Posted on 01/18/2009 4:41:47 PM PST by redhotright
Thank you to all the Freepers who commented on my first Conversation with a Liberal at FreeRepublic. One of my favorite comments likened talking with Liberals to talking with houseplants. Thanks Popman.
Here's another true story for your amusement...
My wife was talking with some liberals recently who were discussing how Europeans are so wonderful and smart because they can speak multiple languages. The implication was that Americans are stupid because most Americans speak only English. My wife, being a naturalized American citizen who immigrated from Europe, was asked her opinion on the matter.
Without missing a beat, she replied, "I know lots of Europeans who can't even speak one language, much less two."
Dropped jaws and stunned silence. It's what I call 'The Liberal Look'. Or as Popman might say, they reverted to their natural houseplant state.
Knowing more languages will give you more options in life, whether personally, socially or professionally.
A friend of mine from law school landed an amazing job with a law firm in Miami practicing international trade law because he is originally from Brazil and speaks Spanish and Portugese. We went to the same law school and had more or less the same qualifications, but that job was not open to me because I didn’t speak the required languages.
We are marooned in DYUmmieland for 4 years
Will someone please explain to this idiot (me) what she meant by some Europeans don’t even speak one language? I don’t get it. I’d claim a blonde moment, but I am an auburn brunette.
(Just asking) How will knowledge of English and Romanian (a Romance language like Spanish, French, or Italian) assist in learning Slavic languages like Czech, Polish, or Serbo-Croatian?
BTW, I was deployed to Uzbekistan 2003-04 and found that recalling my high school Latin greatly assisted my learning Russian. Similar grammatical logic, so maybe you’re right.
Apparently the discussion wasn’t about the benefits of multiligualism as much as it was about the smart multilingual Europeans vs. the dumb monolingual Americans; if so, the poster’s wife addressed the issue as she saw fit.
Personally, I don’t think people are stupid if they don’t learn more than the language that is required for general communication in their home country; I would wish everyone spoke and wrote their native language as well as they were able, and that their country’s sign language would be required, too. A universal sign language would cover even more people than would a spoken language.
Most Canadians only speak English; do Europeans think they’re as dumb as they think we are? So far, I’ve not heard any other country disparaged as we are for this lack of communication skills. I like knowing other languages but haven’t had much opportunity to use what little I know.
She may be referring to slang, pidgin or code-switching. Some people may not bother to learn one language well but simply speak that which is required to conduct business in a multilanguage region.
“That’s the truth! Spent a week at a resort in the Dominican Republic this past spring. It was inhabited by 95% Italian vacationers of which we found only a few who could speak any English.”
We visited Rome recently. Most folks in the tourist areas could speak English reasonably well. A gal we met who had been a little further afield (Tuscany) said almost no one spoke English.
From what I remember, Romanian has some pronunciations that are similar to their Slavic language neighbors and a few dialects of Romanian are Slavic influenced.
Because? Did the liberal twits realize W speaks English and Spanish, and their messiahs (BO and algore) can only speak one?
Of course we all realize the liberal twits will quickly explain it away (after the initial awkward deer-in-the-headlights look) as "Well, it's more than just being able to speak another language!", or some such nonsense meant to be witty or enlightening, but liberals are still stupid and one-dimensional.
What made Latin analogous to Russian for me is that both languages conjugate verbs using word endings which do not require subject/object pronouns, and that nouns are declined in several cases, again by word ending: five in Latin: nominative, genitive, dative, etc., and six or up to nine cases per noun in Russian. As a result, sentence meaning need not be determined by word order as is the case with English.
Marie2,
The basic idea was that an uneducated person would not not fully understand all aspects of their own language, much less be able to speak other languages. The point is that not all Europeans are as wonderfully intelligent as libtards would make them out to be.
Just like in America, there are intelligent people and unintelligent people in Europe. The fact of multiple languages is meaningless and doesn’t cause Europeans to be any more or less intelligent than Americans.
BIG ≤}B^)
Then, by all means, go out and buy that “learn a language” software and smarten yourself up, if that’s how you define intelligence.
Personally, I find the lack of good English HERE to be of more concern to me. In spite of the tendency to admire 'British Accents' (GEICO Gekko, Product Pitchmen), our schools are doing a lousy job at correcting equally lousy family American cant and thus dooming these kids to either lower class or learning on their own!
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