English monolinguals

Another Guest   Fri Jan 29, 2010 6:24 am GMT
<<If all people do like Americans, and nobody study English as foreign language, this language wouldn't be so important. >>
That should be "If all people were to do like Americans, and nobody were to study English as foreign language, this language wouldn't be so important."

<<English is only 5th Worldwide, after Chinese, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. >>
According to wikipedia, Mandarin is first, Spanish and English are about the same, and they are followed by Hindi and then Arabic. With nonnative speakers, Mandarin and English are about the same. When you consider the fact that those totals are usually achieved by considering only the spoken language, and that in today's world literacy is an integral part of learning a language, I think that you will find that English is the language that has the most literate speakers.

Of course, the mere number of speakers of a language is largely irrelevant; the WEALTH held by speakers of a language is much more determinant, and even more important is what portion of international trade is conducted by people who speak that language. By that measure, English has no rivals.
Pete from Peru   Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:02 pm GMT
Paul, I'm with ya.

Boyntonville Bumpkin said:

>>In order to be truly bilingual, I guess you'd need at least a decade of total immersion?<<

My friend, this is absolutely relative. You can't just venture and say how long that'll take. It depends on several factors, e.g.:

- How similar your mother tongue is to the target language.
- How much exposition you have to the target language.
- How much previous knowledge you have.
- If you have gone through the process of learning other languages before.
- Whether you have a good memory or not.
- Motivation
- And last but not least; how good you are at learning languages. There's a theory I remember, which is about different kinds of intelligence or that intelligence developes for certain things at different degrees. I don't know the technical name in English.


>>Even then, even if you achieved near-native fluency, you'd probably still have a noticeable foreign accent.<<

This is also quite relative. If you have no teacher who is patient enough to correct your pronunciation and intonation mistakes or/if you don't have a good ear for languages. Then it's likely that you'll have a foreign accent.

I learnt English in 3 years. Then develope near-native fluency in about 3 more years. I did have to work pretty hard to get rid of certain defects in pronunciation. Listening carefully and trying to emulate the sounds myself. I'm a musician and my mom says that the musical ear helped me replicate the sounds precisely.

Once I met a Dutch guy, married to an Australian girl. I didn't even think he was not an Aussie until he told me. His Australian accent was so perfect... I asked him how he was able to get the accent. He said he was so in love with his fiancée, and loved her accent so much that he tried to copy it and practised everyday. And he had only been in Australia for a couple of years.

Once I met the most surprising Englishman in my life. Of course I didn't know he was English until he told me so. In a near perfect Castillian Spanish. And I never forget a Canadian girl who spole with a funny but quite decent Mexican accent. (I just didn't think she was Mexican because she looked very Anglo, and I heard her speak English before... that gave her away haha)

I have been speaking English at a near-native level for about 5 years. I don't think I have a Peruvian accent. Foreigners, and sometimes even Americans and Brits have mistaken me for a native speaker.

All you need to learn anything is WILL.

Sorry for the long post.

Regards
Pete from Peru   Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:07 pm GMT
Argghh...

Long post, lots of typos. The most annoying:

>>And I never forget a Canadian girl who spole with a funny but quite decent Mexican accent<<

It should say:

>>And I never forget a Canadian girl who spoke with a funny but quite decent Mexican accent<<
JeffinNYC   Fri Jan 29, 2010 11:17 pm GMT
I would love to know other languages. If I win the lottery, I fully intend to learn more languages than the Pope. As for now, all I know is a little bit of French. I pass by a Rosetta Stone kiosk on my way to lunch most days and I'm tempted to buy a course in French or Spanish (or German or Arabic or Japanese or . . .)

It takes a certain amount of determination to learn a foreign language in the United States. Most schools do not offer much in the way of foreign language classes, and they have minimal requirements for students to take the ones that are offered. In addition, the rewards for spending time and money learning another language are less for us than for speakers of other languages because we have an inexhaustible supply of mass media output in our own language and most of us have limited exposure to non-Anglophone cultures.
Uriel   Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:25 am GMT
<<Ama-bitis - Y'all will love >>

I am busting up, Wintereis -- is that from the hinterlands of the Roman Empire? Somewhere near the backwoods of Germania, I reckon?

<<If all people do like Americans, and nobody study English as foreign language, this language wouldn't be so important. >>

It cracks me up when people snidely assume that monolingualism is some sort of mainly American affliction born of economic arrogance and navel-gazing insularity. Especially as I'm dating someone who is pretty much monolingual in Spanish -- and was born and raised within sight and sound and spitting distance of the US border, and crosses it every freakin' day.

Monolingual is what MOST people in the world are, unless they have a REASON to not be. Maybe it's not the norm in Europe or Africa, where there's a new language every five miles, but across vast tracts of Asia, Australia, and the Americas, people easily get by with just the one they grew up with.
K.   Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:09 am GMT
Uriel,
I hope that you don't think I was trying to be rude when I posted the topic. I've heard that being multilingual is actually the norm, but I don't have any figures to back up that statement.

Most of the time in the US we don't need to know other languages. I know Barack Obama tried to stir people to learn other languages, but I'm sure it's hard for people to see the need because it's easy to go thousands of miles in the US on English alone.

I really enjoyed teaching for three quarters, but the monolinguals who had no clear reason for learning the language-except a vague feeling that they should learn a foreign language-really disrupted the class at times-coming in late, etc., then wanting the material to be repeated.
I noticed that the people who were monolingual, but had a specific goal and the polyglots were much more polite.
Uriel   Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:47 am GMT
I didn't think it was rude; I thought it was interesting.
fraz   Mon Feb 01, 2010 11:37 am GMT
I was monolingual until the age of 32 then I started dating a German girl. Six years later I have a very good level of German. Just shows you can learn a new language as an adult, although no doubt it does come easier when you are a child.

People often associate monolinguism with English speakers but there are many millions of people in Europe who are not comfortable with any language other than their native tongue. And there must be countless millions in Asia who are also monolingual in a language other than English.
Wintereis   Mon Feb 01, 2010 4:32 pm GMT
Uriel, I do believe that the "-bitis - Y'all" was an aspect of the southern dialect in the Roman empire after the invasion of Egypt. It was most frequently spoken in the area around Memphis.

It is funny that the only differential version of the plural you in English from the singular you is “y'all”. This seems to be a bit of a hole, though we do manage to get around it quite well with "all of you".
American   Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:27 pm GMT
I am an objective monolingual, since I can only use English at a professional level. However, I speak two other languages, one at a lowish advanced level and the other at a high intermediate level. This is probably about the same as most of these "European polyglots".
Creative but common   Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:49 pm GMT
I think Wint's conjugation must have been taken from here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Latin/Lesson_3-Future

It looks quite similar:

..................................

Future I, Active
Future active is a tense which, unsurprisingly, refers to something which has not yet happened. The endings are fairly basic, and follow fairly regular rules - however, the future endings used in 1st and 2nd conjugation differ from the endings of 3rd, 3rd-io (not a typo!), and 4th.

For example - "amo, amare" (1st conjugation) would be

Ama bo - I will love
* Ama bis - You will love
Ama bit - He/She/It will love
Ama bimus - We will love
Ama bitis - Y'all will love
Ama bunt - They will love
Wintereis   Mon Feb 01, 2010 10:10 pm GMT
Creative but Common:

I forgot where I pulled it from. But that looks accurate. I wanted to make sure that the conjugation was correct since Uriel challenged me on it, so I pulled it from some place off the net that provided the conjugation with examples and description. I should have included the address with my post. Sorry if you had to go out of your way to find the source. I'll remember to cite such things for people in the future.
Jasper   Mon Feb 01, 2010 10:20 pm GMT
I learned French, to an extent, in the 70s. I decided to learn it fro no other reason that, the time, I loved France, and everything about it.

Really loving the language made a key difference. I consistently outshone my classmates, which created some bad feelings when the occasion called for curbed grades. (I have always thought the practice of curbing grades a slap-in-the-face to good students.)

To get back to the point: monolinguals only learn a foreign language when they have to, or when they'd love to. There are no other reasons.
Wintereis   Mon Feb 01, 2010 10:32 pm GMT
If you think that I am making my knowledge of Latin up, no matter how meager it is, you should say so. I'll send you a picture of my "cum laude" medal from the National Latin Exams and have Mrs. Sherman write you a letter. I can tell you that we had our regional Latin competitions in Estes National Park. That was the first time I saw the "Stanley Hotel", the inspiration for King's "The Shining":

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2561/3721035464_8d47bc1484.jpg
LOLZOR   Mon Feb 01, 2010 11:12 pm GMT
Who cares? Do English speakers consider it an achievement to be able to conjugate a verb in Latin? LOL! It's the first thing you learn when learning another language... The easiest thing, just a LIST! Nothing hard there!

amo
amas
amás
ama
amamos
amáis
aman
amé
amaste
amó
amamos
amasteis
amaron
amaba
amabas
amaba
amábamos
amabais
amaban
ame
ames
amés
ame
amemos
améis
amen
amaré
amarás
amará
amaremos
amareis
amarán
ama
amá
amad
amemos
amen
amara
amaras
amara
amáramos
amarais
amaran
amase
amases
amase
amásemos
amaseis
amasen
amare
amares
amare
amáremos
amareis
amaren
amaría
amarías
amaría
amaríamos
amaríais
amarían