trait, but a human one. The difference is that non-English and non-Mandarin speakers, well, really have to.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 26 of 43 31 May 2011 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There was a mid-19th century cartoon, I think in the London satirical magazine Punch.An Englishman in a French coffee shop asks for something in French with an extremely strong accent (OK, he does at least try French - I forget what he said). A Frenchman at the neighbouring table says, "Would you like to read ze Times, monsieur?" The Englishman thinks or says, "How the deuce did he know I was an Englishman?"
English, Scots etc. have been able to learn foreign languages well when they needed to, such as civil servants or soldiers learning languages of India during the Raj. Foreign languages have made an impact on British slang, such as bint as a not particularly polite word for "woman", derived from Arabic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dragon32 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4954 days ago 12 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 43 31 May 2011 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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If Spanish had become the global language of business and tourism instead of English, would everyone in Spain be feverishly trying to pick up another language? I think not.
Aside from a handful of language enthusiasts, most people will only motivate themselves to learn a foreign language to any significant degree if they can derive a social or economic improvement in their lives by doing so. The average British citizen has little call for languages....nothing more sinister than that. What I do take exception to is people moving abroad and making no effort whatsoever to integrate linguistically. Then again, maybe the host nation is letting them away with too much. Incomers to the UK are pretty much expected to learn English, why should the same demands not be made of an Englishman moving to another country? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 28 of 43 31 May 2011 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Exactly; learning a language takes effort, but there are more people that can do it than there are who can learn calculus, because languages are easier. However, most people refuse to learn either not because the amount of effort, but because it takes *some* effort. They can't deny that effort is needed (especially after actually trying), and that clashes with the commonly spread and deeply ingrained, nonsensical belief that languages can, and therefore should, be learned without effort, thus most of them don't even try. While I partially agree that one needs not take a great effort unless it serves some kind of purpose, and/or is somehow rewarded in the end, this actually hides a deeper problem. The belief that languages (or anything, really) can be achieved effortlessly has its roots in the bombardment from the media, political propaganda, etc. we are exposed to all of our lives, and most people lack the critical sense to disregard it until they confront reality, which inevitably has bad consequences. I'll stop it here since I'm veering towards more political than language related issues.
I might agree or disagree with you here. When you say "The problem ... isn't that we're bad learners... we're bad teachers" I gather you refer to Brits, you being one of them, right? (Fortunately?) I know nothing about how languages are taught in the UK, but I think the way English is taught everywhere nowadays (the so-called "Communicative Approach") is actually more part of the problem than it is part of the solutions, and the same goes for Spanish and German in Spain (the ones I've experienced). However, I need to ask, if that's what you meant -- how are languages taught in the UK today? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dragon32 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4954 days ago 12 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* | Message 29 of 43 31 May 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There is no earthly reason why British people can't master a foreign language. However, it takes a massive amount of time and effort and many people dip their toe in the water, realise just what is required and then hide behind excuses such as "I'm no good at languages" or "the language was taught in a bad way"
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 30 of 43 31 May 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Agreed.
Learning might be inherently fun for 'freaks' like you or me (I would even go on a limb to say nothing equals solving 'puzzles' and understanding how things work) as opposed to memorizing which I find intrinsically boring. Unfortunately, it's not like that for most people, who will go to incredible lengths to get by going through the motions, without really understanding stuff, and they'll opt for rote memorization. Of course it doesn't work, but that's another of those stupid and incredibly deep beliefs people hold, and it's why many current education systems build on it, rendering them utterly useless. Mind all of you, I'm not saying memorization isn't necessary nor that it is to avoid -- another failure of modern education systems is to neglect it, when it's actually fundamental to learning. All I'm saying is that memorization should addressed preferably AFTER understanding things, because otherwise it could even directly prevent it.
And that's where comprehensive schooling fails. After a certain age, obviously a bit different for everyone, but let's say around 11, most pupils are positive about enjoying study and learning or not. And yet we insist in teaching them pretty much nothing before that age, and then keeping them all in a kind of jail until they're not minors anymore. How can that work to produce citizens who enjoy or appreciate education? We would be much better off providing real education at an early age, and easy ways out and back into the education system, so we have only the ones who genuinely want to learn inside, and let everyone else do other things or come back any time they want. I don't think languages are very different from everything else in this regard. Edited by mrwarper on 31 May 2011 at 6:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5818 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 31 of 43 31 May 2011 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well yeah but not as great as an advantage as French has to Italian or Italian to Spanish or Spanish to Portuguese or German to Dutch or Dutch to Swedish etc. hence why I made the point that some of our closest multi-lingual neighbours have it (comparatively) easier than we do. Like you said English does give an advantage to the speaker, moreso than Russian would to a German speaker who wished to learn Italian for example but not as great as other European languages due to English's 'mongrel' nature. Obviously they have a greater advantage than a Japanese person does but that Japanese has an advantage in Korean/Chinese like the Russian person has an advantage with Bulgarian/Ukrainian. It's all relative and taking English out of the equation, many Japanese/Russian native speakers tend to be as mono-lingual as us which relates to my other points.
Korean doesn't change the verb based on the number/gender of speakers so this is difficult for Korean native speakers. Koreans quite often will say she when they mean he or say "He have..." or "They has...". When I tell them about Spanish, they freak out and say they never want to learn Spanish and would rather learn Chinese/Japanese or nothing. My issue was 1. This makes English easier to learn than some other European languages especially when speakers from a non-European language have to get their head around it. 2. English doesn't have this degree of verb conjugation so it's tricky for a native speaker to learn this (but not for an Italian speaker presumably).
As a side note, I've always felt that this (and the article) diluted Esperanto's claims to being an international language and merely just being a constructed European language (but that's a debate for another day).
Though that's true I've seen stats (in Asia) regarding the study of foreign languages and English always tops the list because there are so many reasons to learn it (you note one of them below). Those reasons tend to become more personal the smaller the influence the language has had on the world/your region. If you're a big European history buff you might want to learn French/German/Latin/Greek/Russian or if you like Anime you'll learn Japanese or if you like Asian culture you'll learn Mandarin/Cantonese etc. This is when language learning goes from country wide learning experience (English in schools/business etc) to merely a personal experience (why I learn Korean) that others (like my fellow Brits) don't share.
I just wanted to point out with my previous post that 1. learning something new in a language is tricky so this makes it difficult for an English speaker to consider new things in a language (genders, extra plurals, verb conjugations) even if they are in a shared language family. 2. Our European brethren have a greater advantage than us due to the greater relativeness between their languages compared to our mongrel language. 3. We're frequently missing the motivation to learn another language that other learners of English have had to learn our language (travel-no, finance-no, movies/music-no, tourist language-no) hence our reluctance to learn. Personally I do think that we would be far less mono-lingual if we did not share a common tongue with America/other parts of the world and if English was much more related to either German or French/Spanish/Italian (for example) but not to both languages at the same time. Sadly this is not the case. Edited by crafedog on 31 May 2011 at 6:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 32 of 43 31 May 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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If I can wade into this debate over the alleged simplicity of English relative to other languages as a factor in its spread, I would agree that people don't choose a language for reasons of linguistic simplicity. That being said, one has to agree that English does possess a number of features that make it well suited for its role as a lingua franca. Two already mentioned include lack of grammatical gender and a simple verb morphology. When you combine some linguistic advantages with the weight of history and the place of the English-language cultures in today's world, there's no wonder that English has become THE lingua franca. Nothing else comes close.
As for the debate over why many people have no interest in learning other languages, what I see confirmed in the discussions is simply that most people see no need to learn another language. It's pretty much like most things that require a effort of learning. Effort is correlated with perceived value. As someone else has already pointed out, there is a significant number of people in Vermont, USA, who have more than a passing interest in learning French because of the proximity to Quebec, Canada. For some people, albeit a small number undoubtedly, French is useful. I even heard one of the New England governors say a few words in quite passable French. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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