Crosszone contact

[Junesun]

Maybe a kind of brief / simple course, which draws heavily on links to those other sites? That way you can bring it more to the attention of Cantr players, without doing much work in terms of designing a course ...

Ok, I set up feelers at http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=141077 . Everybody interested, please vote there.

Okud: that's the spirit!

[deadboy]

How come every other country knows about 80x more english than we do other languages? Almost every Portuguese person, Spanish person, German person, and French person ive known have all spoken english almost perfectly, and most of them by the age of about 14!

[Sarah]

A German foreign exchange student told me once that she was required to learn English in school. Maybe that's normal there.

No foreign languages are required here to graduate high school, though some universities require or recommend that at least 2 years of a foreign language be completed in high school.

[Hellzon]

English is mandatory i Sweden too. And a third language (I guess most take German.). Basically, you anglos can get away with not knowing another language. We Swedes can't, since we a a pitiful little country that can hide our populace in an average american town.

/Hellzon - one of 9 million Swedes

[WojD]

In most Polish schools English is mandatory - sometimes also French, German, Russian or Spanish. It's sad taht when I was been in high school mandatory for me was been only Russian, French and... Latin

Now this is serious problem for me that I can't fluently talk and write in English

[HoH]

In order for me to graduate and get into a good college, I do have to take a foreign language. I'm already advanced though. SPANISH 2!!!! (That's an honors course for freshman here.)

[Wolf]

I already learnt English and German as a little kid, and some other languages, because we had a huge international family.
That, and I always had a thing for strange languages.
Though lately my learning-abilities are suffering from the wear-and-tear of my age and a fair amount of alcohol has left it's marks on it as well.

[Coramon]

Your in montana and taking spanish? Are there mexicans in montana now too? I figured u would learn french for the canadians. Wierd.... I'm taking Italian 1.

[Sho]

Your in montana and taking spanish? Are there mexicans in montana now too? I figured u would learn french for the canadians.

That's far from the only reason to learn a language. Some people learn a language for travel or business abroad. Some learn for the challenge. Some learn because it's their profession (e.g. linguistics).

In any case, I don't think you get many French-speaking Canadians in Montana, proximity to the border notwithstanding - of course, HoH knows better than I do.

[Coramon]

Yeah but still, when you're 14 all you care about is well.... I wouldn't want to scar anybody for life or anything.

[Nixit]

Yeah but still, when you're 14 all you care about is well.... I wouldn't want to scar anybody for life or anything.

Often, schools require students to take a certain amount of language. In fact, at our school, most people take Spanish.

[Marian]

Spanish was required at my school.

El gato es me amigo.

That's all I remember, but I can ask where Taco Bell is too.

[UloDeTero]

Marian:

You mean 'mi amigo', right?

El gato es mi amigo

Sorry to nitpick!

[Junesun]

How come every other country knows about 80x more english than we do other languages? Almost every Portuguese person, Spanish person, German person, and French person ive known have all spoken english almost perfectly, and most of them by the age of about 14!

Three reasons:

- must learn: at most German schools, everybody is forced to undergo at least 6 years of English classes. This was recently changed to 8 because it is now introduced in primary school already, but nobody graduated from that yet. If you want to go to university, you will likely even have to put up with 9 years of English classes, because it is very hard to deselect. Throughout these years, there are English exams that you mustn't fail, hence the increased amount of effort people put into it, compared to the USA. However, as soon as people are out of High School, they are likely to forget English very quickly if they don't need it for their studies or their job, because they never wished to learn English.

- age factor. I imagine you're more likely to be in contact with young people, whose English skills have not yet gone downhill (see above). Try finding an elderly German / Frenchman / ... who can speak English as well as you describe. Moreover, one who is also ready to do so.

- bias of the observer: if you meet people ready to talk English, particularly those voluntarily going on English-language forums, it's likely that they feel confident enough in their knowledge of the language. They wouldn't try if their English was non-existant or rudimentary at best. If you'd talk English to those who don't volunteer, those who stay away from English forums or English-speaking tourists, you'd get a different picture.

[Junesun]

It looks like there is quite a lot of interest in an Esperanto course. I started by posting a preliminary lesson at http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7698 .