[SOC] Fwd: Why is English so hard to learn?

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:10:45 -0600

Back in the early '70s, my family took a brief tour of London and Paris.
On the steps of the Louvre, we were accosted by one of those famous
photographers, the kind that use a Polaroid with disappearing pictures.
My parents kept telling him "no", that we didn't want a picture.
Finally, out of frustration, my father said "Nyet" at which the
photographer sneered "Ach, Russki" and spit at us.

73 de N8AU, Jim in Raymore, MO

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Jan Clute
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [SOC] Fwd: Why is English so hard to learn?

Most Americans are monolingual, unless they have recent ancestors from
somewhere. Even then it is usually gone by the third generation. This is
because the "melting pot" is pretty intolerant. Blend in or die. (We
have
some charming myths about ourself that don't seem to stand up to much
scrutiny). At any rate, I had just taken German in high school when I
went
over there in the army (the low point of my youth.... the Army, not
Europe.... I loved Germany), so I could get along in it, which made me
pretty rare, and pretty popular. However... so many Germans, Frenchman,
Dutchmen, Danes and whoever else I encountered spoke English (and wanted
to
practice it on me), that I had a heck of a time finding chances to
practice
my German (since I was with Americans most of the rest of the time). It
was
embarassing to have someone say, "My English is not very good, but..."
then
speak fluently to you on the topic of your choice for several hours. Not
many Yanks can do that!

Since I only had some German as a second language, I had to resort to it
on
the rare occasions when English did not work in Holland. This was not
popular in the early 60's. I would have done better to resort to sign
language.

The other thing that was interesting (speaking of the north
German/Belgian/Dutch "what is it?" dialects), is that on trains I would
think I was hearing English, then get closer and realize that it was one
of
the northern dialects. It sounded not at all like German unless you got
VERY
close. 73 Jan