English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by masklinn » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #31

angry-hacker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, I thought every country subtitles movies/tv-shows that are not produced in their own language. When I moved abroad, to Spain, I found it amusing to play clips to movie fans in English and ask who is this? Based on the sound. Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio etc. - they didn't know any because the famous ones have even their personal voice doublants.

Germany is well known for dubbing their TV shows, many other countries do this too. The funny thing is that too can help you learn a language if you already know the program in your own language, but it doesn't really help expose 'the natives' to more languages.

> Germany is well known for dubbing their TV shows, many other countries do this too.

All of the large western european countries, basically all of western europe except for the nordics (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, possibly the Netherlands).

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

#62

Post by syllogism » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #56

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.…

Finnish is not a Germanic language.

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

#63

Post by phatbyte » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

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…

I'm From Portugal and can confirm this, and I'd say almost everyone especially people between 12-45 know how to speak english fluently.

Most of this is because we grow up watching movies and tv shows with subtitles. Heck, I even remember watching Cartoon Network without any subtitles at all.

Another thing I noticed is how good the english accent is from people from Portugal and Sweden.

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

#64

Post by Vomzor » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

I think you're wrong. Dubbing or subtitles make a big difference. In Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) we have 8 years of French in school and only 5 years of English. Even though France is our neighbor and 40 % of Belgium's speaks French, most young people their English is still much better than their French. It's because we grew up surrounded by English; English songs, English tv shows and movies with subtitles. Older generations speak better French because the media used to be more focussed on France.

Young Flemish or Walloon people even speak English to each other..

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

#65

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

A bit of anecdotal evidence that hopefully can be confirmed with more certainty

The number of subtitled movies in France (or at least in Paris), what they call VO/VOST, in the last 10 years in cinemas has increased considerably

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

#66

Post by andreasvc » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

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…

You make it sound too easy. You don't "automatically" learn a language by hearing its sounds on TV (although it most likely helps). You need to engage with a language, preferably by real life interaction. Not dubbing movies is not a silver bullet to second language learning.

I think it's much more plausible to say that the smaller countries of Europe have more of a economic necessity to be proficient in a second language (which often happens to be English).

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

#67

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #31

angry-hacker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, I thought every country subtitles movies/tv-shows that are not produced in their own language. When I moved abroad, to Spain, I found it amusing to play clips to movie fans in English and ask who is this? Based on the sound. Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio etc. - they didn't know any because the famous ones have even their personal voice doublants.

Germany is well known for dubbing their TV shows, many other countries do this too. The funny thing is that too can help you learn a language if you already know the program in your own language, but it doesn't really help expose 'the natives' to more languages.

Yeah, TV shows are a specific area I guess

Not so sure about Cinemas (in Berlin there is an English only movie theatre though)

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

#68

Post by perakojotgenije » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

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…

Nope, I think the reason that user "petke" has mentioned is correct. I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but here it is: I live in a small town near the serbian-hungarian border and we can watch both Hungarian and Serbian TV stations. In Serbia movies are subtitled (so you can hear English language all the time) while in Hungary movies are dubbed (so you can't hear anything other than hungarian language on TV). Serbian families who live here watch mostly serbian TV and hungarian families watch mostly hungarian TV stations. Ask any English teacher here and they will all tell you that there is very clear distinction between level of knowledge in serbian vs hungarian kids. They all live in the same town, go to the same school, the only difference is that those kids who watched serbian TV stations had much bigger exposure to english language as opposed to those who watched hungarian TV stations.

Your reasoning that the size of the country matters doesn't hold water because both countries are small.

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

#69

Post by bshimmin » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #28

grecy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is my first language, I've spoken it all of my 33 years, and I am an Engineer. I have no idea what "contumely" means, or how to pronounce it. You're doing great :)

contumely means an insult, it almost exclusively comes up in Shakespeare. 99% of people on the street would not know that word

I'm guessing 99% of people wouldn't know what "beatify" meant either, and a significant number would think it was a typo for "beautify". Those two words also rather nicely express the vagaries of English pronunciation (the latter is pronounced to rhyme with "pew", the former "bee-A...", which almost feels like it deserves a diaeresis, except we don't do those in English).

I leave the gentle reader with the English place name Beaulieu, which probably isn't pronounced anything like you'd expect, or how it should be.

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

#70

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

codelike wrote: post #58

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #44

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, 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 a…

> So you have the impression that young Austrians nowadays are better with English?

As someone who is married to a native Russian speaker and we both moved to Austria (me from the UK though born in Austria, my wife from Russia), we regularly have conversations with others in English rather than German because everybody seems to actively prefer that.

So at least from general experience you can get the majority of services in English here. The exception seems to be immigrant taxi drivers and local hairdressers.