Pedaling for Peace

Cursive is overrated. Really. Particularly with the advent of confusers, smart phones, and Twitter.

And with all the bitching and moaning about how 'mericans don't learn foreign languages....which one should we learn? No, really....which one? Because I took German for four years. Pointless. You can take Spanish, but how useful is that in business? Chinese? Well, no.

There's a reason English has become the lingua franca (universal language) of the civilized world and Latin died out. It's easy to learn (note I did not say easy to spell; there's actually a perfectly good reason for the spelling - and don't get me started on French spelling), it doesn't rely on fiddly conjugation, and everyone wants to learn it. Oh, and we invent sh!t. Or steal the concept and make it better, while building it overseas.
 
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Runs with Scissors said:
Cursive is overrated. Really. Particularly with the advent of confusers, smart phones, and Twitter.

And with all the bitching and moaning about how 'mericans don't learn foreign languages....which one should we learn? No, really....which one? Because I took German for four years. Pointless. You can take Spanish, but how useful is that in business? Chinese? Well, no.

There's a reason English has become the lingua franca of the civilized world and Latin died out. It's easy to learn (note I did not say easy to spell; there's actually a perfectly good reason for the spelling - and don't get me started on French spelling), it doesn't rely on fiddly conjugation, and everyone wants to learn it. Oh, and we invent sh!t. Or steal the concept and make it better, while building it overseas.
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Probably one or more of these:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
 
scan said:
Sounds a little ethnocentric. I don't think english is easy to learn. Ex: F, ph, gh can sound the same, and some letters are silent (what?)
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Once again, I'm talking about the mechanics of the language, not the spelling. English has grammatical rules that are remarkably free of the foibles of Latin languages such as French, Spanish, Romansch, Russian, etc. One of the biggest problems is where grammarians try to apply Latin rules of grammar to a West Germanic language. This is well known. After all, English lost the case system in the 1300s, and only has three tenses regardless of what you may have been taught by the Latinists.

English has rules that apply in approximately 85% of all spellings. It's also just about the only language that keeps the original spelling of foreign words. It also suffers from the fact that spelling became standardized just as pronunciation shifted, at the time the printing press took hold. So we have spelling systems that accurately reflect the pronunciation of the 15th century.

To learn the language and make yourself understood is relatively easy. To learn to spell is not.
 
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Runs with Scissors said:
which one should we learn? No, really....which one? Because I took German for four years. Pointless. You can take Spanish, but how useful is that in business? Chinese? Well, no
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I took four years of Latin, followed by three years of German and two years of Spanish at college. I don't regret the cool cultural aspects... but the rote memorization of spelling and grammar? No thanks.

Plus as you point out... right now language is a BARRIER to cultural understanding, not an enabler. Once language is out of the way and you can hop on a plane and hang out in Tokyo... or Brazil... or Atlanta... and understand what is being said, won't it be amazing?
 
BonsaiNut said:
I know it's an ad... but still.

They no longer teach cursive writing in school. In my lifetime, they will no longer teach foreign languages.

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A beautiful ad with a beautiful message. TFPU :)

So many of my most memorable experiences have been shared with people from cultures different than mine. It's been so infectiously expanding that I made it a permanent arrangement. The food's a bonus. :D:inlove::thumbsup:
 
Runs with Scissors said:
To learn the language and make yourself understood is relatively easy.
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https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-hard.html

And a key quote at the end of the article:
Ultimately, though, it’s down to the individual whether or not a particular language is difficult to learn. Some people have a natural aptitude for languages and pick them up quickly; children, of course, absorb new languages much more easily than adults.

I feel as though I meet more people who have difficulty learning another language than those who can easily.
 
scan said:
https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-hard.html

And a key quote at the end of the article:
Ultimately, though, it’s down to the individual whether or not a particular language is difficult to learn. Some people have a natural aptitude for languages and pick them up quickly; children, of course, absorb new languages much more easily than adults.

I feel as though I meet more people who have difficulty learning another language than those who can easily.
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I'd seen that before, and that article simply reinforces what I was saying. You can learn the basics and be understood in no time at all. To "master" English - which I'd argue is not all that important unless you're an English major and want to get all arcane - takes much longer and even then you'd never have 100% agreement on what that is. In areas where there are several local languages, or even mutually unintelligible local dialects the tendency is to adopt English as the working language. After all, why didn't the Philippines adopt Tagalog as the universal language?

India does that also. Many others. Why would that be if it was difficult to learn?

As noted in the article and comments below it: English really is easy to learn at the level of basic communication.

If you want a good read on this stuff, see "The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher. Or not.
 
Runs with Scissors said:
After all, why didn't the Philippines adopt Tagalog as the universal language?

India does that also. Many others.
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Well isn't that more about power and influence after WWII for the US and the many colonies the UK had around the world. So not really a choice in choosing the language, more a necessity.
I guess we can agree to disagree. Mainly your feeling of the "ease " of english. Again in my experience many people I come across have difficulty with english.
 
A multilingual friend who taught English as a teen to non-native speakers says English is not a simple language nor is it particularly easy to learn. He has also worked as a language and cultural advisor as an older adult.
 
Back in the day, on business trips to Japan, the Japanese guys I worked with would get a stack of business cards and write out phrases in English and Japanese on each card. I could hand a card to someone to ask what train to get on or which way to the atomic bomb dome, or most often the cab driver to take me to the company HQ. I guess that was a very early version of google translator, it worked quite well. I knew the very basics of verbal comm but Japanese didn't come naturally to me.
 
I went through HILT (high intensity language training) for my stint in the Peace Corps. Comes in handy to tell someone to eat Sh!t in Samoan if I don't want them to understand. Otherwise, not so useful and largely long forgotten.
 
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