Here's part of my point (oh, I forgot to say, yes, yes, look at me, I'm pretentious), but back to the point. All of the Latin-based languages are so similar that they are exceedingly easy to learn. For instance: When: quando, cuando, quand (all of which sound like "when," although that word has a Germanic derivation) Where: dove, donde, onde (they're all the same) Time: tempo, orario, hora, tiempo, heure, temps, hora, tempo Cost/price: costare, prezzo, precio, questa, prix, cout, preco, custo It's so ridiculously easy. Anyway, it wouldn't kill you to try to learn an additional language. As an earlier poster said ~paraphrased~, it's the American who only speaks one language.
yeah, of course America isn't bordered by many different countries speaking many different languages. This country grew in reverse than the rest of the world where people go out and learn many other languages, in America people came here and to some degree went for one common language in English. Its simply based on the way this country evolved and grew.
My second language is German; by the end of grad school I could read it at a pretty high level, but rarely got the opportunity to practice conversation. nowadays, when I get the rare occasion to use it, I can usually make myself understood and sometimes understand all of what is said to me. sometimes not. I used to even understand subtle puns in German. I went to 4th grade in another country and went to the Norwegian school, not the American school. So I guess I knew Norwegian well enough-got all A's, I think. At least in math I did. (Norwegian is actually more like English than even German.) I recently ran into some old Norwegian friends, and apparently I can say, "I don't speak Norwegian" without a hint of an American accent, which is ironic. Never took a day of Spanish; but have studied it a little bit on my own to be able to barely make out the gist of what someone is saying in conversation. Sometimes. I like listening to Spanish baseball broadcasts on the radio. Studied a wee bit of French on my own, mainly just enough to be able to pronounce it correctly and learn some vocabulary. I took one informal Japanese class, with a friend, to learn the alphabet (hiragana) and a very few phrases. I have forgotten most of the alphabet.
I was just looking at a message that I received from this Brazilian girl who lived with the same family that I did down in Buenos Aires. I sent all of the "kids" in the house a gift that was specific to that house. Here's here response-
Praise - don't forget that you speak the international language. The language of love. Fuckin' Diggler stole my line. "Oh stewardess. I speak jive."
Napoleon's post does bring up an interesting point -- being multilingual (and conversing with other people who are as well) gives you the ability to select the EXACT word that most applies to a concept/situation. E.g., just think of shadenfreude (a German word we have all but adopted). We would have to say "taking joy in the misfortune of another," but if we know German and our audience does as well, we can just say shadenfreude. There are a thousand other examples, and sometimes, the reason is simply because the other word sounds better or is more colorful. It allows you to make your sentence more interesting and attention-getting. Or, as my uncle, who lived to save syllables, would say, "dame un beer!", thus avoiding the multisyllabic request of "wouldja get me" (although he coulda said "gimme") and the multisyllabic "cerveza." Lazy, beer-drinking SOB. How I admire that man.
speaking the language often means you get better service, more food, or cheaper prices. When we go to a mexican place, my friend ask me to order for everyone. You DO see a difference. Some of it is being friendly, some of it is making an attempt to connect at a better level. In France, I saw better service when I attempted to speak the language, even if it wasn't perfect. In Indian restaurants, servers seem to also treat you better if you use the correct pronunciation for the food... so yeah, I think it's universal and it works.
Well, some people get it. It's good to learn another language and it will benefit you economically and socially. Eh, whatever. If you don't want that then that's your choice.
Jahé, everybody, jahé. It means 'hello'. I can say 'hello' in a lot of different languages. Not yours, but a lot of them.
I speak Spanish pretty fluently (been teaching it for 3 years). Speak a little German. I spent one summer teaching in Germany and it was amazing how well the kids there can speak other languages. To graduate from the top high schools they had to be proficient in English and French, and most chose to be proficient in Spanish as well. I wish language study was more important here in the US. For some reason it embarrasses me when I see a fellow American refusing to speak in a foreign language in another country. It seems that we have a sense of entitlement that expects other people to know English, even when we are visiting another country. Very strange.
Yeah, in Germany they start English (and French, depending on the region) in their first year, and then take it all the way through 13th grade if they are in the top level schools. I met one guy who was a friend of my host family and we started talking about his job. He told me he worked for Porsche and when I asked what his job function was, he laughed and told me he was a test driver. Basically the guy went around the world test driving Porsches on different tracks. He then took me around in his 911 turbo. It was awesome.
Re Argentine spanish vs. Mexican spanish, my mom has a great story about her first trip to Buenos Aires. She got very sick at a restaurant. The owner was kind enough to give her a ride back to the hotel. My mother learned (and dammit, I can never remember which is which, so I may have these switched) that when you have a fever in Argentina, you should say "tengo fiebre," NOT "estoy calentura." When you say "estoy calentura," instead of saying you have a fever, you are telling the poor man driving you home that "I'm in heat." The poor restraunteur must have thought that he had the horniest American woman in the world in his back seat.
I used to speak German fluently...well, as fluently as a precocious and talkative 5 year old could... We lived in Darmstadt from the time I was 1 until I was 5...I went to a German pre-school for a year (I think it was a year - I was really young)...there was zero English spoken in there the whole year... So, I got fluent...but then we moved to England and, seeing as how there weren't very many Germans there (yay America ), I stopped speaking it...so...I have a 5 yr old German kid's vocabulary...well...I also took a couple years of German in HS...but, I screwed around and didn't really learn it... My Dad worked with a guy over there, though, who could speak something like 29 languages...18 fluently...The guy said that you could speak the language fluently when you could write poetry in that language... He, like my folks, were teachers on US bases...he was Russian and had lived quite a few places in his life...
