So who's made an effort ...

On Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:51:07 +0200, Tom P wrote in post :
:

My English accent and grammatical errors give me away instantly even
after living half my life in Germany.

me too :-(

--
Tim C. Linz, Austria.

Tom P wrote:
On 04/13/2013 12:14 AM, Király wrote:
poldy wrote:
to learn the language of the countries they visit?

I married a Hungarian and have made great effort in trying to learn some
of the language for when we visit. It is quite difficult but I can get
by with the basics, and since I have a keen ear for pronunciation, I'm
told that what I can speak is nearly accentless.

All the guidebooks say that Hungarians tend to be impressed with
tourists who speak it, owing to the fact that few attempt it. But that
hasn't been my experience. I find that people I meet tend to get
annoyed with me when I don't understand when they speak back to me.

I suspect that when I speak Hungarian with no accent I get mistaken for
a native simpleton rather than a foreign tourist. Maybe I'll work on
worstening my pronunciation and see if that makes a difference.

My English accent and grammatical errors give me away instantly even
after living half my life in Germany. On good days, they think I'm
Dutch. As a Polish taxi driver said to me in Hamburg, life is too short to learn German.

I started learning German in my 20s and haven't had a noticeable American
accent(in that I'm not spotted as such) for most of that time, but as a
German teacher, I've paid very close attention to my pronunciation in order
to be a good model. And I've studied in Germany as well.

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

Erilar wrote:

Tom P wrote:
On 04/13/2013 12:14 AM, Király wrote:
poldy wrote:
to learn the language of the countries they visit?

I married a Hungarian and have made great effort in trying to learn some
of the language for when we visit. It is quite difficult but I can get
by with the basics, and since I have a keen ear for pronunciation, I'm
told that what I can speak is nearly accentless.

All the guidebooks say that Hungarians tend to be impressed with
tourists who speak it, owing to the fact that few attempt it. But that
hasn't been my experience. I find that people I meet tend to get
annoyed with me when I don't understand when they speak back to me.

I suspect that when I speak Hungarian with no accent I get mistaken for
a native simpleton rather than a foreign tourist. Maybe I'll work on
worstening my pronunciation and see if that makes a difference.

My English accent and grammatical errors give me away instantly even
after living half my life in Germany. On good days, they think I'm
Dutch. As a Polish taxi driver said to me in Hamburg, life is too short
to learn German.

I started learning German in my 20s and haven't had a noticeable American
accent(in that I'm not spotted as such) for most of that time, but as a
German teacher, I've paid very close attention to my pronunciation in order
to be a good model. And I've studied in Germany as well.

I didn't start learning Spanish until my mid 20s as my partner is
Peruvian. I wouldn't say I'm 100% fluent but I'm told that I speak it
very well, and with a pretty good Limeño accent! Probably no surprise as
I've learned most of it by listening and practising.

I'm quite enjoying going through this site by the way-

http://www.madinaharabic.com/Arabic_.../L000_001.html

D

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)

Martin wrote:

The best time to learn a language is before the age of 7.

I really envied my California neighbor's children - their father was
Puerto Rican (and his mother spoke only Spanish), their mother was born
in the U.S., so spoke English, and their maternal grandparents were
German, and spoke it to the kids. Consequently they were fluent in all
three languages. (Once they realized they were separate, and stopped
replying in a hash of all three.)

"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:46:44 +0200, Frank Hucklenbroich
wrote:

Am Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:21:36 +0000 (UTC) schrieb Bert:

I studied French and German in school, and have had little opportunity
to use either. I was able to read signs, menus and the like when I
traveled in Austria and Germany, but neither language was of much use in
The Netherlands or Norway.

In the Netherlands you can get around with German, the two languages are
not so different from each other and most dutch people understand basic
German. You will also be able to read menus or roadsigns.

That's true, but you do better using English. The Dutch have long
memories

If you're not careful they'll be wanting their bike back

tim

On Monday, April 15, 2013 10:50:28 PM UTC+1, Martin wrote:
On Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:41:16 -0700, "EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)"

wrote:







Martin wrote:



The best time to learn a language is before the age of 7.



I really envied my California neighbor's children - their father was

Puerto Rican (and his mother spoke only Spanish), their mother was born

in the U.S., so spoke English, and their maternal grandparents were

German, and spoke it to the kids. Consequently they were fluent in all

three languages. (Once they realized they were separate, and stopped

replying in a hash of all three.)



Neither of our two multilingual children ever mixed languages.

--



Martin in Zuid Holland

In my Welsh relatives' South Wales town it's quite common for all, including adults, to mix Welsh & English - often using Welsh nouns within an otherwise English sentence, etc. That's where most of my limited Welsh comes from!

Martin wrote:
On Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:41:16 -0700, "EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)"
wrote:


Martin wrote:

The best time to learn a language is before the age of 7.
I really envied my California neighbor's children - their father was
Puerto Rican (and his mother spoke only Spanish), their mother was born
in the U.S., so spoke English, and their maternal grandparents were
German, and spoke it to the kids. Consequently they were fluent in all
three languages. (Once they realized they were separate, and stopped
replying in a hash of all three.)

Neither of our two multilingual children ever mixed languages.

Well, these kids learned pretty fast - they were already talking at not
much older than one year. And they may have heard a "hash" at home, too
- sometimes a gathering of multilingual adults can be guilty, also,
using the first appropriate phrase that comes to mind, knowing they'll
be understood.

On 04/15/2013 11:50 PM, Martin wrote:
On Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:41:16 -0700, "EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)"
wrote:



Martin wrote:

The best time to learn a language is before the age of 7.

I really envied my California neighbor's children - their father was
Puerto Rican (and his mother spoke only Spanish), their mother was born
in the U.S., so spoke English, and their maternal grandparents were
German, and spoke it to the kids. Consequently they were fluent in all
three languages. (Once they realized they were separate, and stopped
replying in a hash of all three.)

Neither of our two multilingual children ever mixed languages.


Our youngest daughter mixed up until the age of three - that is to say,
she chose the shortest and most efficient word - then she stuck to just
one language and refused to speak in the others. She is now word perfect
in three languages.

On 04/15/2013 06:18 PM, David Horne wrote:
Erilar wrote:

Tom P wrote:
On 04/13/2013 12:14 AM, Király wrote:
poldy wrote:
to learn the language of the countries they visit?

I married a Hungarian and have made great effort in trying to learn some
of the language for when we visit. It is quite difficult but I can get
by with the basics, and since I have a keen ear for pronunciation, I'm
told that what I can speak is nearly accentless.

All the guidebooks say that Hungarians tend to be impressed with
tourists who speak it, owing to the fact that few attempt it. But that
hasn't been my experience. I find that people I meet tend to get
annoyed with me when I don't understand when they speak back to me.

I suspect that when I speak Hungarian with no accent I get mistaken for
a native simpleton rather than a foreign tourist. Maybe I'll work on
worstening my pronunciation and see if that makes a difference.

My English accent and grammatical errors give me away instantly even
after living half my life in Germany. On good days, they think I'm
Dutch. As a Polish taxi driver said to me in Hamburg, life is too short
to learn German.

I started learning German in my 20s and haven't had a noticeable American
accent(in that I'm not spotted as such) for most of that time, but as a
German teacher, I've paid very close attention to my pronunciation in order
to be a good model. And I've studied in Germany as well.

I didn't start learning Spanish until my mid 20s as my partner is
Peruvian. I wouldn't say I'm 100% fluent but I'm told that I speak it
very well, and with a pretty good Limeño accent! Probably no surprise as
I've learned most of it by listening and practising.


Great stuff! Monica, my Spanish teacher, is from Peru.

I'm quite enjoying going through this site by the way-

http://www.madinaharabic.com/Arabic_.../L000_001.html

D

That's heavy stuff, hitting you with entire alphabet at once! I started
to figure out some memory tricks, like B has one dot on the Bottom, T
has TWO dots on top, TH has THREE dots on top, that kind of thing.

Tom P wrote:

On 04/15/2013 06:18 PM, David Horne wrote:
[]
I'm quite enjoying going through this site by the way-

http://www.madinaharabic.com/Arabic_.../L000_001.html

D

That's heavy stuff, hitting you with entire alphabet at once! I started
to figure out some memory tricks, like B has one dot on the Bottom, T
has TWO dots on top, TH has THREE dots on top, that kind of thing.

I'll see how I go. When I was first in India at age 16, for 6 weeks, I
learned Hindi (actually, mostly so I could read tabla notation) and
while I won't claim I mastered the spoken language, I was pretty good at
reading (though not writing) it. However, I've forgotten most of it
now...

D

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)