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Disliking your native tongue? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 25 of 94 14 January 2013 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have never met any Swedes with this attitude either. Like Jeff I wonder what sort of people you hang out with. Is there a single adult among them? Now obviously as a Norwegian I should jump at the opportunity to make fun of the Swedes, but I happen to love the Swedish language. To me it sounds kind, gentle and melodic, and I love it almost as much as I love my native Norwegian. Otherwise I agree with everything Ogrim said. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 26 of 94 14 January 2013 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If this sort of thing happens, you might want to rethink your attitude, Part and parcel of learning a language is trying to empathise with the foreign culture. It's important to think like they do. That is what makes you fit in. Edited by tarvos on 14 January 2013 at 6:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5937 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 27 of 94 14 January 2013 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Maybe it's sort of like finding MacDonalds and Starbucks everywhere. Or maybe we've all seen exactly the same Batman movie. I'm an American citizen, but I don't feel any pleasure or pride from this. Really, it's not the language itself, it's just this great big grey bland corporate mono-culture that's spread everywhere. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4451 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 28 of 94 14 January 2013 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I see your point of view but I respectfully disagree. The mono-culture yes, but for me English does not represent a mono-culture, Hollywood and Starbucks does. But English is also Oscar Wilde, Henry Miller, Monty Python, Robert Burns etc. Look at it this way: you have the advantage of potentially being able to communicate with people from all over the world, because your language is the first one they are likely to learn. I would not mind if Norwegian was in that position. That will never happen though... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4434 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 29 of 94 14 January 2013 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Unless Norway is left with the last remaining oil reserves. Then everyone would have to speak their language. Joking aside, I firmly believe that Russian will be a major language of the future as they will most likely have a stranglehold on world energy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6968 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 30 of 94 14 January 2013 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If I could go back in time and maintain Ogrim's perspective about separating the language's characteristics from the ideology, character or history of its native speakers, I wouldn't mind at all replacing my native language with one of Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak or a Saamic one. It wouldn't have precluded me from learning English to an advanced level as a foreign language. However English is simply there as my native language, and I can't make apologies for it.
Even for BCMS/SC, I've somehow managed to get over it where I still heartily despise the purist/nationalistic attitude in most mainstream ex-Yugoslavian linguists and their followers, but don't feel bad about studying the language again because I'll likely be needing to know some of it when travelling. My need for communication trumps the absurdity generated by a pack of demagogues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4150 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 31 of 94 15 January 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
They were almost all adults, yes. Most of them my age (around 20-25) but some around 40-60 as well, only a couple were teenagers but I also have not met many teenagers personally either. I am actually wondering where you guys live and who you have been talking to, to not have met people like this, because it seems like almost everyone I meet, for me. Of course despite it, they are all very willing to write or speak Swedish to me if I just ask (even when I was shit-terrible at Swedish), it's not usually a "no I hate Swedish so much I won't speak it!!!" thing (I have only met that once, and it was with a "foreigner" who had been living in Sweden since age five but avoided Swedish at all costs). But if it is as you say, then perhaps I will over time meet many more who don't think Swedish is dumb at all, instead. Also, while I have met Danes who think Danish is silly, I have never met any Norwegians who dislike their language, so far, for some reason.
I agree with this. When I was a kid, I thought languages were absolutely, completely different. But now I know that many are full of loanwords from English. It feels like "learning another language only to actually be speaking butchered English" to me (especially if on top of the loanwords, people love to use random English in everyday speech). I think it especially feels like that if you are like me, your first foreign language being one that doesn't actually use many loanwords, then learning another one that uses them a lot. I was extremely shocked when I started learning Swedish because of this - the similarities to Icelandic of course didn't surprise me, but the amount of "English" was really surprising and saddening. To me at least, if a foreign language has loanwords with another foreign language (like how Swedish has French loanwords we don't have in English) it doesn't bother me as much, but when they are the same as English it really bothers me and I wish there were more "pure" alternatives.
I disagree in a way. There is not one large "English-speaking" culture to be very precise, but there are similarities between (most) of them that are, perhaps, stronger than between more unrelated countries (of course, look at where a lot of the English countries stem from, and they speak the same language still!) and, for example, an "American" culture that is seeping into other countries thanks to how widespread American tv, novels, music, and general/other influence is today - which also affects other English-speaking-natively countries, possibly moreso than others, if they happen to receive more American things due to a shared language. Of course even very similar countries are still different from each other, and I doubt any country could truly become just like another (There are certainly enough differences between Sweden and Norway, or even Canada and America, and look at them!). However, to me, visiting another completely-English-speaking country feels like I am "not in a real foreign country" in a way, the language normally being such a huge difference is suddenly not there. I also don't like it when I go to Iceland and see KFC, and go to Sweden and see McDonalds, (and they appear in countries America doesn't even know exists!) and even alongside that, in Sweden they even like to have slogans in English. KFC and McDonalds don't mean a mono-culture to me, because in different countries the food and menu is different, tastes different and costs differently, but at the same time it shows a trend that I don't like (not just them, but ex. the fact that you can buy hamburgers as fast-food or frozen in the store, in the first place). And something like English slogans makes me feel like someone is trying to throw away their language... And I sadly have to decline the thought of "you can potentially speak to people all over the world", well, yes we as language learners (or Europeans) hopefully can, as we are more used to foreign languages, mistakes, and accents. The average American cannot understand something like a Finnish accent, even a lighter one, unless they have heard similar accents before (Germanic accents though are easier to understand if you haven't heard them). Even very small mistakes in English are can be very confusing to someone not used to them (warm instead of hot, house instead of building, or my favourite, "hot pot" instead of hot tub because hot pot means a type of meal hahah), not to mention larger mistakes like "white" instead of "pure/innocent". I have even heard of people who needed "translators" when going to places (Ex. Ireland) where they all spoke English natively, and just had too different a dialect. Although if America didn't subtitle people with worse English, and showed more foreign programmes on tv, this wouldn't be a problem : P One reason why I don't like English being my native language is that it is really easy to "cheat". Say you want a book or a videogame. Most likely you are going to find it in English also, and the foreign language version may even be extremely hard to find (or non-existent). Not to mention, the English edition is most likely much cheaper if you live in an English-speaking country. Of course this also helps you to learn, as you can have it in both languages, but at the same time it gives you less of an incentive to study/learn another language in the first place, or as hard as you would otherwise (the same is true for going abroad - if I were going somewhere and I knew they didn't speak English, I would put a ton more effort into studying the language first). Also English is actually unavoidable in some cases - there are many things (internet-related things, for example) that simply will not be around in your target language (unless it is very big or has a large presence on the internet). Lastly, someone else said something like, "An English speaker has the worst luck because everyone speaks English, and they will be able to tell from your accent in their language that you are an English-speaker, so you cannot avoid them thinking 'they speak English, I am better in English than they are in my language, I'll switch to English!' when actually you really want to practise". So in that case, I would love to have a Polish accent and people assume I don't know English and they must speak in their language to me... Although I will say, it is nice to have English as a native language, because you can befriend all the desperate-to-learn-English people and correct people who think they are fluent but still make mistakes, so they can get better, since you understand all the pronunciation, vocab usage, and subtle nuances/references (especially if you take it upon yourself to study English dialects a little) that they miss because they weren't brought up in the culture. Since English is so complicated in that way, thanks to ex. synonyms and sentence structure that implies different meanings but technically mean the exact same thing, and not even the dictionary bothers to mention things like that a lot of the time. Edited by kaptengröt on 15 January 2013 at 2:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fnord Triglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 4845 days ago 71 posts - 124 votes Speaks: German*, Swiss-German, English Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch | Message 32 of 94 15 January 2013 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It could be his own deficiency making him wish for the use of English as lingua franca. If everybody just spoke English, he'd probably be much better at English rather than having had to bother with German. For me, personally, language is first and foremost a tool. A tool to get things done, not unlike other skills that I may have or not. That's not to say that I'm not striving towards improvement in a target language beyond just sufficient functionality. And yes, I also might become intrigued by (and then like, even learn) a language based on their structure, sound or cultural heritage without having any need to use it. But this would qualify as being a mere "useless" hobby of mine, rather than acquiring a "skill". As for my native tongue, I am not particularly attached to it on any emotional level. Neither am I proud of it (why should I? Having it is no achievement) nor do I dislike, let alone "hate" it. It is quite useful in its own way. And its rather close relation to English certainly comes in handy at times. However, that's just my personal opinion. I believe this is actually far from being prevailing opinion anywhere I've been (outside language classes and forums, that is). I think that, for most people, language really is an important part of their identity. And I live in a country where this especially true for their own language variety. My thinking may be a tad more radical than usually, though. Just yesterday did I start preparation for taking a TOEFL test for English as a foreign language. It's a prerequisite for applying at a (English) University. I'm not really motivated to prepare and would much rather tackle the language parts that I really needif and when I go about the actual study contents, after having been admitted (hopefully). So yes, right now, I do wish I could replace my native tongue with English - so I wouldn't have to worry about this annoying, generic test, which doesn't really prepare me much for my intended use of English. Edited by fnord on 15 January 2013 at 2:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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