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Tri lingual parties a regular occurrence? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4395 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes  Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 25 of 43 20 January 2014 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, the religion. This one must be a clairvoyant or something. I'd be very interested
indeed to see such a person in action. It will sure be a peculiar affair.Wonder what would he say about my alien English.:D Apart from that I'm sure anyone can make themselves sound like Maggie Thatcher or something even more "posh". I remember once they were showing the Graham Norton show on telly and there was this lad on a red chair telling some story, and he barely said a sentence and Norton was like: "Let me just tell you: you sound SO posh". Didn't really sound all that posh to me. Conversely, in Bulgaria you can't really say the class of a person by the way they speak, but interestingly, you can definitely see how educated they are after they say just a couple of sentences. And, of course, you can also guess their dialect and that's pretty much it. And chess is popular in Bulgaria, yes. Actually a friend of mine teaches chess at some schools, now that I think about it. :) It's good to know we're known at least with something nice like it. :D Edited by Einarr on 20 January 2014 at 4:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5116 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 43 20 January 2014 at 7:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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I could never tell a person's religion by their accent, but we just assume that everyone is a Protestant, I do not
even need all my fingers to count the Norwegian Catholics I have met In my life. It would make total sense that someone from Northern Ireland could though. What I could tell is education level, geographical origin and to a certain extent political sympathies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4882 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 27 of 43 20 January 2014 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wish that I had that kind of problem. Every single person I associate with speaks English and the few who speak anything else still speak only English around me.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4989 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 43 20 January 2014 at 11:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, I've been to a few parties that sound like a beginning of a joke: "So there was a Scot, a Pole, a Spaniard, a German and an Italian...". Unfortunately not as often as I'd like, but they do happen every so often. Most often it's Spanish people (I say it's not a real party if there aren't Spanish people there), and I see many more Spanish parties on the horizon now that I've started learning the language, but I've been to a couple of mostly-Italian parties too and I've even met the odd French person. A few weeks ago I was at an Italian/Polish dinner party, and a week later, a mainly Italian birthday party.
Generally at the start of the night, people make concessions for speakers of other languages, but towards the end the most dominant language wins. At that birthday party, the conversation ended up being entirely Italian for an hour or two, which was great for me but not so much for the other Scot there who didn't know any other languages! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4404 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 29 of 43 20 January 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been in many bilingual situations where I spoke English to some people and German to others (and where not every English speaker understood German and vice versa) but I've yet to experience a tri-lingual gathering.
However, I have an online friend in Germany who grew up in Lithuania. I speak only German with her as her English is very basic. She has a Lithuanian friend in England who is fluent in English but knows no German. I've always thought that it would be fascinating if we all met up. It would mean that whenever one of us spoke, whether in English, German or Lithuanian, only one of the other two would be able to follow the conversation. Edited by beano on 20 January 2014 at 1:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5342 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 30 of 43 20 January 2014 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good grief, I'm flabbergasted. I always assumed the religious divide ran along the border with Belgium. But trotzdem, without wishing to minimise the catholic contribution, isn't the whole history and identity and independence of the Netherlands tied up with protestantism? Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 January 2014 at 2:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5342 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 31 of 43 20 January 2014 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've always found those American high-school movies where the rich kids bully the poor kids really weird. In your average British comprehensive, all those rich kids would probably get themselves knifed (although these days, most even modestly well off people probably send their kids to private schools anyway.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 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 32 of 43 20 January 2014 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is, partly. The reason is that the Batavian Republic - which was the northern provinces (above the Meuse and Rhine) had converted to calvinism at the end of the 16th century, and fought the 80 years war of independence against the Spanish empire (which was Catholic). During this war, Catholic Spain occupied Flanders and the southern Dutch territories (what is now modern Limburg and North Brabant). When the Dutch finally won the revolt and got their independence (and provinces back) in 1648 (at the treaty of Münster), it was the protestants who won (and thus the royal house is also protestant). However, the conquered provinces that belonged to the Batavian Republic (before we became a kingdom again) were the Catholic ones south of the river. (Keep in mind that Belgium did not gain independence until the 19th century. In those days, Flanders WAS the Netherlands - it was one country!). However the protestants, even though they hated the Catholics, could not afford to annoy a whole host of their provinces, and eventually a tolerance of Catholic religion was established - officially, Catholicism was forbidden, but in practice Catholic services continued (the country did the same for Jews who were in the area). This freedom of religion eventually became known and eventually, the whole situation changed again - and the state religion was lost at some point (ask a historian how - I think it may have something to do with Thorbecke's famous liberal constitution of 1848). What this means in practice is that the three southernmost provinces of the Netherlands (with some exceptions for little villages in Zealand) are definitely Catholic provinces, and during the war many Catholics fled north. There were many Catholic enclaves in North Holland, Frisia, and so on. Catholicism is almost as widespread as protestantism, in fact I think Catholics even outnumber protestants (although that may be a paper falsehood as many modern Catholics which are officially registered in the church books are non-practising - I know hosts and hosts of examples of nominal "lapsed" Catholics who are in fact anything from pagan to atheist to agnostic to religious, but refuse to attend organised religion). So yes, culturally the Dutch are definitely Calvinist - the rich parts of the Netherlands were influenced by that - but Catholicism is equally big, has always been a pillar in Dutch history and Catholic parties always formed a significant part of the political electorate. I should here add that the southern part of the Netherlands is culturally and linguistically much closer to Belgium than it is to the northern provinces. Their dialects resemble Flemish Brabantic / Limburgian dialects much more, they use more French words, their traditions more resemble the Belgians, and so on - and most people from the North see them as almost another people. But to state that the Netherlands is a protestant country is definitely false and it has never been true historically either. Only that for a long while, the formative ruling governments were calvinist, but even that has changed (and in modern times the biggest Christian party is actually a fusion of Catholic and Protestant parties in an attempt to keep that part of the electorate together). Edited by tarvos on 20 January 2014 at 2:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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