The Most Useful Languages

[ArteSuave]

 

 

problem with Irish is that its thought really badly that people want to be finished with it once they are finished school. Its actually a disgrace how it has happened and some sort of reform is needed

 

Taught ?

 

 

well we also don't like learning English either

 

 

They're probably homophones over there I'm guessing.

Edited July 24, 2014 by ArteSuave

[8pints]

Bit of fun with Dutch Translation

 

 

If you want to play - There's a thing called Dutchspeakwords that takes Dutch words and translates them literally in to English and you have to guess what they actually mean/how they are used in English.

 

1) Go with that Banana!

2) Did you get a slap from the Windmill?

3) All Craziness, on a sticky!

4) It shall me be a sausage.

5) Forward with the goat!

6) Hold your waffle.

 

 

ANSWERS

1) Let's do it!/Let's go!

2) Are you crazy?/Are you stupid?/Did you get hit in the head by a windmill?/Have you got a concussion (I'd get this one a lot)

3) This is crazy!

4) Couldn't care less.

5) Let's just go/We're going! (Similar to the Banana one)

6) Shut up.

[Voinjama]

I'm really getting into the Spanish now. Really beautiful language. I think that it is a lot easier then German and French which I also did for 2 years.

[legov]

In terms of value-for-effort, Spanish is probably the best language out there for English-speakers to learn.

 

Relatively easy to learn, but gives you access to a culture that (from what I've seen) is wildly different from Anglophonic culture. Also, the business opportunities that (in theory) would abound in the world of what is the world's second-most widely spoken language (by no. of native speakers).

[abdomlahor]

I started learning Spanish last year but stopped for a long time. Watching TV shows in Spanish with English subs, or vice versa, helps a lot. Duolingo is good as well.

Edited August 16, 2014 by adz.villa

[Voinjama]

I'm using Pimsleur - awesome.

[Xela]

I'm using Pimsleur - awesome.

 

How far are you through it? 

[Voinjama]

I decided to start again so I'm only the 3rd disc, so parts 5 and 6. 

[maqroll]

English is number one; it's the default language around the world for business and diplomacy. That said, you could drive from Patagonia to San Francisco and Spanish would be what you'd want to know. 

 

Seeing as we'll all be workers in a Chinese sweat shop eventually, Mandarin should be taught in secondary schools in the West.

 

1. English

2. Mandarin

3. Spanish

[legov]

 

Seeing as we'll all be workers in a Chinese sweat shop eventually, Mandarin should be taught in secondary schools in the West.

 

1. English

2. Mandarin

3. Spanish

 

Used to think that way as well, but now I'm not so sure.

 

I did a bit of linguistics last semester, and some of the studies I went through suggested that language learning is closely tied to need. In other words, if one does not have a pressing need to learn a language, all governmental efforts (short of changing the working language of the country) will, broadly speaking, be futile. And the current reality is that there is no pressing need for people outside of the Chinese-speaking world to learn Mandarin at all. English is clearly the lingua franca of the world, and so it is the Chinese who will lose out if they do not pick up English, not the other way round - a British MNC can do business in China without any knowledge of Chinese (not that having some workers who are fluent in Mandarin wouldn't help, mind you), but a Chinese MNC would be screwed if it tried to expand outside of China without executives who are fluent in English.

 

The point is that getting people to learn a language isn't as simple as laying down the law and saying that everyone should learn the language. There has to be some sort of economic need for people to persist with the language (the vast majority of people do not learn languages just cos they're cool). Take the state of French education in the UK, for example. Widely taught as a second language, but how many people in Britain can speak more than a smattering of French phrases? And there's no reason you would expect them to - there just isn't any incentive for people to keep up their level of French. (And French is supposed to be one of the easiest languages out there for English speakers to learn! Imagine how much more futile Chinese learning would be)

 

This is in stark contrast to East Asia, where English learning is just an obsession. East Asians know that knowledge of English is the key to international business and getting to the top of the social ladder. English isn't easy - or fun - for them, not by a long shot. But the economic incentives for being able to speak English are so great that they have to persist with it. Widespread knowledge of the English language (fluency is another matter) is not just a product of the English-as-a-second-language policy that is in place in those countries, it is a result of the obsession the general populace has with learning English, which itself is a result of the status of English as the world's undisputed language of business.

 

Of course, there might come a point in the future (not anytime soon though) when China becomes the pre-eminent economic power of the world. Until that time comes, however, I'm not sure how any Western country will be able to institute effective Chinese-language learning on a society-wide level, given the lack of economic incentive for people to pick up the language.

[maqroll]

Good post, Legov. You are right, the key word is effective. In the US public school system, It's typically a choice between Spanish or French, but how many high school students graduate having effectively mastered anything about either language? I'd say a very small percentage. In one ear, out the other. That said, for some students, it sticks, and they go on to gain fluency. There is little practical sense in mastering French for US students. I think schools should drop French for Mandarin, and then students would have the choice between two languages that would be useful to them 20 years down the line.

[legov]

Good post, Legov. You are right, the key word is effective. In the US public school system, It's typically a choice between Spanish or French, but how many high school students graduate having effectively mastered anything about either language? I'd say a very small percentage. In one ear, out the other. That said, for some students, it sticks, and they go on to gain fluency. There is little practical sense in mastering French for US students. I think schools should drop French for Mandarin, and then students would have the choice between two languages that would be useful to them 20 years down the line.

 

Makes sense. That said, Mandarin is much,

 

much,

 

much,

 

much harder to learn than French is.

 

The percentage of students who will find that some of it "sticks" will be much lower than what it already is.

 

Not that that should deter policy-makers from encouraging people to learn the language, but it's worth keeping in mind.

 

 

I'll say this again, I think Spanish is a really useful language (and very underrated in this respect, I think) to learn. Certainly useful from an economic perspective, given how widely it's spoken and how rapidly many parts of Latin America are developing economically. It's also far easier to learn for English-speaking Americans than any of the non-Indo-European languages are. 

 

I just think that the economic development of Latin America gets a criminal lack of attention* in comparison to China (or India, for that matter), and I think the US, given its geographical proximity to the region as well as the fact that there already exist in America so many ties to Latin American culture, is in a better position to take advantage of that than other Western countries are. 

 

 

*Not always without justification (also, this is my impression...not sure how much attention the economic development of that part of the world gets in America)

Edited August 17, 2014 by legov

[AVFCforever1991]

I wish we learned Spanish in school, would have been much more interesting for me. We were forced to learn French and German.

[legov]

I wish we learned Spanish in school, would have been much more interesting for me. We were forced to learn French and German.

 

We weren't forced to learn any languages other than English and Mandarin Chinese (English as a first language, then a second language depending on your ethnicity).

 

I took French classes for 2 years during my time in secondary school (have forgotten everything now, the longest sentence I can construct in French is "s'il vous plait"*). There were three languages offered - French, German, Japanese. Japanese I can understand, but the usefulness of French is limited at best, and German...well.

 

Point is, that sort of view (i.e. adhering to the outdated idea that French and German are the foreign languages one ought to learn) isn't exclusive to Britain - or the rest of the "West", for that matter. It's common in Singapore as well.

 

 

 

* Edit: Hmm, no, actually it's probably "Bonjour, je m'appelle Legov"....but you get the point.

Edited August 17, 2014 by legov

[RunRickyRun]

For me, a basic knowledge of Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) is more useful than a basic knowledge of a 2nd language.

[Voinjama]

There are actually more native Spanish speakers in the world then English native speakers. But it is those who have learnt English as a 2nd language where English overtakes Spanish in terms of numbers who know it. Spanish is definitely the 2nd most important language after English in my opinion. French is decreasing in importance by the decade. One I have mastered Spanish - and I will master it, that will be enough for me. Being fluent in English and Spanish will put in a good position. 

[Voinjama]

Also I would rather be completely fluent in 2 languages then be fluent in my mother tongue, and then know  a little bit of this, and a little bit of that like some people. 

[useless]

I find the Michel Thomas audio recordings are always a good place to start when learning a new language and a real good supplement to the Pimsleur stuff. I think some of it is on Youtube for anyone who wants to give it a try.

 

.

Edited August 17, 2014 by useless

[legov]

The fascinating thing about languages like Mandarin and Arabic (from an English speaker's perspective) is, I think, how they operate on completely different concepts.

Edited August 17, 2014 by legov

[AVFCforever1991]

Thought this was interesting..

 

http://chineseculture.about.com/b/2008/12/16/why-are-chinese-better-at-math.htm

 

 

Author Malcolm Gladwell  has a history of thought-provoking insight in his previous books,The Tipping Point and Blink. Now he's tackling another fascinating subject: success, in his latest work, Outliers.

 

I got and immediately ravenously poured throughOutliers last week. His premise is finding out why some people in society seem to succeed above others. One chapter titled "Rice Paddies and Math Tests " seemed especially relevant to Chinese culture. Here's an excerpt:

 

"Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time."

 

The reason behind this, Gladwell writes, is because humans can store digits in a memory loop that last only about two seconds. In Chinese languages, numbers are shorter, allowing Chinese to both speak and remember those numbers in two seconds -- a fraction of the time it takes to remember those numbers in English.

 

Moreover, Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean have a more logical counting system compared to the irregular ways that numerals are spoken in English. As Gladwell writes: Eleven is ten-one (十一 in Chinese), twelve is ten-two (十二) and thirteen is ten-three (十三) and so on.

 

Children in Asia thus learn to count faster than English-speaking children. Even fractions are easier for Asian children because they are more easily understood and conceptual. For example one-half (fifty percent) is understood as 百分之五十 (bǎi fēn zhī wǔ shí) or literally, fifty parts out of 100 parts. And because math is more easily understood, Asian children "get" math faster than their Western counterparts. This, Gladwell writes, has nothing to do with some sort of innate Asian proclivity for math.

 

Another great point Gladwell makes is that cultures with a history of rice cultivation also have high levels of diligence. Because rice is so labor-intensive on plots far smaller than corn or wheat for example, rice farmers have been forced to increase yields by being smarter and more innovative. As Gladwell writes:

 

"Working in a rice field is ten to twenty times more labor intensive than working on an equivalent size corn or wheat field."

 

Because rice cultivation forces greater innovation, the nature of the work is far more challenging and complex. It's also more meritorious, because the harder you work, the greater the harvest. That's why strict feudalism or slavery doesn't work with rice cultivation, Gladwell writes, citing China historian Kenneth Pomeranz .

 

Pomeranz argues that by the 14th and 15th centuries, landlords in central and southern China had a nearly hands-off role with their tenants, collecting only a fixed amount and letting farmers keep whatever yields they had left over. Farmers had a stake in their harvest, leading to greater diligence and success.

 

Gladwell argues that this belief in hard work carries over in Asian immigrant cultures, who have a reputation for being diligent and studious. While some may be offended by such a statement, Gladwell concludes that in every "success story" he has examined in his book, including people like Bill Gates and the Beatles, success was always defined as having worked far harder than their peers.

 

Fascinating stuff Malcolm Gladwell, as is your hair.

Edited August 17, 2014 by AVFCforever1991