Thread: Comfortability with Foreign Language?

I've been learning German at School for 6 years and still I can hardly remember a dozen of words, but with English it was a completely different matter - I picked it up fairly quickly and in a matter of 6 months I could already speak and understand 80% of what I heard.
In two years my level was 'upper intermediate'.
But I have to say that much of my English experience came from many 'user's manuals', etc I had to plow through to learn Basic, Pascal, C/C++, etc
There was no localized software in my time - everything was in English back then. I learned what this or that command do by trial and error ))).

Originally Posted by alexB

So is Esperanto, bright and simple but nowhere to be found.

It would be really easy to take a political decision to introduce it.

All you'd need to do would be to teach it to kids in school across Europe, start some good TV channels and kick off some other initiatives that used it. The EU has the money to do it.. Esperanto is so easy to learn that it would practically run by itself, whereas English is a struggle all the way, as we know..

Return of investment (ROI) in about 10 years.

You are right that it's on the fringes at the moment. It is reasonably popular in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia and also in Italy I think, but still you'd have to make an effort to find people who speak it. It's a bit like a popular movement on a small scale; like open source software or environmentalism.

Learning English (a hard language) is just such a darn struggle for most people. I didn't enjoy it, it was necessary evil, compulsory, had to be done.

Esperanto takes a third of the time to learn, is easier for everyone, including speakers of Slavic languages, has no cultural or political associations. Much more suitable for the EU. Why should England get a free ride and why should I (Swedish) speak English when I go to Greece or Poland?

Originally Posted by Johanna

And why should Czech and Portuguese people have to torture themselves with English idioms

Idioms are not a toture. They are fun. People love them. Give a nice, clean artificial language to humans and they will spoil it in no time. I don't believe Esperanto doesn't have idioms.

Originally Posted by Ramil

I had to plow through to learn Basic, Pascal, C/C++, etc
There was no localized software in my time - everything was in English back then. I learned what this or that command do by trial and error ))).

Same here... I learnt the programming terms before I learnt the meaning of the actual English word in many cases. LOL

Idioms are not a toture. They are fun. People love them. Give a nice, clean artificial language to humans and they will spoil it in no time. I don't believe Esperanto doesn't have idioms.

Try misusing an idiom while doing a presentation in front of a room full of native English speakers, in your own country....

They may not be laughing viciously but that doesn't make it any less embarassing.

After that you'll be pondering: Why should I be the one who is laughed at and has to re-read my presentation 10 times when these people can't speak any foreign languages at all?

Originally Posted by Johanna

Try misusing an idiom

The same thing with Esperanto idioms.

The idea of an artificial language is similar to the idea of Communism - you will need artificial humans in order to make it a success. As it is, they will either refuse it or distort it beyond recognition.

Originally Posted by Johanna

After that you'll be pondering: Why should I be the one who is laughed at and has to re-read my presentation 10 times when these people can't speak any foreign languages at all?

Oh, I see. It's not about having to learn a foreign language yourself at all, it's about somebody not having to learn any. So let's not speak to them in their language and they will have to learn some. Brilliant.

Originally Posted by Johanna

Originally Posted by alexB

So is Esperanto, bright and simple but nowhere to be found.

It would be really easy to take a political decision to introduce it.

has no cultural or political associations.

And then it will no longer be neutral and will immediately become politically and culturally associated with whoever takes the political decision to introduce it. Anti-globalisation, anti-NWO, anti-EU, anti-Communism (Esperanto is associated with Communism), anti-fake languages, anti-etcetera people abound. So it's in no way less neutral than any other language. Or it is only neutral in theory, but as soon as the big dreaded EU parliament starts promoting it, people who hate the EU will hate Esperanto. English at least is associated with many things. If you don't like one aspect of it you can find a more appealing aspect. But Esperanto would not have any other aspect.

Originally Posted by Ramil

I've been learning German at School for 6 years and still I can hardly remember a dozen of words, but with English it was a completely different matter - I picked it up fairly quickly and in a matter of 6 months I could already speak and understand 80% of what I heard.
In two years my level was 'upper intermediate'.
But I have to say that much of my English experience came from many 'user's manuals', etc I had to plow through to learn Basic, Pascal, C/C++, etc
There was no localized software in my time - everything was in English back then. I learned what this or that command do by trial and error ))).

Well, there's an obvious issue with such a reasoning. You just didn't perceive German as fun and useful, while you definitely did so with English. (So did I, in fact. I know that I'm wrong, but there just isn't anything written or spoken in German that interests me much, unlike Russian, English or French. I still remember some German, and would probably have no problem with "shopping and asking directions" after a quick refresher course, but that's hardly an achievement.)

This has nothing to do with amount of new concepts you have to internalize, new phonemes to recognize or any other objective metric of difficulty you care to name. I hate to sound like a self-help guru, but strength of your wish to understand and be understood is 90% of success when learning something like foreign language. That's the only real "language instinct" there is.

Originally Posted by basurero

anti-etcetera people abound.

EDIT: Found the exact quote: "Gee - who knew there was an anti-Roman Empire constituency ?" /Commenter in Paul Krugman's blog after it was swamped with comments on Roman conquest of Britain.../

That said, Esperanto or Interlingua or whatever are nice ideas. Unworkable in the long run, but nice nonetheless.

The trouble with Esperanto and other artificial 'logical' languages is that they develop irregularities as soon as people actually use them. And as it is not the native language of any speaker at all, people from various languages will still use it to translate their idioms into Esperanto literally and not be understood. It really doesn't matter whether you translate things like "the pot calling the kettle black" into German, Russian or Esperanto, the meaning will get lost anyway.

Regular, logical, simple languages are a dream of many because they sound like little effort. But they are also artless and insufficient, and therefore they will never really gain a foothold anywhere. Reality isn't regular, logical or simple, and language is a reflection of that.

Robin

Ditto to that. I've no problem with English as lingua franca. It started to gain that status long before. Jerome K Jerome wrote about the spread of English a hundred years ago in "Three Men on the Bummel":

"Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spread acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitants of Europe. Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language a necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners. Dickens and Ouida (for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded by the prejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved at the position occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may have helped still further to popularise it. But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman who, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of any language but his own, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent. One may be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at his presumption. But the practical fact remains; he it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Only those with fair knowledge of English need apply."
Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything else than English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue throughout the world would stop. The English-speaking man stands amid the strangers and jingles his gold.
"Here," cries, "is payment for all such as can speak English."
He it is who is the great educator. Theoretically we may scold him; practically we should take our hats off to him. He is the missionary of the English tongue."

But I wouldn't want English could to replace all other languages, of course. The world would lose a great part of of its charm and diversity. Not sure that could ever happen but who knows...