To think it's understandable that English speaking people often aren't great at learning foreign languages?

[Treblecleff88]

When I was at school, I learned French. Do you know how many times I've been to France? 0. Do you know how many French people I know? 0. So guess how much French I remember? Pretty much nothing.

I used to a spend quite a bit of time in Germany and they are all so good at English. But they communicate with other foreigners using English as a language they have a mutual understanding of. They listen to pop songs sung in English. They are constantly exposed to English as are foreigners across Europe. It's easy to see why the stuff they learn in school seems to stick so much better. It is always being reinforced and they have a real, tangible reason for learning the English language.

I often feel we're given a hard time for our lack of knowledge with foreign languages but realistically, even if we pick one language in Europe and get to the point of being fluent, it's not going to be relevant when conversing with the vast majority of foreigners in this country. English is so widely spoken by comparison to say French, Spanish or German which seem to be the three languages which schools seem to teach in the U.K.

Interested to hear other people's views on this.

LadyinCement - the French, Italians etc aren't bombarded with English as much as, say, the Dutch or Swedes - their films and TV programmes are dubbed rather than subtitled. This may make less of a difference now that so much is available online, but I remember meeting Swedish 19-year-olds who had just left school and spoke English with an an Amerian accent from watching many TV programmes in English.

My friend's boyfriend is Finnish. He didn't start learning English until he was about 10 or 11, but said he'd had a lot of exposure to English through computer games and TV prior to that.

When I was at school, we spent years doing quite basic French. We didn't get on to the past tense until Y10, and then some people (and this was the top set) just seemed to find it an impossible concept to grasp. When trying to learn the cases in German, it didn't help that we had studied virtually no English grammar, and so our teacher had to explain what a subject and object was. A few years ago I did some invigilating for a Spanish oral GCSE exam. It had changed from when I did my orals - we had to respond to questions asked in the MFL. These students just had to memorise phrases and repeat them, and they seemed to find this very, very tricky and weren't at all confident speaking (OK I know it was an exam situation so they would have been more nervous, but I couldn't have imagined any of them having a relatively free-flowing conversation in Spanish).

It is a falacy to say that people will only talk to you in English when in other coutnries.

I agree that they'll speak the local language if you persist and realise that you want to learn, but this doesn't always help for quick transactions where people often hear an English accent and switch to English.

But Jijhebtseksmetezels the meaning and origin of the word would be lost. And some words are pronounced differently in different parts of the UK. It would be hideous.

When I attended University in Sweden those who could not understand English would struggle - quite a few essential textbooks on our course were only available in English.....it's a big incentive to learn another language when to not do so limits your University ambitions.

In the UK job market, if you speak two foreign languages fluently, you can maybe hope to land a call centre job at £15k or so. British employers do not value or reward language skills. What's the incentive to learn?

I know what you mean BlackForest and I'm a language graduate too. But I think the difference is that in lots of other countries, people learn English as standard as well as training for another career. I've worked with engineers, geophysicists, geologists, it experts from all over the world who speak English fluently, as well as their first language. It is a shame that languages aren't more valued as a skill in their own right, but I don't think that's unique to the uk.

exactly decaff - dh is an engineer, his brother is a doctor and sister a teacher, none of them work in language based careers. They are all fluent in English.

And they had no TV and no cinema/films growing up, and it was pre widespread computer use. So they didn't have exposure to a lot of English, except radio/music

I think a lot of comments on this thread are thinly veiled excuses to bash the English (yawn). Ime there are 1000s of people all over the world, including Europe, where people don't speak English, and why should they if they don't have an interest or need in doing so? - ditto native English speakers. Is anyone going to comment on the lazy and arrogant Americans? There are also 100s/1000s people who come to the uk to visit and live with little or no English. Some never learn English, despite lessons being available for free! But this is ok? Well, yes it is but then why the scorn for English speaking people who don't feel guilt for not speaking another (random) language? Many people come here and wing it, gradually picking up the language (or not) because they see it as being in their own interests.

I think a lot of comments on this thread are thinly veiled excuses to bash the English (yawn)

Nope. Because a)its a legitimate issue backed up by facts, no bashing at all and b) why bother when there are so many other things we could bash them with?

I think op is right if she only visits the tourist resorts but it is very useful if you go off the beaten track

Roomster I think you are talking absolute rubbish and you've made a lot of assumptions about me and others on this thread.

Also there isn't any need to phoneticise English, it works just fine. If you prefer a more phoneticised version, American English is supposedly that. I don't personally find that it is (I always mentally pronounce traveled as trav-eeld) but it works for some.

Likewise you don't necessarily need to know the grammar of your own language to learn the grammar of another, and indeed it can be a bit confusing, since tenses tend to be used slightly differently in different languages anyway. IME people get more confused when they try to apply the rules of their own language to another one because they constantly try to translate things word for word, which doesn't work, or want to know why it's different, to which there isn't really any answer; it just is, the languages evolved differently. Why do we have a difference between "She works at the hospital" (normally; e.g. she's a doctor) and "She's working at the hospital" (she's there on a temporary job, e.g. as a painter) Other languages just have one tense for that and add modifiers if clarification is needed, so it doesn't necessarily help to know that in your first language. There are other examples too but people were using tenses.

Bertie - American English is not a phonetecised version of British English (whatever that's supposed to be). A knowledge of English grammar certainly does help you learn the grammar of a foreign language.

In the 70s I had to learn a lot of English grammar from my German and French studies! Grammar is taught more now in schools however in England than the 70s and the suggestion it is best each child does a foreign language GCSE which is what our family has always done since the 1940s actually is probably a good thing for those children able to manage it.

I know, that's not what I said I said AE is more phoneticised not that it completely is. They simplified several of the spellings in order to make it more phonetic, that's why they use color and the -ize ending.

Grammar knowledge can help and hinder. That's my experience. I don't think it makes that much difference.

If you speak English or what I call the bastard common language then no you don't need to speak any other language.

I speak two. My mother tongue Twi/Fante and English. Dw and I are learning Mandarin and Spanish now so that we can teach dd 11m the big three languages and will encourage her later in life to learn other important languages like Swahili or dialects like patois if they can be useful to her.

that's why they use color and the -ize ending.

The -ize ending isn't an American spelling simplification though. If you check the OED, you will see that realise, for example, is not listed. Instead, it's realize (and then, in brackets, also -ise).

But the use of the (alternative) -ise ending has now become so popular (in the UK, but not the US) that people assume the original spelling actually comes from the US when it doesn't.

Leonard, -ize is just the Oxford preferred spelling.

You will find -ise in Cambridge, Collins, etc.

English doesn't need to be phoneticised. Once you have a large enough vocabulary and can already read in another language it is easy to read in English. My nearly 8 year old started to learn to read in English about 6 months ago. At first he attempted the phonetic and syllabic method he learnt at school (in a different language) when he realised it wasn't making sense, he just decoded it differently until it sounded like a word he knew and that made sense in the context. In a week he was reading almost fluently.

My students that are good at English can read really well. Occasionally they ask me for the pronunciation of new words, but they certainly don't struggle. The ones that are weak in English read using their own phonetic rules but they also read other languages using the their own phonetic rules instead of the clear phonetic rules of that language, so a phonetic system makes no difference to the ability to read correctly, what does make a difference is studying and effort.

I periodically think, I should learn a foreign language and it is a bit embarrassing that I only speak one language, but that's an abstract thought really.

Then I think: how would it benefit me in day to day life?

I interact with colleagues from across the world, but in an occupation where the lingua Franca (to paraphrase George W. Bush) is English and my subject area (British history) means I am unlikely to have real employment prospects in the non-anglophone countries, so learning a language wouldn't benefit me in career terms. If I studied, say early modern France, it would be different.

I rarely go on holiday abroad (once in the past 10 years due to fear of flying, lack of money and carbon footprint concerns) and then never off the beaten track. Again, if I were to move to another country, I'd learn the language, the idea of only living and interacting with British ex-pats is depressing.

A friend learned Catalan, just as she was interested in how it worked as a language and for the sheer challenge: I'm not like that. I don't particularly relish the idea of learning a foreign language as a pure intellectual exercise. I was crap at foreign languages at school and found the lessons torture.

It isn't my fault that through historical and cultural circumstances, that the language I've spoken from birth is preeminent in international politics, business, diplomacy, the sciences and education, the uncomfortable fact is that learning another Language wouldn't hugely benefit me. Although I'm happy to be told I'm wrong!

I didn't say in the UK. All over the world countless adults learn languages, and plenty of them are not bilingual before that.
it's time consuming and difficult for everyone, but they do it anyway, why are british people somehow different? They aren't.

It's not as difficult or time consuming if they already have a good grounding in at least one second language in childhood (via school and english language films/TV) which is usually the case in non-English speaking countries. DH speaks English as a second language and he learned most of it at primary school age. Children in English speaking countries usually have zero exposure to another language at that age.

I didn't say in the UK. All over the world countless adults learn languages, and plenty of them are not bilingual before that.
it's time consuming and difficult for everyone, but they do it anyway, why are british people somehow different? They aren't.

It's not as difficult or time consuming if they already have a good grounding in at least one second language in childhood (via school and english language films/TV) which is usually the case in non-English speaking countries. DH speaks English as a second language and he learned most of it at primary school age. Children in English speaking countries usually have zero exposure to another language at that age.

Are you trying to argue that no adults anywhere learn a second language as adults, who were not bilingual as children? Because that is pure bullshit.
Stop trying to come up with reasons why its more difficult for Brits than anyone else. It really isn't. It's a choice.

Roomster I think you are talking absolute rubbish and you've made a lot of assumptions about me and others on this thread.

I am not making a lot of assumptions about you. You said that you are an English teacher living in Germany. This would suggest that it is important for you to speak German and is one of your main skills as part of your job. My job requires a science degree and PhD and a lot of other skills which have taken a long time to get. I wouldn't suggest that you are lazy for not bothering to acquire the same skills..

Are you trying to argue that no adults anywhere learn a second language as adults, who were not bilingual as children? Because that is pure bullshit.

I didn't all adults and I also didn't say bilingual. I said that a large proportion of them have a good grounding in another language via school/english language TV/film. That is the difference between English speaking countries and non-english speaking countries.