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Is English Nativity a Blessing or a Curse? - SPEAK 'MURRICAN
- Thread starter Dick Justice
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- Jan 9, 2020
One of the great things about English being a lingua franca all over the world is hearing it spoken and transformed slightly by all sorts of accents!
Seeing as Afrikaans is basically a simplified Dutch, can you understand modern Dutch speakers?
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- Sep 9, 2019
English is so confusing. Literally a mutt language.
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Depends on the Person... for a stupid Person its a blessing, its pretty easy and you cant make big mistakes.
for an Intelligent Person its a curse.
Suppressing in german sounds more like this...
for an Intelligent Person its a curse.
Thats a greeting.
Suppressing in german sounds more like this...
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- May 26, 2019
Blessing.
The level of flexibility English begets with its vocabulary and grammar is basically unparalleled. Such flexibility is especially important for being a global language where speakers of other languages can utilize grammatical structures closer to their native language and still be understood. At the same time, there is *just* the right amount of rigidity in the rules to keep things comprehensible.
The level of flexibility English begets with its vocabulary and grammar is basically unparalleled. Such flexibility is especially important for being a global language where speakers of other languages can utilize grammatical structures closer to their native language and still be understood. At the same time, there is *just* the right amount of rigidity in the rules to keep things comprehensible.
t. Grew up speaking a Celtic language at home. There's a reason they are dying out.
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- Jul 22, 2020
Depends on the person, I personally see 1 and 2 multilingual as the best situation economically. Growing up speaking minor language does not guarantee you the neccesity or will to learn another language. Although being able to speak minor language can gives you an access to some infos most English-speaking people don't tend to know.
I'm technically of 3rd category - but I wouldn't say that your assessment that you will have an easier time learning other languages because you're forced to learn it early will be universally true. My language is spoken only in a country, a 3rd world shithole one for that fact. - but I wouldn't say that people in my country are motivated to study another language because they think there isn't 'the need too'. Most people in my country can't speak a 2nd language fluently because our education is so shit and it is more self-effort to learn it. Still, the ability to speak English or major languages is a very important asset in getting a job otherwise. Perhaps it'd be different if that language is spoken in a smaller scale and the economic viability of using other languages is higher.
Some anecdotes that farmers might find interesting. People in English internet seem to assume that there is a unified internet and popular culture, up to until the early 2010s and the boom of centralised Social Media. People in my country mostly just surf the sites in my language, developed their own internet culture, and has no clues of what is popular outside of my country. Our popular media was very insulated back then. Knowing to speak English definitely opened you up for a whole new world and was somewhat a superpower back then.
I'd say that if you're born speaking major language, you may have to learn English at one point in your life anyway - So I believe that the 2nd scenario might put you in a better position than 3rd. (except 'pure' third option as you describe, that you're forced to learn multiple languages.) And purely from personal experiences : Growing up using a language in a culture that isn't part of English hegemony can give you a lot of perspectives if you happened to learn English enough to converse with native English speaking people in a common basis. (What we see as 'truth' will be simply a cultural difference)
I'm technically of 3rd category - but I wouldn't say that your assessment that you will have an easier time learning other languages because you're forced to learn it early will be universally true. My language is spoken only in a country, a 3rd world shithole one for that fact. - but I wouldn't say that people in my country are motivated to study another language because they think there isn't 'the need too'. Most people in my country can't speak a 2nd language fluently because our education is so shit and it is more self-effort to learn it. Still, the ability to speak English or major languages is a very important asset in getting a job otherwise. Perhaps it'd be different if that language is spoken in a smaller scale and the economic viability of using other languages is higher.
Some anecdotes that farmers might find interesting. People in English internet seem to assume that there is a unified internet and popular culture, up to until the early 2010s and the boom of centralised Social Media. People in my country mostly just surf the sites in my language, developed their own internet culture, and has no clues of what is popular outside of my country. Our popular media was very insulated back then. Knowing to speak English definitely opened you up for a whole new world and was somewhat a superpower back then.
I'd say that if you're born speaking major language, you may have to learn English at one point in your life anyway - So I believe that the 2nd scenario might put you in a better position than 3rd. (except 'pure' third option as you describe, that you're forced to learn multiple languages.) And purely from personal experiences : Growing up using a language in a culture that isn't part of English hegemony can give you a lot of perspectives if you happened to learn English enough to converse with native English speaking people in a common basis. (What we see as 'truth' will be simply a cultural difference)
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yes. to an extent. dutch is basically shit german so i can understand german too (short phrases mostly)
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As I said in the OP, being born an English native disincentivizes learning another language and multilingualism has huge benefits practical and intellectual. Being born to a language other than English increases the probability of becoming a polyglot, usually ESL.
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Native anglophones have no incentive to learn other languages as anything other than resume-boosters at this point, but that has little to do with the language itself and more with culture. That being said, I like declensions. Why couldn't English keep them? It's one of the things that makes learning other languages hard.
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- May 25, 2013
this, but in a good way
I think English taught me the idea that language is a ridiculously fluid thing compared, to say, French, that has literal government rulings about its use (or so I've heard).
I haven't bothered to learn much functionally about other languages because lolUSA but from what I've seen I've been a lot more openminded about "things can mean a lot of stuff to a lot of people" than I see ESLs do online.
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- Mar 29, 2014
Though I'm Puerto Rican, I'm only fluent in English because I'm stuck deep in America (but I can still get the gist of stuff in Spanish). Being monolingual stunts learning other languages.
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I just am annoyed with non-native English speakers desperate and insistant to converse with you in English, in their own language community. Like cunt, I did not fly 6000 miles to fucking speak English if I do not want to. Pay me if you want to unnecessarily speak my mother tongue.
Otherwise, yeah I am fairly privileged being a born native speaker, for better or worse, admittedly.
Otherwise, yeah I am fairly privileged being a born native speaker, for better or worse, admittedly.
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Growing up as a native Anglophone definitely gives one a leg up on the idioms. Before the internet, I don't know how non-Anglophones could ever hope to figure out all the idioms that pepper colloquial English speech.
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To add to that, it can be kind of annoying when words from other languages have to be "mentally translated" into English before being "translated into pure thought". Like I'll see 地球 (chikyuu) and think. oh that's "earth-ball" or "Earth". Along with having to memorize, this can obviously be a barrier to other languages.
I guess people fluent in more than one language can "directly translate words into pure thought" from more than one easier.
Coleslaw
kiwifarms.net
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Native French speaker here who speaks and reads several other languages to either complex business discussion or full fluency with accent and slang level.
I don't think it's a good or a bad thing. There is less of a motivation for the monolingual lingua franca speaker to learn another language, hence why I suspect Anglophones moreso than others are monolingual, but there's not even anything to say English will remain the most spoken language. It was Assyrian, then it was Greek, then Latin, then French, English....Give it another hundred years ago and we might all be looking to learn Mandarin, Ebonics or who knows?
I can't decide if it would be easier to start with English or not. On one hand, English is by far and above the single most difficult language I've learned. It's wholly unintuitive, it has no consistent or absolute grammatical, phonetic or linguistic structure (Words like Yacht for instance) and it's an ugly bastardization of hundreds of other languages. It might feel more natural and less awkward.
On the other, I do wonder if it would have been harder to learn another language if English was my first. There's no gendered language, very weak conjugation and suffix use (e.g: Amo, Amas, Amant) and it's in my personal opinion very....Blunt.
To an extent, I think language and the ability of it to express certain ideas can alter or shape how you think. I find it very difficult to express more nuanced feelings in English; the word for love is the prime example. Anglophones have a single word to cover everything from "I like this" to "I would die for you right now". Contrast this to Sanskrit with at least ninety-six and the ability to specifically identify different strengths, types and levels of attachment.
IMO, English is a great language for business and factual discussion but with exception to some Germanic influenced ones like Swedish and the very reserved modern Japanese possibly one of the single worst for a deep personal conversation or literature.
I don't think it's a good or a bad thing. There is less of a motivation for the monolingual lingua franca speaker to learn another language, hence why I suspect Anglophones moreso than others are monolingual, but there's not even anything to say English will remain the most spoken language. It was Assyrian, then it was Greek, then Latin, then French, English....Give it another hundred years ago and we might all be looking to learn Mandarin, Ebonics or who knows?
I can't decide if it would be easier to start with English or not. On one hand, English is by far and above the single most difficult language I've learned. It's wholly unintuitive, it has no consistent or absolute grammatical, phonetic or linguistic structure (Words like Yacht for instance) and it's an ugly bastardization of hundreds of other languages. It might feel more natural and less awkward.
On the other, I do wonder if it would have been harder to learn another language if English was my first. There's no gendered language, very weak conjugation and suffix use (e.g: Amo, Amas, Amant) and it's in my personal opinion very....Blunt.
To an extent, I think language and the ability of it to express certain ideas can alter or shape how you think. I find it very difficult to express more nuanced feelings in English; the word for love is the prime example. Anglophones have a single word to cover everything from "I like this" to "I would die for you right now". Contrast this to Sanskrit with at least ninety-six and the ability to specifically identify different strengths, types and levels of attachment.
IMO, English is a great language for business and factual discussion but with exception to some Germanic influenced ones like Swedish and the very reserved modern Japanese possibly one of the single worst for a deep personal conversation or literature.
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