Job Discussion Forums

abufletcher · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject:

I freely admit an abundant ignorance of historical linguistics. I do know however that great claims are made for this or that "dialect" being a "language" and this or that "language" actually being "just a dialect." The Dutch "language" is certainly no further from standard high German than is the variety spoken in Switzerland which for whatever historical/political reasons is still considered a "dialect" of German.

But I'll admit I'm completely wrong on my evaluations of Catalan -- which has always struck me as more like French than Spanish anyway. But of course this only bolsters my argument that learning Catalan has little world-wide value. Though of course there are many other reasons to learn a language.

I'll also agree with Sheikh that there are a great many strong socio-cultural reasons why expats in the Gulf do not learn much Arabic -- it's not entirely (or even primarily) a matter of linguistic arrogance. Most of my colleagues in the Gulf were good caring human beings -- but that alone wasn't a sufficient condition for language acquisition.

BTW, it's not much better here in Japan even though in some ways the Gaijin's need for Japanese is much greater than the Gulf expat's need for Arabic. It's been my experience that they only people who really seem to learn Japanese are those with a Japanese partiner.

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Was it Roman Jakobson who said 'a dialect is a language with an army' ?

For me the AMAZING fact is how many TEFLers are monoglots.

abufletcher · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 4:42 pm Post subject:

abufletcher · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:45 am Post subject:

Sheikh Inal Ovar · Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 1208 Location: Melo Drama School

It is another of the quirks of the 'profession' that somebody can claim to be an expert in language teaching (which by definition runs to include language learning) without having consciously learned or applied themselves to learning a language ...

It's another thing though for posters like the one 'way back when' to maintain that the teacher should know the language of the country in which they teach ... the logistics of this system would entail people having to learn the language of the destination country before even applying for each new job Wink

... and who on earth would be qualified to teach the mixed nationality classes found in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the US & the UK Shocked

The poster's comments stink of trumpet blowing to me

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Celtic langauges are not in the Germanic group but they are Indo-European!

The 'isolates' are Basque and Finno-Ugric.

And what is wrong with a bit of trumpet-blowing ! Polyglots unite and demand a pay-rise ! Seriously it is a reflection of a major defect in the education system of the Anglophone World that foreign languages have such low priority.

abufletcher · Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 10:39 am Post subject:

Guess I'd better just shut up before I make an even bigger fool out of myself! Very Happy

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.html

DesertStar · Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 80 Location: UAE Oasis

When there is a will, there is a way.

The rationalizations made by some language teachers are quite interesting. I certainly have more respect for our students after reading some of the above.

Cool

DesertStar · Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 80 Location: UAE Oasis

When there is a will, there is a way. Isn't that what we want our students to believe?

The rationalizations made by some language teachers can be quite interesting. I certainly have more respect for our students after reading some of the above.

Cool

Sheikh Inal Ovar · Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 1208 Location: Melo Drama School

I'm sure we've heard that somewhere before ...

Anyway, wasn't the whole point one of there being no will ... for many ... many who may well have previously had the will to go on and learn other languages ...