Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2008-03-20 05:31 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2008-03-20 05:31 pm
[ SECRET POST #440 ]
⌈ Secret Post #440 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Heads up: tomorrow's secret post will be late (8 PM eastern), as we've been asked by multiple people to delay it until the activity strike is over.
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 82 secrets from Secret Submission Post #063.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 ] broken links, [ 1 2 3 4 ] not!secrets, [ 1 2 ] not!fandom, [ 1 ] too big, [ 1 2 ] repeat.
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
I did seven languages in school, all in all, even though I only speak three and understand another three if the texts aren't too hard. I feel kinda inferior to a lot of my peers because they're not only fluent in English but also in French, though ^^;
That's not to say that every European or even every German speaks English fluently or is even partially competent in it, but bilingualism isn't that much of a deal here :x
no subject
On top of that, I see TEACHERS and even PROFESSORS who make mistakes with basic English grammar. English! Their NATIVE language! They'll get there/they're/their mixed up, or it's and its, to/two/too, and so on. It disgusts and frustrates me.
no subject
But then again, foreign language instruction here occasionally tends to suck ass as well - I'd had five years of English and only spoke on the level of "This is Bob. Bob has a dog" or similar until I started dawdling around on the internet a lot. And there are enough students here studying English Literature (eventually aiming to become teachers of English) whose English is more than simply sub par and more along the lines of atrocious.
However, the trend of native speakers cocking up their mother tongue isn't new or limited to the US, either - there's been reports of French pupils using netspeak in official writing (just like in the UK, where it seems to have become a common problem) and I have a community along the lines of
In my honest opinion, it's a result of people forgoing books in favour of TV or computers... I've never had problems with spelling and grammar, or plain expressing myself, while my brother regularly struggles with all three - I've been a bookworm all my life, he's maybe read five books out of school, period. Both my parents are perfectly literate... but while my mother has a vocabulary which intimidates even me and reads a lot, my father's is more limited and he only reads books and magazines related to computers and the internet. She's fluent in French and competent in English, he can barely work software in English. My brother elected Latin as his language in "high school" because he's entirely incapable of English, I majored in English and am studying Japanese. Go figure, I guess?
/verbosity
no subject
"I HATE BOOKS!"
I was like getting stabbed in the chest. I wanted to cry. I don't want to think about what the world will be like when kids like that grow up.
It really is a shame all around, and such a preventable one, too. It also boggles my mind how many languages we're losing, permanently, when the newer generations have no interest in learning them, and/or there are no surviving, fluent speakers who can help write them down. I forget the exact statistic, but it was a staggering number across the globe.
You speak English PERFECTLY, for what it's worth. Slang and everything. It's flawless. I can only hope that someday I'm as good as that with Spanish. D: I took three years of it in high school and I plan on taking it every semester while I'm at my university, but I bet I still sound like "This is Bob." to anyone who speaks it natively.
no subject
Seriously though, I don't get people who claim to "hate" books... it's like claiming you hate bread or water to me. Honestly, I think that if a kid refuses to touch books it's a sign of sucky parenting - probably one of those families where the TV replaces the babysitter.
Then again, he's probably better at any game he touches than I could ever be... I barely completed Tomb Raider I and Carmageddon, and they're both over ten years old ^^;
Afair most of the 'dying' languages are part of an oral tradition, where writing just never developed or hasn't got any sort of importance. It's a real shame, for what it's worth, but probably inevitable in a internationalizing world... English (or a creole thereof) is the language of choice in 90% of cross-border trade and commerce, and for more than enough people (including me, I'm afraid) it's taken precedence over their mother tongue. Heck, I often stumble over my words in German conversation because I can think of an English word that fits, but the German one escapes me totally. That's what happens when you spend so much time dealing with English you think and dream in it but forgo German books and movies :/ What can I say, I loathe dubs and translations, and the local productions don't exactly tickle my fancy (although my favourite movie EVER is German... just nearly eighty years old)
I probably just have an aptitude for languages, of sorts. I'm stuck at the "I understand it but can't use it" stage for a lot of languages I studied and only tend to improve when I'm in a sink-or-swim situation, unfortunately. And my brain seems to be incapable of understanding that languages which sound similar are not identical... I crashed and burned in Korean because I couldn't separate it from Japanese properly. My final? Japanese sentences with Korean verbs and particles in Korean script :/