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So called multilinguals of western languages r monolinguals!
GIVEN THE HUGE SIMILARITIES OF WESTERN LANUAGES ALL BASED ON THE 26 CORE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET, so-called multilinguals of western languages are ACTUALLY only monolinguals of many dialects that make up one language!
So there is little point to flaunt how many western languages westerners could speak!
Only a person in the West who can at least speak Chinese or Tibetan or Japanese or any other non-western language can be positively qualified to be called as a bilingual!
Do you think so?
you are right Russian and English are brother languages :-)
According to your definition of "language" and "dialect" please explain how is any European language different from romanized Chinese or Japanese.
So naturally it would follow that Mandarin and Japanese are just separate dialects as well...
Go bang your head against a wall.
God.
Do you restrict "western languages" to just Indo-European ones, or does that include languages like Finnish, Hungarian, Navajo, Inuit, Basque, Arabic,etc?
Is Basque just another dialect of English, French, Spanish, or German?
Speaking your native tongue + English only is just as being monolingual IMO, especially when your native tongue is Germanic.
"GIVEN THE HUGE SIMILARITIES OF WESTERN LANUAGES ALL BASED ON THE 26 CORE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET, so-called multilinguals of western languages are ACTUALLY only monolinguals of many dialects that make up one language!
So there is little point to flaunt how many western languages westerners could speak!"
A thought-provoking post. It makes me think of Ali G's conversation with Chomsky. In other words, the original post is pretty off-the-wall, but a lot of fun.
Okay. If this theory of yours is accurate, shouldn't you also join the club of western multilinguals because you know English? I mean, why shouldn't you be able to start up a conversation with a Norwegian and a Russian if they are simply dialects? After all, you speak English, another related dialect.
No, just like "monoglot" and some others have posted, just having the alphabet in common is not enough. Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish, are Western languages, but they are not Indo-European languages. Yes, you may be able to sound out "Kiitos" in Finnish, but can you tell what it means based on your knowledge of English? Probably not. Just knowing the alphabet shapes doesn't help much.
Now, let's take some languages where you have a chance to make a few connections based on what you know of English.
"Bare bra, takk."
Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with a lady's undergarment. It's in a language pretty close to English. In fact, it's in the same family-the Germanic family. It's Norwegian and it means "Very well, thanks."
Maybe you got the "takk" part. It kind of looks like "Thanks" doesn't it?
That's fuel for your point. Baldewin is with you about the Germanic languages. They are pretty similar to each other. Professor Arguelles knows that they are a lot alike as well. If you want to drive yourself completely bonkers-learn all of them from Afrikkaans to Swedish.
Okay, you got a point for the Germanic languages, but what about the other Western languages? Greek, which is written in-Greek letters- is actually a fantastic language. That's the language you want to learn if you want to decode IE languages, I think. But you can't read it. It's in the Greek alphabet. That's why people say in English, "It's Greek to me." They can't understand it or read it without studying it.
There goes the alphabet bit. Then there is Russian, but you can't read it either as it's Western, but doesn't use the roman alphabet. Okay, that leaves you with other Slavic "dialects" of English like POLISH. Uh oh!
Have you seen Polish words? They have multiple consonants in a row.
Here's one: przystanek. Can you guess what it means? My guess is Percy Stanek, Mr. Grabowski's neighbour, but that would be wrong.
I'll give you a huge clue with another Germanic language, Dutch. It means "stoppen" in Dutch. I bet you got that one with the clue.
Do you still think Western multilinguals are monolinguals? Yes, I guess you'll still be annoyed when someone who speaks English, Croatian, and Danish claims to know English, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Swedish, and Norwegian, but, well, some of us think we know what the real language total is. It's three and three quarters, maybe, not seven, but it isn't "one" like you think it should be.
I understand why you may think this way. Maybe people have said things about the Chinese languages and called them dialects as well.
People who have learned distant languages know that there is a big difference between knowing English and Chinese and knowing English and French.
By the way,
Kiitos means "Thanks" in some form. I don't speak Finnish. It's the only word I remember. Did you figure it out on your own? If you did, you are a genius.
<<If you want to drive yourself completely bonkers-learn all of them from Afrikkaans to Swedish. >>
I know I'd fail at this. Just learning to at least have insight in or understand all Dutch dialects (my native language) would even be a very difficult task. Especially East Flemish and Limburgish are very heterogeneous dialect groups, the latter being more a regional language than a dialect of Dutch though.
Especially the Low Dietsch spoken in the Walloon province of Liège is an interesting language/dialect; it even has 'tones' to form plural nouns rather than suffixes, just like in many Limburgish dialect that haven't been influenced heavily by Dutch yet. It's actually a intermediary dialect/language between Limburgish and Ripuarian (spoken in Germany).
Singular nouns are pronounced in long and upward way, whilst plural nouns are in a short and downward way.
Example (Limburgish from Maastricht):
eine stéi-n (long vowel)
twie stèin (short vowel)
You also have several Low Saxon dialects spoken in the East and North of the Netherlands which are classified under Low German (also spoken in North Germany) rather than Dutch, even though its Dutch speakers identify themselves with the Dutch language.
The line between dialect and language is a very thin one indeed, not rarely defined by political sentiments.
But indeed, learning all the official Germanic languages alone would be a difficult task.
By the way, what I mean with just as being monoglot is: being able to produce a basic rudimentary English and your native tongue isn't a difficult task to achieve. You are sort of predestined to be exploited to English on a daily basis in the 21th century, so you're not really being a polyglot only knowing your native tongue and English.
I did forget to mention that's mainly the case of it's very primitive English, of course.
IMO, these people only speak one-and-a-half languages. Too much people are too confident in their English, often being convinced they'd speak it like a native, which is almost always far from true.
Even my English is highly illogical and very basic, one can instantly notice it's not my native tongue.
"what I mean with just as being monoglot" should what I mean with just being a monoglot. Just a typo.
I also often make typoes as you can see.
I also make typos. I spelled "Afrikaans" wrong.
This is interesting.
"Especially the Low Dietsch spoken in the Walloon province of Liège is an interesting language/dialect; it even has 'tones' to form plural nouns rather than suffixes, just like in many Limburgish dialect that haven't been influenced heavily by Dutch yet. It's actually a intermediary dialect/language between Limburgish and Ripuarian (spoken in Germany)."
It makes me think about the brain trust Antimoon has. We could have a better Antimoon if we didn't have so much silliness here about which language is better.
I'm not saying that I am not silly. Obviously, that was a joke about Percy Stanek. I don't know anyone by that name.
Antimooner K. T. Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:51 am GMT
"GIVEN THE HUGE SIMILARITIES OF WESTERN LANUAGES ALL BASED ON THE 26 CORE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET, so-called multilinguals of western languages are ACTUALLY only monolinguals of many dialects that make up one language!
So there is little point to flaunt how many western languages westerners could speak!"
A thought-provoking post. It makes me think of Ali G's conversation with Chomsky. In other words, the original post is pretty off-the-wall, but a lot of fun.
Okay. If this theory of yours is accurate, shouldn't you also join the club of western multilinguals because you know English? I mean, why shouldn't you be able to start up a conversation with a Norwegian and a Russian if they are simply dialects? After all, you speak English, another related dialect.
No, just like "monoglot" and some others have posted, just having the alphabet in common is not enough. Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish, are Western languages, but they are not Indo-European languages. Yes, you may be able to sound out "Kiitos" in Finnish, but can you tell what it means based on your knowledge of English? Probably not. Just knowing the alphabet shapes doesn't help much.
Now, let's take some languages where you have a chance to make a few connections based on what you know of English.
"Bare bra, takk."
Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with a lady's undergarment. It's in a language pretty close to English. In fact, it's in the same family-the Germanic family. It's Norwegian and it means "Very well, thanks."
Maybe you got the "takk" part. It kind of looks like "Thanks" doesn't it?
That's fuel for your point. Baldewin is with you about the Germanic languages. They are pretty similar to each other. Professor Arguelles knows that they are a lot alike as well. If you want to drive yourself completely bonkers-learn all of them from Afrikkaans to Swedish.
Okay, you got a point for the Germanic languages, but what about the other Western languages? Greek, which is written in-Greek letters- is actually a fantastic language. That's the language you want to learn if you want to decode IE languages, I think. But you can't read it. It's in the Greek alphabet. That's why people say in English, "It's Greek to me." They can't understand it or read it without studying it.
There goes the alphabet bit. Then there is Russian, but you can't read it either as it's Western, but doesn't use the roman alphabet. Okay, that leaves you with other Slavic "dialects" of English like POLISH. Uh oh!
Have you seen Polish words? They have multiple consonants in a row.
Here's one: przystanek. Can you guess what it means? My guess is Percy Stanek, Mr. Grabowski's neighbour, but that would be wrong.
I'll give you a huge clue with another Germanic language, Dutch. It means "stoppen" in Dutch. I bet you got that one with the clue.
Do you still think Western multilinguals are monolinguals? Yes, I guess you'll still be annoyed when someone who speaks English, Croatian, and Danish claims to know English, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Swedish, and Norwegian, but, well, some of us think we know what the real language total is. It's three and three quarters, maybe, not seven, but it isn't "one" like you think it should be.
I understand why you may think this way. Maybe people have said things about the Chinese languages and called them dialects as well.
People who have learned distant languages know that there is a big difference between knowing English and Chinese and knowing English and French.
By the way,
Kiitos means "Thanks" in some form. I don't speak Finnish. It's the only word I remember. Did you figure it out on your own? If you did, you are a genius.
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What a reply you came up with!
I am still glad to see you came to see my point somehow!
I repeat:
Westerners only able to speak western languages cann't be strictly regarded as multilinguals, for western languages are so much alike for their close historical connections!
Only someone who is able to know a Western language and an Oriental language can lay claim to be multilingual!
Western language
What does this mean??
German, Basque, Estonian, Greek are western or Oriental?!!!
How many stupid people are there on this forum? They should all read some good books about linguistics instead of writing bullshit here.
The problem with too many people in the Far East (particularly in places like Japan), is that they tend to think of "the West" as being this homogenised land mass containing all the countries in the world where white people live.
This thread is ridiculous.
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