Are there any linguists among Antimooners?

<<So, why are in the US the budgets cut on such important issues as language learning?>>

In the US, whenever the economy is in a downturn, it seems the first things to get cut are social programs and public education. So schools facing financial shortfalls end up eliminating courses in the liberal arts, humanities, and the extracurriculars. Don't ask me why that is... it's just that our priorities are screwed up. ;-)

Per capita education spending in the United States is second highest in the world after Norway. I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but you have to consider that there are other things at play than spending... In my experience (keep in mind, my own personal experience, I could very well be wrong) a lot of it has to do with with emphasis on self esteem at the expense of performance. 1st and 2nd grade, yes, self esteem is important. By the time your kids are in junior high, it's time to give them actual grades and if they don't pass, they don't move on.

Tough love, my kids are gonna hate me :-)

guest2,

Thank-you for a very interesting description of schools in Germany. You answered a question I had about Realschule and Gymnasium. Now when I listen to DW, I'll understand more when they have a report on education.

Homeschooling is or was illegal in Germany, I believe. I've seen this "trend"in my area: parents homeschool until juinor high school (age 12 or so), then the kids go to some sort of private school (secular, Catholic, or Christian, non-Catholic.) I don't blame any of them or think they are hypocrites for doing this. They want a good, safe education for their kids. They are middleclass, not necessarily wealthy parents.

The public school system in my city has problems that I won't discuss except to say that the kids are the ones who lose.

"Does that mean that in the US, there aren't language classes in schools and just a few of it at universities? Im my alma mater, there are many language classes, even Turkisch, Georgian, Korean, Japanese and some African languages such as Kisuaheli, Tigrinya, Hausa, Fula. I attended a 4 term Turkisch class." guest2

You adressed this to another guest, but I have never known any of those languages except Japanese to be offered in schools. I may have read that one school with an African emphasis offered Swahili. (I'm almost jealous of you. I would have enjoyed learning an African language in school.)

Universities vary a lot in the languages they offer. We discussed this in another thread. Some may have many (Northwestern), and some may have only French and Spanish.

Jasper was on target when he offered this:
"European dynamics are vastly different from American ones. We have vast areas of unpopulated areas, and other vast areas of English-only speakers. Learning a foreign language really would be a waste of time for a lot of us because we wouldn't have the opportunity to practice it---unless the target language were to be Spanish."

As to my relative and that stupid language sampler, no, he attended classes. His public school offered different language arts classes every grading period, I think. Maybe the problem was offering students too many classes in diverse subjects.

I need to look at your links. Thanks.

"Learning a foreign language is never a waste of time, even if you don't practice it. In trying to learn a foreign language, you also learn about the way of thinking and parts of the culture of the speakers of this language"
guest2

I wrestle with this. Americans are very practical. If they can't use it, they don't want to learn it. There are a few languages I'd like to study, but I'd feel guilty if I learned them and I'd be mocked, scorned or severely questioned if I admitted studying them.

guest2: Very interesting links. I am enjoying them.

>>I wrestle with this. Americans are very practical. If they can't use it, they don't want to learn it. There are a few languages I'd like to study, but I'd feel guilty if I learned them and I'd be mocked, scorned or severely questioned if I admitted studying them.

You speak my mind too. The main problem here, rather.. well, besides similar things in budget cuts, ... we just don't have the money to do all that, especially for linguistics and lingoes (humanities). Those are pretty useless for the general student population.

The mainland would be too incompetent, in terms of money and general knowledge (some of them still think our English is far better), to teach a lot of lingoes. The US should still remain one of the wonderlands for lingoes with so many immigrants. In my country, they're almost...very very rare. If you *count* how many schools offer French or German, probably it's more difficult, but lingoes are pretty much confined to universities (not Gymnasien of public high schools). From that perspective, I should say Hong Kong IS more international for... em, at least one of the uni's is now offering 10 languages, regardless of how people teach (and learn).

And as expected, Japanese classes are as popular as usual, so I suspect scenes are often quite similar across different places. The only big difference is just that a lot of folks can't even "learn English" well (they say), and so they can't even be as optimistic as to learn another lingo. That's essentially a linguistic burden, but without English I can't understand why you should learn a second L2. To put it bluntly, Chinese sucks in the department of foreign-language teaching litearture; English IS the most useful language for _learning_ _other_ _languages_. So, by the time that a guy like me masters French _and_ German, he must also be already very fluent in English anyway.

==

And for this reason, like in the field of linguistics, the scene is: you are expected to read literature of Anglophone professors (Chomsky, Yule, ... I can't remember their names), mostly from the US, followed by the UK, and if you do compare.... except in historical linguistics, the past, glorious academic achievements of the French and Germans (and Russians, perhaps) are totally unknown to the audience (the students). China hasn't yet entered the international scene of doing linguistics; there have been a lot of linguists too, but at best they can do languages in China, and translate the American books.

For budding undergraduates, linguistics here just mean: it's all about America and the UK. No Chinese, no French. I'm always so much irritated by the term "international" at the university, when they actually mean "Anglophone" instead. Not to mention the fallen regional powers (France, Germany) or my own country, *other* Anglophone countries seem also to be under-represented for, perhaps, very obvious demographic and economic and thus academic reasons.

That's really boring. On one hand, it won't make any sense if students don't read the stuff of those (dead or living) American/British guys, since every university uses English here; but on the other, are they really competent enough to accept the challenge of reading it? Probably not. A lot of budding students, in language-related subjects in general, don't necessarily write and speak English ... well, as well as I do (my English sucks too), then they might be staying at a dangerous academic plateau of NOT having any possible promotions for their poor English.

Personally, I can't trust my own ability to accept doing linguistics, for example, in a place where linguistics is in its infancy, and when my English is too poor. It's worth noting that, unfortunately, even some future/present scholars, not just in linguistics, can't even express themselves probably in English as well. There have been *countless* instances that... our studying pace is being slowed down owing to language barriers.

For example, now, in a small-group discussion, you have a Brit guy (probably not RP, RP should be very clear to my ears), an Irish guy (native?), a few Chinese guys from elsewhere, a few local Chinese guys, and a couple of people from other countries.... and with the lecturer/scholar being from China as well. If the Brit guy WERE the scholar, probably it could be better given that he can lead the discussions, and even give them answers in case they can't say what they think directly (or properly); but with almost only one Anglophone here, and when at least half of them... are too poor in language skills, I felt as if I were just sitting there in order to FINISH this lesson (this is compulsory). I can't, therefore, see the point of attending it if it weren't compulsory.

It shouldn't happen at all in your country, when perhaps 70% of you were Americans/Brits (while the other 30% have to struggle); now, it's almost the 90% of us that aren't Anglophones and struggle. That's why... I often think, if you Anglophone guys come to Hong Kong here just to study for a bachelor degree (practically everything except Chinese)... sorry, personally, I can't agree, I'll be perplexed why you would want to be here, instead of doing very well in your own home country. It may be that an Anglophone getting a Ph.D. here will be boosting his own academic potential (and even getting job promotions here or elsewhere; in terms of university, I do believe the top universities here are considered Anglophone...), yeah, hope so.

It may sound off-topic:

no matter how you slice it, as long as a university is adopting a particular language, and teaches almost everything in it, it's not self-belitting... or unpatriotic... or illberal, or dictatorial... to say, if you want to study there, it's a must to master this language, ok, let it be English in my example. How? Your accent should be at least a 5/6 mark on prof AA's own scale, so that you have no difficulty expressing yourselves, at least using the simplest words for everything - socializing, for example. the same goes for writing. As for comprehension, it should be that, really, you have literally NO problem understanding an average Hollywood film, and almost NO problem understanding what scholars wrote.

Without this, then bye, you don't really deserve the title of a competent student at large, especially in the international (this isn't American) academic market.

The economic structure of Hong Kong is, understandably, easily influenced by external forces, and doing academic stuff isn't very commonplace (it's not a country after all). I've heard of loads of students, from everywhere, saying that... well, for most majors in general (law and medicine are not general subjects), you just need "good" English to develop your career, becoz not everyone can/wants to do post-grad. This is, for reasons above, a very inadequate explanation, but it reveals perfectly, again, the problem with English. It's my personal opinion, of coz, I just think, naturally, university studies DEMANDS university-level fluency in the language in which it is offered. It might be pointless for a guy like me to learn and use slang at my university, when almost everybody can't understand it and ... I might be considered stilted, but certainly at least above-the-present-average comprehension skills are expected.

I don't see much hope in the sort of students like such. When you graduate as an undergrad., how can you not master the language used during your university studies? It could even be some of the unique dilemmas that I personally face (frankly, I haven't reached my own really high standard above): by this standard, I'm supposed to understand news reports in China (in Mandarin, that is) perfectly, and so are those in America, for example. In most instances, the best that I can do is to deal with subjects, rather than internalize the content of everything down pat. In general, sorry, I don't intend to belittle anyone, but it sounds as if a lot of folks here... beggars can't be choosers. No matter which language they use, a university without the right country, the right economy, the right students... or a combination of all... ugh.

[Language is not just the ''mechanics'' of language, but mostly practice. Learning a foreign language can help you to also understand those ''mechanics''.] Perhaps I have used the wrong set of words to describe the "mechanics" of language. My interest lies not in learning Latvian, or Sorbian, or any specific language, but learning the processes behind it.

For example, why do some people lose their accents through osmosis rather quickly, while others never lose theirs?

Why do English-speakers with different accents perceive other accents differently---even the same accent? (Possibly they're hearing different groups of sounds)

Why do Americans perceive one language as pleasant (French, for example) while they perceive others as unpleasant? (Possibly some cognitive dissonance going on)

Why does shadowing work? (Answer: we have mirror neurons)

Why do people almost all over the world perceive nasal tongues as unpleasant?

Is there any validity to the Critical Period Hypothesis?

Guest2: these are questions concerning the mechanics of language learning---the study of the wiring of the BRAIN--as opposed to study of a certain foreign language. To my mind, it's a far more interesting topic of study.

[Learning a foreign language is never a waste of time, even if you don't practice it].

Guest2, I'd beg to differ. I had two years of French in the 70s--and loved every single minute of it! But I had no opportunity to practice it with anybody. Over the years, I lost it; nowadays, I remember very little French.

As KT has correctly noted, Americans are practical minded. If we cannot use something, we don't want to learn it. Unless you love it, what's the use of learning it?

By the way, practicing a foreign language online would only be useful for the purposes of written language, and useless for conversation....

K. T. Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:31 pm GMT:

<<Thank-you for a very interesting description of schools in Germany. You answered a question I had about Realschule and Gymnasium. Now when I listen to DW, I'll understand more when they have a report on education.>>

What was that question?

<<Homeschooling is or was illegal in Germany, I believe. I've seen this "trend"in my area: parents homeschool until juinor high school (age 12 or so), then the kids go to some sort of private school (secular, Catholic, or Christian, non-Catholic.) I don't blame any of them or think they are hypocrites for doing this. They want a good, safe education for their kids. They are middleclass, not necessarily wealthy parents.>>

Yes, I think it's illegal in Germany. I never heard of homeschooling here.
Can you tell us more on homeschooling? Can everybody do it? Are they required certain teaching material? How can they know that the schooling is actually done? What subjects are they teaching? Does it require special teachers or can it be done by the parents?

<<The public school system in my city has problems that I won't discuss except to say that the kids are the ones who lose.>>

Kids are the weakest part of the chain. That's why they are the ones who loose. Even if you don't want to discuss it, it would be interesting to know about that problems you mentioned.

<<"Does that mean that in the US, there aren't language classes in schools and just a few of it at universities? Im my alma mater, there are many language classes, even Turkisch, Georgian, Korean, Japanese and some African languages such as Kisuaheli, Tigrinya, Hausa, Fula. I attended a 4 term Turkisch class." guest2

You adressed this to another guest, but I have never known any of those languages except Japanese to be offered in schools. I may have read that one school with an African emphasis offered Swahili. (I'm almost jealous of you. I would have enjoyed learning an African language in school.)

Universities vary a lot in the languages they offer. We discussed this in another thread. Some may have many (Northwestern), and some may have only French and Spanish.>>

In German, the term ''Alma mater'' refers to university only. I never heard that term applied to schools. Therefore, the languages I mentioned are taught at University Frankfurt, besides others, as should be clear if you followed the links provided. At school, they don't teach African languages, at least not as I attended school. As far as I know, Englisch, French, and Latin are most commonly taught in German schools. There might be schools with additional language offer: e.g. Russian, ancient Greek. (Russian, I think, most likely in the eastern part, ancient Greek in ''Humanistischen Gymnasien'' or like it was offered to us, as one term course. (Note that ''studying'' means something different in German: being enroled at a university and hopefully learning something there. It is never applied to learning at school.)

Can you give a link to that thread?

<<As to my relative and that stupid language sampler, no, he attended classes. His public school offered different language arts classes every grading period, I think. Maybe the problem was offering students too many classes in diverse subjects.

I need to look at your links. Thanks.>>

Nice that you enjoy those links. I provided them to show the variety of languages offered at a German university. Unfortunatly, because of the Bologna process, many things change resulting in a decrease of the number of languages offered.

I don't think that offering too many classes in diverse subjects is the problem.

JTT Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:14 pm GMT:

>><<So, why are in the US the budgets cut on such important issues as language learning?>>

In the US, whenever the economy is in a downturn, it seems the first things to get cut are social programs and public education. So schools facing financial shortfalls end up eliminating courses in the liberal arts, humanities, and the extracurriculars. Don't ask me why that is... it's just that our priorities are screwed up. ;-) <<

Economy turns up und down and up again, and so on, and education isn't that much expensive that it couldn't be done in the ''basic part'', the part which isn't affected by the ''waval behaviour'' of the economy. Of course you can make it expensive, e.g. with useless technical gadgets like TV in every classroom, see:

http://www.projekt-kinder-im-netz.de/VortragWeizenbaum.htm

''In den USA hat heute jedes Klassenzimmer einen Fernseher, die Schule zahlt dafür nichts, da einmal pro Stunde eine Werbeeinblendung diese Versorgung finanziert. Dass ca. 10% des Kaufpreises der beworbenen Produkte die Kosten für diese "kostenfreie" Maßnahme wieder hereinholen, wird nicht mitbedacht. Ebenfalls folgen auf die Gabe eines Gerätes Folgekosten wie Wartung, Ersatzteile, Erweiterungen etc., vom allgemeinen Wertverfall durch Alterung (was bei Computern besonders gravierend eintritt) einmal abgesehen. Diese laufenden Kosten werden nicht mitberechnet, schlagen sich aber im Schulhaushalt zu Buche: es fehlen Mittel für Lehrkräfte, baulich-hygienische Maßnahmen, Lernmaterialien etc. In den USA sind derzeit 1/3 der Gesamtbevölkerung "funktionale" Analphabeten; d.h. sie können Straßenschilder lesen, aber Inhalte einfacher Sätze nicht mehr richtig verstehen und aufnehmen.''

Rough translation:

In the US, today, every classroom has a TV set, the school don't pay for it because of advertising. ... That donation is followed by consequential costs for maintenance, spare parts, extensions, ... These costs are not included, but affect the budget of the school: resulting in lacking money for teachers, maintenance of the building and it's sanitary arrangements, teaching materials, etc. In the USA, today, 1/3 of the population are ''functional analphabets'', i.e. they can read the traffic signs, but don't understand the contents of simple sentences correctly.

K. T. Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:47 pm GMT:

<<"Learning a foreign language is never a waste of time, even if you don't practice it. In trying to learn a foreign language, you also learn about the way of thinking and parts of the culture of the speakers of this language"
guest2

I wrestle with this. Americans are very practical. If they can't use it, they don't want to learn it. There are a few languages I'd like to study, but I'd feel guilty if I learned them and I'd be mocked, scorned or severely questioned if I admitted studying them.>>

There're very practical people all over the world, not just in the USA. If you can't use it today, you'll probably need it tomorrow. It's an ''investigation in the future'' (a term we Germans learned form the USA).

See www.spinnoff.com and www.spinnoff.com/zbb for a website dedicated to the invention of languages and constructing worlds. Many of the members of that board are Americans.

You need not tell anybody about studying the subjects of your interest. You even needn't attend a class for studying a language. I started learning Turkic with a partly copied textbook years before I attended a turkic class at the university. And you need not feel guilty! It's your life and your time and your interest, may others think what they like ...
If somebody scorns someone for learning a language, I would conclude that that somebody is very stupid, not worth to talk with him/her.

Jasper Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:05 am GMT:

<<[Language is not just the ''mechanics'' of language, but mostly practice. Learning a foreign language can help you to also understand those ''mechanics''.] Perhaps I have used the wrong set of words to describe the "mechanics" of language. My interest lies not in learning Latvian, or Sorbian, or any specific language, but learning the processes behind it.>>

I understood what you mean with mechanics of a language. But even so,
you need a notion of the subject you talk about. Maybe there aren't much processes about it? (The use of the term ''processes'' here maybe results form that presumed ''mechanics'' behind language.)

<<For example, why do some people lose their accents through osmosis rather quickly, while others never lose theirs?>>

Osmosis? In that context? www.leo.org doesn't give a linguistics-related translation for it. Do you mean ''assimilation''?

<<Why do English-speakers with different accents perceive other accents differently---even the same accent? (Possibly they're hearing different groups of sounds) >>

Most likely because of they are different people with different tastes?

<<Why do Americans perceive one language as pleasant (French, for example) while they perceive others as unpleasant? (Possibly some cognitive dissonance going on)>>

See above!

<<Why does shadowing work? (Answer: we have mirror neurons)>>

What does that mean?

<<Why do people almost all over the world perceive nasal tongues as unpleasant?>>

Do they really? How can you know?

Almost every language as nasal consonants: e.g. n, m, ng,
some have nasal vowels, too, like French. French is perceived as pleasant by Americans, as you stated. As some paragraphs above, different people, different tastes! Note that these questions are very unpractical!

<<Is there any validity to the Critical Period Hypothesis?>>

The above questions are some of the silly ideas I mentioned!

<<Guest2: these are questions concerning the mechanics of language learning---the study of the wiring of the BRAIN--as opposed to study of a certain foreign language. To my mind, it's a far more interesting topic of study.>>

The study of the ''wiring of the brain'' would be histology, not linguistics. For that, you need to study medicine or biology and you would need lot's of chemistry. Or, maybe informatics = computer science or biological informatics for processing and modelling the vast amounts of data you might get. Maybe the ''wiring'' depends of the language or the type of language? Maybe it works different?

↑ Guest, actually, there has been some research done on some of the aforementioned topics.

A clarification is in order first, however. When I refer to the wiring of the brain, I'm referring to the wiring of the brain in terms of language development. The Critical Period Hypothesis is a case in point. It is believed that neurons involving language development begin to "solidify" at about the age of puberty, and continue this development until about the age of 19 or 20; after that age, complete, native fluency in a foreign language, spoken without an accent, is believed to be impossible. Some research on this topic has been done, but I won't post the results without permission from the webmasters.

There has also been some research done on nasal tongues, and the existence of mirror neurons--about which you apparently have no knowledge--is a known fact.

The notion of perceiving one tongue--or accent--as unpleasant, while others perceive the same tongue as pleasant, may also have a neuronal base: it is possible that an element of cognitive dissonance is in play.

These topics really are a part of linguistics, along with its sister topic, neurolinguistics. One does not have to learn a foreign language to understand the mechanics of language, Guest; English alone has enough richness and variety, and the complexities of the language differ even within the United States.

In any case, I refuse to learn a foreign language that I cannot use; I prefer studying topics that interest me, not topics that someone else decides for me. ;-)

By the way, Guest2, please remember I'm not knocking anybody else's interest in foreign languages; I merely assert that I don't share that interest.

If Skippy wants to learn Serbo-Croatian, or KT wants to learn Russian, I think it will enrich their lives because they're doing something they enjoy.