Learning English?

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DutchNvG
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Re: Learning English?

Post by DutchNvG »

[quote=""esam709""]It depends most on your mother language.
Spanish, portuguese, french, italian and another language I can't remember come all from latin, and they are sometimes so similar you can understand what other people say without knowing their language.[/quote]

It indeed depends pretty much on what your mother language is. Dutch, my native language, looks like German. I have only had 1 year of German at the highschool in what I learned some German basics and I can now already make myself pretty good understandable.
My French for example just sucks. French is way different from Dutch, German or English which makes it so hard for the Dutch to learn it. I have had it 3 years at highschool and I can only remember 4 words "oui, non, bonjour, merci" and just 1 sentence "je ne parle pas du Francais".
At the age of 11, I´m 16 now, I spoke my first words in English. Especially the grammer is in the beginning pretty hard. I still don´t speak it fluent but I try my best and I keep improving in English (at least that's what my teacher said to me :-P ).
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Aaryn_GenD
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Re: Learning English?

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

when it comes to languages i'm pretty skilled i guess ;-)
i speak german, english, turkish and french.
all of them well :-P, except for my french, i'm so rusty in it cuz i didn't speak it for years

if you can speak a couple indo-European languages well, it's pretty easy to learn any of the other indo-European languages.
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luukje
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Re: Learning English?

Post by luukje »

I did six years of Latin, cant say I can understand the pope or an ancient roman if I would meet any of those.
I can tell u guys, Latin thats something else then learning english or french.

But I did kinda read some original works: De bello Gallico (I. Caesar), Ab urbe condita (Livius), sallustius, suetonius, cicero and poetry like Aenis (vergillius) and Orpheus et euridice. In a lesson of 1 hour we would read 1 page, sometimes 2 if it was an easy text.

Do they teach Latin anywhere else in the world then belgium?
wicked_assassin
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Re: Learning English?

Post by wicked_assassin »

probably, but i don't think many countries give it as a option for high shool. I never have chosen for it. It's a dead language.
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huGGy
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Re: Learning English?

Post by huGGy »

I had Latin for 5 years in school :). Still have "De bello Gallico" here. Due to my laziness in school i weren't able to master this language, though. But you know what? It still helps me alot with portuguese now. The grammar is pretty similar.
Blackadderthe4th
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Re: Learning English?

Post by Blackadderthe4th »

I think they still teach Latin in Public schools over here, which perversely means schools that aren't public and you have to pay tuition for.
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luukje
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Re: Learning English?

Post by luukje »

I got my latin for free from genuine catholic priests! Lucky me!

This one priest gave a quiz every day, 20 questions, if you got 5 or more wrong, you got a zero! If you got the first two wrong, you got zero.
And a zero was detention!
aaargh!
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Re: Learning English?

Post by wicked_assassin »

you call yourself lucky? A guy who gives detention for no real reason, besidesnot being good in latin.

I'm against teaching kids latin in high shool. Just choose modern languages, scienses, math as high shool specialisation for your kids.

Studiying latin has it's limited use.
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Sporting_Lisbon
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Re: Learning English?

Post by Sporting_Lisbon »

Even tho I'd like to know latin I agree that my time is better spent studying something else.
Blackadderthe4th
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Re: Learning English?

Post by Blackadderthe4th »

Yeah my Dad was taught Latin by a catholic priest too, except he didn't use detention he used a cane and if you weren't paying attention he would throw a bible at you. Those days are long gone now of course.
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Re: Learning English?

Post by gendarme »

Actually, I think that the english language is one of the easier languages to learn.

There are like no exceptions if you compare to spanish, swedish, french etc.

Swedish is also pretty easy to learn, but it's a boring language (xD)
Nice finds there strokey.

If anybody wants to learn a new language - or improve their skill in a language, there is a software called "Rosetta Stone".

Really OP! You can either buy it for 100$+ or you could *cough* *cough* Mininova *cough* :)
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Kaiser_von_Nuben
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Re: Learning English?

Post by Kaiser_von_Nuben »

Cool thread, Jim. And I think the examples you found demonstrate what's really difficult about English: Idioms.

I have written at length about English and its relationship to its component languages: German, French and Latin. At base, English is a High Germanic language. Over time, its Germanic core has given way to more Latin and French influences. But it's still largely German-based. French and Latin really just "overlay" the German. You can say the same thing in English using either German or Latin/French-based words. For example, you can say "hibernate" (a Latin-based word) or "winter sleep" (German-based) to say exactly the same thing. Personally, I like the German stuff. It gets to the point and it's less pretentious.

English is easier for Germans and Dutch for obvious reasons: There are TONS of identical words and grammatical forms. The reason why it seems easier is because English dropped a lot of High Germanic formalism over the last three centuries. German now seems "tough" because it KEPT confusing stuff like capitalized nouns, adjective endings and grammatical gender. English used to have those things, too. It just "shed" them over time. This is what makes English "appear" easy at first: There's just one "the" and "a." No need to remember what "gender" a word has. No need to worry about what ending to put on it if you want to make it plural (with some notable exceptions). And no complicated conjugations or declensions.

But that does not end the story. English is absurdly difficult on the higher levels. The fact that it has German, French and Latin influences means that it has roughly three times the number of words as other languages. The vocabulary is simply enormous. Not only that, but English heavily uses idiom, analogy, metaphor and dialect to create "sayings." Strokey's post mentions a few. Taken literally, they make no sense. They have independent meanings that you need to learn as if they were different words altogether. It is virtually impossible to learn them all as a native speaker. It must be bewildering for a foreign one.

For better or worse, English is a "lingua franca." It's relatively easy to learn the basics, so it enables people from all over the world to communicate on some common issues. But beyond the common stuff, English rapidly becomes far more difficult. Add the fact that American and British English are basically different languages, and it gets even more complicated. Just listen to the way Americans say things compared to the British. It might as well be night and day sometimes.

I like British English because it is "real English." Ethnic Brits speak it, and their numbers are quite small. Americans only speak English because it was the most convenient language to unite all the immigrants who moved here. I mean, it's nothing like the way ethnic Brits speak it. But America needed a common language. It chose English, and it has followed its own weird trajectory ever since.

Think about how a Brit would say: "I'm going to go there later." Now think how an American would say it ("I'm gonna..." or "I'ma..." "layder"). Then consider why most foreigners say that American English is almost a different language than British English. Now listen to African-American English. Forget about it.

There's my 250 cents on the question! Sorry, this is something I study constantly, so forgive me for droning on.

BTW Luukje, I think Latin is essential to a good education. I studied it for five years and it immensely helped my linguistic understanding in so many ways. It helped me learn French, Italian and Spanish. Plus it helped me understand the meaning of almost every complex English word.
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froggyman
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Re: Learning English?

Post by froggyman »

I am French from origin and my native language is French however I have found that learning English was actually very simple. However again this may of been because I had moved to England so was surrounded by English.

I am now currently studying German and did Japanese and find both of these so much harder than English xD
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luukje
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Re: Learning English?

Post by luukje »

I do think studying latin can be very usefull. As Kaiser explained, almost all our european languages originate from the same mother language. They are part of the so called indo european languages and have lots of common feautures. In fact about 50% of the world population speaks one of these languages (all germanic languages, romanic languages, indian languages and slavic languages). I think other important groups will be arabic, chinese and african languages?
As wicked mentionned, Latin is a "dead" language. So studying it seems to have no use at all, unless your aim is to become the next pope or some laywer that can phrase latin expressions at will. But for young minds it's the best way to start the study of language, because you start from scratch. you have to be taught the vocabulary, the grammer, syntax, semantics etc. Big advantage: you start understanding these things much quicker when studying latin as a language, because your mind doesnt have any presets, prerogatives, other opinions,...
When I as a dutch native, start studying english or french, i have been influenced by music, cartoons, parents,... For Latin, that influence hardly exists.
Once you know latin, learning another language becomes so much easier. Even more so other indo european languages.

So yes, latin doesnt have any practical uses, but at the same time, its idealy suited to start training kids in other languages.






@wicked: Fortunenately
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luukje
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Re: Learning English?

Post by luukje »

@kaiser: I just read some article yesterday on the influence of "cricket" terms on the english language and how difficult it must be for non sports adapts to understand those phrases like: "being on the backfoot", "hattrick", being stumped, being bowled over.
Or for americans: ballpark figere, touch base, gettin to first base, you guys know those expressions, but try to explain them to some chinese.
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