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What is chic in your area... | ||
Tags: Chic Factor | Place of Residence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| portunhol Triglot Senior Member United States thelinguistblogger.w Joined 6253 days ago 198 posts - 299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (classical) | Message 49 of 56 16 April 2011 at 7:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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This has been a very interesting thread! It seems like English is practical but not necessarily impressive or chic. Is it impressive to learn a language that you are forced to learn? Spanish is learned all over the place and people react to it in different ways. French seems to be the ultimate chic language and it should be since "chic" is a French loanword.
I am pleased to see that so many people find fluency in any second language to be impressive. In my mind, the Dutchman who learns to speak German at a near native level is still very impressive even though the two languages are quite similar. Certain languages are easy to speak poorly but a near native level of fluency is cool no matter what language it is. Of course, a Chinese guy who could speak near native Arabic would just blow my mind. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pj1991 Newbie United States Joined 4954 days ago 29 posts - 49 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 50 of 56 09 May 2011 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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[My first post here, I've been reading the forum for a while and finally signed up, Good to be part of it].
Around here (Greater Boston area) you're typically not going to impress anyone by speaking a language other than English. Spanish is definitely the most common second language, and no one really has a problem with that. That being said, just about everybody took it in high school for a year or two and just about everyone did terribly in it, so the reaction to the language here isn't a "Oh no, it's the Mexicans!" so much as it's "Spanish killed my GPA in high school for two years and I couldn't be any less interested with it now that I'm done". If you look like a typical Bostonian, white and of Irish decent, and people hear that you can speak Spanish at higher than a beginner level they might take a second to appreciate you're effort to learn it, but assume you know it because whatever you do for work calls for it. The same goes for being able to speak Portuguese, although it might raise a couple more eyebrows despite a pretty big Brazilian community around here because it's not offered in most schools. There's a good amount of Chinese people here but like most, people here view it as an impossible task to learn it. If you speak Chinese or any Asian language it's assumed you're an immigrant or from an immigrant family. If you speak or are actively seeking to learn an Asian language and you don't fit into those categories, that might be the only time people would view you as "weird". If you speak French it's assumed you're from Quebec and any hockey fan can tell you people from Boston and French Canadians do not get along, so French is definitely not a "cool" language to speak here (unless it's an offensive phrase or two directed at a visitor from the North sporting a Montreal Canadiens jersey). Speaking Italian or wanting to is virtually unheard of which is a bit surprising. If you're not of Irish decent in this city, then there's a 90% chance it's Italian decent (most people you'll meet are both) and everyone knows stories from their parents or they've at least heard from friends parents about their crazy old Italian speaking aunts and uncles from their childhood, but any use of the language stopped a couple generations ago and there's next to no "cool" factor in speaking it today. Those are the only languages with anything to even say about. Pretty much if you don't speak a foreign language for work the first response from people would be "Why?". While someone might be mildly impressed hearing you unexpectedly go from English to another language and doing it well, you're not going to have a crowd gather around gawking at your abilities. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5404 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 51 of 56 10 May 2011 at 11:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Where I come from most major world languages are considered chic. English, German, Chinese, French, Italian and to a lesser degree Russian. Back when I was learning Chinese most people said it was a good idea. However, I remember a funny encounter with one man in a train. He was a street performer who travelled around Europe. He said he spoke 6 languages fluently, but when I said I was studying Chinese he just looked at me and wondered "Why in hell do you need that?" :-D Edited by Delodephius on 10 May 2011 at 11:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sponge Newbie United States Joined 4948 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: French | Message 52 of 56 10 May 2011 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I moved to Louisiana for school, I was surprised that they offered Cajun French as a
choice and a decent amount of students were enrolled in those classes (though not as many as regular French). To me it seemed sort of chic in its rarity and uniqueness to the region. Lousianians are very proud of their culture and heritage, and I think its one of the few US places where French is a more popular (maybe even practical) language to study than Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 54 of 56 11 May 2011 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm from New Orleans, and people took Spanish over French by a wide margin at my school. I can't speak for other high schools, though. When you get out to Cajun country French might be very helpful (I rarely go there, so I don't know for sure), but in the rest of the state, including New Orleans, English is all you need. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sponge Newbie United States Joined 4948 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: French | Message 55 of 56 11 May 2011 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||
No, but I think they share some similarities. I never studied it, so I'm not exactly sure to what extent.
Maybe it was because LSU (where I went to school) has a large Department of French Studies. So perhaps government funding/initiative was behind it. I guess by practical, I meant in terms of being familiar with the cultural aspects, or someone being able to impress his grandma with a little Cajun French. But I guess like most other US cities, Spanish is becoming the more common studied language. Edited by sponge on 11 May 2011 at 8:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| xander.XVII Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5055 days ago 189 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC1 Studies: French | Message 56 of 56 12 May 2011 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm from Italy, then I had never considered that Italian could be considered "cool", yes
I know it is a nice language, as french,spanish, German or any other one, but "cool" is such strange to be heard. Here we have often people speaking German and Italian so German isn't considered a cool language, undoubtedly hard to learn but no cool. On the other hand, French and Spanish are considered quite exotic (also because of our small city which isn't a place where you can many polyglots), while language as Polish,Russian,Arabic or Hungarian are considered more strange than cool, due to the fact that they are seen as useless because they are far from us. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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