Taking due consideration of the comment above "without proof reading their posts"

I'd like to point out that the phrase "on serious note" should read "on a serious note".

Funny how you only see the spelling and grammar mistakes after you press the send button! And I honestly thought I'd checked everything. I think human nature is that you read what you want to read rather than what you actually write.

I've learned english at school, but most of the knowledge (beside grammar which I owe to my professor in last two classes of higher school) I got from speaking with foreign tourist, (privilege when living in famous tourist destination).

At the time I was in elementary school (some 30 years ago) we started learning one foreign language (at first only english, later german, french, italian...) at 4th grade. Now kids learn two languages, starting first on in 2nd grade.

Beside english, I do know some italian, french and german (in that order), and of course, my 'native language' croatian.

Hi

In Denmark we have a long tradition of learning foreign languages. We simply need to as Denmark is a small country and Danish is only spoken by app. 5,000,000 people.

All children must learn two languages: English and German in school from app. age 10 to age 16. Later (in high school) French, Spanish, Russian and some more languages are optional. In high school and university many foreign language books are used.

Besides this the Danish television shows a lot of English/American soaps and films - and a few German, French etc. - and these are shown in the original form with Danish subtitles.

And as you probably know the majority of popular music is in English.

All this means that we have all got a basic training in school in English; and we keep this active be hearing English all the time.

This means that most Danes understand English, many speaks English and many writes English fairly. ;-)

J�rgen http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha

Very true!
I remember taking a crash course in Arabic......1 week of intensive 16 hour days!........and then went on my export trip to a customer in Jordan, where I had been manytimes before with only english as our common ground.Whilst we were talking, my customer's Aide brought him his lunch on a plate and asked him (in arabic , of course) if he wanted a knife and fork.
I picked up on this and asked my customer if he had decided whether he wanted a knife and fork!
He was astounded and suddenly really warmed to me and my sales talk!!!!
We are all the same.
When somebody takes the trouble to say a couple of words in our language, we may sometimes smile at his accent but really appreciate his efforts.!!!




------------------
Eddie from Rotherham
Skype:eddiefromrotherham
www.yamahakeyboards.info

PSR9000

Great example, Eddie.

When abroad you should adapt to the locals, not the locals to you.

Most of us speak at least 3 or more languages, i personally speak 6 languages the same way
i am talking to you now...if you ask me how i did it i still have no clue even today...in school
i took Russian classes so i had no contact with English at the time, i came to USA in 1997 but
already spoke english, how? I have no clue how i learnt, only from computers and movies i
guess but the story is...i am Turkish who was born in Yugoslavia, correctly Macedonia.
At the age of 5 I HAD to speak 4 languages...Turkish, at home we spoke it, Serbian, it was the
official language of Yugoslavia, Macedonian, i had to cuz i was in Macedonia and school was
in Macedonian and i lived in a town where everybody was Albanian. At the age of 5 i had to
speak all those 4 languages and i did. Then i went on to learn German (i lived there) and at
the end had to learn English...now i am getting into Greek and i am getting pretty good at it.
Every language that i speak i can also read and write same like here in English.

...and yess...i grew up listening to READY TO ROCK!!!

[This message has been edited by Nedim (edited 08-11-2009).]

Chas,
Interested in your thoughts here. Are wee too arrogant or too dumb? After all, those are the only 2 possibilities you offered up. So which is it?
If we're too dumb, is that why people world wide have found it necessary to learn English? "let's learn English so we can deal with the dumb English speakers of the world." Obviously there was a lot to gain by dealing with the dumb Americans, otherwise some other language spoken by smart people would have become the dominant language of the world.

So far, I've heard that learning another language is good for impressing the locals, ordering at restaurants, and buying beer. Learning English is good for most business, education opportunities, and most popular entertainment. Have I missed something? Guess I'm among the arrogant. Even though I did briefly study 2 languages, and have since never found a real need for either of them.

Sure, I'm impressed that many of the internationals speak English, and some of them speak it very well. But I don't feel dumb or arrogant for not speaking another language. Guess I was a bit miffed with the slightly condescending attitude of the original post. I would like to see us coming back closer to the front in areas of math and science. American students are falling behind in a lot of areas lately, and the use of a foreign language in my opinion should not be at the top of the priority list.

Interesting post and I don't think that any person is too dumb too learn, though particuarly on this BBS I think any of us musicians are able to learn a foreign language since good ears help a lot with learning a foreign language

Personally I did learn french, german and english at highschool but also learned spanish (in fact I am writing from spain at the moment as I am on a holiday) and arabic by listening and trying.

My native language is obviously dutch.

Nice too see that most of you are still here by the way

Fred

Gosh Rory, I've been thinking of how to respond to you without causing a controversy. You must know that as far as I'm concerned, you are one of the most talented and accomplished musicians on this board. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're in lock step in all other areas, particularly politically. I have no problem with that. I strongly believe in a two-party system.

In answer to your question, YES, I do believe that it is arrogant to think that there is no need for us English speakers to learn another language. What are we saying? that WE hold all the marbles so if they want to play in our backyard, let THEM do all that language-learnin' and stuff. I guess we should be grateful that the citizens of all the non-English speaking countries don't feel that way. There would be very little global communications going on. How many times have we heard how some great piece of literature cannot be fully enjoyed or appreciated unless read in the original language. To say (or imply) that such things are unimportant does hint at a vein of anti-intellectualism that seems to run through a part of America's political landscape.

I do agree with you, though, on getting our students back on track in math and science. If we fail to do that, we WILL be learning the language of whoever wins that (math, science, technology) war.

And finally, NO, I don't think it is condescending to point out areas in which our country could do a better job. The pursuit of knowledge and the desire to improve our ability to communicate with the rest of the world certainly seem like worthwhile goals to me.

BTW, hope things are going well with your recent commercial pursuits. If talent and professionalism is what it takes, you should do well.

chas

I'm still not hearing a good reason to learn another language. Just that in your opinion it's arrogant not to. OK, if I want to understand an Italian song, I better know Italian, read a French poem, I better know French. Even if I knew 8 languages, there would still be a 9th piece of literature that I couldn't appreciate in its original tongue. So I'd still have that same problem.
But, the international people are not learning English just because they are interested to know what Nickelback's latest song is about. Is it just a random accident that English is the dominant language in the world? If it is just a random accident, then I probably would have learned whatever secondary language had turned out to be the dominant language of the world. I don't think I would have (just because I'm an arrogant American) refused to learn another language if I could point directly to some marked benefits for doing so. And even if I'm wrong about that, and I would have actually refused to learn the dominant language of the world, that's not the reality of the situation. These people have given us a lot of sound reasons as to why they learned English. I'm still waiting for an equally strong list of reasons to learn another language. All I'm hearing is it's arrogant not to.