Do you speak another language besides English?

[+ Gar1eth]

I did a three-week intensive German course at the Goethe Institut in Rothenburg in Northern Bavaria. It was astonishing how fast you learn in the immersion setting. When you don't have the option of peeking at a dictionary, you become very resourceful at understanding and finding a way to say what you want. When I was in Frankfurt, before the course started, I was walking along and I saw a big sign, "Ladenflaeche" on the window of a big empty store. In the context, even though the word was unfamiliar, I recognized immediately that the sign said "retail space." In an immersion environment like that, you have such "Aha" moments 10's of times in a single day.

 

 

My 10 day intensive Spanish class at Dartmouth was immersive. But I have to tell you even though we were supposed to converse only in Spanish, being at the very basic level, if we hadn't cheated after class, myself and the others at my level would have been mostly silent outside class.

 

Gman

[+ Gar1eth]

Spot on. I always require a native speaker when I learn a language, irrespective of whether they are teaching me the standard register of their language or not. Nothing against non-native speakers, but accent is a very important aspect of learning for me, in that I actually want to speak with an accent that would make a native go: "Are you sure you're not local?"

 

(It's only happened twice in my travels, but hey, I still wear that like a badge of honor!)

 

I guess I can say that I got lucky when I took French in college. My professor was a Marseillais who then was only living in the US with his wife for five years. He has picked up on a number of Americanisms, but not the accent, and he is (was) very adamant that it would stay that way.

 

My French teacher was an old lady, close to retirement who spoke French with this godawful American accent. She made no attempt to speak with an authentic accent. Even as a kid, I used to ask myself, "What's wrong with this picture?'

 

Many years ago, I knew a wealthy old lady. She was the widow of a Texas oilman and seemed to have piles of money - she drove around in a Bentley and had a small household staff. She spoke French fluently, but with that same godawful American accent that my French teacher used. She liked to surround herself with people who spoke French, preferably native speakers, but non-native speakers who were skilled enough were OK , too. She would have lunches and dinners with 10-12 guests where only French was spoken. It was incongruous to hear her speak, because, on the one hand, her command of the language was so good, but on the other hand, her accent was so bad. I could never understand how somebody could have made the effort to become fluent in the language and yet make no attempt to speak with an authentic accent.

 

 

Geoffrey seems to agree with you about bad accents.

 

"There was also a nun, a PRIORESS,

Who, in her smiling, modest was and coy;

120 Her greatest oath was but "By Saint Eloy!"

And she was called Madam Eglantine.

Very well she sang the service divine,

Intoning through her nose, becomingly;

And she spoke French fairly and fluently,

125 After the school of Stratford-at-the-Bow,

For French of Paris style she didn't know."

 

 

Gman

[BSR]

I tend to disagree regarding the desirability of having a native Spanish speaker teaching Spanish - especially in California. Here in California a native Spanish speaker can become qualified to teach Spanish, in a public school, if he or she passes a competency exam; many have never taken a class in Spanish grammar or literature. The exam although written is objective – true/false and multiple choice and many who pass it are virtually illiterate. They don’t know Spanish grammar and their vocabulary is a terrible combination of Spanish and English. In other words they don’t speak Spanish they speak Spanglish or Cholo.

 

Examples being:

English Spanish Spanglish/Cholo

To eat lunch Almorzar Lonchear

Shoe Store Zapateria Shoeteria

Brakes Frenos Breques

Truck Camion Troque

Market Mercado Marketa

to park Estacionar Parkear

 

This type of Spanglish/Cholo works just fine along the U.S. Mexican border but is worthless when one tries to speak with someone anywhere else in the Spanish speaking world. As a rule non-native Spanish speaking teachers know the grammar and vocabulary of the language and even if their accent isn't great their students learn correct Spanish.

Having a good accent in any foreign language has more to do with how good an ear a student has. Some students will naturally have an excellent accent and others, no matter how much they try and no matter how good the accent of their teacher is, will never have a good accent. In graduate school I took a class from a professor who was one of the world's leading authorities in twentieth century Mexican literature yet every time he opened his mouth and spoke a word of Spanish I shuttered. It was immediately obvious that he had a tin ear as he spoke Spanish with a heavy god-awful gringo accent.

Well, if a "Spanglish" speaker, with no degree or certification, can get licensed to teach Spanish in California public schools, then that sounds like a case where government royally f*cked up (gee, as if that never happens). I ran into a high school classmate in my mid-20s. We had both been to France recently, and we were both in the same French class senior year of high school. We weren't friends but I remembered her well because we were both "French nerds," that is, two of the few kids who were really into studying French. She was laughing because when she went to France, after 4 years of HS French (but with a teacher who spoke with an American accent), she couldn't understand a single word French people said but could understand every word when Americans spoke French. I don't know if there will ever be an official ranking of World's Most Useless Skills, but if one were ever compiled, "the ability to understand Americans when they speak a foreign language but not a word when natives speak that language" would have to be right near if not at the very top of that list.

 

This is a case where you can have your cake and eat it too. In Spain, with its sky-high unemployment rate, there are countless unemployed Spanish majors. I'm guessing the same is true in Mexico and other Latin/South American countries. You could recruit Spanish major university graduates from those countries, put them through a crash course on how to teach Spanish as a 2nd language (3 months or so), and hire them to teach Spanish in American schools. Before they arrive, make sure housing and transportation is arranged. Of course, you would need to set up a support system for these new teachers, such as connecting them with the local Mexican (or Colombian, Peruvian, etc.) community and ensuring they have help with issues like visas and taxes. Set them up with a go-to contact, someone to help them maneuver through all the day-to-day issues like getting a cell phone, setting up utilities, getting cable/phone/internet, dealing with a parking ticket (kaben zotz!), etc. After the first year, you can set up the next year's teachers with a big brother/sister to mentor the newbies. I think such a program would be highly feasible for Spanish teachers. For French, German, Italian (does anybody in the U.S. even study Italian in high school?), and Mandarin, the degree of difficulty is higher, but it's still feasible, in my opinion. This could definitely work in big and medium-sized cities, maybe even in small cities. For rural/isolated areas where there is no support community for foreign teachers, I'd favor online courses for the kids over classes with an American speaker of the foreign language.

 

Yes, of course it's important to be learn proper grammar when learning a foreign language because only with correct grammar can one learn to read & write in that language. But one of the principal goals should also be the ability to communicate orally, to be able to speak and to understand that language. I don't argue for native-speaker teachers so that kids can nail down an authentic, pass-for-a-local accent. A native accent is difficult to pick up after 14 years of age and nigh impossible after 18. I argue for native speakers because you can't possibly know what real Spanish (not Spanglish, mind you) sounds like if you study with an American teacher with an American accent and pronunciation (I have yet to meet an American Spanish teacher who truly mastered the Spanish "R"). Look, I'm not trashing my HS French teacher: she had a degree in French, she spoke with correct grammar and pronunciation (for the most part), and she knew how to teach French as a foreign language (but couldn't pronounce the French "R" to save her life). But four years of serious study yet you don't understand a word when you get to France? My HS classmate could communicate just fine if she begged the French person to slow down (a LOT), but the moment they started "speaking normal," she was lost. Four years of serious study with a native speaker wouldn't guarantee fluency, but at least she would understand a respectable degree of real-world French, not just classroom French.

 

By the way, when I was in Spain almost 30 years ago, the teachers insisted we say estacionar instead of aparcar because estacionar was the true Spanish word whereas aparcar was an Anglicism. But from the last year and some that I've been watching Spanish TV, it seems nobody says estacionar any more. Spaniards all say aparcar nowadays, like "tengo el coche aparcado en doble fila."

Edited September 8, 2015 by BSR

[whipped guy]

Regarding made up words, there is a word that is unique to my area that has a very complex etymology.

 

Years ago there was a Jewish guy who would travel the streets buying and selling rags. He was known by English speaking individuals as the "Rag Man". As he traversed the streets he would yell out, "Cash paid for rags!" However, he did so in an extremely heavy Yiddish accent that completely distorted the English words that he was attempting to intone. As such, the Italians who barely spoke English anyway and certainly could not comprehend when the other person spoke with a heavy accent, interpreted things to sound something like, "Shpiporags"! Therefore the word "Shpiporags" was born! It was used in two ways: to reference the Jewish vendor, but also to indicate that someone looked disheveled and was dressed in rags. Many times as a child if I came in from playing outside and I was dirty and perhaps ripped my shirt or got a hole in my pants my mom would say that I looked like a "Shpiporags"! The word is still used to this day among older individuals. However, only by local Italians and those who associated with Italians, many of whom think that it is an Italian word! I fear it will be totally forgotten in a decade or two.

 

Personally I think that the original Italian word for ragman straccivendolo has a nice ring to it, but obviously a hundred years ago some folks thought otherwise.

 

Just a bit of local lore.

Edited September 8, 2015 by whipped guy

[Epigonos]

I learned Spanish grammar and literature during three years of high school Spanish and four years of university Spanish. I learned to SPEAK Spanish fluently by living for three years in Mexico and Guatemala. One does not learn to speak a foreign language fluently in a classroom studying for an hour a day. One learns to speak a foreign language fluently by living in a country where the language is spoken – it’s called total immersion. One has an excellent accent or one does not because one has an excellent ear for accents or one does not.

[Rudynate]

. For French, German, Italian (does anybody in the U.S. even study Italian in high school?)"

 

At the high school I attended in New York State, one could learn Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, Italian and Hebrew. I don't know whether those options are still available, maybe not, since public education is being starved out of existence.

[liubit]

In Mexico, we still say estacionar when we park our car, BSR. Nobody uses aparcar, which does sound like an Anglicism to me....

[Rudynate]

I tend to disagree regarding the desirability of having a native Spanish speaker teaching Spanish - especially in California. Here in California a native Spanish speaker can become qualified to teach Spanish, in a public school, if he or she passes a competency exam; many have never taken a class in Spanish grammar or literature. The exam although written is objective – true/false and multiple choice and many who pass it are virtually illiterate. They don’t know Spanish grammar and their vocabulary is a terrible combination of Spanish and English. In other words they don’t speak Spanish they speak Spanglish or Cholo.

 

.

 

That doesn't mean that you don't hire native speakers. It does mean that the hiring process is broken because it allows unqualified people to be teaching.

[+ Gar1eth]

That doesn't mean that you don't hire native speakers. It does mean that the hiring process is broken because it allows unqualified people to be teaching.

 

There are pluses and minuses for hiring native speakers. If they do get hired, they need to know their own languages grammar from an analytical standpoint. Otherwise they can't really explain things to students when there are questions.

 

Gman

[gregkidman]

I am a little late to this thread but I remember a travel guide stating that if you have three men sitting at dinner where one is Portuguese, one is Spanish, and one is Italian. Then the Portuguese could understand both the Italian and the Spaniard when they spoke, the Italian would only understand the Spaniard when he spoke. The Spaniard would understand only Spanish.

[+ Charlie]

At the high school I attended in New York State, one could learn Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, Italian and Hebrew. I don't know whether those options are still available, maybe not, since public education is being starved out of existence.

In my public high school, students took Latin, German, French or Spanish. Then at the beginning of WWII, they stopped German, and never reinstated it.

 

When the urban community college I taught at first opened, liberal arts majors were required to take German, French or Spanish, and one could also major in one of those languages. So few students chose German that all courses were dropped after a few years. After ten years, we were down to a single professor of French, who had to teach an occasional Italian elective to fill her teaching schedule; when she retired, she was replaced by a part-time adjunct. The school now offers courses in Arabic, Chinese, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Swahili, but Spanish has become the only foreign language with full-time professors and possibility as a major, in a college with over 40,000 students.

[Epigonos]

BSR you point is well taken and the official reasoning behind the Spanish Language Certification exam is interesting and is done for three reasons.

1. A college/university major or minor in Spanish required major time and effort. It is much easier to major in U.S. History or Ethnic Studies, for example, and then pass the Spanish Language certification exam and be able to teach the class without taking a single class in Spanish.

2. There are not enough people graduating from colleges and universities with Spanish majors and minors to fill the need for Spanish language teachers.

3. In California there is a major bush to but minority teachers in classrooms to provide "role models" for minority students. This policy encourages Hispanic students to pass the exam so them can enter classrooms in an area where there is a need for teachers and positions are readily available.

[BSR]

I learned Spanish grammar and literature during three years of high school Spanish and four years of university Spanish. I learned to SPEAK Spanish fluently by living for three years in Mexico and Guatemala. One does not learn to speak a foreign language fluently in a classroom studying for an hour a day. One learns to speak a foreign language fluently by living in a country where the language is spoken – it’s called total immersion. One has an excellent accent or one does not because one has an excellent ear for accents or one does not.

Your Spanish may be fluent, but your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired. No, of course you can't learn to speak a foreign language fluently in the classroom. But by hiring native speakers, students will at least learn what the language really sounds like, and thereby gain some degree of oral comprehension.

 

American schools really need to revisit their approach to teaching foreign languages. Like I stated before, I am constantly shocked & disgusted by American kids' level of Spanish despite all their years of study. The question I love to pose is to ask them to explain the sport of baseball in Spanish. It's pretty simple & easy, one could do it with just a basic level, yet kids always give me a blank stare as if I had asked them to explain nuclear physics in Spanish.

 

I figured that the ridiculous CA certification standard was some feel-good, diversity-motivated push. Merit? What the hell is that??

[Epigonos]

BSE I’m not quite sure what you meant by the following: “Your Spanish may be fluent, but your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired.” How do you have anyway of knowing whether or not my “reading comprehension leaves something to be desired”? Just as a matter of clarification I taught, for over twenty years, Spanish Literature and Latin American Literature. I have been retired for a dozen years but I still read the authors of the La Literatura Revolucionario de Mexico in SPANISH. My favorite South American author happens to be Jorge Luis Borjes and he is best read in Spanish as his works don't translate well into English.

 

I am in total agreement with you, however, on the following: “ I figured that the ridiculous CA certification standard was some feel-good, diversity-motivated push. Merit? What the hell is that??” What it is, is absolute bullshit.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Epigonos

[whipped guy]

I am a little late to this thread but I remember a travel guide stating that if you have three men sitting at dinner where one is Portuguese, one is Spanish, and one is Italian. Then the Portuguese could understand both the Italian and the Spaniard when they spoke, the Italian would only understand the Spaniard when he spoke. The Spaniard would understand only Spanish.

Several years ago I was in the company of a person from Argentina and Brazil. Obviously One spoke Spanish and the other Brazilian Portuguese. The were both speaking in their native tongue and were carrying on quite a conversation. At first I did not realize that was happening, Then a mutual friend turned to me and explained that they were both speaking in their own language. Perhaps in this case the fact that the Spanish speaking person was from Argentina and the Portuguese spoken was of the Brazilian variety made all the difference!!!!

 

I know nothing about Portuguese, but as was mentioned previously in this thread I find Italian to be much more complicated from a grammatical point of view than Spanish.

[+ Gar1eth]

I am a little late to this thread but I remember a travel guide stating that if you have three men sitting at dinner where one is Portuguese, one is Spanish, and one is Italian. Then the Portuguese could understand both the Italian and the Spaniard when they spoke, the Italian would only understand the Spaniard when he spoke. The Spaniard would understand only Spanish.

 

Several years ago I was in the company of a person from Argentina and Brazil. Obviously One spoke Spanish and the other Brazilian Portuguese. The were both speaking in their native tongue and were carrying on quite a conversation. At first I did not realize that was happening, Then a mutual friend turned to me and explained that they were both speaking in their own language. Perhaps in this case the fact that the Spanish speaking person was from Argentina and the Portuguese spoken was of the Brazilian variety made all the difference!!!!

 

I know nothing about Portuguese, but as was mentioned previously in this thread I find Italian to be much more complicated from a grammatical point of view than Spanish.

 

And there is my experience of actually working with educated Brazilians-they even went to college together-where one of them was fine understanding and speaking Spanish and the other just about had no clue.

 

Gman

[whipped guy]

Sorry, but this thread reminded me of the following!

 

 

A classic linguistic moment if there ever was one!

[+ Gar1eth]

Sorry, but this thread reminded me of the following!

 

 

A classic linguistic moment if there ever was one!

 

That was ausgezeichnet!!!

 

Gman

[Guest]

Sorry, but this thread reminded me of the following!

 

A classic linguistic moment if there ever was one!

 

I remember the warning on the old French Franc bills:

L'Article 139 du Code Pénal Punit de la Réclusion Criminelle a Perpetuité Ceux qui Auront Contrefait ou

Falsifié les Billets de Banque Autorisés par la Loi. Ainsi que Ceux qui Auront Fait Usage de Ces Billets Contrefaits

ou Falsifiés. Ceux Qui les Auront Introduits en France Seront Punis de la Même Peine.

In other words: Article 139 of the Penal Code punishes with permanent incarceration those who will have counterfeited or falsified bank notes as authorized by law. Those who bring them into France will be punished with the same penalty. No counterfeiter could say he didn't know the risk he was running!

http://imunier.free.fr/Collections/billets/France/500V89G.jpg

 

Earlier versions promised a lifetime of hard labor for the counterfeiter, or even anyone who USED such bank notes!

http://sceco.univ-poitiers.fr/hfranc/images/medCP.jpg

[samandtham]

Or, this.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO2ZMlqVoA0

 

"You're just adding le to every word!"

[+ Gar1eth]

I remember the warning on the old French Franc bills:

L'Article 139 du Code Pénal Punit de la Réclusion Criminelle a Perpetuité Ceux qui Auront Contrefait ou

Falsifié les Billets de Banque Autorisés par la Loi. Ainsi que Ceux qui Auront Fait Usage de Ces Billets Contrefaits

ou Falsifiés. Ceux Qui les Auront Introduits en France Seront Punis de la Même Peine.

In other words: Article 139 of the Penal Code punishes with permanent incarceration those who will have counterfeited or falsified bank notes as authorized by law. Those who bring them into France will be punished with the same penalty. No counterfeiter could say he didn't know the risk he was running!

http://imunier.free.fr/Collections/billets/France/500V89G.jpg

 

Earlier versions promised a lifetime of hard labor for the counterfeiter, or even anyone who USED such bank notes!

http://sceco.univ-poitiers.fr/hfranc/images/medCP.jpg

 

Devil's Island!!

 

Gman

[+ Italiano]

I am a little late to this thread but I remember a travel guide stating that if you have three men sitting at dinner where one is Portuguese, one is Spanish, and one is Italian. Then the Portuguese could understand both the Italian and the Spaniard when they spoke, the Italian would only understand the Spaniard when he spoke. The Spaniard would understand only Spanish.

 

 

Being Italian my first language, Spanish my second (totally fluent) and understanding some Portuguese I can tell you that definitely the Portuguese would understand almost everything of Spanish and some Italian. The Spaniard would understand definitely more Italian than Portuguese, the Italian would understand most Spanish (not from Spain, but yes from Latin America apart from Central America's Islands!) but very little Portuguese.

[samandtham]

In the same train of thought, will a German understand a Dutch, or is it vice versa? I have only elementary knowledge of German (and my ear hasn't been developed for it yet), but I find that some spoken Dutch sound quite similar to German.

[doya66]

I speak Chinese & French in addition to English, and smatterings of other languages. One thing I've noticed is that if you meet a white American man who is a native English speaker but who speaks a second language fluently, there's a good chance that he's gay. This is just an observation, and I have no statistics to back it up, but it's been my experience. And among white Americans studying Chinese, somewhere over half seem to be left handed. Again, I have no statistics here, but am absolutely certain that left-handers study Chinese way out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. And yes, I'm gay & left handed.

[+ Gar1eth]

In the same train of thought, will a German understand a Dutch, or is it vice versa? I have only elementary knowledge of German (and my ear hasn't been developed for it yet), but I find that some spoken Dutch sound quite similar to German.

 

I am nowhere near fluent in German. And if any native speakers of Dutch or German think differently I will gladly concede, but I doubt in general that they could understand each other very well at all except for maybe the Germans/Dutch/Belgiums living right near the borders of Holland, Germany, and Belgium. I'm betting their native dialects might be more understandable in those regions. Dutch is pronounced very differently and the words have changed a lot in spelling compared to standard German.

 

Gman