No One Knows Better

Discussion in 'Education' started by unkotare, Mar 22, 2022.

  1. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    I will generally only do that if someone does it to me or their post is exceptionally long and I don't need to re-quote it.

    It does get pretty annoying doesn't it?
     
    Lil Mike likes this.
  2. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Then your website is full of ****. There are many variables.
     
  3. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Consider this:

    1. A kid born and raised in America of Yemeni descent takes Arabic as an elective because he dreams of impressing his grandparents.
    2. A kid born and raised in America of French/German/British descent takes Arabic as an elective because there are no other electives that fit his schedule.
    Who will find Arabic "more difficult"?


    1. A divorced American woman marries a very recent Italian immigrant.
    2. Her teenage son takes Italian lessons because he feels like it's his responsibility to keep this family together.
    3. A Chinese-American kid takes Italian lessons because his parents insist that he do so.
    Who will find Italian "more difficult"?


    1. A French person who speaks Spanish very well decides to learn Portuguese in the hopes of traveling to Portugal and Brazil.
    2. An American adult who has never been out of his hometown in Ohio buys one of those "Learn Any Language in 3 Weeks!" programs.
    Who is more likely to actually learn Portuguese?


    Need I go on?
     
  4. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Actually, since all people don't feel the same way as you do, about all things-- no offense-- but you cannot know how all others feel, about anything. That is just a fact of human perception. Dealing with other people would be easier, I would imagine, if we could always know how others felt.

    That said, obviously any person, if they could have their druthers, would want to be able to speak the language of the "native" people, wherever they live-- even of wherever they visit. But it is a very different thing to want to speak French, and to actually do all the work, to make it happen. And the immigrant experience is not the same, for all. There are many places, I think-- and where I live, is one of them-- where there are established ex-patriot communities, with businesses that cater largely to others in those communities; therefore, the "need" of learning the lingua franca, is much less. Add to that, stores like Target, hiring not only bilingual employees, but employees who ONLY speak Spanish or Portuguese (many in my town are from both Portugal & Brazil; as well as having immigrants from Ecuador & other Spanish- speaking countries, like Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico). I am sure it is not so convenient, everywhere, as it is in my own area; but here, many decide that they can get by, on only a little English, even though they have lived here for years.

    I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has actually worked with and gotten to know some of the people, of whom I speak. Just to be clear, I think this is a minority of the immigrants in my area (and of course some who are not yet proficient, are newer arrivals). But considering how undesirable a situation it is, of not knowing the local language, a significant portion of immigrants in my area, it seems, never become fully proficient, with a substantial number not even achieving a "functional," level.

    I was going to come back to your other thread, in which we were discussing this, but wanted to wait till I had the time to thoroughly explain myself, so as not to come off differently than I really feel; mine is not the most common way but, in my mind, having empathy is not a reason to ignore facts. And that is what I present: not the interpretation that serves whatever viewpoint "feels" right to my nature, so that argument which I want to make; but whatever conclusion about any situation that (to the extent possible) my impartial perception of reality, seems to be presenting (and then that is what I use, in trying to decide how I should feel).

    This brings me to your pointing out that what makes English so difficult for some Latin American immigrants, in particular, is that they'd had a lesser amount of formal education in their home countries, so are not even especially literate in their native language. And as regrettable as I find this, it actually adds weight to the idea that our immigration policy is poorly- constructed. I'm afraid I don't have the time to get well into it, at the moment, but the U.S. used to give priority to European immigrants, but changed that, to emphasize prioritizing those with relatives here, already, leading to an augmentation of South & Central American, legal immigration totals, and cutbacks elsewhere. Because of this, we have actually allowed people to come study in our higher institutions of learning, acquire expertise that would serve America well, want to remain in the U.S., but we have forced them to leave. This is nonsensical.

    Similarly, with language, it is obviously preferable to have long-term residents, who are fluent in English, as opposed to not being fluent. I had previously mentioned a few of the public health & safety reasons, why a country's having a common language is desirable, but it is also part of what unites a country, and gives citizens a sense of community. I noticed, in a link you sent me but which I have yet to finish, that at one time, English literacy was an immigration criterion. While I still want to read what happened with that program, at first blush, that doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me.

    In conclusion, it is a well- founded, linguistic belief, to my knowledge, that ENGLISH IS among the toughest languages to learn, arguably the toughest, among the major world languages. This is certainly true, at least, when we move beyond just basic English, to consider the idea of speaking our language well. There is a very good reason for this: there are far more WORDS in the English language, than any other (at least, what I have heard, is that the next closest, has only half the words of the English language). But that gets into another argument that I would prefer to make, on its own, rather than to over burden this post with another case, heavy with explanatory argument. For now, let me suffice it, to say that it is not surprising that, under these circumstances, a given proportion of new arrivals, are going to find English more difficult, than their personal drive for self- improvement, will be able to overcome. This is also a reality of all cultures: there are percentage of very conscientious, hard workers; and there is a share who get frustrated & give up relatively easily; as well, of course, as a lot who fall in-between those two. We can see this in about any country's (but especially in our own) scholastic results, which are not determined, simply by varying degrees of natural intelligence, but also by the amount of effort that different individuals are willing to, or are driven to, invest in this form of mental betterment.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2022
  5. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    LOL!!!

    NOT "well-founded" and NOT accepted among actual linguists.
     
  6. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Can you foretell the future? I bet you can, at least, at times. Now, for instance-- what am I about to ask? If you concentrate, I bet you can predict my reply:

    Link?
     
  7. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Do you want a link to my masters degree in linguistics?
     
  8. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    If you have a Master's Degree, then you no doubt are aware of many scholarly articles on this subject, which would be far more enlightening, than merely seeing the likeness of a diploma.
     
  9. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    @unkotare

    I just did a quick search, and the top google article somewhat confirmed what I have long believed true, though it also kind proved false, what I had originally heard. For starters, here's the link:

    https://blog.ititranslates.com/2018/03/07/which-language-is-richest-in-words/

    It's a very short & lightweight article; in fact, if I could, I would argue with the author over many of the reasons that the article lists, as unresolvable questions, making true word counts, an impossibility. Perhaps you will wish to support at least some of the author's expressed views, thereby allowing me, the author's absence notwithstanding, to still have someone to debate.

    Here is the part that comes closest to endorsing my stated view:

    [Snip]

    Which language has the most words? Maybe it’s English.

    The Oxford Dictionary says it’s quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages. The reason is historical.

    English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German. English shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages.

    After the Norman Conquest in 1066 English was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church.

    Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. This melding of languages means English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family according to Oxford.

    English builds its vocabulary through a willingness to accept foreign words. And because English became an international language, it has absorbed vocabulary from a large number of other sources.

    [End]

    Though over 30 years have passed, this is still near identical to the way I'd originally heard the argument. The only difference, this time, is a pulling back on the "most words," claim. The article says that if one were to just list the number of entries in an authoritative version of each language's dictionary, that would put English 4th, but the top two seem very questionable. Because of the bizarrely inflated difference between the first two, and all the rest-- and because their languages & norms (and so not improbably, their dictionaries) might follow a very different form than that of the "Western" world-- what I'm thinking about, is the way, when one looks up a word in English, all the definitions of that word, even if it can be used as both a noun & a verb, generally fall under that one entry. The article cites, for example, a recent NPR article, saying that the word, "run," has at least 645 meanings.

    But perhaps-- I am speculating, for these top two, Asian languages-- a word analog might have tiny differences in its picturing, which may not even affect pronunciation, to signify which meaning it has (rather than, as in English, the reader just being expected to figure it out, from context). So, if what was essentially just one word, in either of those two, Asian tongues, might get numerous listings, for different of its definitions, that is an inherently unfair comparison. Are linguists-- contrary to what I would have been inclined to believe, before reading this article-- just not terribly bright? The fix, if what I speculated has any truth to it, would be to count,
    not entries, but definitions.

    The article includes a list from Wikipedia, which attributes 171 K words, to English. The next behind it is, once again, the language I had always-- from what I had probably heard-- assumed, would come next: Russian. But it is a good bit closer than I'd imagined, at 150 K. After that, comes Spanish at 93K, then Chinese, at 85,500 (which would be half of the English total).

    Notice their range. Even if we add in #3, Italian, at 260 K, the range from #3 to #8, is about the same as the total number, for English. When we move up just one more notch, we find #2 Japanese, with double the Italian word count, at
    500,000.

    In that final step, to the top rung, the count doubles once more, to
    1.1 Million words, for Korean. (Just a wild guess-- is that your native language?). But as even Wikipedia offers, as a caveat, "
    it’s possible to count the number of entries in a dictionary, but it’s not possible to count the number of words in a language."

    Let me backtrack, though, to the article's opening, to see a different evaluation:

    [Snip]

    Have you heard language experts say that English has more words than other languages? The claim is made but it’s practically impossible to verify.

    Steven Frank, the author of The Pen Commandments claims that English has 500,000 words with German having about 135,000 and French having fewer than 100,000.

    But wait…

    A blog post for The Economist agrees that English is rich in vocabulary, but comparisons with other languages can’t be made for several reasons.

    The simplest problem in comparing the size of different languages is inflection.

    Do we count “run”, “runs” and “ran” as three separate words? Another problem is multiple meanings. Do we count “run” the verb and “run” the noun as one word or two? What about “run” as in the long run of a play on Broadway?...

    When counting a language’s words do we count compounds? Is “every day” one word or two? Are the names of new chemical compounds words? Answering the question, “What is the richest language?” becomes more and more complicated.
    ..

    [End]

    Again, it doesn't seem, to me, like these questions should be insurmountable. Just count every meaning, that is, every definition. Linguists are not poor at counting, are they?



     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2022
  10. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    The number of words in a language has not been in question, nor is it a measure of which language would be "most difficult." There is much, much more to language than that.
     
  11. Joe knows

    Joe knows Well-Known Member

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    I worked on a ranch as a kid that had two Mexican brothers and their families working there as well. One brother refused to teach his kids English while the other did. Listening to them argue about that was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

    The point of the story is that No, not all want to learn English.
     
  12. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    The vast, vast majority do. Bear in mind that realizing one should do something is not the same as actually doing it. How many New Year's resolution gym memberships opened in January are actually being used now?
     
  13. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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  14. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    I agree with your OP, this is another ridiculous thread.

    Just wanted to say I also hate phones. My wife's phone died, so for months she's been carrying mine. I rarely used mine, and I don't miss it. I keep one around mostly for emergencies.
     

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