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May 8, 2024 22:05
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great now that my map is complete just to put in the title and OH NO
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May 8, 2024 22:14
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Offler posted:One of the hosts of a podcast I listen to used to tell stories of when he took part in focus groups for tv-pilots. They would be given a kind of remote with a knob that they were supposed to turn to indicate how much they liked/disliked various characters, plots etc. The guy leading the group would always guide them through a test before they started watching the show where he would ask everyone to turn their knob all the way towards "like" or "dislike" just to check that the equipment worked.
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May 9, 2024 06:38
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Illinois doesn't have term limits; it has sentencing guidelines.
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May 9, 2024 07:38
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Platystemon posted:Nielsen ratings are up; Denmark confirmed for another season. They cancelled Yugoslavia for so many lovely spinoffs, and we still can't get Denmark off the air despite jumping the shark in the viking ark. Not everyone is as immortal as China! Ussr 2 really failing to live up to the first as well.
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May 9, 2024 08:11
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San Marino fans stay winning, that's 1,723 years on the air now
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May 9, 2024 12:05
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May 10, 2024 15:22
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I wanna join the Pancake Alliance
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May 10, 2024 15:36
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Apparently all of Switzerland now speaks German.
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May 10, 2024 16:33
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There was a great advertising campaign for the Italian-speaking part like 15 years ago that was basically, "We're like Italy, but not run by Italians."
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May 10, 2024 22:58
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Groda posted:There was a great advertising campaign for the Italian-speaking part like 15 years ago that was basically, "We're like Italy, but not run by Italians." This works for all of Switzerland’s neighbors, except Liechtenstein.
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May 10, 2024 23:32
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 Big Germany (that somehow excludes Netherlands and Belgium) has been canceled for being woke now (and excluding Netherlands and Belgium).
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May 11, 2024 00:06
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Guavanaut posted:
Doesn't it also somehow exclude Austria?
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May 11, 2024 00:13
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And the Sudetenland. And Nord Italia. Serious lack of ambition on the behalf of fictional Big Germany when they were off conquering Portugal and Morocco.
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May 11, 2024 00:25
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Guavanaut posted:
this is just a map of the EU post 2010
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May 11, 2024 01:11
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Thread, could you maybe help me out? A friend is asking for a map of Europe which shows how many weeks it takes native English speakers to learn the basics of different European languages. It was probably posted in this thread several years ago. If anyone knows what I'm referring to and has it sitting around, please share it.
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May 11, 2024 06:16
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Carbon dioxide posted:Thread, could you maybe help me out?
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May 11, 2024 06:38
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Guavanaut posted:
Nobody noticed that Italy finally can has Fiume 
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May 11, 2024 06:43
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Carbon dioxide posted:Thread, could you maybe help me out? The map you’re remembering is probably based on U.S. State Department classifications.
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May 11, 2024 06:59
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Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. This makes a language like Finnish, which is incredibly easy, seem hard because the concept of a different grammar is alien to Americans.
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May 11, 2024 07:06
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Thanks for the tips and the map!BonHair posted:Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. This makes a language like Finnish, which is incredibly easy, seem hard because the concept of a different grammar is alien to Americans. I'm not sure I agree with that last part. Other than my native language of Dutch, I speak English well and I understand some very basic German and French. German is easy for basic sentences but very difficult to get fully right because it has 4 grammatical cases which I can't keep apart, and the only way to deal with that is to learn all word forms by heart. Same for the grammatical gender of each word. Finnish sounds daunting to me, not only because it's about as far from a Germanic language as you can get, but also because, from what I heard, it has like a gazillion different grammatical cases.
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May 11, 2024 08:47
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BonHair posted:Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. This makes a language like Finnish, which is incredibly easy, seem hard because the concept of a different grammar is alien to Americans. Doesn't Finnish have like zero commonalities with any other Western European language? Like, English has more borrowed words from Arabic than Finnish.
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May 11, 2024 08:53
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Even children can speak Finnish in Finland
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May 11, 2024 09:00
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Ras Het posted:Even children can speak Finnish in Finland Yes cruelty towards children remains a persistent problem in many societies
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May 11, 2024 09:05
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BonHair posted:Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. Europeans only speak their own language, plus English -- just like Americans.
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May 11, 2024 09:11
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I should point out a huge chunk of people in America speak languages other than English, many as their first language, they just tend to not be white tourists in Europe.
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May 11, 2024 09:17
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What is the definition of “speaking and reading proficiency"? I moved to France and know a lot of Americans and non Americans and I can tell you for certain the proficiency is quite low even after 24 weeks of studying. Unless this is like all day every day studying, but even then I doubt it.
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May 11, 2024 09:32
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kiminewt posted:What is the definition of “speaking and reading proficiency"? You can learn quite a bit if it's high intensity, and then you keep doing it every day. It's just you'll lose it pretty quick if you don't keep using it. For a diplomat I would assume their day job involves speaking the local language quite a bit every day. An ex-pat who defaults to English the moment they realize the person they are talking to can also speak English, not great odds of them retaining it.
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May 11, 2024 09:40
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Carbon dioxide posted:
Those are just instead of prepositions Sort of like "the book is [the table]+on"
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May 11, 2024 10:04
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kiminewt posted:What is the definition of “speaking and reading proficiency"? Speaking 3 (General Professional Proficiency) posted:Able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations in practical, social and professional topics. Nevertheless, the individual's limitations generally restrict the professional contexts of language use to matters of shared knowledge and/or international convention. Discourse is cohesive. The individual uses the language acceptably, but with some noticeable imperfections; yet, errors virtually never interfere with understanding and rarely disturb the native speaker. The individual can effectively combine structure and vocabulary to convey his/her meaning accurately. The individual speaks readily and fills pauses suitably. In face-to-face conversation with natives speaking the standard dialect at a normal rate of speech, comprehension is quite complete. Although cultural references, proverbs and the implications of nuances and idiom may not be fully understood, the individual can easily repair the conversation. Pronunciation may be obviously foreign. Individual sounds are accurate: but stress, intonation and pitch control may be faulty. quote:I moved to France and know a lot of Americans and non Americans and I can tell you for certain the proficiency is quite low even after 24 weeks of studying. Unless this is like all day every day studying, but even then I doubt it. The time estimates are for "Your full time job for the next 30 weeks is to learn French, with ~5 hours of classroom instruction 5 days a week, and about the same in homework and self study every day" type programs
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May 11, 2024 10:14
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Air Skwirl posted:You can learn quite a bit if it's high intensity, and then you keep doing it every day. It's just you'll lose it pretty quick if you don't keep using it. For a diplomat I would assume their day job involves speaking the local language quite a bit every day. An ex-pat who defaults to English the moment they realize the person they are talking to can also speak English, not great odds of them retaining it. Groda posted:Europeans only speak their own language, plus English -- just like Americans.
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May 11, 2024 10:17
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I made a IV* category jump from Finnish to learning English when I was a kid with no problem  Mainly thanks to LucasArts, maybe the US state department should translate Monkey Island to Finnish and then give it to all diplomats who drew the short straw to be posted here.
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May 11, 2024 10:29
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To be clear, my broad generalisation is based on teaching Danish to adult immigrants. The Americans were mostly white exchange students, and just terrible at anything that wasn't 1:1 translations. The Chinese who were extremely good at memorising and repeating stuff without understanding a single thing were worse though. Also the various middle eastern people with physical or mental head trauma, but that's a different league of bad. Obviously there were exceptions too. The thing about Finnish is that, aside from the vocabulary being entirely new, it's pretty simple and the rules apply in 98% of cases, and a lot of words are derivations which makes it pretty easy once you get past the first hurdle.
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May 11, 2024 11:45
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Air Skwirl posted:Doesn't Finnish have like zero commonalities with any other Western European language? Like, English has more borrowed words from Arabic than Finnish. Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, like Hungarian, although the connection between these two languages is very distant. It is, however, closely related to Estonian, and I assume both languages were part of the same dialect continuum until it was cut in twain by the Russians. It is indeed unrelated to the Indo-European languages that cover most of Europe, although they must have a bunch of loanwords from Latin, French, Swedish, English, etc. Right? So I wouldn't say there are zero commonalities. steinrokkan posted:Yes cruelty towards children remains a persistent problem in many societies lol
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May 11, 2024 12:22
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The most important factors when it comes to learning a foreign language are exposure and attitude, not so much how close it is to your own language. Finnish is as unrelated to English as you can get, yet most Finns speak excellent English. This is because they are regularly exposed to English-language media from a young age, and as speakers of a minor, relatively isolated language they don't have any mental roadblocks preventing them from engaging with it. Conversely and somewhat understandably, native speakers of relatively widespread and prestigious languages often don't see the utility in learning other languages, and in many cases they've also convinced themselves that it's just too difficult, that their brain doesn't work that way, it's hopeless. Very often this goes hand in hand. There is a French phrase that we sometimes refer to ironically in Flanders, "je [ne] suis pas doué pour les langues", which can be loosely translated as "I don't have a knack for languages" or "I'm not linguistically gifted". You will occasionally hear (often older) francophones repeat this, or something similar, in order to justify why they barely know any Dutch, even though it would objectively make their lives much easier. I had a coworker like this when I still worked in Brussels, a francophone woman in her fifties. She had worked in bilingual environments for decades, had even lived in Flanders at one point, and still struggled with basic Dutch. This was a normally intelligent woman. The real issue was her attitude, which caused her to actively avoid engaging with Dutch, or any other non-French language that could potentially cause friction. No, you will never be able to master a foreign language quite to the same extent as the one you speak natively. By definition I will never be a native English speaker, because I wasn't raised in English as a child. It will always be foreign to me. But you can get close, at the very least to the point where you are able to easily communicate with other speakers of the target language. And it doesn't matter that much how 'gifted' you are, or how 'difficult' the language you're trying to learn is. In principle even systematic study is unnecessary, although obviously many people prefer to do it in this more structured way. You are a human being, your brain is inherently wired for language, ultimately all that is required is regular exposure over a sufficiently long period of time.
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May 11, 2024 13:05
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BonHair posted:Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. This makes a language like Finnish, which is incredibly easy, seem hard because the concept of a different grammar is alien to Americans. Idk what you’re talking about, a large population of Americans know Spanish??? We are dumb about geography by and large for drat sure but you’re clearly stereotyping white middle+ texans as all Americans Air Skwirl posted:I should point out a huge chunk of people in America speak languages other than English, many as their first language, they just tend to not be white tourists in Europe. This Diqnol fucked around with this message at 13:55 on May 11, 2024 |
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May 11, 2024 13:53
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Americans do have a bit of disadvantage learning new languages from English spreading too effectively, so you have to get pretty deep into many countries to be properly immersed in the language; the big internationally-connected cities will be too easy to make your way without learning. Although possibly English as a weird bastard language with a lot of vestigial remnants of alternate grammar might be a better first language for learning other languages from, because you can make a lot of alternate grammar make sense. Finnish spelling does make me feel a little like I'm having a seizure though.
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May 11, 2024 14:22
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BonHair posted:Here's one. Let in mind that it's specifically for Americans, who are stupid about languages because they barely learn a second language. This makes a language like Finnish, which is incredibly easy, seem hard because the concept of a different grammar is alien to Americans. I remember last time this was posted in here someone was incredulous that they didn’t have a classification for Luxembourgish
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May 11, 2024 14:30
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BonHair posted:The thing about Finnish is that, aside from the vocabulary being entirely new, it's pretty simple and the rules apply in 98% of cases, and a lot of words are derivations which makes it pretty easy once you get past the first hurdle. based on the explanations from the goon who posts finnish comics finnish can't be that hard because they just use the same few dozen words for their entire language
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May 11, 2024 15:01
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To be absolutely clear, the number one best way to learn a foreign language in my experience is to marry a native speaker. Second best is not speaking English (or any other language the natives speak).
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May 11, 2024 16:24
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