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Opportunity for immersion - Various langu | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 1552 days ago 417 posts - 1 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 9 of 23 26 May 2008 at 5:20am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for your feedback. I can totally agree with you regarding the situation in Spain. My advice is same. Don't go to Barcelona. People seem to know English well (at least in the city center). I myself studied in Valencia, and almost everyone solely spoke Spanish. You really must have it down well to get by there. When my parents visited for a week, they just couldn't function at all and either used me to translate, or used body language. For an Spanish language learners, I can really recomend Valencia. By the way I was speaking of the city. When one ventures into the remote, beautiful miriad of pictureque towns, you will be just about 100 percent immersed. I really loved it. I am sure that many Spanish people do know alittle English from school, just they are not bothered about it (and why should they be. It is not exactly of great utility in Spain unless you work in a specific field like tourism. An again that depends on your locality) or they just don't have confidence to attempt to speak it. That is why Spanish as better to choose in school (out of the big three: Spanish, French, German) as like I have mentioned before, Germans tend to have a good domination and an interest in the English language. You mentioned your experiences in Eastern Europe. How was Croatia and Hungary? There are English speaking foreigners abundant or scarce? And to which cities/towns did you go? If you could give me a description of the situations in those countries like you did for Spain, I would be appreciative of your kindness. In Hungary and Croatia, where is to go, and where is to avoid? As for Thai, I suppose anywhere outside of the touristic resorts is good isn't it? By the way, how is France? Is English widely spoken there or is it more like Spain. By the way, I have heared that French people generally are funny with foreigners dispite their efforts and act quite rude, so that would put me off learning French as it did in highschool. | |||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 1552 days ago 417 posts - 1 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 10 of 23 26 May 2008 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, you have a point. English is kind of overrated isn't it? But still, in a country where even a "large or sustantial minority" speaks English, I would be disuaded immediately. This isn't the only determinant in my choices for languages, but my ideal is to elect the language of a for the most part monolingual country. I have interest in Korean. Do you have knowledge of Korean to expand on that? I read on the profile of Korean that it is useless as most Koreans will just force English on you. But of course English is distant for a Korean and I doubt that all have any interest in learning it. How is the situation outside of Seoul? Which are the best places for immersion in Korea (Lack of English language presence plus proximity to standard variant of Korean)? | |||
 ChristopherB Triglot Pro Member New Zealand Joined 1119 days ago 737 posts - 88 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Bulgarian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 23 26 May 2008 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I myself don't know a word of Korean, but I have heard differing opinions on this very forum as to whether Koreans in Seoul will use English when you speak to them as a foreigner.
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 DaraghM Pro Member Ireland Joined 954 days ago 1268 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 23 26 May 2008 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
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In Eastern Europe, English is very common, and most people would have far better English than I would have of their language. It was in Budapest, stranded out in the middle of nowhere (Statue Park), that I had to use Hungarian. A kindly old man, who had no English, was telling us what buses to get back into the city centre, and which stops to change at.
In Dubrovnik, where everyone has English, I was suprised that we found a bar outside the old town, where they didn't speak English. I reckon the man was in his late fifties, so I ended up using tourist Croatian to order drinks. In Riga, the old lady in the History of Riga museum, had no English, and I wasn't going to use Russian, in case it offended. Again, this was tourist Latvian, and allowed us to get tickets and a drink of warm water, in a mug, from a tap. In Phuket in Thailand, we were struggling to get food, and ended up using basic Thai to get directions to the nearest place. This was very tough as it was about 40 degrees outside, and I was melting. | |||
| Marc Frisch Pentaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 1468 days ago 922 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Italian, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 23 26 May 2008 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
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France is great for immersion in French. People are not eager to use any other language than French. They can be rude in the sense that they will correct your mistakes if you don't speak well, but that's actually an advantage because you can learn from your mistakes.
Russia and Turkey are also monolingual countries. Finally, Germany is actually not a bad place for immersion, I have seen several people become fluent during one- or two-year stays. People usually prefer to speak German, eapecially if your German is good. For example, when I was in high school we had a young American teacher in English class, who stayed about a year in Germany. He frequently went to students' parties and I met him quite often, but I never heard him speak English outside of the classroom! I guess, in Germany it's really up to you if you want to speak English or not. I know some people who spent a semester or two in the Netherlands, where they made similar experiences and everybody was perfectly fluent when they came back. However, among the people who went to Norway or Sweden, NOBODY was fluent when they came back and most had abandoned all efforts to learn the language, because they just couldn't get people to talk to them in Norwegian or Swedish! | |||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 1552 days ago 417 posts - 1 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 14 of 23 26 May 2008 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
Again thanks for your feedback. I am especially interested in your experiences in Hungary and Croatia. In Hungary, outside of Budapest, is English suddenly inexistent? And in Croatia, when you stray from the capital, do even young people have little or no knowledge of English? My friend who studied in the Czech Republic explained that in Prague, English speaking Czechs always molested him with English despite his efforts and despite his sufficient domination of their language. However, in any towns which weren't the capital, he was totally immersed. For that I wonder if it is the same in the other Slavic countries, especially Croatia. Marc, thanks for you explanation of Russia. That is promising, although I think that the less studied Slavic languages at this moment in time interest me a little more. As for France, my cousin has a friend who speaks French quite well. Despite this, just because he was a foreigner, people claimed not to understand him even though he mad a good effort to be understood. Maybe it depends on the locality, but I have heared enough horror stories to put me off French. Because of these, I didn't really have enough interest in my French classes in highschool and netherbothered to learn it. But know I already know Spanish pretty well so I don't have a motivation to take on French again and ammend the flaws of those poor highschool classes. The reason being that learning families bores me a little. I just like distant languages. I still asked about France though as I have friends who study French and are close to realizing immersion programs over there. Oh, and those English-strong Nordic countries must be hell for the serious language learner! It's a good jon I don't have any interest what so ever in any of those languages! Edited by Maximus on 26 May 2008 at 10:52am | |||
| Serpent Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation n-e-g-a-t-i-v-e.tk Joined 1400 days ago 958 posts - 9 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish, Latin Studies: German, Portuguese, Esperanto, Belarusian, Indonesian Studies: Romanian | Message 15 of 23 26 May 2008 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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| Teutonic Noble Newbie United States Joined 845 days ago 14 posts Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese | Message 16 of 23 26 May 2008 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to echo previous sentiments about the importance of individual circumstances within each nation, rather than generalizing the nation as a whole. For example, with a language such as Japanese, there are likely to be many Japanese youths in Tokyo and other major cities who would rather learn from English-speaking foreigners than help them, but among the older, more conservative Japanese generations, the importance of speaking the native language while in Japan, whether one is a citizen or just a visitor, is likely to be more stressed, and so, a greater immersive demand will be put on you. Another country I can see fitting this mold would be France.
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