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Re: multilingual Europeans

Zerox — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:37:50 GMT

I sincerely agree with you CB. Finns, normally, have very good English teachers with a strong command of the language mainly due to the reasons mentioned above. I must admit that your example of the entrance exam made me smile. Finnish universities have notoriously hard entrance exams, especially if one desires to major in English. I remember when I was preparing for my entrance exam and I asked my teacher from the upper secondary school to help me with the previous year's entrance exam. Despite he was an English teacher and, hence, majored in English and studied it for 6 six years or so in a university, he still had tremendous problems with the exam and, frankly, there were places in the exam of which my teacher didn't have the foggiest idea.

Re: multilingual Europeans

Cool Breeze — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:57:11 GMT

Koto
Why are European people so fluent in English?
People say it's becasue their languages are all derived from the same root as English but is this the only reason?
Was it easy to master English for you?

Hi Koto

I realise you may never read this but I'll post it just the same. Not all European languages are related. My native language, Finnish, isn't even an Indo-European language. It is related to Estonian and Hungarian but not to such Germanic languages as English, German, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and so on.

One reason many Finns have at least a working knowledge of English probably results from teachers of foreign languages having a very good education in the languages they teach and the teaching methods. The methods are extremely important. All language teachers are university graduates with 4 to 7 years of university studies behind them. As for English, everybody has studied it at school before entering a university, which is also an advantage. Also, the universities select the very best candidates from English-speaking countries to do the teaching. The professors are Finnish, though, and there are some Finnish lecturers as well.

I am mentioning this because I have noticed on my travels that quite a few people who tell me they are teachers of English have a rather fragmentary command of the language themselves. If a teacher doesn't know the language, he can't teach it. In many cases the student isn't at fault at all. There are amazingly incompetent teachers of languages in many countries. Some of the posters who claim to be teachers of English on these forums wouldn't pass the qualifying exams for would-be teachers at Finnish universities.

I have never mastered English. I have a fairly good knowledge of the grammar but my vocabulary could be much larger. Learning languages has always been easy for me; that is, learning the languages I have attempted to learn. I am not so sure how quickly I would learn Japanese or Thai, for instance. English spelling causes me the most problems. And of course any words and idioms I am not familiar with.

Cheers

Re: multilingual Europeans

Koto — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:52:00 GMT

Pucca wrote:

What if Japanese people thought so? What if the say.."bah, why should we learn English if there is people learning Japanese?"

Actually, some think that way becasue once compulsory education is completed, we are not usually exposed to English.
(English school is big in Japan, though )

And yeh, I guess you guys, European people, have much chance to speak English.

I've noticed that people who already know 2 or 3 languages are prone to learn another language quickly.
I think their left brains are developed.

Re: multilingual Europeans

Pucca — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:43:13 GMT

Kooyeen wrote:
why is it easier to learn English for Europeans than for, say, Asians? Because all of our languages often have several things in common: words, structures, expressions... Look at these Italian words:
lingua = language
Inglese = English
Europa = Europe
generalmente, seriamente, immediatamente, continuamente = generally, seriously, immediately, continuously

That is because they have the same roots. By the way, in Spanish it is:
Lengua = Language
InglÃ©s = English
Europa = Europa

And the other ones are same as in Italian.

In the end, they don't need another language... for example, why learn Japanese when most Japanese people are already learning English?

What if Japanese people thought so? What if the say.."bah, why should we learn English if there is people learning Japanese?"

Re: multilingual Europeans

Kooyeen — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:37:48 GMT

Hi,
yes, not many native speakers of English know another language well, compared to other countries, espacially North-European countries. I once heard this:
What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call a person who can only speak one language? American.

In the end, they don't need another language... for example, why learn Japanese when most Japanese people are already learning English?

Nona The Brit wrote:
English is widely spoken in Europe so they get plenty of opportunity for practice - if a French person wants to talk to a Danish person they are likely to use English. Many European people grow up speaking two or three languages fluently.

Ha-ha, no way! People in Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and other countries in Northern Europe generally know English very well because they start learning languages at school when they are very young, and their school systems are among the best. But in other countries, like here in Italy, school systems are among the worst and English isn't taught very well at all.
So, to answer your question Koto, why is it easier to learn English for Europeans than for, say, Asians? Because all of our languages often have several things in common: words, structures, expressions... Look at these Italian words:
lingua = language
Inglese = English
Europa = Europe
generalmente, seriamente, immediatamente, continuamente = generally, seriously, immediately, continuously

Re: multilingual Europeans

nona the brit — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:07:57 GMT

No, we are the black sheep of Europe in that respect, notoriously poor at languages. There are several reasons

1) English is widely used in Europe, and is usually the 'default' language when native speakers of two different languages need to communicate in business for example, so there is less pressure on us to learn other languages

2) In the UK it is not uncommon for people to only receive 2 or 3 years basic instruction in another language at school and then never use it again. You don't start learning another language until you are 11 and you don't have to continue past the age of 13/14. I had two year's instruction in French and 1 year's instruction in German and never really got beyond a few basic phrases. I've never been to either France or Germany so have not had to use the little I learned.

3) We don't share any land borders with other countries so there is no 'blending' of languages across an area. A language never stops dead at a country's border; people living near to a border will normally be fluent in both languages. Some Europeans live in areas where up to three languages are in daily use.

Re: multilingual Europeans

Koto — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 05:55:09 GMT

Thanks Nona!
Do many of Brit people speak a few other languages as well?

Re: multilingual Europeans

nona the brit — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:30:46 GMT

English is widely spoken in Europe so they get plenty of opportunity for practice - if a French person wants to talk to a Danish person they are likely to use English. Many European people grow up speaking two or three languages fluently.

multilingual Europeans

Koto — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:43:36 GMT

Why are European people so fluent in English? I have some friends from Germany, Denmark and France.
Oh Gosh! They have accents but their English are just perfect!!
If they had lived in some English speaking countries at laest for a year, I would understand why, but in fact, they stayed in the states only for 6months.
People say it's becasue their languages are all derived from the same root as English but is this the only reason?
Was it easy to master English for you?