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Message no. 1
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: [OT] Languages
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:56:11 +0200
According to Hexren, on Thursday 28 August 2003 07:30 the word on the
street was...

> It's the same everywhere. I my naturla language is german and I would
> bet my englsih grammar is better than my german...
> That's because you learn non natural language based on rules and your
> natural language you learn from hearing people who are to lazy to care
> for right gramar in their everyday conversation. IMHO

I doubt it; since German is your first language, I doubt you'll get
der/des/dem/den and all the rest of that wrong very often -- but even
though I was taught all the _rules_ for this in the course of five years
of German in high school, I chuck it out the window and use the first one
that comes to mind. Sometimes it's the right one (because I did pick up a
bit of a feel for it) but most of the time, I simply use the Dutch gender
(like "das Idee", to give the first example I can think of) and the first
-- ack, what's the English name for words like "the" and "a"?! :( --
that
I can think of.

None of which happens if you learn to speak a language from when you're
little. IMHO it's not laziness, it's the fact that everyone else uses the
language that way -- which, after all, is how languages develop. And face
it, English has a tremendously outdated spelling, which probably made
sense when it was first made official (if it ever was -- I'm not even sure
about that) but doesn't really to modern people anymore. In some ways, I
think it's too bad the American attempt at modernization in the '50s and
'60s never caught on ("thru" instead of "through" etc., which at least

dropped the letters that don't get pronounced anyway).

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 2
From: jeremie.bouillon@****.fr (Jeremie Bouillon)
Subject: [OT] Languages
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:55:26 +0200
Le 10:56 28/08/2003, Gurth écrivait :
>I
>think it's too bad the American attempt at modernization in the '50s and
>'60s never caught on ("thru" instead of "through" etc., which at
least
>dropped the letters that don't get pronounced anyway).

Try to learn the french language, you'll have bigger problems :-D
Message no. 3
From: me@******.net (Hexren)
Subject: [OT] Languages
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 15:51:23 +0200
G

G> I doubt it; since German is your first language, I doubt you'll get
G> der/des/dem/den and all the rest of that wrong very often -- but even
G> though I was taught all the _rules_ for this in the course of five years
G> of German in high school, I chuck it out the window and use the first one
G> that comes to mind. Sometimes it's the right one (because I did pick up a
G> bit of a feel for it) but most of the time, I simply use the Dutch gender
G> (like "das Idee", to give the first example I can think of) and the first
G> -- ack, what's the English name for words like "the" and "a"?!
:( -- that
G> I can think of.




---------------------------------------------

I'm told by people that German is some hell of a devil to learn, 'cause
there are so few rules. Everything just seems to be an exemption to
the few rules ;)
Interestingly I can't say anything to that because I never really
learned rules and such. That seems to prove the point made in another
message, that when learning a foreign language you are mostly stuck
with teachers who very much emphasise speaking "corectly" in contrast
to your batural language where most teachers will overlook much 'cause
they do it themselves or it goes as "umgangssprache" (<-- that word
means the way people speak with each other in day to day business,
don't now the english word)

Greetz
Hexren
Message no. 4
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: [OT] Languages
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:17:56 +0200
According to Jeremie Bouillon, on Thursday 28 August 2003 11:55 the word on
the street was...

> Try to learn the french language, you'll have bigger problems :-D

Yeah, I know; I had three years of French in high school, and went from
being bad at the initial stuff they taught us, to worse at the slightly
more advanced bits :) Though that didn't have to do with the spelling as
much as with all the superfluous grammar ;)

<rant subject="The high school method of teaching languages">
Which neatly leads to my chief complaint with how you are taught languages
in school, namely: by trying to make you remember and apply all the
grammar that you'll never use IRL unless you get (close to) fluency in the
language. My example of how I speak German, in my other post, is a good
case in point, I think -- all Germans I've spoken to over the years
understood what I meant to get across (eventually ;) yet I'd be almost
guaranteed to fail any high school German test due to the accumulation of
minor mistakes.
</rant>

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 5
From: raveneyes@*******.net (Raveneyes)
Subject: [OT] Languages
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 15:50:37 -0400
Hexren wrote:

>---------------------------------------------
>
>I'm told by people that German is some hell of a devil to learn, 'cause
>there are so few rules. Everything just seems to be an exemption to
>the few rules ;)
>Interestingly I can't say anything to that because I never really
>learned rules and such. That seems to prove the point made in another
>message, that when learning a foreign language you are mostly stuck
>with teachers who very much emphasise speaking "corectly" in contrast
>to your batural language where most teachers will overlook much 'cause
>they do it themselves or it goes as "umgangssprache" (<-- that word
>means the way people speak with each other in day to day business,
>don't now the english word)
>
>Greetz
>Hexren
>
>
>
>
I believe that the english for umgangssprache is "colloquial speech"

--
Carpe Sanguis
Raveneyes

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