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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)

#231

Post by kwhitefoot »

gongador wrote: post #169
kwhitefoot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds plausible unless you happen to know that children's programmes are dubbed, at least they are in Norway and as far as I know in the rest of the Nordic area. As an adult subtitled programmes are very useful for locals learning English and foreigners, like me, learning Norwegian. English spelling is often a problem because people are told that it is simply irregular when the truth is that if you know a little ety…

As far as I can remember, that's a relatively recent trend though (dubbing childrens' programmes), at least in Sweden. I can't remember any being dubbed until possibly in the late 1990s, more likely the early 2000s.

Been in Norway 30 years now and all three children grew up here from the late 80s. Children's television has always been either dubbed or home grown.

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

#232

Post by foldr »

StavrosK wrote: post #221
mamcx wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kind-of-rule based in personal observations, is that spanish people closer to the sea talk FASTER than the rest. We have somebody in the family that is know as: "Blah ahk guak fiuya sdsds caramañola ñame!". And " caramañola ñame" is the only thing you will understand 100% of him ;) -- the other text is not a perfect rendition. In fact, nobody agree how exactly him talk when left him at full speed! How fast is the t…

Oh man, don't get me started. I'm trying to learn Spanish, and if I watch a movie from Spain, there's no "v" sound, everything is "b". If I watch a movie from Mexico, it's the other way around! Trying to get the accent right on my trips to Spain are pretty frustrating to me, although it's a pretty minor difference, so it ends up fine.

Surely both sounds exist in both vatieties? Mexicans don't pronounce 'bueno' with an initial fricative, and people from Spain don't pronounce 'estuvo' with a plosive at the beginning of the final syllable.

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

#233

Post by StavrosK »

foldr wrote: post #232
StavrosK wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, don't get me started. I'm trying to learn Spanish, and if I watch a movie from Spain, there's no "v" sound, everything is "b". If I watch a movie from Mexico, it's the other way around! Trying to get the accent right on my trips to Spain are pretty frustrating to me, although it's a pretty minor difference, so it ends up fine.

Surely both sounds exist in both vatieties? Mexicans don't pronounce 'bueno' with an initial fricative, and people from Spain don't pronounce 'estuvo' with a plosive at the beginning of the final syllable.

I don't know enough to know, I thought the Spanish did pronounce it "estubo".

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

#234

Post by DanBC »

vorg wrote: post #191
DanBC wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue the "phonetically broken" nature of English has more to do with his learning it as a second language than anything intrinsically wrong with English. ough: Bough (ow), Though (oh), through (oo), thorough (uh), rough (uff), cough (off), hiccough (up) That's broken.

"Hiccough" is spelt "hiccup" by nearly everyone nowadays. In comic books, "though" is often spelt "tho", and "through" spelt "thru". The US and UK should get together and create a small language spelling reform group to suggest more such changes to the 20% of words that cause 80% of the problems, e.g. changing "thorough" to "thuruh", "rough" to "ruff", and "cough" to "coff".

Moon Joon? bedrum?

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

#235

Post by andreasvc »

ap3 wrote: post #178
noamyoungerm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language Then how do babies ever learn to speak? The most fluent speakers of foreign languages are almost always immigrants, because exposure is the key to learning to speak.

Anecdotally: my kid that grew up in the US in a spanish speaking home speaks fluent english. The other one that moved to the US at 4 speaks english with an accent. No one speaks english at home, same people at home - only difference is the language on the TV. It works.

He probably has peers that speak English with him, that has a larger effect than the language spoken at home, or on TV.

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

#236

Post by glitchdout »

icebraining wrote: post #128
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Not here in Portugal - only shows for children are dubbed.

But only recently.

I learned a lot of English just watching Cartoon Network (undubbed and unsubbed)!

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

#237

Post by perakojotgenije »

scarmig wrote: post #77
perakojotgenije wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). S…

Wow, that's an awesome natural experiment. Can you share the name of the town? Or would any town near the border do?

The name of the town is Senta, although I guess that any nearby town which has bilingual population would do.

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

#238

Post by th-ai »

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…

Spelling English is a pain. Can modern text reduce this pain? How can you see the sound in text?

Written and spoken English can sync CAPS in sylLABles while vocaliIZED. http://th.ai youtube CCaptions=ON, text=monospace, see syllables precisely while you hear them, playback SLOW.

In theory, constant experience of SYNCHronous vocALized TEXT will help you spell better faster.

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

#239

Post by tripzilch »

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…

Pretty sure I knew (a little) English even before learning it in school. My theory for that has always been subtitles as well. When we learned German in school (which is much more similar to my mother tongue Dutch), I found it very hard. German shows were also subtitled, but there were a lot fewer of them on TV.

Side-note: A few years ago, I read about a project for "same language subtitling" (of soap TV series, nonetheless) to improve literacy in India. Don't have a link for that, unfortunately.

Your reasoning makes sense, and probably plays a role, but I believe subtitling of English TV plays at least as much of a role. A lot of German TV is dubbed, and the effect of this also carries over to smaller German-speaking countries, like Austria. Now one could argue that this is, according to your reasoning, because they are part of the larger German-speaking community. But that really isn't the case, ask any Austrian, most of them will tell you their mother tongue is Austrian (which is not a written language, but also quite a bit more unique than merely German-with-a-dialect), and "high German" is definitely something they had to learn separately.

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

#240

Post by tripzilch »

andreasvc wrote: post #109
Vomzor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we don't use dubbing, English is way more prevalent. Most kids have a somewhat basic grasp of English before being taught in school. Years of hearing English also made it easier to learn in school. You already know how to pronounce many words, it's also less foreign because you grew up with it. With French, you learn it in school and when you go home.. That's it, no more French influences. With English, you t…

So I agree with all your points, except that the subtitling/dubbing issue is the cause of all this. The subtitling/dubbing is an effect, not a cause. Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language. The status/prestige/coolness is a cultural thing, and this is what explains the difference in motivation to learn languages.

> Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language.

It totally does. Especially when you're young. I think you thinking about a lower amount of exposure though. It needs to be quite a lot, not like hanging out at a French-speaking family once a week, but more like watching 30-45 minutes of subtitled cartoons/shows daily.

(maybe it was more, not sure how much TV I watched when I was little, and how much of it was subtitled. I do remember my parents didn't let me watch The A-Team because it was just about guns and violence ... :P :P)

Also, you can keep your position, but so far there are several people from all over Europe and elsewhere, confirming personal anecdotes about the difference subtitled TV shows make.

I want to emphasize the difference it makes whether you are young or not. The effortlessness by which young kids pick up languages, seemingly through osmosis, is just insane. I work with kids a lot, some of them come from crazy places, the younger they are, often after just a year in NL, hardly even an accent (translating for their parents at 8). On the other hand, adults that move here, even in their early twenties, if they don't make an explicit effort, forget it, after 3-5 years they still speak three Dutch sentences (I admit that it doesn't help that any Dutch person will immediately switch to English as soon as they hear you're having a tiny bit of trouble with the language. Not the case for small children, of course. Unless they already speak English).

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