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Re:Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part V
I agree, and that can be a wonderful resource for some. Unfortunately, we're not all equal in our levels of responsibilities, obligations, energy levels and so forth. Some of us can go to school, work, raise kids, and go to language group meetings. Others of us find it's all we can do just to get through work or school. Forget having kids! In that situation, going to meetings once a week (which in order to really benefit must be supported by regular exercises each day!)
It comes back to the same problem we always have in capitalism: Whoever has always gets more, and whoever doesn't gets less and less.
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 20, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Mark’s Soap Box, part VI
Universal Language
In light of all of this discussion of how important it is to be multi-lingual and how difficult it is to address that in the U.S.A, it’s funny to talk about having a universal language. Nonetheless, I agree that it is not only useful but very important.
Of course, until 1991, we had two universal languages; now we have one, and it is English. Again, I hope I’m not being arrogant. The fact is, the point of universal language primarily is trade. If you can speak English, you can travel anywhere in the world and do business. This is not absolutely true, but it is generally true. I visited once to a little town in Italy called Paestum. A beautiful place, and it was especially beautiful to me that nobody spoke English. That would have been a problem for me, not speaking any Italian (and sadly, I haven’t fixed that yet), but since they were used to German tourists, many people spoke German, so I was able to get around pretty well.
But look at a country like India. Every part of the country has a different language to speak, and these languages are not mutually intelligible. A person from the South cannot communicate to a person from the East. But everyone in India speaks English, and so Indians communicate from all parts of the country in English.
The one point I have to concede to my arrogant American brothers is, however much I hate the fact that Americans think that everyone should speak English, the reality is that between the ascendancies of the British Empire and the age of American imperialism, we have created a world where it is sadly a fact that you pretty much have to speak English in order to communicate at an international level.
But rather than leave the subject on that note, I want to come back to a very interesting point that Puti makes. I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Novial, but I’ve had some experience of Esperanto, which is very much a European language, unquestionably. And I think that Puti asks for the impossible (and I don’t doubt he knows this) in asking for a universal language that is accessible to Europeans, Asians, and Africans. But that’s not a bad thing. Next time, When universal includes the stars
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 20, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Re:Re: a second language?
Puti, you really put that very well. I really appreciate that you made that point so beautifully.
Thanks :-)
Warm Regards,
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 20, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part V
> The problem, I’m afraid, doesn’t seem likely to go away soon, because implementing good language programs involves something we’re always fighting over in our country: Money.
>
The formal education may be diminishing, but it can be supported by volunteer work. International friendship clubs could have evenings for foreign-language social chatting (or more formally guided discussion) and give the members free language education as a by-product. The members could take turns inviting the group to their homes. I have studied Japanese that way in Finland, and I think it works well.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
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Juha-Petri T.
February 19, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Mark’s Soap Box, part V
The outlook for change in the U.S.A.
The problem, I’m afraid, doesn’t seem likely to go away soon, because implementing good language programs involves something we’re always fighting over in our country: Money.
Whenever the schools get together and hash out what they’re going to do about programs in education, everything always comes back to bottom line. What does it cost? How are we going to pay for it? Right now, our schools (certainly in California, and I expect very much across the country, for the most part), are struggling really hard to do more with less and less every year. All of the basics—math, science, English, athletics—are cut to the bone. And every year, these critical departments are required to make further cuts, even though they have already cut deeply into the most basic requirements they have to educate students. But the money isn’t there, so they have to find more to cut. The U.S. continues its free fall in educational quality in comparison to the rest of the world.
In this atmosphere, I can’t imagine what to say to the schools that could encourage them to consider putting money into foreign language. The classes cost money, and the money simply isn’t there. They sadly shake their heads, and they point to English-speaking Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii, all of our immediate neighbors (except Mexico, but, well, they don’t speak English, so they don’t count) and say, “Hey, everyone speaks English. Why should we teach anything else?”
Sure is rough being the wealthiest country in the world. If this is what our life is like, I can’t imagine how difficult things are for the rest of you out there.
Next time: Is universal language a paradox?
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Re:Mark's Soap Box, Part III
> In Western Culture, we often we think of
> ourselves as flowing forward in time, so
> we’ll imagine that the past is behind us
> and the future ahead.
>
And yet we say that January comes before
(i.e. in front of) February, and March
comes after (i.e. behind) February.
Perhaps we could think that while we
move forward in time, the timescape
moves backwards, towards us from the
future, just like a scenery flows
backwards around a moving car.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
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Juha-Petri T.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Re:Visiting Mark's Soap Box
Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.
One of the things I learned in a college course on the study of language, something I found very interesting, is that the more persnickety a language is about endings and agreements, the more rich it is in expression. Also, the language is going to very likely be more flexible in word order.
Latin, for example, like Japanese, is a highly inflecting language. What this means (for whomever hasn't encountered this stuff before), is that not only do verbs change, based on who is the subject of the verb (I have, he has, etc), but nouns change, too, depending on the work that noun is doing in the sentence. In English, we see that only with pronouns, and to a very limited extent. When the noun is ME, that words fine if I'm the object of the sentence (he hit me) the indirect object(She gave me a kiss), or the object of a preposition (She kissed the guy beside me). But when "me" is the subject of the sentence, I have to use a different word: "I kissed the guy beside me" (Whatever, grammar gets really boring if you dont get a little silly).
In latin, everything changes. The book changes. And each noun has like seven different forms so that we can tell which of all the different noun jobs it's doing. That may seem like a lot of memorizing, and a lot of work to keep track of seven times as many nouns, and it is. But it also gives Latin speakers freedom we dont' have in English. We can mix the words of the sentence up any way we want to and everythign still makes sense. This is because the relatinoships bnetween the nouns and verbs are carred by the forms of the nouns, rather than by the nouns' positions in the sentence, as in English.
All of this explaination is to point out that Highly inflected languages like Japanese and Latin have the advantage of allowing many different kinds of sublety--As Puti points out with Finnish, but also because you can reorgder the words any way you like to shift the emphasis of the sentence.
I think that's pretty amazing, neat stuff.
Enjoy!
Mark Springer
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Mark’s Soap Box: part IV
What’s wrong in the U.S.A?
The problem, of course, we will all agree, stems from the traditional US arrogance around foreign language. This problem stems from two key factors. First, we have been, since the end of WWII, the single great superpower in the Western world, and since 1991, the only great superpower on the planet. Without detracting from the richness and importance of the myriad contributions to human accomplishment that come from outside the US, the fact is, our country has had the power and the wealth and the arrogance to call the tunes which, pretty much, the rest of the world is forced to dance to if you all want to play at the International level. I hope you don’t think I’m bragging here. This is NOT something I’m at all proud of. These are just facts as I understand them. (and if I’m wrong about them, by all means please let me know! This is exactly the sort of thing I hope to learn more about by making friends internationally.)
Add to that the fact that we live, as I mentioned before, in linguistic isolation. Of the forty-eight of our states that live here in immediate contact, every single one claims English for its official language. This means for almost all domestic concerns, there is no need to learn anything but English. Europeans, Southeast Asians, Africans, most of the world’s countries have a very different experience, where you can hardly travel 100 miles in certain directions without needing to be able to speak one different language or another. In many cases, such as the postcolonial rearrangement of national boundaries in Africa, this condition was very carefully constructed in order to maintain cultural tensions between neighboring countries. Europe couldn’t have Africans working in harmony together and developing the capability to complete on an even footing with European business.
So, we can do anything we want in the U.S.A in English. And since we’re so powerful and so wealthy, most of the rest of the world just needs to learn to speak English in order to earn profits from us.
Boy, I wish the U.S. had been more like other places in the world. Too bad we didn’t have to fly to Utah or somewhere to get to another English-speaking state. Actually, California is supposed to be a Spanish speaking state, but that’s a whole other diatribe.
So bottom line is, like any ill that ever occurs in the world, the US. lack of meaningful foreign language programs in the schools exists pretty much for one reason—cause we can get away with not teaching our children foreign languages. Let the rich folks send their kids for lessons.
Next time, the outlook for change
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Visiting Mark's Soap Box
> A great many of you, of course, are
> familiar with this issue of gendered
> nouns. [...] If we are trying to learn
> many languages, like French, the gender
> [...] may end up following the word used,
> even if the word is referring to
> a person of the other gender.
>
> “My father was tha victimess (a female
> word for my father) of a horrible crime.”
>
Finnish language has no gendered nouns, but
it has possessive endings used in parallel
with personal pronouns (minun kirjani = my
book, hänen kirjansa = his/her book).
Foreign students of Finnish often tell that
Finnish would be better off without this
redundant mechanism. However, it can be
used for nuances. "Tämä on kirjani" could
express the idea of "For your information:
this is a book of mine", while "Tämä on
minun kirjani" could mean "This is my book,
not yours, you thief!", especially when
stressing the word "minun" in spoken
language. Colloquial Finnish tends to
leave the endings out even in writing,
and consequently loses one of the tools
for expressing nuances.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
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Juha-Petri T.
February 17, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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Re: a second language?
Please, Amanda, do not be so hard to Dwyn. Willingness to study foreign languages and concern for others are admirable traits, whatever the level of previous skills.
While English is not my mother tongue, I am still bold enough to mark my level "good" on every questionnaire landing on my desk, even though I find grammatical errors in my own postings afterwards.
I agree with you in the sense that if a person offers his tutelage to others, he is especially obliged to avoid errors in his own writing. What comes to other purposes, people might feel happier with several adequate or just passable languages rather than only one polished to shining perfection.
Puti
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Language pair: English; German
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Juha-Petri T.
February 17, 2005
# Msgs: 28
Latest: February 27, 2005
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