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| Subject: languages | |
Author: Kevin (U.S.) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 23:58:58 01/23/05 Sun In reply to: Ed Harris (London) 's message, "Is it me..." on 02:23:52 01/22/05 Sat So how many languages do each of you know? I myself speak: English - of coarse French - pretty well Irish - Gaelic Pretty well Bulgarian - A little [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Good work | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:25:50 01/24/05 Mon I'm impressed. Most of us in the English-speaking world are just about able to order a glass of wine in Spanish, but that let's us out. To know French, Gaelic and Bulgarian is pretty good. Learning languages broadens the mind. I wish I spoke one. I've even read somewhere that children who are brought up speaking more than one language have denser neurone-structure in some unpronounceable part of their brains. Beats me how anyone knows without opening up their brains, but I guess they've managed it somehow. Mind you, I have been obliged in my short life to learn a truly indecent number of languages, and I still have the IQ of the offspring of a village idiot and a TV weather girl. Indeed, I have forgotten at least half of the languages I have been forced to learn. I suppose it must be because I had to learn them when I was too old... Mind you, it can go too far the other way: I read that some women have started reading French poetry to embryos in their wombs in an attempt to start the process early. I would be interested to read the results, but frankly I have my doubts. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:37:24 01/24/05 Mon Only English and Portuguese to any serious level. I can read some German, the Portuguese gives me a certain degree of access to other neo-latin languages, and I studied a little Gaelic and Murrinh Patha at university, but that doesn't mean I can speak either of them. I started learning Portuguese at 35, so I don't think you have any real basis for the "too old" argument just yet, Ed. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:45:42 01/24/05 Mon Twenty-three in years, 108 in malevolent decrepitude, laddie. And I mainly meant that people are more receptive to language-learning when they are infants: it's an altogether slower process thereafter, whether you are 20, 40, or 108. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Hmm... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 11:46:36 01/24/05 Mon I’ve long since forgotten most of my school-boy French. Like most things, if you don’t use it you lose it. However, my father remembers most of his, probably down to the culture of “over-learning” that prevailed before the decline in educational standards that coincided with Britain’s discovery of socialism. I think my state education was reasonable good. Although I went to a Catholic school (we still have religious apartheid in Scotland) which meant that we spent most of our time fending off riotous invasions from the local Protestant school, I occasionally learnt something from a few of my reasonably good teachers. However, now it seem as though we are pandering to the lowest common denominator. An article in the Telegraph at the weekend highlighted a Government sponsored report that concluded that the teaching of grammar in schools is a waste of time. I wonder whether the Government will take this advice on board. Perhaps they already have. What is next on the list of Educational frivolities: basic spelling perhaps? Labour's education policy aims to turn the UK into a nation of semi-literate, semi-numerate graduates. At the same time, the Government bemoans our collective apathy in learning other languages (admittedly, we have less reason to do so). Surely without a basic knowledge of grammar, learning any other language would become a far greater task? Another report this week stated that the knowledge of history had also reached new levels of ignorance, with even the holocaust escaping the psyche of today's youth inn greater numbers. With an apparent gaping hole in the knowledge of our school-leavers where English, mathematics, science, geography and history used to be, what exactly is being taught today? Is it coz they is not teaching them nothingk now, innit. Is this just grumpy cynicism, or is it just a reflection of our age, with our language evolving in front of our eyes in ways most uncomfortable? We used to have Dickens, Blake, Turner, Keats and Milton. Now we have Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, JK Rowling and TXT MSGING. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Well said. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:43:18 01/24/05 Mon At school, not so long ago, I was expected to translate Homer and Virgil, to put together a 3000 word analysis, in French, of one of Guy de Maupassant's short stories, write essays on the repeal of the Corn Laws, Disraeli's second ministry, and sundry Victorian nonsense, and also compose a string-quartet in the style of Debussy and rearrange a piece by Bartok. In detention, I was obliged to spend an hour or so doing puzzles based on the Fibonacci Sequence. I suspect, frankly, that I got to do these things quite simply because I paid. What kind of allegedly socialist government presides over an education system in which, increasingly, only those who can afford ten grand a year for school fees gets a decent education? They are even attacking the last 160 grammar schools, which provided a public-school quality edication for talented children without the funds for Eton and whatnot. It's the same in health: go private or lie on a trolley in a filthy hospital for three months before seeing a consultant who tells you that the machine is broken and gives you a lozenge. Every time the socialists get in, social equality suffers. Their solutions to the problems which they themselves have creates are in two parts: firstly, they attack the symptoms not the causes, for example by obliging universities to take a certain quota of state-school children, which in fact perpetuates the don't-bother attitude in the state sector; and, secondly, by buying off understandably pissed off people with 'anti-toff' legislation like banning foxhunting, kicking earls out of the Lords, and complaining about Prince Andrew's expences. Do these things improve the lot of ordinary people? Do they buggery. You'd have thought that people would learn... perhaps the dumbing down of education is a deliberate policy to prevent people from learning the hideous truth! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Socialism is not all bad... it merely needs to be implemented wisely | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:50:09 01/24/05 Mon [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> Subject: Hm... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:57:21 01/24/05 Mon By 'wisely' I presume that you mean 'sparingly'! Otherwise I can't say that I agree. It is a lousy, discredited and corrupt system which has only been able to survive by being watered-down into that weird hybrid-creature "social democracy", which cunningly combines the worst of both capitalism and socialism... TB would say the best of both worlds, but the non-megalomaniac amongst us know better. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: To a certain degree... | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:03:47 01/24/05 Mon However, I do not believe that I should be forced to pay because I've broken my leg, nor to go to school and learn the basics of life. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: But laddie... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:06:11 01/24/05 Mon You do pay. You'll be paying for the rest of your life. No such thing as a free lunch. When you retire, calculate how much you've paid in tax, and how much you've cost the government in public services. Bet you'll be disappointed. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Of course someone pays. But the point is, it's free at point of use. No silly insurance details to find, no begging the bank manager for the money to save my life. | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:26:11 01/24/05 Mon [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: You have a point there... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:16:12 01/24/05 Mon Healthcare is one of the few services that should be available publicly in my view. Unlike private education, private healthcare is not a flat fee, but is insurance based, with premiums calculated on your age, your medical history, and your answers to a detailed questionnaire which asks you how many units of alcohol you drink each week and whether you have a propensity for white-water rafting and clay pigeon shooting. If, like me, you enjoy racing sportscars, and the occasional pint or two (although not at the same time of course) in addition to the things above, then your healthcare premium ends up as frightening as the sports car’s [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Er... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:16:54 01/24/05 Mon Whether it costs you at point of issue or over the period of your working years, the principle is the same. One is more inconvenient, I grant you, but if you paid the NHS-portion of your taxes into a savings account every year instead of handing it over to G. Brown, there would be no mucking about with bank managers. And if you never have to draw on it for anything worse than flu medicine, you get all your money back at the end - or, rather, your children inherit it. Think of it this way: if you wanted to give money to charity, would you (a) pay it directly to the charity or charities of your choice, or (b) give it to the government to distribute it for you? I presume that you would choose the latter, because it is more efficient and suits your needs better. It would make sense to do the same with health. I'm with BUPA, and the service is always free at point of issue anyway (I've never heard of a doctor and his staf of nurses standing over a bloke, scalpel in hand, and declaring that he can't do anything until he writes a cheque in advance), and they bill you, and you fax the bill to BUPA, and they send a cheque to the private hospital or doctor or dentist or whatever. This involves a lot of mucking around, but not an unbearable amount. My conception of the welfare state is to serve as a cushion to prevent the standard of living of the very poorest people from falling below a certain level; the socialists seem to see it as a mechanism for organising various aspects of the national life centrally. This was the distinction which I was drawing. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: I've forgotten all of ym schoolboy French... | |
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Author: Ben.M(UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:07:23 01/24/05 Mon ...it's at least 6 months since I had a French lesson:) [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: To quote the great Jerome: | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:18:51 01/24/05 Mon "I learned German at school, but realised a couple of years after I left that I had forgotten every word of it, and have felt much better ever since." [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |