Languages, learning, speaking, anecdotes, what you will

[Sporting]

So last night I was in the corner bar with my train driver friend and one of his colleagues whose partner, also present, is Romanian and speaks about 100 languages (well, four or five). And also there was my friend Giovanni who is from Napoles. So a mate of Giovanni from the same city drops by and they start talking about football and the Romanian is peeved not because she doesn't care about football but because despite speaking Italian she can't understand what they are saying. Cos they're speaking pretty dense Neopolitan. Kindly, they move into more standard Italian for a while.

This reminded me of when I first went to meet my "in-laws" in southern Germany expecting to be able to practice my lousy German a bit and found that when when the family were talking to each other they did so in Swabish. The mother finds High German nigh-on impossible to speak, though of course she understands everything.

I did French at school: or better said I was present in the classes but absent in the mind. Bad teachers for sure, but to be honest zero effort on my part to learn much. Now, I've been to France many times since and have sort of got by, and one when in the Central African Republic I actually got mistaken for a Frenchman. But really, my French is crap.

I used to speak pretty decent colloquial Sudanese Arabic, though the writing and reading bits were beyond me (or I'm just lazy) but with the passing of the years most of that is pretty well gone. I speak Spanish and understand a lot of Catalan (and read it pretty well too) but my oral skills are sub-par to say the least. I did maange to sort out a bus trip once near Perpignan in France using Catalan to the bus driver there.

Despite being born in Caernarfon (more or less the capital of Welsh-speaking Wales?) I speak no Welsh as we moved soon after my birth to England. Many of my relatives are fluent in the language and find themselves more comfortable speaking it than English. I'd love to have learned it but man! it's hard!

Sorry for the scattergun manner of this post but language and language learning fascinates me. What languages do you speak and do you have any stories/opinions/comments to make on the topic?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

In written English, "yes" is almost always used to indicate the affirmitive. But in true spoken English, unless in response to direct questioning from someone in authority or a stranger or waiter, hardly any English speakers would use "yes" in normal speech. "Yeah", "Arr", "Right", Yeh", and the "Yah" of the well-and in-bred of the home counties are much more heard. All understood of course. Anyone solely using "yes" in spoken English would probably be mistaken for a German tourist.

[Gawpus]

Aye.

[anton pulisov]

Swedish for socks is "strumpor" and Swedish plural for backside is "rumpor".

Yours truly once went into a Swedish sports shop and said, in Swedish, "Excuse me, do you know where I can find some black backsides?"

[Diable Rouge]

In written English, "yes" is almost always used to indicate the affirmitive. But in true spoken English, unless in response to direct questioning from someone in authority or a stranger or waiter, hardly any English speakers would use "yes" in normal speech. "Yeah", "Arr", "Right", Yeh", and the "Yah" of the well-and in-bred of the home counties are much more heard. All understood of course. Anyone solely using "yes" in spoken English would probably be mistaken for a German tourist.

Not forgetting the standard Hiberno-English response to any request, "I will, yeah", which, of course, means "No", and an emphatic No at that.

[G-Man]

This reminded me of when I first went to meet my "in-laws" in southern Germany expecting to be able to practice my lousy German a bit and found that when when the family were talking to each other they did so in Swabish. The mother finds High German nigh-on impossible to speak, though of course she understands everything.

The famous Swabian saying goes: "We can do everything, except high German."

[Sporting]

Since living abraod I've virtuallly given up using traditional question tags and only use "yes/no"? mirroring the Spanish way of doing it.

I seem to remember that the main question tag used in South Wales is "isn't it?", as in "Your dad's a builder, isn't it?" Though I may well be misremembering here,

[Antepli Ejderha]

That question tag has now mutated into innit? across the south east and probably beyond.

[treibeis]

The famous Swabian saying goes: "We can do everything, except high German."

They're not very good at restructuring mainline railway stations, either.

[Sporting]

Examples?

[treibeis]

Examples?

All right, I should have written "restructuring mainline railway stations to budget". Stuttgart 21 has cost four times what it was supposed to. And that from financially astute Swabians.

[Sporting]

Can anyone name any major construction project anywhere in the world which was completed under budget?

[Patrick Thistle]

I want to learn Welsh. Being educated in England meant I never had Welsh lessons in school. It was literally beaten out of my family in my grandparents generation. One of my grandads was caned for speaking Welsh in school so the family switched to English and that was it, gone.

I've picked up a bit, living in Wales. But not very much.

[treibeis]

I want to learn Welsh. Being educated in England meant I never had Welsh lessons in school. It was literally beaten out of my family in my grandparents generation. One of my grandads was caned for speaking Welsh in school so the family switched to English and that was it, gone.

I've picked up a bit, living in Wales. But not very much.

My mother spoke Welsh, as do her siblings, but none of them spoke it to their children when they we're young. This, as far as I know, wasn't a conscious decision; none of them sat down and thought "Why?" or "Why not?" They just didn't speak it.

And so, as you say, gone completely, within just a few short years.

[Diable Rouge]

I want to learn Welsh. Being educated in England meant I never had Welsh lessons in school. It was literally beaten out of my family in my grandparents generation. One of my grandads was caned for speaking Welsh in school so the family switched to English and that was it, gone.

I've picked up a bit, living in Wales. But not very much.

The Duolingo course seems to be considered up to standards when it comes to pronunciation, unlike the Irish one, which had a number of teething problems at the beginning.

[Diable Rouge]

My mother spoke Welsh, as do her siblings, but none of them spoke it to their children when they we're young. This, as far as I know, wasn't a conscious decision; none of them sat down and thought "Why?" or "Why not?" They just didn't speak it.

And so, as you say, gone completely, within just a few short years.

A fairly common refrain also in relation to Irish, perhaps more in previous decades than nowadays, but certainly a sizeable proportion of emigrants to the US and UK came from Gaeltacht areas such as Connemara and Gaoth Dobhair (Donegal).

[ursus arctos]

Can anyone name any major construction project anywhere in the world which was completed under budget?

It happens, although it is quite rare.

One study that looked at 258 major road, tunnel, bridge, transit and rail projects in 20 countries on five continents found that nine out of 10 of them finished in the red. Another survey of 1,471 information and technology megaprojects found an average cost overrun of 27 per cent, with one in six projects having a cost overrun of 200 per cent. Yet another study concluded 245 large hydro dam projects in 65 countries over a 70-year period went an average of 90 per cent over budget.

That said, Stuttgart 21 has been a disaster (though not one on the scale of new airport in Berlin).

[treibeis]

My stepsister-in-law (German father, Swedish mother) grew up bilingual in Germany, has lived in Sweden for the last 30 years. When her son was young, she didn't speak German to him because the father (who doesn't speak German) didn't like not knowing what his son was saying.

The son's now a young adult, the father got binned a while back. My stepsister-in-law still beats herself up for not standing up to the father all those years ago.

(I've told her to stop beating herself up and to go and beat the father up instead (she's a 6'3" former hockey player, so she could probably give him a run for his money), but she's not sure.)

[treibeis]

That said, Stuttgart 21 has been a disaster (though not one on the scale of new airport in Berlin).

People'll forget about Stuttgart 21 once it's finished. Look at the Elbphilharmonie. Took seven years longer than it should have, cost ten times as much as it should have ... and now all anybody talks about is how fucking great it is.

The last time I was in Berlin, my mate and I went for a walk around the new airport (or at least the bits you're allowed to walk around). The multi-storey car parks were choc-a-bloc with new vehicles, still in the wrapper. I bet they all had diesel engines.

[ursus arctos]

At least they were smart in naming the project.

They still have 81 years to get it done within the century.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Is it the (largely 19th century) creation of the nation state that led to standardised languages in otherwise large and diverse countries? In Britain, for example, did someone at the Ministry for Education come up with "the" correct form of English that was then taught in grammar schools from Wick to Penzance?

[ad hoc]

It was more the invention of the printing press

[Diable Rouge]

It was more the invention of the printing press

Partly, but to take France as an example, fewer than a quarter of the population spoke "standard French" in 1850 - so railways, increasing centralisation of government following the Revolution, and educational reform all played a role in the decimation of regional languages, with similar factors and emigration combining in the 19th century language shift in Ireland.

[Sporting]

Partly, but to take France as an example, fewer than a quarter of the population spoke "standard French" in 1850.

Very interesting, I'd like to know more about this, if you or anyone else has links/etc.

[ursus arctos]

This is a useful book on the Italian context.

I have found that works in this area tend to focus on either the linguistic aspects of the question or the cultural/historical background, whereas ideally I would prefer something that examined both.

Braudel looks at the issue from the latter perspective in his three volume l'Identité de la France, but it isn't his primary focus (and I'm not sure how much made it into the one volume English version).