Language skills!?

[BrankoL]

Here is my "2 bits" supplement to the popular thread on this forum " Can you speak croatian"?:

What is a person, who speaks 3 languages?

Tri-lingual!

And two?

Bi-lingual

A just one?

English!

[Ribaric]

and American, Canadian, Australian, Kiwi, South African, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Wolverhampton......perhaps not Wolverhampton.

[seka]

You are mostly wrong Ribaric: 40 million Americans speak Spanish, a lot of Canadians speak French, many Irish speak Gaelic etc

You are only right about Wolverhampton, nice people living there and many are bi-lingual English and Urdu, with a smattering of Pushtu.

BTW, brankol, you are rude, and you are fired, as Alan Sugar would say.

Am I right or what?

[lojalnost]

Lots of people speak another language but still think in their old one. It may have been easier if they had never bothered! You usually end up mixing the languages. I mean some things just don't translate the same. Different inflections?

[gmh]

Actually it's true that most people of english heritage don't speak another language.
I would argue that the 40million americans that speak spanish are made up of 95% people with mexican, south american or spanish heritage.
It's probably the same for other countires, the majority of people who do speak another language have some family connection to that language.
In europe it's standard to learn at least english as a second language and quite often a couple of others.

[mambo]

An American friend of mine once said: 'why would we have to learn another language ? Most of the people in the US will only travel from one city to another and if they are lucky they will travel to Las Vegas....................where they will also speak English'.

It is true that most Americans will not travel beyond their onw state bounderies, but the ones that do should speak another language.

Problem for Europe of course is that if you travel 2 hours by plane you can end up in a country where they speak completely different languages again !

Most of the smaller countries in Europe do teach other languages at schools. For me (Holland) it meant that German, English, French and of course Dutch were mandatory for at 4 years and after that I was allowed to drop one. At that time I didn't like it that much, but at this moment I am benifitting from it. Only problem was that when I was living in Italy I had to start all over again, the Italians hardly speak any English, German or French so no other option than to learn that language as well.
Same applied during my time in the Caribbean. Most people on Curacao speak Papiamentu, which I won't even call a language, it is more 'noise' or 'sounds that people make when they are drunk'. Since everybody did also speak Spanish I figured out quickly that this language would be more benificial for me. Also Spanish is close to Italian and French, not a big problem picking it up.

Croatian however is a completely different story, I have no feeling with the language, cannot pronounce it, so I am sticking with Italian and German and working with a translator.

[Ribaric]

I also had the opportunity to learn a second language at school. French was the only option and you could drop it after one year - which I did on the basis that only rich people went abroad and that wasn't to be my destiny. Foresight wasn't my strongpoint I have to admit. Now the brain has much less ability to take on new stuff.
I needed a good kick in the pants as a teenager but never got it, my "school" (a loose term in this case) was concerned only with turning out fodder for the local Ford motor factory down the road in Dagenham...not that I was bright enough to see that at the time. One girl got to university from my class, the story made the local newspaper!

What a way for a country to treat it's young people

[Ribaric]

English can be pretty crazy too.

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The full dump had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture
6) The deserter got his just desserts in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.(US)
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer.
16) The farmer taught his sow to sow seeds. (US)
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) I shed a tear when I saw the tear in the painting.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

[seka]

Mambo, I am impressed with your language skills. Papiamento is a proper language, and there are even newspapers published in this language.

Last year, in Miami, I met two ladies from Curacao and got the whole story on this almost unknown language.

[mambo]

The Antilleans claim it is some sort of a language, it is actually a mixture of Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, English etc. For many years there was no real book from which you could learn the language. The language was 'alive' as they call it, in other words...............it changes on a daily basis.
Worst part is that most of the time the Antilleans from Curacao cannot understand the ones from Bonaire or even Aruba. There seems to be a 'proper' papiamentu, but not too many people speak that language.
In fact on Curacao on the western part of the island the words may end on an 'a', in the middle on an 'e' and in the east part everything may end on an 'o'.
And this whole island is 60 km long and 5 - 12 km wide !!

We have 100,000 inhabitants on Curacao of which 90,000 may really be Antillean, the rest is expat and then we have perhaps 20,000 or more illegals from Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic etc and they all speak Spanish.

But I always asked myself why 100,000 people would start teaching this 'language' in schools, thereby making it impossible for the children to study anywhere else. Most of them don't speak Dutch, some speak Spanish and some speak English.
It is for this reason that I never attempted to learn that language. I could only use it on Curacao and in certain cities in Holland (where you will find a hell of a lot of Antilleans who only speak Papiamentu). Therefore it made no sense and I concentrated on the Spanish.

[seka]

Mambo, you are great! I really got fascinated about Papiamentu, as I could not, as I have never heard about this language before I heard it in Miami.