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Locations fostering "native polyglots" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6669 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 17 of 46 04 June 2006 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Really? It wasn't noticeably diminishing when I worked there in 1988. Lots of signs like
How many speak Walloon? It is a common misunderstanding that Wallon is Belgian French. If you think so, try this piece from here:
(So, it's Scandianavian and Walon only in this wide world that use "å"?) Regarding the requisite to know Dutch for higher positions in Brussels, I'm slightly puzzled. For country-wide performance, OK, but the only place in Brussels where I found it appropriate to use Dutch was in the Dutch bookstore; everybody else used French. (Well, an exception was the charwoman where I lived. She was Flemish, and was quite pleased to, for once, supply some practice in Dutch.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6559 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 18 of 46 04 June 2006 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Wallon guy wrote:
Si dj' comprind bén, on pout bén aveur li droet teyorike d' aprinde li walon, sins police-pinsêye ki vénrèt schoûter ås ouxhs eyet egayoler les cis ki cåzrént walon; gråces, c' est foirt binamé, foirt democratike; mins sol minme lan, vos n' voloz nén k' on åyexhe li droet d' aveur èn acsegnmint do walon; on l' pout bén aprinde... mins on n' pout nén aveur des mwaisses po l' acsegnî... This is fonetically transcriped Wallon, Wallon is just a regional dialect of French and hence written exactly the same as French. Also Flemish is not another language, these are the southern dialects of dutch, who are more like the medieval dutch ("lower dutch") This is also in a way similar to 'platduutsch' the dialect spoken in the north of Germany.. Flemish people are generaly not trilingual. They learned their languages at school, and language school in Flanders is as bad as everywhere else : big groups, three hours a week and so on and so on... so yes, in general you can easily trick an ignorant american that we speak four languages or five (and acting like flemish is just an extra language) but most people in flanders who haven't studied on their own only speak dutch and english fluently, have some basis in french and understand German to a certain level (due to the similarity with dutch) but cannot speak it, write it or remember any grammar. And if you were asking why jobs in Brussel ask for bilingual people, that is because 80% of the population does not know sufficient the other language to have formal conversations. Sorry if I crushed the myth of multilingual Flanders but I'm mostly just ashamed when I hear people brab that they speak fluently french but say two sentences further that the subjonctive is something that is too difficult to use. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6577 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 19 of 46 04 June 2006 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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My friend said that in Iceland, everyone has to learn English, Danish, and another language (plus Icelandic) to complete basic schooling.
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| sayariza Triglot Groupie Indonesia Joined 6565 days ago 42 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Malay, Indonesian*, DutchC1 Studies: EnglishC2 | Message 20 of 46 05 June 2006 at 9:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For us in Indonesia. many people speak more than three language (or at least thay undestand); his mother language, Indonesian (national language), language where he lives, language spoken by people where he lives.
for example me: my mother language is Minang and Malay I speak Indonesian, I live in Jakarta I speak jakartan, many people live arround my house are Minangs and sundanese so I speak Sundanese too, most of my friends are Javanese, so I speak javanese too. To finish high school we should learn English and pass the exam. The last 20 years there is new development. Many people lost their mother language and Indonesian is being their new mother language. It is happened with our multiculturism. When there are 725 languages spoken in our country. We need one language where we can speak with it and everyone understands. Most 725 languages are very different and can not be understood each other. People are being named Javanese, Sundanese, balinese, etc not from language they speak anymore but from where their mother ofather or grandma or grandpa come from. To complete highschool in Indonesia we should learn English or Arabic. corection on my English is always welcome. Edited by sayariza on 05 June 2006 at 9:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6659 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 21 of 46 06 June 2006 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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On the island of Curaçao, in the Carribean, most everyone there speaks four languages, and beautifully: Papamientu (a Creole language), English, Spanish and Dutch. They can switch from language to language with ease.
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| walteringi Newbie Netherlands Joined 6321 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 22 of 46 19 January 2007 at 5:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I grew up on Curaçao, and I can confirm that a lot of people from our island speak the four languages that CaitO'Ceallaigh mentioned.
Papiamentu is the language most people have as their mother-tongue, and which is used in gouvernment, business, and normal conversation. Most local newspapers are in Papiamentu, and most radio programs too. People watch mostly television from Venezuela, which is the way most of us start learning Spanish very youg by watsching television. A lot of people have cable by which they have access to different english-language channels. In school we learn dutch, english, and Spanish, and more recently papiamentu has been introduced at school as the instruction language for some grades in grammar school. Tourism and immigration makes Curacao an island in which people in different professions use Spanish, english, and dutch in their day-to-day business. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| NascentOne Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 6691 days ago 19 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian*, Hindi, Punjabi, French Studies: German | Message 23 of 46 19 January 2007 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In India nearly everybody will learn at least two languages, like their state language and Hindi. It is also very common to know three languages, for eg. a person in Bangalore knowing Kannada(mother tongue), Hindi(national language of India) and English(associate official language of India).
Most Indians I have met in my life are polyglots. Since different ethnic groups mingle alot on the subcontinent, it is inevitable that people grow up knowing several tongues. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6958 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 24 of 46 03 May 2007 at 9:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As exemplified by Idril and Vlad, southern Slovakia is conducive to a certain amount of "native polyglottery". Many people from this area are of mixed Hungarian-Slovak background and thus can get regular exposure to Slovak and Hungarian at home or through relatives.
In addition, most people there will also get exposure to Czech from the media, while at school, children learn English or other European languages. I once met a guy from Vojvodina in northern Serbia and this region also is conducive to some "native polyglottery." He told me that the region was part of Hungary for many centuries but had been settled by Serbs, Croats, Rusyns, Slovaks, Albanians, Macedonians, Gypsies and Romanians in addition to Hungarians. Today, the official languages of this region are Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian and Rusyn. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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