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Phil_b · Joined: 14 Oct 2003 Posts: 239 Location: Back in London

I meant that Chinese was spoken by more people than other languages.
I guess it was a bad choice of words. I do agree with you - I am not aware of any other languages that are truly international - other languages are spoken in more than one country: Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese etc. but are they used in contexts where they aren't the L1 for either person in the conversation?

I think the point of this topic is whether that could change in the future... I'm sceptical - for many of the reasons that have already been mentioned.

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

In South America, Spanish tends to be spoken as the lingua franca--as the continent includes countries with these official languages: English (Guyana), Dutch (Surinam), French (French Guiana) and Portugese. I expect with the brand new South American Community of Nations thatwill continue to be the case.

When I attend conferences in Venezuela there are frequently speakers from Brasil who are reluctant to present in Spanish--and most Spanish speakers get about 95% of it just fine. But when we talk informally--while eating in a restaurant, we tend to speak in Spanish. (My first language is English.)

Spinoza · Joined: 17 Oct 2004 Posts: 194 Location: Saudi Arabia

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

Speak for yourelf. I learned 8--and I can tell you that Gaelic and Latin are not all THAT useful....

distiller · Joined: 31 May 2004 Posts: 249

As teachers the point has to be made that language learners do better when they have an incentive to learn the material. Why would I for instance want to learn Estonian? It would be pointless. Now if I lived in Estonia or had Estonian family then that would be different. I'm not sure what kind of person chooses to learn obscure languages without these kinds of connections.

I also agree with the previous poster, no not THAT one the other one, that the ability to learn languages is not a sign of intelligence. Some of the most ridiculously stupid people I've ever met have been able to pick up languages in a heartbeat while many intelligent people I know find it difficult. Personally, I like foreign languages and speak several but it has always been a struggle, although it gets easier with time and the more languages you pick up. That's why hard work is also key to language learning.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

ShapeSphere · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 386

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

[quote="ShapeSphere"]

ShapeSphere · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 386

I stand corrected. I should have made the distinction between the Romance languages and Germanic.

But at least I can understand how to use the quote function. Wink

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

ShapeSphere,

You may understand how to use the quote function, but I would like you to cite the other reasons why Latin is so very useful. For most people it is ONLY useful for the purpose you mentioned--which kicks in when you are studying Romance languages. I will agree that it is certainly useful for that, as I found when learning French, Italian, Spanish and Portugese. And Roger is wrong--the German sentence structure comes from Latin. (Remember the Holy Roman Empire?)

It is NOT useful for much of anything else--you can read books in Latin, but you can't find someone on the street to have a conversation with in Latin--at least I can't. I can't order dinner in Latin....

I still read in Latin, despite my last course having been in 1965, but that's because I keep telling myself if I keep up my Latin skills I will be able to sneak away to conferences in Italy where authors/texts are still examined--for example the one every May in Cicero's birth village east of Rome.

Note to ls650: I can't do a lot of things--run a marathon, leap tall buildings at a single bound, swim the English Channel, etc. That doesn't mean that I should stop learning new things and perfecting abilities in things that I CAN do. At 60, I have pretty much sorted out what I can and can't do--there's plenty to keep me really busy till I turn up my toes.

And you?

AsiaTraveller · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:40 pm Post subject:

Right you are again, moonraven.

See the lengthy Web article "Latin in German":

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa103000a.htm

Many people see the word family in the term "language family" and think that families are completely separate. In Europe, as in many other parts of the world, this is simply not the case.

German and English might be languages in the "Germanic" family. But this simple fact does not lead to the conclusion that they share little with the Italic family of so-called Romance languages.

moonraven · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 3094

Yes. Back in the late 60s and early 70s I translated Goethe's ROMAN ELEGIES and VENETIAN EPIGRAMS to avoid taking German in graduate school. It was easy to do, given that Goethe had capitalized on the sentence structure similarities between Latin and German.

ShapeSphere · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 386

Moonraven,

I think you've answered the question yourself.