The Brits & English speakers are linguistically disabled

Steve   Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:47 pm GMT
error: fueled
The drunken Brit   Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:59 pm GMT
Come on Steve, we're a Nation of Drunks....GET OVER IT!!!

Only the Brits sent their police force to Germany, from all world countries that participated at the Football World Cup , to aid the german police fighting against the British Hooligans, that was a national and international embarrassment.

"British police will be deployed to Germany to aid in operational security during the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament"

3,500 orders have been issued banning attendance at the tournament by those viewed as England's most troublesome soccer hooligans.

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/9153.asp
una mierda   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:03 pm GMT
well, we need some British police in Spain, to help the Spanish police arrest the English visitors. lol
Steve   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:07 pm GMT
Whether or not Britain is a nation of drunks is competely irrelevant to the topic or the forum and you know that.
Aquatar   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:18 pm GMT
Vladimir

Don't forget that some Brits (some of the Welsh) are already bi-lingual, having been brought up to speak both English and Welsh fluently. This is also the case, but to a far lesser degree with other Celtic languages, Gaelic, Manx etc. I believe there are six official languages of the UK, although I am not certain.

But as to your question, as to why so many native English speakers don't learn foreign languages, I think there are several reasons.

First, as many people have already said on here, if you are living in an English-speaking country, there are not the same benefits to be gained from learning a foreign language, as there are for other people to learn English. It is of course different if you have actually moved to a country where another language is spoken, but maybe if people are living in English speaking communities, they feel they can still get by without it. (I do not agree with this by the way, but I suspect it might be the case).

The other thing is that, in the UK at least, we don't tend to study grammar. If you are lucky you might learn what a noun, verb, adjective and adverb are, but that will probably be the extent of it. This combined with the fact that most other languages have far more grammatical rules than English, mean that it can be difficult at first for us to grasp the basic structures of other languages. When I first started learning German I was genuinely surprised to find that its structure wasn't exactly the same as English, just with different vocabulary. I was completely clueless about things like cases, adjective endings, subjunctive etc. Thankfully I persevered and did get to grips with it, so it is possible with a bit of effort, even for us Brits hehe
Benjamin   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:18 pm GMT
It might be more appropriate to say that Britain has a serious problem with the rather rigid class system which seems to exist here. Britain apparently has one of the highest (if not the highest) percentage of people below the poverty line, one of the highest rates of child poverty, and one of the largest gaps between the rich and the poor in the 'most developed' world. Equally, being successful and making more money through business does not cause one to move up the social scale, as such. I feel that a lot of the social and educational problems (real or perceived) in Britain today can ultimately be attributed to this.

Equally, the tendency here to mix only with people of one's own 'class' (a lot of people won't admit this, but it's usually true) tends to mean that individual British people can have VERY different ideas about what 'most British people' are like, since there is so much difference.
Benjamin   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:43 pm GMT
« if you are living in an English-speaking country, there are not the same benefits to be gained from learning a foreign language, as there are for other people to learn English. »

That's precisely it. I actually find that it is unusual for people from many non-English-speaking countries to learn any foreign language other than English. Or if they do, it often tends to be closely related languages for which they can assimilate a large vocabulary simply by exposure. That's the other thing — English is not mutually intelligible with ANY other major language to any degree.

For example, our French exchange partners came over here a few months ago. There were about 30 of them who were obviously all learning English. However, only two of them were learning German.

Equally, I was with a group of about 20 German students a while ago. Whilst they all spoke English, none of them could really hold a conversation in French, nor did they seem interested in doing so.

And at that same time, I was also with about 15 Polish students. They all spoke English (to varying degrees), but very few of them could really speak any reasonable German. And as for French? No chance.

The point being, the motivation which British people in general have for learning other European languages is comparable to the motivation which other Europeans have for learning other European languages apart from English which are not particularly related to their native languages either.
Benjamin   Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:44 pm GMT
I'll also add that I've come across several Dutch-speaking Belgians who have been largely unable to converse in French or German.
euro   Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:09 pm GMT
"The other thing is that, in the UK at least, we don't tend to study grammar. If you are lucky you might learn what a noun, verb, adjective and adverb are, but that will probably be the extent of it. This combined with the fact that most other languages have far more grammatical rules than English, mean that it can be difficult at first for us to grasp the basic structures of other languages"

I perfectly agree with you, German grammar is 10 times more sophisticated than the English grammar. Just think of the Feminine, Masculine and Neuter genders. On the other hand Slavic languages have a difficult grammar as well. Out of the Romance languages, Spanish grammar however is more relaxed.

Because the English grammar is a joke, compared with Slavic, Romance or Germanic languages, this disadvantage can confuse the native English speaker that expects the same grammar simplicity in other languages.

This disadvantage and the incapability to understand a complex grammar relates somehow with the title of this thread:

“The Brits & English speakers are linguistically disabled”
Benjamin   Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:23 pm GMT
Ironically, there are many grammatical mistakes in euro's messages.
Steve   Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:25 pm GMT
Euro seems, too, to forget that it is the trend for languages to simplify grammatically as a matter of evolution.
Aquatar   Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:42 pm GMT
Euro

'This disadvantage and the incapability to understand a complex grammar relates somehow with the title of this thread'

As I pointed out this is a disadvantage for us and does make it more difficult, but you are incorrect to say it is then an incapability.

Yes, I was very confused by German grammar at first, but once I sat down and really thought about it, actually comparing it to the minimal grammar that English has (i.e. the remnants of the case system in the English pronouns), I found my understanding increasing rapidly. I went from not being able to construct a grammatically correct German sentence at all, to being able to construct a sentence that was largely correct within the space of a couple of months, if not weeks.

Also, I believe that, had I been taught more about grammatical concepts in general at school, I would have understood German grammar much more easily, despite the paucity of English grammar.
Aquatar   Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:14 am GMT
'Just think of the Feminine, Masculine and Neuter genders'

Plus, genders are not something you actually have to understand. You have to understand the way they change, if there is a case system, but in themselves they require no special understanding. You just have to memorise them, like you have to memorise plural forms if these are not regular.
Fredrik from Norway   Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:01 am GMT
Steve wrote:
"Yes. What's interesting about that is that in a place like Norway or Sweden, there is no real reason to learn the local language as almost the entire population is reasonably well-versed in English."

True, but with some modifications. If your goal is just to exist, i.e. to get all the information you need to survive, of course you will manage very well with just English. But then you will start noticing that people think twice about inviting you for dinner, for a party etc., because if you are there, everybody has to speak English, out of consideration for you. And of course we can speak English, no problem, but when you sit down to dinner with good friends, you want to relax and not feel the least linguistically handicapped, and that means speaking Norwegian.

But luckily, most Anglophones who settle in Norway (a lot of them due to work in the petroleum sector) learn Norwegian very well, even though they simply rape Norwegian phonology :-)
Steve   Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:29 am GMT
That's true. The thing is that those in the petroleum sector are only there on 2 or 3 year contracts and aren't terribly concerned with pronouncing words correctly.

I've been trying my utmost to pronounce words reasonably, but I'm still often told I sound like a Finnish person trying to speak Norwegian!