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Which country is the worst at languages? | ||
Tags: Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 65 of 72 27 April 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReiLung Diglot Newbie Bulgaria rei-lung.blogspot.co Joined 4846 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English | Message 66 of 72 06 July 2012 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can only speak for Bulgaria.
People here are monolingual and it's awful. Few people speak English and it's seen as something really impressive. Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc.? Nope, (almost) nobody speaks them. Unfortunately, there are many people who think that languages aren't really necessary. And while this may be true for most languages, it's utter nonsense to say that English is useless and that you can live just fine without it. There are even many people, mainly in the countryside, who say that if someone wants to speak with them, s/he should learn Bulgarian in order to do so. How arrogant, in my opinion. At least I have hopes though - the world is becoming more and more globalized and open, English (and foreign languages in general) is becoming a NECESSITY. PS: I'm not saying that nobody speaks foreign languages, no, there are people who speak English, French and so on, but they are 'the odd ones out'. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4859 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 67 of 72 06 July 2012 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Interesting, since I've heard very positive things about Bulgarian knowledge of languages and geography. Edited by prz_ on 06 July 2012 at 11:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReiLung Diglot Newbie Bulgaria rei-lung.blogspot.co Joined 4846 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English | Message 68 of 72 07 July 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Prz, it really depends on the person. Unfortunately, our educational system is not very
good and you can easily graduate with a D or a C in most subjects without really knowing much. (but it then again depends on the school as well) I, for example, have decided to actually study and make use of my time at school. I can agree with you for the case with geography, but languages... You can find people with a good knowledge of English in Sofia or another big city (for Bulgaria), but you can't expect anything like that in the countryside. Even in the big cities, knowledge of languages is not good. Generally, it's a myth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5100 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 69 of 72 08 July 2012 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sadly, it appears to be rather general that the UK are quite ignorant in terms of
learning foreign languages; especially when it comes to people adopting the thought that "everyone wants to speak English anyway". I for one, find it quite boring to speak English 24/7 - especially when the world is full of other languages. 3 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 70 of 72 08 July 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although I think people have the best intentions, I want to take exception with this idea of countries being good or bad at learning languages. It is a plain fact that people learn languages when there is some perceived need or great motivation. Most people don't learn languages out of the goodness of their heart or their love of fellow mankind.
If you look at countries with long traditions of large-scale multilingualism, you see small countries with traditions of trading, seafaring or contact with other countries. Is anybody surprised that the Scandinavians, the Dutch, the Israeli, the Singaporeans, the Swiss or the Lebanese are among the most multilingual in the world? Traders everywhere learn the language of commerce. Throughout the Middle-East, the Far-East, in fact everywhere, people learn the languages necessary to do business. Why do so many Germans have a relatively good command of English and so few British have any knowledge of German? It's not because the Germans are good at languages and the British are bad. It's a question of history. By the same token, many Americans, Canadians, British, Australians, Chinese, Mexicans, etc. have absolutely no need for another language. Why should they learn one? In those same countries, however, I'm sure there are people who are learning languages because they see a need or desire. It really has nothing to do with entire countries being good or bad at languages. It's all about need within the population. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 71 of 72 09 July 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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If I had a nickel for each time I've heard French people tell me they aren't good at
languages... I always point out that whether language instruction is horrible or great it won't make much of a difference unless people get actual exposure to the language and practice it which is the downfall of most language education. People I've met with excellent English tend to be the ones that watch tons of English-language TV series and participate a lot on internet forums. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6618 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 72 of 72 10 July 2012 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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To answer a question like this, you must have done extensive traveling as well as have an objective criteria to answer
the question. For example, many of the posters on this thread look mainly at the English speaking ability of other countries while playing down the importance of learning other languages. One thing that would be interesting to look at is cases where 2 countries or regions are next to each other but the languages spoken are nothing alike. For example: Chinese people who learn Mongolian, White/Black Americans who learn Navajo, or Brits who learn a Celtic language as a second language. Learning a difficult language that is quite different from your own and getting up to fluency is talent indeed. Besides putting too much emphasis on people's English/Spanish ability, the other thing to be careful of is using false metrics to evaluate a person's language ability. Showman polyglots are a dime a dozen and will not hesitate to toot their own horns when asked which languages they speak. And for academic test scores, certain tests like the TOIEC are known to have so many holes that a person can get a good score without speaking a lick of English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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