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English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

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Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#51

Post by masklinn »

WalterBright wrote: post #8

I enjoy watching foreign movies with subtitles, and then trying to learn a few words in the language that way. I watched a French movie a few days ago that way, and was surprised at how many French words I already knew. I've been told that's how the Dutch learn English. The country isn't big enough to make it worth dubbing the shows, so they are shown in English with Dutch subtitles.

> I've been told that's how the Dutch learn English. The country isn't big enough to make it worth dubbing the shows, so they are shown in English with Dutch subtitles.

IIRC that's the case in all scandinavian countries, I'd also expect it in most of eastern europe (but having started much more recently).

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#52

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

xixixao wrote: post #29
petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

Yeah, what you noticed is correct, but the reason is completely wrong. edit: see the map on wiki[0] The reason it might be true that people from smaller countries speak better English is emphasis - in a small country, people are fully aware that knowing foreign language (English, German, French in Europe) is super important. People in big countries (Spain, Italy, France) don't think it's that necessary, because they…

It's not just emphasis, it's necessity. Smaller countries have to deal with other countries more, and so too do their citizens.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#53

Post by bazzargh »

bshimmin wrote: post #20

Great read. This bit was especially interesting to me: Still, guess what, nobody has issues understanding one of another region, or even from a Switzerland canton. I learnt standard Italian (Tuscan) whilst I lived in Bologna, and achieved a reasonable level of fluency - though sadly quite rusty now, a decade later - but I really struggled with regional dialects, especially in Sicily and Venice. It's not just the diff…

Of course none of the accents in that clip are supposed to be Glaswegian...they're all meant to be from Edinburgh (though Robert Carlyle was born in Maryhill in Glasgow). For the full Glaswegian effect, try this bit of Rab C Nesbitt, parodying the fact that previous series of this show had been shown subtitled in England

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud9LT7R60kU#t=6m30s

on the other hand we from Glasgow don't seem to have problems understanding accented US stuff (eg The Wire)...I guess because we're brought up on imported TV. The Glasgow accent is nothing though compared to full-on Geordie and Aberdonian dialects, with lots of non-English vocabulary.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#54

Post by zokier »

pizzeys wrote: post #34

I think this fact (and he's obviously not wrong, though I don't know if I'd label it a secret - everyone knows this about English, I thought?) is inevitable from any language which gains the reach English did, or at least, gained the reach English did at the time English did... whether it would be different now we have global communication all the time remains to be seen I suppose. How do you have a language spoken b…

Does french suffer from the same issues? It has been spread pretty widely too and with long history.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#55

Post by masklinn »

pizzeys wrote: post #34

I think this fact (and he's obviously not wrong, though I don't know if I'd label it a secret - everyone knows this about English, I thought?) is inevitable from any language which gains the reach English did, or at least, gained the reach English did at the time English did... whether it would be different now we have global communication all the time remains to be seen I suppose. How do you have a language spoken b…

Both french and spanish have a huge number of speakers, yet haven't broken to the extent that english has. And the issue of english phonetics long predates its rise to primacy as the international language.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#56

Post by legulere »

petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

If you look at the countries in Europe that are good at speaking English it's actually two big factors you see:

- The consumption of English media you mentioned

- Other Germanic languages. Even though English has moved away quite far from the other Germanic languages, there's still quite some Germanic heritage in for instance in how to generally express yourself. The problems arise when things are actually different. Swedes for instance often have a problem pronouncing the /tʃ/ sound and pronounce chip like ship. But for speakers of Germanic languages the problems are fewer.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#58

Post by codelike »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #44
codelike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although when you compare the English that Austrians and Germans speak (I'm from Germany) to the English of Scandinavians and Dutch people, the latter are noticeably better than the German-speaking countries. So the argument probably has some merit. Edit: At the same time, Scandinavians, the Dutch and Germans/Austrians all have a language that is more closely related to English than the Romanic or Slavic languages.

> Although when you compare the English that Austrians and Germans speak (I'm from Germany) to the English of Scandinavians and Dutch people, they are noticeably better than the German-speaking countries. Historically sure, but if you look at people from my generation I doubt that's the case still. Focused English education in Austria only really started 15 years ago. When I went to school our first english lesson wa…

So you have the impression that young Austrians nowadays are better with English? In Germany they have started to teach English at a much younger age, too, but I haven't noticed a big improvement. Sure, at age 10 they already know more than the kids 10-20 years ago, because they've learned it for 3-4 years already. But I get the impression that a couple of years after leaving school, the language skills deteriorate again because they stop practicing it. And that seems to be the point where movies in English would help a lot: you stay used to the language (at least hearing it).

On the other hand, that might be selective perception on my part and things might have gotten better. Or maybe Austria has improved more than Germany, which is entirely conceivable.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#59

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

> English spelling is another thing though. Im still struggling with that.

You're in good company since many native speakers can't spell either. English's greatest virtue is a high degree of fault tolerance.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#60

Post by freedryk »

metafunctor wrote: post #38
xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

English does not have a simple set of rules for pronunciation or dictation. Spelling bees don't exist for most languages, but it's a thing for English. So yes, I'd say English is “phonetically broken”, if that means it's difficult to figure out how to convert from spoken words to text and vice versa. I am not a linguist, but I speak English, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, and German. English does seem to be an unusually…

This is so true. It's even worse than spelling bees though. Dyslexia is less of a problem for non-english speakers because our writing system is so messed up. We we have letters that not only represent multiple sounds, but redundantly duplicate the sound of other letter combos (c->k,s; x->z,ks; q->kw). We have multiple letter combos for single phonemes (ch, sh, th). "th" actually represents two phonemes--compare "there" to "through" and you'll see they are two different sounds (try to say through like you would say there). English is a mess.
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