Learning to UNDERSTAND languages vs. learning English

Vytenis   Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:39 pm GMT
The aggressive domination of English as a global language is perceived by many as a threat. The reasons of this may be numerous: the cultural, the political, the fear of global US domination etc. I don't want to get into discussions on that. However, what seems important and very ralely mentioned, is that this domination seems to spring from or at least to be aided by peoples' lazyness to learn languages. People are too lazy to learn more than one foreign language. And since the contacts between people from varius countries are constantly increasing, the medium of communication is almost invariably English (very often very bad English), since that is the only language they know, however badly. However, if more languages were taught at schools at least to BE UNDERSTOOD (which is much easier than to learn to speak them properly) then more people from different countries could speak their own language and be understood, without the need to speak a foreign language or to use English as a medium. Of course, one cannot learn to understand all the languages, and English will still have to remain as a medoium especially for the representatives of smaller nations, but I believe that learning to at least understand several major European languages in addition to Englishh will create a possibility for real multilingual culture which the EU oficially profess. AND this would aid communication. After all, everyone would agree that aperson can express themselves much better in their native language (even if it is not perfectly understood by an interlocutor) than with the limited vocabulary of their poorly learned English...
Jav   Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:53 pm GMT
>>The aggressive domination of English as a global language is perceived by many as a threat. <<

Yeah, all those poor people mercilously being taught English with knives at their throaths, American GI's torturing non English speaking people and of course the assasination of the French President Chirac by Australian secret agents for leaving the room when a fellow countryman giving a speech in English.Not to mention the Anglo-Saxon hordes in central Asia and South America.

Terrible.
Jav   Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:55 pm GMT
giving = gave
Vytenis   Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:56 pm GMT
The other question which one might raise: why are people so lazy or slow to learn other languages? One possible answer may be that this unwillingness to learn springs from a (false?) belief that it is very difficult to learn another language. However, even if this belief where true (which it isn't), learning to just UNDERSTAND another language rather than to actually speak it fluently, should be much easier and less time-consuming. And after all, isn't that belief that to learn another language is an extremely difficult achievement just a merit of our education system and its outdated ideas about language learning and old-fashioned methods of language teaching?
Guest   Sun Jun 04, 2006 4:52 pm GMT
Actually it does seem aggressive when someone foreign comes up and starts chattering in a language you don’t understand or speak... and English is being learned mostly because people “need” it, not because they like it.
greg   Sun Jun 04, 2006 4:58 pm GMT
Jav : « American GI's torturing non English speaking people »
Tu ne crois pas si bien dire : Vietnam, Iraq...


Jav : « Not to mention the Anglo-Saxon hordes in central Asia and South America. »
Peut-être pas des hordes, mais des bases miltaires, oui !
ARN   Sun Jun 04, 2006 5:49 pm GMT
True, the dominance global language may cause many problems...
However, the global language helps to avoid miscommunication...

But the global language also may create communication problems and change the national language...

The only thing to be done is to create positive attitude of linguists, politicians, bureaucrats, journalists towards national language at the same time not fostering the dominance of 1foreign language...
Jav   Sun Jun 04, 2006 6:54 pm GMT
Greg, I do not speak French so your message is incomprehensible for me.And I'm not going to use an online translator because it is you whose talking to me so you're the one who's supposed to put some effort to it.
You could try comunicating in other languages, I speak Dutch,English, and German.
Vytenis   Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:15 pm GMT
Actually, my original intention in this discussion was not to discuss whether domination of English is good or bad, but whether learning to UNDERSTAND other languages (and not necessarily to speak them) would be a viable alternative to the situation when English is used almost exclusively in any international gathering... Another point: how much people's misperceptions of how easy or difficult learning another language is have been formed by outdated concepts and metho)ds of language teaching at our schools (e.g. grammar-based language teaching)
Vytenis   Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:19 pm GMT
ARN,

This is not the Daugvpls conference report, you are allowed to use less sofisticated style... ;)
Benjamin   Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:33 pm GMT
« Greg, I do not speak French so your message is incomprehensible for me.And I'm not going to use an online translator because it is you whose talking to me so you're the one who's supposed to put some effort to it. »

I don't usually bother to do this, but...

« Tu ne crois pas si bien dire : Vietnam, Iraq... »

He's suggesting that Americans have been torturing non-English-speaking people in Vietnam and Iraq. However, this point seems to be redundant because the fact that they're being tortured has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they can't speak English.

« Peut-être pas des hordes, mais des bases miltaires, oui ! »

He's saying that some English-speaking countries have military bases in Central Asia and South America. Again, I'm not quite sure of his point here.
Viri Amaoro   Sun Jun 04, 2006 10:01 pm GMT
We should creat an advanced revolutionary elite that will fight for the rights of the people (including linguistic rights) and push Esperanto as the Nº1 link-language in the world. Forward with the Revolution! Down with the status quo!
greg   Sun Jun 04, 2006 11:04 pm GMT
L'espéranto ou interlingua (dont le potentiel semble immense). Ce qui nous ramène de toute façon à la 'guerre' des langues, même artificielles.
Benjamin   Sun Jun 04, 2006 11:24 pm GMT
Chu vi parolas Esperanton, Virio ? Mi ankaux ! Tamen, mi ne volas ke Esperanto estus la lingvo de chiuj, kvankam ghi plachas al mi, char mi kredas ke tio pereigus nian plezuron.
Viri Amaoro   Sun Jun 04, 2006 11:25 pm GMT
Interlingua was invented by an american heading a commitee. Esperanto is the Opus Magnum of a profound humanist and a lover of Mankind, L. L. Zamenhof.