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| 44735 |
a second language?
Has anyone noticed that almost every country except america has a requirement, or early education of a second language. Should america start to teach their youth another language? Why? How many languages do you know? I personaly think it would be an excilent oppertunity for new chances, and everyone would benifit from it. Should we all have our own languages, and a universal language? What is your opinion?
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Language pair: English; German
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| 44800 |
Re:a second language?
I absolutely agree with you. Most districts do not even OFFER a foreign language before 7th/8th grade or even high school, and even then it is not a requirement or considered a "core" subject like math or English. But the thing is, by the time kids are 14 or 15 not only is language much harder to acquire, but they simply don't have any interest in it; to them it is just another pesky subject that they have to take.
The unfortunate thing is, though, Americans are so ego-centric that we believe the whole world speaks English, and English will be sufficient in all situations we could possibly encounter. School systems subsequently don't stress Foreign Language departments as much as they would English or math or sciences.
It is very sad.
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Language pair: English; French
This is a reply to message # 44735
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| 44931 |
Re:a second language?
I think it is very hard to make a truly universal language, as there are so many different concepts and thinking patterns in the world. An universal language would be very large and hard to learn, unless somebody finds a really clever way to design it. It is a good idea that there are many different languages, as each of them is adapted to different way of thinking, and is small enough to be mastered. Together the languages cover a large spectrum of cultures.
There has been attempts to make an universal language; Esperanto and Novial are good examples. However, these languages are "universal" only in the Western world. A better universal language would consider at least African and Asian speakers, too.
Puti
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 44735
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| 45002 |
Re:a second language?
Dwyn,
I think you should master English before you worry about a second required language.
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 44735
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| 45051 |
Mark's Soap Box, Part II
Expanding the Mind through cultural mobility
Last time, I promised to talk about how differences in language can shape the way we think. Consider this:
In Mandarin Chinese, there are no articles, a, an, or the. There are no plurals/singular distinctions in words. On the other hand, they have special measure words that have to be used. They work very much like measuring units work in English: Imagine we all spoke like this:
There are three each man standing outside…
Hey, can I borrow couple sheet paper from you?
I need to buy tube pants.
The difference may seem subtle, but when, over time, you have to memorize up to a hundred and twenty measure words and keep track of which nouns use which measure word (and sometimes the same noun may mean different things depending on which measure word is used), it gives you a linguistic perspective that is very different from, well, different from what I grew up with speaking English.
A great many of you, of course, are familiar with this issue of gendered nouns. Those of us who grew up speaking English (or, I would guess, Mandarin Chinese, and a good many other languages) have a terrible time keeping track of what’s feminine and what’s masculine. And then, in German, we have to deal with neuter nouns too! If we are trying to learn many languages, like French, the gender (and associated articles, adjectives, etc) 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.”
This sentence will just blow an American’s mind.
Next time, Mandarin and Turkish warp time and space
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 44735
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| 45094 |
Re:Mark's Soap Box, Part II
By the way: For those of you who are puzzling about where Part I was at, I neglected to put it in the right place. If you go and read message 44976, then this one might make a little more sense.
Sorry about the confusion!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45051
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| 45138 |
Mark's Soap Box, Part III
MANDARIN AND TURKISH WARP TIME AND SPACE.
First, if you haven’t read the first two message of this series, this will make a little more sense if you find messages 44976 and 45051, which are parts 1, and 2, respectively.
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. I was shocked to learn that this wasn’t universal. When I took Chinese, I learned that the past is up and the future is down. This is connecting to the Chinese writing system which, classically, was top to bottom.
Mandarin Chinese and Turkish have a very interesting thing in common (I have a theory that since Mongolia and China are neighbors, and since Mongolian and Turkish are both Altaic languages, that that, strangely, makes Mandarin and Turkish distant cousins as languages). Rather than moving words around, as we do in most European languages, to indicate that a question is being formed, Turkish and Chinese leave the word order exactly as it is, and simply pop a particle in at the end of a sentence that simply says, “this is a question” Oddly, the question particle is the same, both in Turkish and Mandarin: “Ma”
Imagine if we started asking questions like that:
“You are fourteen years old ma?”
“I left my black shoes where?” (No particle required when a question word is used).
Again, it’s a different way of thinking about language, and it will affect how I conceptualize thoughts.
Concepts of “this” and “that” also vary quite a bit from language to language. In the USA, we only care if something is near me or not near me. In many European countries, there are also gender issues, and very often a third option that distinguishes “that” over “there” out of my reach from that down the road beyond my range of vision. Turkish does this also.
But what I love most about Turkish: There is no gender. This blew my mind. The U.S.A.’s National Organization of Women might want to consider this. Turkish has no words for “him” and “her”, “he” and “she.” There is no difference between an actor and an actress, a waiter and a waitress, a director and a directrix. Here’s this wonderful “backward” (in our arrogant USA viewpoint) middle-eastern country (and of course we love to put Middle Eastern countries down here in the U.S. because we claim Muslim people have no respect for women.) But we must face the fact that our language is still very sexist and theirs has never been. What do you think of that?
So clearly, there are many ways in which language molds our thinking, and my most important reason for speaking many languages is to develop a broader variety of thinking skills.
Next time, What’s OUR problem in the U.S.A?
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45051
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| 45140 |
Re:Re:a second language?
Hi Amanda,
I was trying to figure out what exactly you meant by your comment about learning a second language first, because my initial interpretation of your comment was to wonder how you could possibly be so rude and what you might hope to accomplish by your comment.
Finally I decided that there were actually two ways to read your message, and that more likely, you were telling us that Americans, as a rule don't speak English very well, and it is important for us to deal with that problem before requiring everyone to be multilingual. I'm going to assume that this is what you meant, in which case I really appreciate your thought on the subject, as you make an excellent point.
Just on what I hope is a very unlikely chance that you may have meant to rub Dwyn's nose in her having made a couple of errors typing her message, I need to stand up to that. Not to get into Dwyn's business, but as a member of this community, whose purpose is to make friends and work together, I cannot stand by and watch a person insulting people over stupid things, just trying to make them feel bad. It’s just ugly; there is no good reason to treat someone that way.
If your intent was to make Dwyn feel bad, I must assume that you're having a pretty rough time yourself, and I sincerely hope things look up for you. And even if that is the case, it is not okay for you to come here insult people.
But please ignore all of that if, as I assume, your intent was just to make a comment about American education.
In either case, I sincerely hope you will consider offering Dwyn some kind of clarification, and probably an apology. Whether you meant my first reading of your message or not, I know that I felt really bad for her when I read it, and it's not impossible that it was pretty uncomfortable for her to get your message.
Best wishes,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45002
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| 45166 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45002
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| 45171 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45051
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| 45258 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45138
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| 45259 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45171
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| 45264 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45138
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| 45337 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45258
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| 45367 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45337
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| 45414 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45166
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| 45418 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45337
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| 45420 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45367
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| 45421 |
Dwyn Hart
You know, it's funny, Puti,
I've been worried about Dwyn and how she might have taken Amanda's comments, but I did a little checking around, and it looks like she may not have even been on board since 2/12. I see a flurry of messages from her 2/11 and 2/12, and then nothing. I don't even think she knows how much fun we're having on her nickel.
By the way, I really appreciate the comments you're making in response to my musings. It's kind of nice to think that someone out their finds my ramblings worth reading.
Cheers!
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45166
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| 45477 |
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
This is a reply to message # 45337
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| 45478 |
Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VI
Mark’s Soap Box, Part VII: How Universal do you want to get?
Any of you out there fans of Star Trek? (Now, now, don’t groan. It’s not for everybody, and a good thing, too!) Actually, I have learned a good many very important lessons on Star Trek. Two episodes come to mind that I think are relevant here.
One episode involved two cultures who had very sophisticated sciences of linguistics, but couldn’t figure out how to communicate, because the fundamental bases of their languages were just incompatible. They solved their problem by stranding themselves on a planet and being in the position of having to work together in order to survive. Finding a way to communicate became a matter of survival, and they worked it out.
The other episode involved a man who had a very unusual style of communication. He was mute, but he had a psychic connection with three servants who did all of his speaking for him. He was a diplomat, in this episode, and he was responsible for helping two warring nations work out a peace agreement. When he showed up to the peace talks, there was a problem, people started shooting, and his servants were killed. Not knowing how to communicate left the ambassador in despair of being able to complete his mission. But he ultimately realized that he could turn his weakness into strength (something he always tries to get people to do when working out peace). Without his servants, he would have to learn to speak in sign language in order to be able to communicate. He realized that by going to the two warring leaders and working together with the three of them to learn sign language, they would have a common cause that would help them to bond together, to establish a sort of fraternity that would establish commonalities among the warring leaders that would then form the basis for a lasting peace.
Next time: Getting back to Earth
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45418
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| 45505 |
Re:Dwyn Hart
> I've been worried about Dwyn and how
> she might have taken Amanda's comments,
> [...] I don't even think she knows
> how much fun we're having on her nickel.
>
This place is like a village market:
people come and go all the time, and
there is no guarantee that they will
stay to read the replies.
> By the way, I really appreciate the
> comments you're making in response
> to my musings.
>
Commenting each other is one of the
very reasons why we are here. :-)
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45421
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| 45507 |
Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part V
> 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. [...]
> Whoever has always gets more, and whoever
> doesn't gets less and less.
>
Could it be possible to do the daily
work in a place, where most of the other
workers are speaking a foreign language?
That would mean 40+ hours of language
education per week with no extra costs
in time or money. I know that this option
is not available to everyone, but people
who have to find a new job now and then
might have a chance there.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45420
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| 45508 |
Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VI
> 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.
>
So is Novial, too. If you are interested,
an Internet search program will take you
to Novial resources.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45418
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| 45563 |
Error on Mark’s Soap Box, part VII
Note: MSG part VII was mistakenly sent out as message VI. If you saw two messages headed Mark’s Soap Box, part VI, but the very first line says that it's message number VII, Ignore the subject title of the message and go by the one on the first line of the message, which is correct. Sorry for the confusion!
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45478
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| 45564 |
Mark’s Soap Box, part VIII
Mark’s Soap Box, Part VIII: Conclusion on the Universal Language, or, “Is he EVER going to shut UP?”
. This process of bonding, finding things in common, and building peace or fellowship (or both) is the same thing that happened in that other episode, where the two men played survival games in order to learn to communicate with each other.
So we’d actually be much better off finding a universal language that tries to make everyone happy, regardless of what continent they come from, and fails miserably at it. Let’s go ahead and create a language that is kind of Korean and kind of Swahili and kind of Romanian. Let’s be sure and mix in a little of everything else while we’re at it. Use umlauts, clicks, vowel harmonies, gender AND measure words. We’ll conjugate the nouns and decline the verbs. Let’s make it HARD to learn.
By the time we’re done learning it, we’ll understand each other a whole lot better, I think.
Well, I’ve gone on for eight messages now. I hope I haven’t put anyone to sleep. I hope I’ve maybe shed some light on a very complicated problem. More than that, I hope someone out there will bounce off of my thinking and shed some more light on it for ME. I sure hope there’s someone out there smart enough to solve this. I can’t wait for my country to recover from being a superpower and discover that the rest of you out there are pretty cool.
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
Normal member
Speaking: English, Spanish
Studying: Spanish, Portuguese
Studied: German, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese
Played with: Russian, Hebrew, Latin, Tagalog, French, Sign language
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45478
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| 45646 |
Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VIII
> Let’s go ahead and create a language that
> is kind of Korean and kind of Swahili and
> kind of Romanian. Let’s be sure and mix
> in a little of everything else while
> we’re at it. Use umlauts, clicks, vowel
> harmonies, gender AND measure words.
> We’ll conjugate the nouns and decline
> the verbs.
>
And for a good measure, let's add the
Asian tones, too.
I think one of the real attempts to solve
these problems are the pidgin languages.
The pidgins I have heard of, have
appeared between two languages having
very different grammar and vocabulary.
And in the backstreets of large cities
there are probably many slangs and
"unofficial pidgins" serving the same
purpose of bridging two languages together.
Pidgins are often looked down; isn't the
very word "pidgin" originally derogatory?
Yet the speakers of these languages are
unconsciously doing excellent field
research on topics nobody else is pursuing
actively. A look into the structures of
these languages might reveal many
interesting, exciting, and surprisingly
streamlined partial solutions to the
problem of a universal language.
Yet another source of information could
be bilingual children learning to speak.
Instead of scolding them by: "Shame on
you, do not mix two languages in the same
sentence!" we could instead listen to
HOW they mix two languages. Children are
likely to cut corners and throw away
anything that they deem too unwieldy for
fluent communication.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45564
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| 45709 |
Re:Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VIII
Well said!
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45646
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| 45837 |
Re:Re:Dwyn Hart
Hi, I was wondering if you could answer a question? How do you find responses to statements? Do I type in my number, or do I search page-by-page? Sorry that I haven't been on for awhile, but I'll try to keep checking in. I have a bunch of questions!
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45505
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| 45838 |
Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VIII
I agree that the universal language should consist of all the languages. In a highschool play, there was this UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE called UMGABUNGA, it consisted of German, Rusian, English, and Spanish. By the end of the play, everyone could understand it, thanks to the actors gestures, and facial exprisions. If the major powers/leaders of all the nations/countries got together and created a universal language consisting of all the languages it would be really cool!
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Language pair: English; English
This is a reply to message # 45564
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| 45839 |
Re:Re:a second language?
Hi Amanda,
Thank you for your comment, I find it very embarrasing that I am not the greatest when it comes to writing in English. I recently passed English 3 in high school, and the only thing I struggled on was Grammer, Machanics, aka spelling and punctuation. In truth I am much better at writting in german than in english, German interests me more. I also had a question for you, if you read this, would you recomend becoming a gold member? Or, just keep using the bulletin board? I am sorry if my lack of English grammer offended you in any way. I'll start working on improving it! Danke(Thanks) Dwyn Hart (16)
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 45002
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| 45840 |
Re:Re: a second language?
Thank you for defending me!
Dwyn
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 45166
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| 45845 |
TO: Mark Springer and Juha-Petri Tyrkko
Hello Mr. Tyrkko and Mr.Springer
I have read a lot of your messages! You are very wise and knowledgable! I hope one day I can be as smart and wise as you and Mr. Springer. Thank you for defending me against Amanda. I sent her a message saying I was sorry for offending her. I don't mean to offend anyone, with my poor mechanics (spelling and punctuation) skills, I just wanted to talk to people and share my opinions. In school I am invisable, I don't exist, and no one really has a real conversation with me on "smart" topics. I was so happy when I found this site, and found out that I could share my oppinions and later that others shared the same. Thank you again! :)
P.s- I'll try to improve my spelling and punctuation, so I don't offend anyone else!
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 45166
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| 45846 |
Re:Re:a second language?
Cameron,
I know what you mean. In my high school the kid complain about the requirement of 2 years forign Lang. to Graduate. It is sad. So, you know two languages? Is it true, that after you learn one foreign lang. you can learn many?
-Dwyn
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 44800
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| 45891 |
And don't you dare apologize!
Dear Dwyn,
Welcome back! I was wonderfully challenged by your question (and your new one too!). I teach college composition, and my great challenge is how to spark this kind of interest for eighteen- and nineteen-year-old students. You’re a bright and charming young woman.
Which is all the more reason why I was disappointed to see you apologize to Amanda. Her expectations are completely inappropriate here. When you work in a U.S. Foreign embassy, you can worry about offending people with spelling errors. This is not the place for that.
The Language Exchange is a learning environment. To learn, students have to be free to make mistakes. Otherwise, we stick to what we know well. We don’t stretch our abilities, and we don’t grow.
The only thing I can imagine that Amanda may have been thinking of, but didn’t really put into words was that if you want to exchange languages, and if your language isn’t “perfect,” maybe you shouldn’t exchange language with someone else and teach them imperfect English.
But that’s a bunch of crap. This is not a college course in formal written English. This site is not here to teach non-English-speakers how to write a doctoral dissertation or a diplomatic brief. This is a place where normal people from countries all over the world learn to speak everyday English with everyday Americans like you and me.
Americans speak English colloquially; we often have trouble spelling or we use non-standard grammar and all that. That’s the kind of English we all use. So if you were to teach your pen-pal perfect grammar, she might be troubled when she corresponded with someone else whose grammar wasn’t perfect. And just as you and I have to get used to that and learn to work with it, so will they.
May I suggest that you write in the best written English you can, become aware of your errors and make a sincere effort to do better, and then be honest with your correspondents about what you do well and what you need to work on? That way, they’ll know that it may be better to talk to Puti about rules of punctuation, and to talk to you about slang expressions that younger people use today. We all have different contributions to make, and that is as it should be.
But I hope you will never feel that you should have to apologize for making errors. Those who are offended by them on the language exchange are in the wrong place. Errors here are among our most important resources.
"We have to keep trying things we're not sure we can pull off. If we just do the things we know we can do... you don't grow as much. You gotta take those chances on making those big mistakes."
Cybill Shepherd
"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
Elbert Hubbard
"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."
Benjamin Disraeli
"Correction does much, but encouragement does more."
Goethe
I look forward to seeing you make a whole lot more mistakes :-)
Cheers,
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45845
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| 45897 |
Dwyn Hart's Question on finding replies to messages
This is a response to Dwyn’s question about finding replies to messages.
Dwyn was asking if there were any ways of finding replies to messages other than paging back through all of the messages.
In order to answer this question, I'll use the word "thread" which means a sequence of messages that are all replying to other messages in the same sequence, all the way back to the original message that got the first reply.
Once you find any message in a thread, you can see them all, just by clicking on the orange (brown?) title of the message. The order they appear in may seem confusing, so be sure to watch the message numbers--they'll show you what order the messages were submitted in.
As far as finding any particular message from the thread, it is easiest if you know any message id for any of the messages, so I make a point to write that down for messages I'm looking forward to reading replies to. Without that information, the next best bet is to remember any special information from the subject of the message. I try to make very specific and descriptive message subjects because it makes them easier to find later when I want them. "Mark's Soap Box" was very easy to find with the search tool. "Mark's Soap Box on Dwyn's multilingualism and universal Language" would have been much more descriptive, especially since I'll very likely get on another soap box on a new topic soon. So I guess I made a mistake :-)
You can also find messages if you can think of something unusual that appeared in the body of the message. “Spanish” will get you way too many messages back, but the other day, I was looking for messages containing the word, “Esperanto”, and that was very easy to find. There weren’t a lot of those. When searching for something in the body of the message, you have to be a little more patient, because the body is a much bigger field than the subject is, so it takes the server longer to search message bodies than message subjects.
Of course, you can also find messages by the first name of the author. That’s great for an author named Dwyn, but when his name is John (or Mark), and especially if he's a busybody like me, always writing a message about something, you might have a pretty long list of pages to flip through in order to find what you're looking for.
I hope that's helpful. Please reply if I left anything out.
Cheers!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45837
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| 45973 |
Re:Re:Mark’s Soap Box, part VIII
It sure would!
Of course, Dan would have to add another language to the list...
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 45838
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| 45982 |
Re:And don't you dare apologize!/School/Opinion
"We have to keep trying things we're not sure we can pull off.If we just do the things we know we can do... you don't grow as much. You gotta take those chances on making those big mistakes."
Cybill Shepherd
I really like this quote! It is very true. Didn’t some of the greatest inventions in the world, happen because of mistakes?
"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
Elbert Hubbard
This is one of the common survival rules of high school. It is actually really sad. Because some kids are so cruel the others learn that in order to survive you have to become blank. You take what they give you and never tell. If we do tell these kids have the teacher, deans, and any other authority figure in school so tightly wrapped around their fingers that the don’t believe us. We are quiet, never speaking, and because of this ignored. If we tell or stand up to them it only gets worse. The other option is to become an exact copy of someone or stab your best friends in the back. Most kids choose the first option, enjoy school, yet never share their opinions. Many people think think some people are nothing and ignore them, when really that person is something, and is waiting for the day when they can share their opinions and have them taken seriously, that is when everyone knows they are something.
I love school, but has anyone else ever relized any of this in their schools?
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Language pair: English; German
This is a reply to message # 45891
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