English language

[Tantallon2]

To Bilsonius: I get the joke but it would surely be Aramaic?

To Paul, humour is another subject that usually comes up at scientific conferences (mostly after a few beers and I tell the world famous Gus the Gorilla joke). I am fond of pointing out that the word Symposium is from the Greek meaning "Drinking party".

Most jokes that are international involve obvious slapstick or are jokes about wives - these being universally funny. However, most jokes require an intimate, almost intuitive understanding of the language or you won't get it. This is because humour plays with the language centres of your brain and usually works by setting up a discord between the words and the situation.

A rather poor example (but it was the first one than sprang to mind) of the necessity of understanding the language is this joke:

There were two souls ascending to heaven. As they ascended they saw a flight of eagles. One souls turned to the other and knowingly said "Ah, eagles!" But the eagles were too polite to comment.

I did say it was a bad joke but I wonder how many non-native english speakers get it at all?

The language splintering effect is supposedly to help groups of humans identify with each other and differentiate them from other groups of humans but it will be interesting to see how the universality of modern communications affects language differentiation in the future.

I didn't know the Vatican had someone making up new Latin words. I wonder what the methodology is?

Erudite enough for you Paul?

[Tantallon2]

In the joke, it should read one soul not one souls..apologies for the typo

[Paul]

I didn't know the Vatican had someone making up new Latin words. I wonder what the methodology is?

Erudite enough for you Paul?

Erudite? Sticks most things together but I prefer Pattex

The method used in the vatican is to take the beginings and endings of latin words ie ium, entem, uerint etc write then on pieces of card, chuck them up in the air, pick out two at random that land face up, add it to the word needing translating and bingo, or hacbingoete as the pope would later say.

[Phersu]

I agree with Paul about the influence of different structure of language.
I think it influences the way of seeing the world and the way of thinking too, as well and in some ways more than the difference of culture.

It's impossible to understand some jokes if the cultural contest is unknown, in fact even knowing that different culture some things can remain out of reach.

The most useful parts of my english learning came from the "full immersion" (stopping to talk my own language at all for awhile) and from a wise primary school teacher.
She taught us: try to think and get used to it directly in english, even if in a rough way not grammatically correct.
You'll improve and fix the mistakes with time and practice anyway, meanwhile this practice will become less tiring and will give you the base for understand a deeper meaning of language.

It quite works, it will never reach the level of a mother language as it is not developed during the childhood, but sure it helps.
I know many italians that can speak english, some speak better and have spent longer time in England than me, but just few of them think directly in the foreign language.
They're lack becomes evident when it comes to understand some deeper things, often someone who speak worst can understand deeper and explain himself better.

[Paul]

The most useful parts of my english learning came from the "full immersion" (stopping to talk my own language at all for awhile) and from a wise primary school teacher.
She taught us: try to think and get used to it directly in english, even if in a rough way not grammatically correct.
You'll improve and fix the mistakes with time and practice anyway, meanwhile this practice will become less tiring and will give you the base for understand a deeper meaning of language.

It quite works, it will never reach the level of a mother language as it is not developed during the childhood, but sure it helps.
I know many italians that can speak english, some speak better and have spent longer time in England than me, but just few of them think directly in the foreign language.
They're lack becomes evident when it comes to understand some deeper things, often someone who speak worst can understand deeper and explain himself better.

The "deep immersion" way is the only way to learn another language. It can be very stressfull at the beggining with your mind doing several "flips" as understanding barriers are jumped over, a bit like learning higher mathmatics, suddenly the numbers take on new meanings but it is certainly worth the effort as one becomes a new perspective on the world.
What really helps is a love of words and thier meanings and a desire to communicate. Great fun really.

[Tantallon2]

Paul's comments about glue reminded me of one of the very few jokes I have ever made up myself:

Q: What is a psychologist's favourite glue?
A: Ego-stick

Didn't say it was a good joke.

It is one of the downsides of being a native English speaker (though not English!) that we are so poor at other languages. Problem is that pretty much everyone else speaks English as their second language so it is easier to converse in English - indeed even when I have a go in, say, French, my friends quickly switch to English as they do not have all day to wait for me to construct a sentence.

The best way to learn a new language is to get a girl friend who doesn't speak your language. More fun too though I think my wife may have something to say about this if I have a go at this method

[Paul]

That´s quite a good joke actually.
A thought. If modern languages lead to different perpectives on the world as it is now, what about using them to look at the world a long time back as seen through the eyes of a race/civilisation who spoke an ancient or even dead language; ie the mayans. Maybe the BIG clock that stops at 2012, has a completely different purpose in the perspective of an ancient mayan speaker??

I´ll get it onto Analytical philosophy at some point

[Phersu]

The best way to learn a new language is to get a girl friend who doesn't speak your language. More fun too though I think my wife may have something to say about this if I have a go at this method

That's probably the best motivation!
During my youth in Florence the "foreign tourists girls hunting" was a real fixation for many... and some knowledge of foreign languages, especially english, was useful for the approach, and of course to persuade the foreign prey to switch the communication into "universal language"...
I had a lot of good times just for a minimal speaking of english, and it caused to me a big mistake and failure too... my ex was one "english tourist prey" captured in an off duty day during my military service.

And is happened often to me too to give up trying other languages and switch to english to communicate with people from other countries, it often speed up everything and prevent from many misunderstandings.
But it make mostly impossible the full immersion in other languages , and drive mad erasmus students...

I've been in France many times despite I can speak and understand very few words of french... until few years ago no many spoke english there (is not so common still now) and even less italian.
So I had no choice than force myself to understand and try to talk somehow.
French and italian sounds similar but are quite different, anyway that common base was enough to begin to understand and communicate roughly after one week or two spent there.
Sometimes I find more difficult to understand some italian dialects...

This of the dialects it's a strange thing that may have something to do with the structure of language and consequent way of thinking.
I find often easier to understand some strong dialects (don't know if it's the right word) rather than slighter inflections.
Despite some mistakes I can manage good enough with english, I can undestand well people from a lot of places but I have many difficulties still in England...
For example I can understand well the southern and welsh english as I've learned and practice mostly there, more difficult is the London's cockney and I'm even worst with the north-eastern... While I can understand much better scottish, some american and other more basicly different from real english...

[poky]

now that a few friends moved to Denmark I'm teaching myself Danish but as I never bin there and here nobody speaks Danish it really hard I do hope that a at least can read it this summer that makes shopping and public transport a lot easier, that will be my fourth languish that I hope to speak after that I think I will give Turkish a try.
at the moment speak Dutch, English, some German I can read it but speaking is another matter, ooh and a bit of Fries but only a bit I think that My Danish is better now then my Fries.
Anyway for me the best way is just start reading things like Donald Duck speaking is the hard part as dialects can really screw things up, of course having a girlfriend in another country is a big help guess I need to find a girl in Denmark this summer

[bilsonius]

The late great Victor Borge once said that the secret of speaking Danish is not to open your mouth too much: "There are some very cold winds coming from the Baltic, and you don't want to let your tongue get anywhere near the open air without being sure you can get it back in again..."

[musketier]

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one of my favorite comedians.