Why do all yiz readers/writers claim to be bad at foreign languages?

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I suspect you're all full of it, aka modest. Otherwise... why would a big reader/writer in his native language lack a facility for new templates? Me, I started to actually get horny over the Italian vocab book I picked up today; I catch on to foreign grammar with almost guilt-inducing ease. And come ON: the same lit-types who claim to be unable to remember anything but swear words from their 4 years of French are not just brilliant with their own language but whizzes with math, whereas I have to take off my socks to figure out whether I have enough quarters to wash 'em. I know, I know, math is just another language... but I'd say it's a lot less languagy than Italian!

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 2 March 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

¿Que?

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 2 March 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

OK, I obviously didn't mean you... for those unfamiliar with the idiom, "all yiz" means "so many of you."

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 2 March 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I like to read (though I'm not a writer), I was good at maths in high school and now I'm doing a bit of stats with moderate sucess. I can hear a new name for a spp once and remember it and the 3 features that distinguish it from 33 others in the genus.

But I can't learn another language, it doesn't stick (though I'm trying, and it's a language I've heard in bits and pieces all my life). From this I am certain the way you need to think to learn a language is not the way you need to think to learn other things.

― isadora (isadora), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 03:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess you're pretty poor with what I assume to be your native language. I'm referring to the subject line. And not "yiz".

― B. Michael Payne (This Isnt That), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 07:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Americans, including American intellectual lit types, have a serious inferiority complex about the whole language thing. Except for the small numbers who have actually lived abroad and become fluent in another language, we're very much aware of our lack of multilinguality, and even exaggerate it. Partly, I think we imagine that the rest of the world is much more multilingual than we are (which it is, maybe, but not as much as we think), which makes us feel very isolated -- we imagine this whole globe of people speaking to each other in 5 or 6 languages while we just sit there like big galoots smiling and nodding and worrying that they're all saying to each other, "Look at the big dumb American, we can insult him to his face and he doesn't even know it because he only speaks one language!" So I think that that inferiority complex carries over even to some Americans who do have some facility with other languages -- by virtue of being American, they automatically downgrade their ability to converse in anything BUT American. And of course, that same attitude is reinforced by the nativist strains in our culture that are forever running around trying to declare English the "official" language of America or Texas or the township of Niptucket. Literacy in other languages is viewed with at least a little suspicion in this country ("What, English isn't good enough for you?"), seen as a sign of pretension or worse. (e.g. George Bush openly making fun of an American reporter who had the audacity to ask a question of a French diplomat in French -- of course, Bush was mostly afraid the reporter was asking, "Can you believe what an idiot our president is?" and that the French guy would say something really clever and mean and then turn to Bush and smile and Bush would have to laugh along having no clue what anyone was talking about.)

Don't know if that gets anywhere close to what you're asking about, but I think this kind of cultural insecurity is the big unspoken flipside of our world-beating public posturing -- we go around saying we don't need the rest of the world, and we really hope it's true, because if it turns out we do need them, we might have to figure out what the hell they're saying.

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 08:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha, I am awful at foreign languages AND math! I did a bunch of years of Latin because I didn't have to speak it, and even though I enjoyed it it was still like pulling teeth sometimes.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 14:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Je ne sais pas du tout pourquoi vous nous insultez ainsi. Je n'ai jamais ete modeste. Cela dit, l’anglais est ma deuxieme langue. Le charabia est ma langue maternelle. En ce qui concerne les maths, ce qui m’interesse le plus, c’est de savoir si l’on peut faire des calculs difficiles dans une langue etrangere. A proposito, per me anche, l'italiano e fascinante.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 4 March 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think there's any hard and fast rule about writers and foreign languages, or math either. Someone with a facility for learning languages may or may not be a good writer in their own or in their adopted languages. The kicker in that sentance is "good writer", as there are so many different styles of writing and so many different subject areas to write about. Even acknowledged Great Writers have failed in areas outside their proper province - the most frequent example being novelists who failed spectacularly as playwrights.

In my own case, I am weak in foreign languages, but not entirely hopeless. I can pick up a smattering (with effort) and learn to communicate simple (very simple) needs and wants. My many years learning German mainly served to strengthen my grasp of English; it did little to embed the German language in my head. On the other hand, my accent was excellent. I can learn the sound of a language very rapidly and exactly.

If you were to immerse me into a place where another language was utterly necessary, I would end my days speaking it with a good accent and a thousand obvious clues that I was not a native speaker.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 4 March 2004 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

"I think Americans, including American intellectual lit types, have a serious inferiority complex about the whole language thing."

I guess I have a "talented tenth" superiority complex then... not only do most U.S. schools not start teaching foreign langs till grade 9 (most people are about 13, past the pre-pubescent easy-language-learning age by then), but I went to a seriously shitty school in the backwoods -- 23 people in my class, maybe ten of 'em could read in English, much less another language. I basically sat in the back of the classroom teaching myself out of the French textbook for four years. So my attitude is "You got spotted five-six years on me and my French is still as good as your English???? I'm a GENIUS!" Of course then I say something grammatically incorrect and feel like the planet's leading source of hubris. So I order more bourbon. I guess I have mixed feelings about going to Europe and facing "LOOK, a TALKING MONKEY!!!" syndrome afer I explain that REALLY, NO, I'm from Wisconsin which is NOT ACTUALLY PART OF CANADA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Both flattering and insulting, like being an Articulate Black Man, perhaps.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Friday, 5 March 2004 01:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Let me refine my basic question, since now I've figured out what I'm getting at. Hmmm... do you think some writers are more interested in story while others just love language? I may be a bit of both -- I remember drooling in junior high over the fact that the smart high schoolers I did know were getting to learn a whole new way to say hello, how are you? I can still recall that anticipation -- god, I think the day I got my first French textbook was one of the happiest days of my life. (I had no clue yet that learning French was pretentious -- thanks a lot, Normans and Saxons, for providing English speakers with approx. five zillion and ten years of having a social-status complex over the French language.) Yet I will slog through some really, really poorly worded but well-plotted sci-fi just to find out what happens, what happens?!?!??!?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Friday, 5 March 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

ouf ! Je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites. Mais alors.. le francais n'a pas plus de pretension que des autres langues, le tout depend de la maniere de les parler a mon avis. Si je parle comme les jeunes, si g t dit des trucs genre "tu me prend pour ki, t une tass-pe koi" ca fait pa tre snob koi. Peut-etre les registres divers d'une seule langue m'interessent surtout, et non pas le simple fait de parler une langue etrangere. Pour l'ecrivain il vaut mieux avoir une connaissance hyper vaste de la langue maternelle que d'avoir une connaissance moyenne de plusieurs langues..

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 5 March 2004 05:21 (twenty-one years ago)

um, toot yer owm horn there, sister. When you live in America you're only really taught accents, not language. Ergo, anyone who doesn't speak English like you do is either a hick/yank/neck/prep/gringo/honky/black/etc. and I do mean etc.

I guess I should be happy you're having such an easy time of it?

― McDowell Crook, Friday, 5 March 2004 06:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Daria: Pour l'ecrivain il vaut mieux avoir une connaissance hyper vaste de la langue maternelle que d'avoir une connaissance moyenne de plusieurs langues..
-- daria g (daria_gra...), March 5th, 2004.

yabbut... English cops words from so many languages that it's hard to really understand it without dipping into other pools.

"Ergo, anyone who doesn't speak English like you do is either a hick/yank/neck/prep/gringo/honky/black/etc. and I do mean etc."

Yeah, I hate it when I get shit for the redneck accent I slip into when I don't pay attention to my English. That's why I like speaking French and just sounding like an awkward, goofy foreigner. BTW, I said I picked things up easily; actually mastering a foreign language certainly isn't easy, especially when you're stuck in a putrid school system. Which is why listening to European socialists give individual Americans hell for the lack of language skills their social system has left them with makes me laugh till I cry. Stupid earthlings.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Friday, 5 March 2004 23:45 (twenty-one years ago)

P.S. Daria, maybe where you come from it doesn't seem pretentious to get caught with a Ball-sac, buuuut...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 6 March 2004 00:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess you're pretty poor with what I assume to be your native language. I'm referring to the subject line. And not "yiz".

Ah, specious pedantry, my favorite. Merriam-Webster collegiate dic says: bad 1a: failing to reach an acceptable standard: POOR [a ~ repair job]

So your objection again is ...?

― captain gay, Saturday, 6 March 2004 01:03 (twenty-one years ago)

"Je ne sais pas du tout pourquoi vous nous insultez ainsi. Je n'ai jamais ete modeste."

Does it just seem so because of the way I'm wired, or is it really true that the sanest reply to a question is usually the funniest?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 6 March 2004 02:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm from Appalachia. Folks back home are not too big on pretension. Je m'en fous. But then, I don't live there anymore, which helps.

― daria g (daria g), Saturday, 6 March 2004 03:24 (twenty-one years ago)

When you move, the rules change.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 6 March 2004 03:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Ako ngani bako man ngani magiging taga-digde na arog kang sakong pighalian sasalidahan ko ang sakuyang lahi, ang pigtataram ko apat na lingguage. Orgolyo man ako sa pigahalian ko asin orgolyo man na maging parte kang nasyon na ini, para magserbing gabay sa mga tawong kulang ang swerte sa nanunud-an tungkol digde asin da maghusgar. Saro ako sa mga estranghero na nagdigde, igwa ako ning agom na didge namundag, asin pigbendisyunan man kami ning duwang akue, apat na lingguahe ang sakong pigtataram kaya maray man sa pagmate.

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 12 March 2004 14:47 (twenty-one years ago)

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