English Language

[Seeker]

The more I teach English the more I respect how good some our non-English posters English is.

There are many Koreans who, after years of Middle School, Elementary, and HS, and even after 4 years of university, are still at the 'taxi cab driver' level, at least when it comes to spoken English.

Yet many of our posters here are so fluent it hurts. Stefu knows many of our colloquialisms, Provost Harrison is very good, and even Giancarlo cannot really be told apart from a native speaker.

Is there something I'm missing? Korean kids study english all the time, why don't they 'get it' like Euros do?

Every time I get that irrational 'are you just stupid?' feeling, I have to tell myself 'this is a person who thinks in a language with NO articles, no plurals, no gendered words, and no S O V word order, no progressive 'ing' words'. It's actually amazing how fast they do learn anything.

I also find myself thinking about how crazy and interesting English is, what with it's strange patchwork. Kith and kin, clan, marvellous, Famous, fabulous, who what where when, Mister, question, all betray the roots of very historically wierd pastiche. (quiz: name the different ethnic backgrounds of those words)

Korean borrows many words directly from Mandarin, and a number of corruptions. They tend to be words that deal with elevated concepts like 'harmony' 'nature', universe' etc. (korean 'gi'= Chinese 'chi')

They also betray words with the background of the vast Ural-Altaic group (mongol, uighur, turkic,).

Then there are their words that are plainly ancestral to Japanese words (compare Sun sang neem to Japanese Sensei-ni, in pronounciation almost the same, mountains are 'san', harabogi, halmoni, etc).

In addition to grammar problems, Koreans have the extra hurdle of differing alphabetic sounds, which makes it difficult for foreigners to find consistent translations of anything.

Korean have one sound for the following letters:
g=k
p=b (pap, bap sound the same)
l=r

The mind blowing thing is that they aren't substituting. They have no L OR R sound, they have a sound which sits right on the middle, same for the others.

They often confuse:
f=p
e=i

Koreans have no 'hard A' sound, so that 'make' is said 'mek', 'crack' 'crek', etc.

They also don't use the following sound combinations and mangle them 'ket' as in basketball', 'ro' as in 'rope', the long l of 'ball' (pa), th=d (dis dose dese), and many others.

[Asher]

Provost Harrison is very good

I thought English was his native language?

What's his first language?

BTW, I agree, the level of English here is stunning. Congratulations.

[Seeker]

Oops. Well, there are still lots of others. I'm particularly impressed by the Suomi contingent, with their nightmarish language, who seem to master English so easily.

[Asher]

Yeah, the Finns here are exceptional.

[Combat Ingrid]

If you know one European language well, you have a massive advantage when learning the next one, compared to those who only know Mandarin/Korean/etc.

[alva]

no-subtitles

The fact that the (euro) languages are much more related to each other does help too.

Learning english is bound to be much more difficult for a Korean then it is for any non-french native speaking euro


Edit: added Korean

[aaglo]

Me like who the goodier talk and read. I now nothing the respect from you

[Zopperoni]

Hm, I think we must distinguish between written and spoken English now.

Seeker, in your first post you discuss a lot of issues concerning spoken English/pronounciation.

You can't really compare that to (non-native English-speaking) Apolyton posters/writers. I'm not going to generalize by saying that even if their spelling is perfect, their pronounciation still sucks, but it's possible.

I'll use my grandfather as an example: he was a photographer/journalist in Singapore, his written English and written German were very good, but his pronounciation was poor.

[Seeker]

Non-french...?

Not just your technical and grammatical ability impresses me, but the level of understanding of expressions like 'it cuts both ways' (I had to try to explain this one today), or 'I've got to discover myself' from our reading today.

What is the English level in Euro media like?

In Korea, there is English music on the radio, but only about 50%, and often edited, 'covered' or otherwise mangled, (I love it when the Korean tribute bands sing fast to get over problem words). The imported movies have Korean subtitles instead of dubbing (thank Odin).

There is an all-English TV channel, AFN, and two English language newspapers, International Herald Tribune for American views and Joong-ang-ilbo for Korean-English views.

[Rogan Josh]

You must also remember that English is default for non-english speaking Euros to communicate with each other even if there is no native speaker present. At my work there are very few native English speakers - there are lots of Germans, Italians, Spanish, and Eastern Europeans - but everyone speaks in English because it is the common language.

In fact, my main difficulty in learning French is that I don't have enough opportunity to speak it - even though I live in France!

[HershOstropoler]

"g=k
p=b (pap, bap sound the same)"

Same for me, but I'm not Korean.

As for the Suomi guys, I'm impressed too. I've just noticed that sometimes they do not put an article where you'd expect one. I suppose that is finnish grammar shining through ?

[aaglo]

Hersh - I think you've got it right. Our language has evolved beyond the need of articles...

[tinyp3nis]

The koreans and other asians have their funny letters, I guess that's one of the big reasons. If they had the same alphabet, they might have easier time.

Bit OT:The english was by some test, the hardest european language to learn for infants, finnish was the easiest. It didn't have all european languages, only around 15 I recall. Finnish is easy, because every letter is allways pronounced the exact same way. If you see a new word in finnish, you know damn well how to pronounce it, there are no exceptions.
To come back how it's possible for finns to understand english well? I'd say TV and maybe videogames too. The series and movies are mostly in english and NOT dubbing the words is helpful, you allways hear them speak, and possibly you learn while watching TV, I know it helps me. To me it's pretty automatic, I don't have to try to learn. Many my friends say the same thing. Of course I doubt the TV has any effect untill the basic english is being taught, I for one didn't learn any english before they taught it in school. After that TV started helping, but it didn't start to unravel the language or anything like that.
I'd say random finnish person, compared to random german person has the disadvantage of the original language, since finnish is very far from english (or german, french, spanish or swedish or you name it, any important language ), making english harder to learn. But the random german person has dubbed TV programs, I'd say it evens it out. I think the swedes have it pretty nice, they have language very similar to english, and to my knowledge they use subtitles, and play lot's of videogames. Oh btw, finns SUCK at swedish, eventhought it's being taught as much as english in schools. Gives my point about TV and computer games bit more value. And the youngsters nowagays have internet too.
Oh and finnish suck at pronouncing english but that's another story...


Uh... so do koreans use subtitles, or do they dub?

[Seeker]

Subtitles.

Just now you used the phrase 'I for one'.

My most advanced adult students, hell, my BOSS wouldn't use such a phrase.

It must be the TV, Koreans tend not to watch AFN very much because of its famously bad programming (American Forces Network: Bringing you Judge Judy, Oprah, Jerry, and WWF)

Also, the 'lingua franca' thing. Europe is a rabbit warren of countries.

Koreans are rather the homebodies and don't travel very much. They talk to Japanese and Chinese, they aren't part of the dense hodge podge of cheap to travel to countries.

Also, I think Euros are just more cosmopolitan than Koreans. A Koreans idea of a big, exotic trip is Ullung-do, or Jeju-do (ie it is rare for Koreans to actually leave Korea very much)

[HershOstropoler]

If your native language is german, the biggest problem will be that you are confused by the simplicity of english.

[tinyp3nis]

Bit OT:The english was by some test, the hardest european language to learn for infants, finnish was the easiest. It didn't have all european languages, only around 15 I recall. Finnish is easy, because every letter is allways pronounced the exact same way. If you see a new word in finnish, you know damn well how to pronounce it, there are no exceptions.

WHoops! I should have made these separate, doesn't make much sense for infants to try to read now does it.
More OT from me. This time totally off topic. Seeker, I'm not sure if I asked about this some time ago earlier. I was supposed to, but I can't remember anymore... Since you are over there, do you know who is Yohwan Lim, and what is his "sport"? I bet every kid knows. But how are the other generations and you aware of the gaming mania there? Is it as big as the gamers in rest of the world think it is. If you don't even know what I'm talking about, I guess the answer is no

[Starchild]

The english barely speak english properly. Half the time, the language my friends and I speak isn't the same English I was taught in schools but a weird tongue full of glottal stops and strange pronounciations.

[Giovanni Wine]

Here in Italy they dub everything.

that's probably one of the reasons Italians generally are not so good as the other Euros in English.

The language is taught in middle school, and you can take it again in high school if you want (or you can go for another language instead... generally French, German or Spanish).

(Which is what I did BTW, 3 years on English in Middle School, and than 5 years of German in High school)

English teachers in Italy most of the time are British (no Americans ) so if you study it well enough, you can learn a good british pronounciation. Although I must agree with tinyp3nis that TV could be another good place to learn it.... if only they stopped dubbing everything

Saluti

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Seeker
and even Giancarlo cannot really be told apart from a native speaker.

You're kidding? Tell me you're kidding. It's classic hispano-pidgin, not the glorious tongue.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Seeker
Provost Harrison is very good

I should bleeding hope so as I am English and of English descent Anyway, I don't know whether I should feel honoured being mentioned as my English being 'good' or insulted as my English is 'good for a foreigner'

[Dauphin]

You still need to work on your pronunciation.

[Ozz]

Honoured, Foreign English speakers use proper grammar and don't use slang. They speak the "King's English" most English speaking people use slang or speak American English (which is just an excuse for misproouncing Zed ).

[Solly]

I well use slang.

[Paul Hanson]

None of the foreigners I know speak "proper" English. I share a house at uni with a Frenchman and a Yemeni, and both of them are very competent at using, amongst other things, contractions, English expressions and, of course, swearing.

[Solly]

Innit.

[Ozz]

Ah, but you have corrupted them to your evil ways

[Solly]

c'rupted 'em.

[Traianvs]

Not really boddie . I mean not in here. I have several British ppl in my SoFclan, and simply the way they talk to me is mind-boggling, the words are simple but first I have to figure out what they mean... I mean the sentences are sometimes very confusing!
(of course they are garbagemen or they work temporarily in a supermarket filling up the racks but they're still nice ppl though )


And btw Seeker, who are you teaching, I mean smarter students or...? Many ppl say Belgians know much languages (simply because we ourselves are so meaningless and tiny, and have to adapt to others and so we can't communicate in our own language), but in reality that only applies to people who become mathematicians and physicists etc later (or archaeologists in my case )... ask Joe Jackson in the street about his English and you will hear a funny story (well at least they will probably do even a little bit better than your taxi-driver English )

[Paul Hanson]

Originally posted by Ozz
Ah, but you have corrupted them to your evil ways

Maybe. Soon I'll have them walking around the house wearing socks too (I was just told by an Italian that I was clearly English because I don't wear shoes in the house ).

[Solly]

This is why it's easy to pull fit Koreans. If you use the right tone, you can say absolutely anything and they'll laugh. Same goes for most Asians actually.