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Why the Spanish can’t learn English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6679 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 9 of 33 20 July 2010 at 11:35am | IP Logged | |||||
I am not young and learning languages was impossible for me until I discovered the Internet. So who knows? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PolyglotNZ Pentaglot Groupie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6208 days ago 71 posts - 91 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, German, Mandarin, Japanese Studies: Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Russian | Message 10 of 33 20 July 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all!
A Spanish farmer and his teenage son are sitting on a tractor by the road. They're enjoying their morning break. The young boy tells his dad that he wants to travel the world and learn several foreign languages. The father tells him that his ideas are naive and useless, that he won't achieve anything and that foreign languages have no use whatsoever. At that moment, a car pulls over next to them. The driver is a tourist who got lost. The tourist gets off the car and asks the two Spaniards: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" The Spaniards shrug. The tourist tries again in English, Hungarian and several other languages. After every attempt, there's no reply and the poor tourist doesn't speak Spanish. After 10 minutes and being really frustrated, the tourist decides to leave. At that point, the farmer turns to his son and says: "May this be a lesson, my son, that poor man spoke several languages and as you can see they were all useless, he couldn't talk to us!!!" 13 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 11 of 33 20 July 2010 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
The second last paragraph. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7107 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 12 of 33 20 July 2010 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
I guess that maybe the 70s is more recent to some than others. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 33 20 July 2010 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's recent compared to for instance Norway where English has been a compulsory subject for generations. Recent or not, It means that many Spaniards haven't learnt English at school. Even by the late 1980s there were schools without English classes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 33 20 July 2010 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I tend to disagree with this idea that a people as a whole, to wit the Spanish, have difficulty learning a foreign language. To be very brief, learning other languages is fundamentally about obligation (work, commerce, study, travel) and desire (personal interest, sentimental attraction). Most people do not learn a foreign language because they have no need to. On the other hand, we all know that in small countries like the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries, many people, but not all, learn foreign languages because of the necessity of a tool for wider communication.
Tourism being Spain's third largest industry, I am sure there are many people, more so the younger ones of course, who speak a fair amount of English. The teaching of English is a flourishing business in Spain. And with the development of all kinds of exchange programs and travel within the European Union, forms of multilingualism are certainly on the rise in Spain. And let us not forget that there are Spanish emigrants all over the world, who have learned the languages of their host countries. The Spanish, like the Americans, the British, the Canadians, can learn foreign languages as well as anybody else, if they have to. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7107 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 33 20 July 2010 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I guess "relatively" recent is the qualifier. However, longevity of foreign language teaching withing an education system is no guarantee of anything. If it was, I'd be surrounded by people of my generation fluent in French (compulsory) and maybe German (elective but a popular choice) Edited by Andy E on 20 July 2010 at 2:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6046 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 16 of 33 20 July 2010 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What?
Just remove the -o/-e at the end of a word. presidente = president diferente = different arido = arid COME ON! 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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