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TokyoLiz
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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 Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:00 am Post subject: Language nerds |
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Mark
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| Anyway, it's half on its way to becoming an international language of internationally-minded travellers anyway. For that reason, there are speakers who would prefer that it is not adopted by the global community as it wold then no longer provide those opportunities for international contacts and travel. |
?
Womblingfree, Esperanto is delightfully nerdy, imho. Hooray for language nerds. 
My favorite teacher in school was a nerdy guy who memorized great swacks of Milton. My classmates sat in slack-jawed awe in his recitations. And another one spot-taught us Latin grammar to make sure we understood where French grammar came from. |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:01 am Post subject: |
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| womblingfree wrote: |
EDIT:
Sorry Mark, didn't realise you'd actually learned it!
No offence intended  |
No worries. The key to being able to do "nerdy" things and get away with it is to not be nerdy in the other aspects of your life. |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:03 am Post subject: |
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| womblingfree wrote: |
| Mark wrote: |
I would also point out that we are discussing this on an internet forum in the middle of the day. What would you call that?  |
It's 2:00AM where I am and I have work in six hours.
Where do I claim my nerd prize? |
Down the hall, second door on your left.  |
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TokyoLiz
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:05 am Post subject: |
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| Everybody's nerd status jumped considerably. |
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womblingfree
Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:05 am Post subject: Re: Language nerds |
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| TokyoLiz wrote: |
| Womblingfree, Esperanto is delightfully nerdy, imho. Hooray for language nerds. |
buy' ngop! |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:07 am Post subject: Re: Language nerds |
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| womblingfree wrote: |
| TokyoLiz wrote: |
| Womblingfree, Esperanto is delightfully nerdy, imho. Hooray for language nerds. |
buy' ngop! |
Ok, well, those people should clearly be punched.
Unless they also speak Esperanto, in which case they should be punched, but not very hard. |
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TokyoLiz
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:15 am Post subject: Ooh! |
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Look! That's me on the left!
I'll settle for a glass of punch
Are we bored, or what? |
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shuize
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Hmm ... Which do you think this woman would have been better off knowing, English or Esperanto?
| Quote: |
| Thai woman tells of 25-year detour after catching wrong bus |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070208/od_afp/thailandmissingoffbeat
Of course, the even more obvious point: "Hey, dumb lady, after 25 years maybe you ought to think about learning some f-cking Thai." |
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japanman
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
Posts: 281
Location: England
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:48 am Post subject: |
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| she must suffer from some sort of mental illness. I lived in bangkok for just one year and learnt Thai pretty quickly, impossible not to pick it up. What an utter lunatic. |
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shuize
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:14 am Post subject: |
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| japanman wrote: |
| she must suffer from some sort of mental illness. |
I thought the same. I also wondered if she's never learned to write or operate a telephone. |
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zorro (3)
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 202
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:43 am Post subject: |
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| They might be unintelligible for many native speakers, but that's not who they're being used to communicate with. This may be a problem of NS's lack of flexibility in communicating with unfamiliar variation. |
Heavily accented Sri Lankan English trying to communicate with katakana English. Do you think they would be mutually intelligible? Or is it simply only NSs who have a problem with flexibility? Probably from your perspective...
| Quote: |
| I'd argue that native speakers are often the very worst people to teach their language though! |
Do you mean native English speakers or any language? Do you have some way of supporting your argument? [/quote] |
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womblingfree
Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="zorro (3)"]
| zorro (3) wrote: |
| Heavily accented Sri Lankan English trying to communicate with katakana English. |
Katakana English is not used to speak in English, it's used to speak English words in Japanese. It's not a variety of English communication any more than the French words that litter the English language enable us to understand French.
Also there's more to a true English variety than accent, differences will depend on whether the English being spoken is a dialect, New English, creole or pidgin.
| zorro (3) wrote: |
| Do you mean native English speakers or any language? Do you have some way of supporting your argument? |
Well what I mean is that entirely monolingual language teachers with no experience of language sudy or inter-cultural communication are often the worst.
This, of course, does not apply to all native speaking English teachers (I am a shining example of this ). But let's face it, it applies to a great many who are employed simply because they speak their own language.
It's like employing someone as a builder simply because they live in a house.
In my experience English is often taught more effectively by non-native speakers as they are aware of the process of language acquisition, of the reasons why people are studying, the needs of the students, and are usually well educated in all aspects of language teaching; grammar, phonology, morphology, etc.
In an ideal world teachers wouldn't be able to get jobs without the relevant license. But let's not be too pious about it, both students and teachers can have an enjoyable time at an eikaiwa regardless of the fundamental flaws in the enterprise. |
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Eva Pilot
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 351
Location: Far West of the Far East
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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This man attempted for years to learn Esperanto. As in all other aspects of his life, he failed.
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natsume
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 409
Location: Chongqing, China
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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I have an aside on the Esperanto debate.
As somebody who has invested a fair amount of time trying to learn both Japanese and Spanish, personally, there is no way I would, at this point, ever try to learn Esperanto. I'm far more inclined to start something like Mandarin or Portuguese, if I'm not too busy trying to work on the first two.
What it comes down to is my intrinsic motivation. I'm learning the languages of cultures I am interested in. Esperanto does not have the allure of any culture behind it, for me. |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:04 am Post subject: |
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| womblingfree wrote: |
Katakana English is not used to speak in English, it's used to speak English words in Japanese. It's not a variety of English communication any more than the French words that litter the English language enable us to understand French. |
Yes, but many Japanese speak English via katakana and, to some degree, Japanese syntax. Is this a valid example of linguistic diversity?
| Quote: |
Well what I mean is that entirely monolingual language teachers with no experience of language sudy or inter-cultural communication are often the worst. |
Are there really that many people like this? Granted, they are in conversation schools in Asian countries, but those people are not language teachers responsible for students' development. They're just working as chatting partners, and monolingual folks with no teaching knowledge can handle that job. |
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