Ship of Fools: Purgatory: Shrunken anglophone world

Thread: Purgatory: Shrunken anglophone world Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

I don't want to spark off another pond war. In particular I appreciate the wit and wisdom of our transatlantic shipmates. But I think it's a pity (though probably inevitable) that we are deprived of similar contributions from the rest of Europe and indeed the world, simply because of language.

This article made me think. America is big enough, and varied enough, to look after itself (to some extent) . But here in Britain we need to look further for support. Creativity, political vision, theological wisdom are all to be found amongst our fellow-Europeans, but how well do we know them? English people go on package holidays to the Spanish Costas, and even settle there in retirement, without learning a word of Spanish or engaging with the local culture. Middle-class Brits might have holiday homes in France or Italy, but remain as Anglophone enclaves for the most part.

Whereas all of us are aware of the celebrity 'big names' of popular culture, how many of these are not British or American? How well do we know similar figures from France, Italy or Germany? When it comes to politicians, as Martin Kettle remarks, most of us could name more Alaskan politicians than Dutch ones.

When our government (present or previous) wants to pursue a new initiative in, say, social or educational policy, it will send a research team off to the States despite the fact that more relevant data could be found just across the channel or in Scandinavia.

Partly of course this is because of the so-called 'special relationship', and the British inferiority complex now we have lost an Empire. But as Kettle points out, a great deal has to do with language and the sad fact that we are by and large a monoglot nation terrified to open our mouths in anything other than English.

Until the late Middle Ages and the rise of English (not yet British) nationalism/ imperialism, England was firmly part of European culture. Even earlier than that, the sea was not seen as a barrier but a highway for social and cultural interaction.

Does the blame lie with Henry VIII? Or what else lies behind our self-imposed isolation?

[ 05. January 2015, 23:39: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

I think the article is rather ignorant. Mr Kettle assumes that the only reason we pay attention to American or Australian rather than French or German politics is because of language, whilst omitting to mention the shared history, culture, politics and social background of Britain and the United States and, particularly, Britain and the Commonwealth.

People in Britain can understand and identify with the concept of an Australian Prime Minister and an Australian Leader of the Opposition in a way that they can't with a Dutch Lijsttrekker. Or not so easily, anyway.

I think Mr Kettle has realised that the Guardian's Weltanschauung and the real world aren't the same thing and this is him throwing his toys out of the pram.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

This is something that I've often thought about - and frequently found a source of frustration.

I encounter it all the time in my field (political science / comparative constitutional design): the tendency is to look to other English-speaking nations and not to continental Europe for ideas and inspiration. That means we are overly-influenced by American concerns, ideologies, and proposals - to the exclusion and neglect of what's going on in Europe. It also means that we let very useful constitutional technologies pass us by (although not in Scotland, because we did it properly in the build up to devolution, and actually looked at how they did things in other European countries - but then Scotland is less anti-European, culturally and psychologically, than England is).

Rejection of European thinking shifts British politics to the market-liberal right in ways that would be quite shocking to many European countries (remember: Walmart could not make a profit in Germany: it was beaten by mom-n-pop stores, because Germany regulates its retail market in ways which just don't fit with the Walmart model).

I don't buy Anglican't argument: A moderately well-informed British person will know what a primary election is, and what the Electoral College is, but that is only because (i) These things are actually reported; and (ii) There is no language barrier. The Dutch concept of a Lijsttrekker is not any more intrinsically difficult to understand.

I put much of it down to post-imperial arrogance, as well as to linguistic laziness(*). Its as if we have nothing to learn. But we have so much to learn.

O Britain, you who rubbish the Europeans and ignore those who have useful things to teach you, how often I have longed to gather your MPs and Civil Servants together, and send you on a fact-finding trip to Copenhagen, Barcelona or Luxembourg City, but you were not willing!

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
When our government (present or previous) wants to pursue a new initiative in, say, social or educational policy, it will send a research team off to the States despite the fact that more relevant data could be found just across the channel or in Scandinavia.

In what way is Scandinavia any more relevant to the UK than America?

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

So maybe we should adopt Latin as a pan-European lingua franca?

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Well it's European for a start. And (the 4 Scandinavian countries together) about the same population as Britain. With a much better record of social cohesion and much less of a rich-poor divide, which should be a better example for us than the raw-toothed capitalism of America.

[ETA: reply to Marvin]

[ 20. August 2010, 14:27: Message edited by: Angloid ]

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Rejection of European thinking shifts British politics to the market-liberal right in ways that would be quite shocking to many European countries

But would the Guardian-reading left be happy? If we did embrace European thinking in a way that we apparently aren't at the moment*, would we still have a National Health Service (given that people would see insurance-based systems on the continent working better than our own)? And when David Cameron defended his plans for tax breaks for married couples with 'but it's common on the continent' people might say 'he's right, you know, why don't we have over here?'

*I have some doubts that the problem is as bad as Mr Kettle makes out, but that's only a hunch.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
When our government (present or previous) wants to pursue a new initiative in, say, social or educational policy, it will send a research team off to the States despite the fact that more relevant data could be found just across the channel or in Scandinavia.
In what way is Scandinavia any more relevant to the UK than America?

In what way is it any less relevant?- for that is how it is usually regarded in the uK

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Scandinavia...should be a better example for us than the raw-toothed capitalism of America.

Ah, so the only reason is that it better suits your political prejudices.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Only insofar as American capitalism is strongly influenced by geography and history: "Go west young man' and all that. When you've seemingly unlimited resources to exploit, it makes some sort of sense. It doesn't make the same sort of sense in Europe.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Rejection of European thinking shifts British politics to the market-liberal right in ways that would be quite shocking to many European countries
But would the Guardian-reading left be happy? If we did embrace European thinking in a way that we apparently aren't at the moment*, would we still have a National Health Service (given that people would see insurance-based systems on the continent working better than our own)? And when David Cameron defended his plans for tax breaks for married couples with 'but it's common on the continent' people might say 'he's right, you know, why don't we have over here?'

With the greatest respect, Anglican't, that is a pathetic argument. Knowing how our neighbours tackle similar problems doesn't mean that we have to adopt their solutions. At present we don't know very much about it. We've all read lots of newspaper articles about Obama's health care plans, and have a better idea of how things work there than we do about France, Italy or even Scotland.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

When I lived in the Czech Republic, I remember the front page news on three consecutive days was: "Tomorrow: America decides." "Obama or McCain? America decides today." "It's Obama."

The failings of Sarah Palin were minutely dissected. The New Yorker cartoon that was accused of comparing Obama to a monkey was front page news. They were reporting the Tea Partiers before they became famous.

The only other country's politics that got comparable levels of coverage was Slovakia, which is a bit of a special case.

So it's not just the British who are obsessed with the Americans.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
When I lived in the Czech Republic, I remember the front page news on three consecutive days was: "Tomorrow: America decides." "Obama or McCain? America decides today." "It's Obama."

The failings of Sarah Palin were minutely dissected. The New Yorker cartoon that was accused of comparing Obama to a monkey was front page news. They were reporting the Tea Partiers before they became famous.

The only other country's politics that got comparable levels of coverage was Slovakia, which is a bit of a special case.

So it's not just the British who are obsessed with the Americans.

Good point. The relative power of America within the world is a significant factor.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
With the greatest respect, Anglican't, that is a pathetic argument. Knowing how our neighbours tackle similar problems doesn't mean that we have to adopt their solutions.

But isn't that what you're saying? When you say

quote:
When our government (present or previous) wants to pursue a new initiative in, say, social or educational policy, it will send a research team off to the States despite the fact that more relevant data could be found just across the channel or in Scandinavia

and suggest looking to Scandinavia because their way of living is a 'better example' aren't you suggesting that we emulate these countries or at least seek inspiration from them? All I'm saying is that doing something like that might actually have consequences that some supporters of such an idea might not actually like.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
With the greatest respect, Anglican't, that is a pathetic argument. Knowing how our neighbours tackle similar problems doesn't mean that we have to adopt their solutions.
But isn't that what you're saying? When you say

quote:
When our government (present or previous) wants to pursue a new initiative in, say, social or educational policy, it will send a research team off to the States despite the fact that more relevant data could be found just across the channel or in Scandinavia
and suggest looking to Scandinavia because their way of living is a 'better example' aren't you suggesting that we emulate these countries or at least seek inspiration from them? All I'm saying is that doing something like that might actually have consequences that some supporters of such an idea might not actually like.

I don't understand "more relevant data" to be a value judgment about whether Scandinavia has done better things, it's an assessment of the similarity of the basic factors such as demographics. What works in a country the size, spread and make-up of the USA doesn't always work in a country the size, spread and make-up of the UK. I understood Angloid's point to be that Scandinavia is more similar to the UK on many measures.

Beats me where Australia is supposed to look for comparisons, though. Highly urbanised combined with an extremely low population density. Canada is probably the best match.

Posted by Benny Diction 2 (# 14159) on :

I'm really torn on this one. I have a great deal of time for America and Americans. But on the many times I have visited the USA I always find myself thinking that it is so familiar (in part because of TV shows, films and so on) but equally despite the same language it is also very different to the UK.

Health care and welfare provision is an obvious difference. But I believe from my experiences many Americans (though not all of course) have lower education standards than us.

Like or not (and I know there are a few Euro sceptics around these boards) we are European. Having visited France, the Netherlands and Germany on many occasions as well Germany and the Netherlands always feel familiar (that is a bit like the UK) though France has a different feel.

It's not a language issue. (Though English is very widely spoken in the Netherlands.) Maybe the Netherlands and Germany just feel more Anglo Saxon?

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I don't understand "more relevant data" to be a value judgment about whether Scandinavia has done better things, it's an assessment of the similarity of the basic factors such as demographics. What works in a country the size, spread and make-up of the USA doesn't always work in a country the size, spread and make-up of the UK. I understood Angloid's point to be that Scandinavia is more similar to the UK on many measures.

Oh, I see. It could be. But even if it is, I'm not sure how relevant that is. For example, when thinking about how to deal with long-term unemployment the Conservatives in Britain looked at, and were impressed by, how Wisconsin dealt with the problem. Now the United States might be massive, but somewhere like Wisconsin or even California isn't. I don't see why a state-wide initiative in one of the United States wouldn't be of interest to a politician in a country like Britain who wants to apply it to the whole of England and Wales or to the UK.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Of course it would be of interest. But the point is that you should cast your net pretty widely. Indeed, in the instance you cite, there wasn't even an appreciation of the variety of models within the USA- hence Prof Alan Deacon's comment about British welfare policymakers' America consisting of New York in one corner, California in another, and in between 'the continent of Wisconsin'.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

Seems a fair point. I appreciate the need to cast a wide net.

To go back to the original article by Mr Kettle, I get the impression of an anti-democratic, dirigiste line of thought, almost 'these people need to be told to make the right decisions', when the fact is that, with the full splendour of the internet before them, they have voted with their feet and opted to go with the cultures that they like and identify with rather than the places that Mr Kettle and his ilk think they should identify with.

Posted by Zoey (# 11152) on :

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

Beats me where Australia is supposed to look for comparisons, though. Highly urbanised combined with an extremely low population density. Canada is probably the best match.

[Tangent]
I'm in the UK. When reading journals + books about children's social work, I've noticed that there are some other seeming similarities between Canada and Australia - original native population not treated well by colonisers, followed by significant social problems amongst native population, followed by social workers from colonising population trying to work out best ways to help, but sometimes making things much worse, etc, etc. I haven't researched this at all - it's just something I've noticed - you get social-work articles from Canada and Australia discussing these issues, which simply don't have a direct UK equivalent (so no UK-based articles about them). (I also haven't seen any articles from the USA discussing such issues, though I assume some social workers in the US must be discussing them - could only speculate on why I haven't seen US-based articles.) [/Tangent]

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Well it's European for a start.

Proximity isn't the same as relevance.

quote:
And (the 4 Scandinavian countries together) about the same population as Britain.

Nor is size - I'm sure there are plenty of countries with roughly the same population as the UK, but that we'd never dream of taking advice from.

quote:
With a much better record of social cohesion and much less of a rich-poor divide, which should be a better example for us than the raw-toothed capitalism of America.

That does sound awfully like what I suspected it was, namely the desire of some left-wingers for us to follow the more left-wing Europe rather than the more right-wing America.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
[

quote:
With a much better record of social cohesion and much less of a rich-poor divide, which should be a better example for us than the raw-toothed capitalism of America.
That does sound awfully like what I suspected it was, namely the desire of some left-wingers for us to follow the more left-wing Europe rather than the more right-wing America.

As opposed to the desire of some right-wingers for us to follow the more right-wing America rather than the more left-wing Europe?

[ 20. August 2010, 15:46: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
As opposed to the desire of some right-wingers for us to follow the more right-wing America rather than the more left-wing Europe?

For my part, I'd rather we stayed to the right of Europe and to the left of America. You know, the much-derided but perfectly viable bridge-between-the-continents position...

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

It took living outside Europe for a year or two for me to realise that, despite the language difference, we actually are culturally closer to Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands and Belgium (and perhaps Germany) than we are to the USA.

Not because I found out more about those places but because Americans started to seem very foreign and exotic in some ways. We get so much US TV and film that I think we mostly come to delude ourselves that they are more like us than they really are. to think of them as a sort of English abroad. That might be still a little true of Australia and New Zealand, but not the USA.

There's degrees of foreigness. From my point of view home is the South East of England (so by definition that's not foreign at all) and my family are from the north of England and Scotland (so again I feel quite at home there). The west of England is just a tiny bit foreign, as is the midlands. Its like where I live but it is clearly not where I live. Wales a little bit more odd than that, and Ireland a little bit more than that. I've never been to Australia or New Zealand but the Australians I meet here (no doubt a biased sample) seem a little bit more different from the English than the Irish or Welsh do.

Belgians come next. Not weird at all. Then perhaps the Norwegians and Danes and Dutch. By the time you get to Swedes things are starting to feel quite strange - and then the Germans and Americans after that. The French of course aren't like us at all [Snigger]

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
As opposed to the desire of some right-wingers for us to follow the more right-wing America rather than the more left-wing Europe?
For my part, I'd rather we stayed to the right of Europe and to the left of America. You know, the much-derided but perfectly viable bridge-between-the-continents position...

Whihc is perhaps viable as you say (although not my own preference)- as long as it doesn't turn into the 'falling between two stools' position.

BTW ken, where are you on Canadians? the ones I've met, and the ones on the Ship, are certainly more like us than Americans generally are- and perhaps also than Australians are, too. (Of course, all this is wild generalisation.)

[ 20. August 2010, 16:18: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

British politics seem to me to fall across the same fault-lines as the rest of Western European countries. We have the same arguments about privatisation, part-privatisation (e.g. PFI), trades unions, university funding, the integration of immigrants. Granted the outcome of the debate may be different but the underlying debate is relatively similar.

By contrast American political debate seems alien to me from my outside perspective. The American left feel relatively "European" but - however much they may dislike taxes or state healthcare - it's rare to see Europeans arguing that taxation is actually theft, and I cannot imagine a European believing that state healthcare provision is a form of high treason.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
When I lived in the Czech Republic, I remember the front page news on three consecutive days was: "Tomorrow: America decides." "Obama or McCain? America decides today." "It's Obama."

I bow to your much greater knowledge of the Czech Republic, Ricardus. But might it not be the case that it, along with the other 'iron curtain' countries, has been cut off for so long from the rest of Europe that they have a different perspective from the west? Plus the fact that admiration for American capitalism is likely to be much stronger among peoples who suffered under the Soviet regime than it is among those who have evolved their own form of social democratic capitalism.

That's not to deny that American news can loom large in the news agenda of other European countries, though I doubt if it does so to the extent it does here.

I said in the OP I wasn't trying to start a pond war, and I'd be more interested in discussing why the British are so reluctant to learn other languages or engage with mainland European culture. Chickens and eggs come to mind of course.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
For example, when thinking about how to deal with long-term unemployment the Conservatives in Britain looked at, and were impressed by, how Wisconsin dealt with the problem. Now the United States might be massive, but somewhere like Wisconsin or even California isn't.

The population and GSP of Wisconsin are 8% the size of Britain's GDP. California's population is 60% and its economy 85% of Britain.
Based on scale, California would be a better comparison. Politically likely as well, though it would not necessarily serve the purposes of Conservatives.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
It took living outside Europe for a year or two for me to realise that, despite the language difference, we actually are culturally closer to Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands and Belgium (and perhaps Germany) than we are to the USA.

I agree for the most part, however wonder if part of this might be expectations. The USA came from, in large part, England and do share, mostly, a language. So the expectation may be for commonality, at least more so than from mainland Europe. It would then be a natural tendency to notice the differences, USA and Britain, and the similarities, Europe and Britain.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
British politics seem to me to fall across the same fault-lines as the rest of Western European countries. We have the same arguments about privatisation, part-privatisation (e.g. PFI), trades unions, university funding, the integration of immigrants. Granted the outcome of the debate may be different but the underlying debate is relatively similar.

By contrast American political debate seems alien to me from my outside perspective. The American left feel relatively "European" but - however much they may dislike taxes or state healthcare - it's rare to see Europeans arguing that taxation is actually theft, and I cannot imagine a European believing that state healthcare provision is a form of high treason.

You are correct that British politics, like European politics, lack the cut-throat strand of Lockean anti-Statism so beloved of the American right.

Beyond that, though, I think there are major differences between Britain and the continent. British politics lacks some of the major cleavages which have marked continental European politics since the 19th century, such as the secular-religious cleavage and (until recently, with the rise of the SNP and Plaid Cymru) the centre-periphery cleavage. Britain, in contrast to most continental European countries, developed two-party politics with alternating one-party rule (at least in the period from 1945 to 2010). We lack, on the whole, the moderating experience of perpetual coalitions. Instead we have swung from left to right: we nationalised the steel industry, privatised it, re-nationalised it, and finally re-privatised it - something unthinkable in most of Europe. Also, the British right is dominated by a market-orientated party rather than by a Catholic-orientated party: this makes a big difference to how certain policies, not least economic, welfare and family policies, are developed. On the other hand, there has been, in Britain, no strong communist party: whereas communists have been a relatively strong force in French, Italian and even Swedish politics.

All this probably has more to do with historical contingency than the transmission of ideas, but does nevertheless mean that the ideas motivating a continental politician or civil servant will be very different from those motivating his or her British counterpart.

The real elephant in the room is the difference between Civil Law and Common Law, and how that shapes no only the size and activity of the State, but also ways of thinking and approaches to problem solving. To a typical continental European, the role of the State is to achieve the common goals of the State operating under Civil Law, to manage the common life of the community. That is its default position, and it is an interventionist one. To a typical English-speaking person, living under Common Law, the role of the State is to protect private rights, especially private property rights. That is an essentially non-interventionist position. Also, a Civilian, when faced with a problem, asks "What is the most rational solution?", a Common Lawyer asks "What has been done before?" A Civilian thinks in general terms, which lead him or her to the particular; a Common Lawyer thinks in particulars, from which the general is derived.

Basically, we'd be a lot better off if we'd had the Code Napoleon.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

RW. I was nodding in agreement until the final sentence.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

Incidentally much of the reason why EU rules seem to be so absurdly applied in the UK, compared to just about every other EU country, is also due to the difference between Civil Law and Common Law.

The rest of Europe laughs at us for the way in which we apply EU law - but we are "forced" to do so by the way our legal system works. The Common Law allows little scope for common sense and latitude, and tends to produce strange precedents which are difficult to get out of - to say nothing of the shear uncertainty of the system.

[ 20. August 2010, 19:03: Message edited by: RadicalWhig ]

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

I thought that there was the problem of 'gold plating' too, where civil servants say 'we've got this directive to enforce, let's see how stringent we can make it'. I'm not sure whether that's the fault of the common law system or British civil servants being over zealous. Given the bureaucratic mentality, I suspect the latter.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
by Radicalwhig The real elephant in the room is the difference between Civil Law and Common Law, and how that shapes no only the size and activity of the State, but also ways of thinking and approaches to problem solving. To a typical continental European, the role of the State is to achieve the common goals of the State operating under Civil Law, to manage the common life of the community. That is its default position, and it is an interventionist one. To a typical English-speaking person, living under Common Law, the role of the State is to protect private rights, especially private property rights.

I think it is possible to have a common-law state that operates to advance what RadicalWhig describes as civil law principles. It seems a rather good description of the British (and certainly the New Zealand) state after the Second World War.

I would make a slightly different point: under constitutional principles, the State in the UK is essentially like a private person with some additional powers: UK constitutional law contains no fundamental principles as to what a state should do but what it can or can't do, and perhaps that is what RadicalWhig should be driving at.

As for the opening post: I think Angloid is indulging in a rather excessive amount of hand-wringing. American culture predominates here and in Australia more than it does on the Continent. This is more likely to have nothing to do with British insularity and everything to do with American cultural predominance. Additionally, I'm sure Angloid will be pleased to know that it is quite normal for British research teams to come down here to, for example, study educational trends and other administrative matters. I understand, for example, that PAYE was invented here. Also this:-

quote:
Until the late Middle Ages and the rise of English (not yet British) nationalism/ imperialism, England was firmly part of European culture.

is an odd thing to say given that American culture is essentially European too, as is obvious to most people who have been to culturally non-European parts of the globe. How Britain has been 'removed' from European culture is not clear to me.

quote:
Even earlier than that, the sea was not seen as a barrier but a highway for social and cultural interaction.

Well quite, and I guess it remains so.

And I think there is no denying the importance of having a language in common. Some of us, contrary to Angloid, might be more inclined to think that continental European countries are on the whole more insular than Britain, because they do not look beyond the European continent.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cod:
I would make a slightly different point: under constitutional principles, the State in the UK is essentially like a private person with some additional powers: UK constitutional law contains no fundamental principles as to what a state should do but what it can or can't do, and perhaps that is what RadicalWhig should be driving at.

Yes, I think that expresses it well.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Incidentally much of the reason why EU rules seem to be so absurdly applied in the UK, compared to just about every other EU country, is also due to the difference between Civil Law and Common Law.

Hi RadicalWhig - I find this point very interesting indeed, and I would be grateful if you could expand upon it.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I bow to your much greater knowledge of the Czech Republic, Ricardus. But might it not be the case that it, along with the other 'iron curtain' countries, has been cut off for so long from the rest of Europe that they have a different perspective from the west?

When you talk about 'Europe' what do you mean? When I think about Europe I think of a continent that extends from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula to the Urals (geographically) but culturally probably to the Polish - White Russian border (I've always thought of Russia herself as a kind of special case). This would place countries like the Czech Republic in central Europe.

When you talk about 'cut off' I'm wondering whether you say 'Europe' but really mean 'France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, the Iberian Peninsula and Scandinavia'.

This in turn makes me think that you would really like Britain to be more like these countries. That's a valid viewpoint, of course, but it strikes me that complaining about our ties to Europe is really just a smokescreen for a different frustration about the course our country has taken.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

We're in danger of drifting off the point, which is about language. Mostly an English problem ISTM: the Welsh (at least the younger element) are more or less bilingual; Scotland has always been more European-minded even if still largely anglophone.

Yet in contrast to most educated continentals, we are reduced to gibbering stupidity when trying to speak another language. And in contrast to the usual self-effacing English modesty, we come over uncharacteristically arrogant and expect others to understand our shouted English commands.

I know all the reasons such as 'English is the lingua franca of the world' or 'English is the obvious second language for most Europeans; which one should we learn?' But when you have French, Spanish, German and Italian people coming over here for high-powered jobs which demand a second language, because we haven't got enough English people with the necessary skills, something is wrong. The last government made foreign language learning optional beyond the age of 14: clearly an unwise move, but in view of the shortage of effective teachers maybe the only possible one.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Cross-posted with Anglican't: a challenging question and you may be onto something. Maybe because I don't know Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless I was only hazarding a guess about why the Czech Republic (as mentioned by Ricardus) might be more pro-American. I might be completely wrong. In any case, while they might be more inclined towards America politically, I'd be surprised if they were any closer to America culturally than say the Netherlands or Italy. France I think (as others have hinted) is a special case as culturally they seem different from anyone else.

And again language might have something to do with it. Speakers of minority languages like Czech, or Danish, or Dutch have always seen the need to be fluent in another major European language, and usually that is of course English.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
We're in danger of drifting off the point, which is about language. Mostly an English problem ISTM: the Welsh (at least the younger element) are more or less bilingual; Scotland has always been more European-minded even if still largely anglophone.

Not to any great extent (having lived in Scotland myself) and IMHO motivated by the desire to be unlike the English.

quote:
Yet in contrast to most educated continentals, we are reduced to gibbering stupidity when trying to speak another language.

This is a problem for English speakers worldwide. The only exceptions come from places like South Africa, where those who speak English as a first language really have to learn another one.

It is not a peculiarly British problem.

It is caused, so I understand, by the comparatively unusual way in which the English language it taught in Anglophone nations.

quote:
And in contrast to the usual self-effacing English modesty, we come over uncharacteristically arrogant and expect others to understand our shouted English commands.

Perhaps this is a throwback to the days when a pith helmet acted as a sort of Babel Fish.

More seriously, perhaps this is true in Ibiza where British people are generally drunk. But, once again, the problem there appears to be other than a British cultural trait. The problem is alcohol.

quote:
I know all the reasons such as 'English is the lingua franca of the world' or 'English is the obvious second language for most Europeans; which one should we learn?' But when you have French, Spanish, German and Italian people coming over here for high-powered jobs which demand a second language, because we haven't got enough English people with the necessary skills, something is wrong. The last government made foreign language learning optional beyond the age of 14: clearly an unwise move, but in view of the shortage of effective teachers maybe the only possible one.

Why learn another European language at all? Most of the world is outside Europe.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cod:

quote:
And in contrast to the usual self-effacing English modesty, we come over uncharacteristically arrogant and expect others to understand our shouted English commands.
Perhaps this is a throwback to the days when a pith helmet acted as a sort of Babel Fish.

More seriously, perhaps this is true in Ibiza where British people are generally drunk. But, once again, the problem there appears to be other than a British cultural trait. The problem is alcohol.

Not always. Try standing behind a middle-aged, obviously sober, middle-class English couple in a French or Italian village shop. And cringe.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

Perhaps. But it's easy to find examples of people from all sorts of places behaving rudely. It's also easy to find surveys naming various nationalities as the worst tourists overall. This one, for example, had the French last, and the British quite far up. I make no claims about the survey's accuracy. My point is simply that the oft-made claim that British insularity is demonstrated by British behaviour abroad is not all demonstrable.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

RadicalWhig:

You're wrong about the Civil Code. There is an excellent test case for your hypothesis: Quebec. It has its own Code Civil, first written in 1866 and updated in 1994. Every other province in Canada uses English common law. It really hasn't made a difference economically or politically by itself. Quebec was Canada's most conservative and right-wing province until the 1960's, now it's our most liberal and left-wing.

Until the 1960's the Quebec Government was one of the most minimalist and market-oriented in Canada. Even in the age before the Welfare State it was a bastion of "small government" by the standards of the day.

The Quebec Civil Code, being written in 1866 had a deep emphasis on individual freedom of contract, if anything it was profoundly individualistic.

Try again then.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Cross-posted with Anglican't: a challenging question and you may be onto something. Maybe because I don't know Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless I was only hazarding a guess about why the Czech Republic (as mentioned by Ricardus) might be more pro-American. I might be completely wrong. In any case, while they might be more inclined towards America politically, I'd be surprised if they were any closer to America culturally than say the Netherlands or Italy. France I think (as others have hinted) is a special case as culturally they seem different from anyone else.

And again language might have something to do with it. Speakers of minority languages like Czech, or Danish, or Dutch have always seen the need to be fluent in another major European language, and usually that is of course English.

I raise the point for two reasons (and both or neither may apply to you).

First, some people seem to talk about 'Europe' as if the attitudes or way of doing things on the continent are homogeneous when of course they aren't. I don't think the Poles are any less European than the French but sometimes are treated as they are. I think what is sometimes called the 'European Social Model' really only covers about half the continent and to suggest otherwise is rather unfair on the rest.

Secondly, people tend to confuse Europe and the European Union. I rather like Europe and Europeans. I'm much, much less keen on the EU. There were a lot of things that Tony Blair said that got me incensed but one of the worst was when he said that Kosovo is 'on the edge of Europe' (this was when he was about to bomb Serbia). Kosovo is in no such place - it is at least 500 miles from the edge of Europe (if you can say that the Bosphorus is one of the edges).

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

You're quite right, Anglican't. My point was that there is likely to be a significant difference between ex-Communist Europe and the rest. Not that either part was more or less European than the other.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

It is always fascinating to see what English-speakers, UK or US, know about language.

It is a tad insulting to call Czech a "minority language". Minor perhaps. A minority language is one spoken in an enclave within some other linguistic community: a Hungarian-speaking village in Slovakia, Russian in Lithuania or Welsh in the UK. In these cases the minority often have to know the dominant language to get by. Czech in the Czech Republic is hardly a minority language.

It is odd to take it for granted that English is unquestionably dominant. There is a fair bit of Russian and German about and probably more common than English when it comes to doing business. The name of the game is to be polyglot and to appear to get by in the customer's language. And that is an idea which goes way back before the Socialist interlude.

Modern Foreign languages are not for the English, who in general understand their own language no better than they learn another. Where English speakers struggle with 'would have' and 'would of' not to mention 'potatoe's', the typical Slovak knows his genitive from his plurals and will place his apostrophe unerringly. There may well be a future where the educated speakers of English within the United States of Europe will mostly be on the continent while the insular natives grunt at each other in a minority dialect. Latin and Italian all over again.

Et trabem non vides?

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

Not that I have a canoe in this race, but there has been plenty of talk on this forum about how English people are like totally different from Welsh people and Scottish people, and how Americans are totally not like Canadians at ALL. And NEVER confuse Irish people and English people. Now Americans and English people are way different. Far more different than Belgians and Swedes!

Where DID this preoccupation come from anyway?

Zach

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Not that I have a canoe in this race, but there has been plenty of talk on this forum about how English people are like totally different from Welsh people and Scottish people, and how Americans are totally not like Canadians at ALL. And NEVER confuse Irish people and English people. Now Americans and English people are way different. Far more different than Belgians and Swedes!

Where DID this preoccupation come from anyway?

Zach

From prejudice?

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

quote:
Partly of course this is because of the so-called 'special relationship', and the British inferiority complex now we have lost an Empire. But as Kettle points out, a great deal has to do with language and the sad fact that we are by and large a monoglot nation terrified to open our mouths in anything other than English.

I think language and culture are inextricably linked. Generally, English, American, Australian, Canadian and NZers spring from the same cultural heritage many generations ago. Sharing a language has meant that we have contintued to learn from each other and form special relationships and ways of looking at the world that others have not.

Let's not forget that Europe has been embroiled in wars and it's only been in the last 40 years that there's any sort of unity.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

There are outlook and attitudinal differences that separate the Englsih and Americans from one another (and no doubt other British likewise from Americans, but I feel most competent focusing on the English-American split). I find these differences difficult to put one's finger on concisely, but as a left wing American I still perceive significant differences between myself and left wing English whom I know -- and I'm talking here of dispositions surrounding a basic orientation toward social democratic/socialist politics. I actually find it rather preposterous that the English or the British generally can find much to apply from American public sector procedures and systems of various sorts. As an American-trained psychologist practising in the NHS I eventually felt that I was neither fish nor fowl - neither having a typically British outlook on various issues of the approach to mental health treatment, nor any longer subscribing to my formerly strongly American views toward treatment (this cultural displacement has endured even after my return to America). I mention this because cross-fertilisation of ideas is no doubt a good thing, but at the same time you can't simply pick up a system and approach from one side of the pond and transplant it to the other side. The differences are based in layers of history, national culture, certain socially reinforced aspects of personality functioning, etc.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

Daniel Hannan, a journalist and politician whose views I don't always agree with, has written this article in response to the article by Martin Kettle that Angloid refers to in his OP. I agree with it.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
There may well be a future where the educated speakers of English within the United States of Europe will mostly be on the continent while the insular natives grunt at each other in a minority dialect. Latin and Italian all over again.

Et trabem non vides?

As an Italian speaker (and singer) I resent the implication that Italian involves people grunting at each other!

Re. the topic of the thread, I do think the language issue is a big part of the problem - that it is simply easier to talk to people who share the same language - one can't learn all 23 official EU languages, never mind the smaller European languages, and then there are all the hundreds of others in the world... I think it is a good thing that English is becoming more of a new lingua franca, but would like to think at the same time it would not mean other languages can't continue as well. It would be good if in the future everyone spoke good English as well as their own local language.

I only know France as well as I know Britain, and I am not sure if in general things are done better here, it's a mixed bag I think. I find France a bit more bureaucratic and formal than Britain, and I find money matters are more complicated - eg. everyone fills out tax forms and when the government wants to offer some sort of financial help it is often in the form of some sort of deduction to be applied for on the income tax form.

I think some aspects of its legal system here seem good, like the juge d'instruction system for criminal cases, which seems to look for the truth in a more balanced and less antagonistic way (a judge investigates the pros and cons before the case procedes rather than eg. the UK system where the crown looks to get a conviction); generally the health system seems to work quite well, though "social charges" as a proportion of salary (like National Insurance) are high to pay for it (they also though eg. pay for what I believe is a more generous family allowance and unemployment pay and pensions etc than in the UK. When it comes to self-employment things are more complicated, with each activity being classed under one of various different categories (like artisan, commerce, liberal professional etc) whose social security is managed by different bodies and with slightly different rights etc.

Re. health again, there is a state system even though it is referred to as "health insurance" (because a set part of your earnings are paid into it to give you your rights - however you do not have fewer rights if you have smaller earnings etc or anything like that). There is a small percentage that is not covered, and people usually have a fairly inexpensive private policy, which is available regardless of health conditions, that "tops it up".

I spoke to an American recently who hugely admires the system here as compared to America, which she says is brutally commercial. Her brother died young of an illness he could not get treated for because he could not get private insurance, because he had a preexisting condition. She said in any case if you have insurance firms sometimes drop you when you get ill with some new serious condition anyway and seem to get away with it. It seems like Obama may be improving things somewhat though, though she thought it would not go far enough as it still left private business playing the major role.

Another thing I like here, which is not really related to politics as such, is the lack of ranting tabloids.
I think I find there to be a bit less of a rich/poor divide and a bit less materialism and somewhat less celebrity obsession.

I quite like that in politics there is input from a broader range of parties, eg. as someone said the French Communists are a perfectly normal part of the scheme of things. I think people have more interest in local politics here, with eg. the local mayor's office being a significant part of local life. I also find the presidential system a bit more coherent than a nominal head of state based on heredity.

...just some thoughts off the top of my head! Should the UK be more like France than America, I think probably in some respects, but not all. Certainly I agree it would be good for the UK to look a bit more at areas where other European countries do something well.

[ 21. August 2010, 09:07: Message edited by: Orlando098 ]

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
It is always fascinating to see what English-speakers, UK or US, know about language.

It is a tad insulting to call Czech a "minority language". Minor perhaps. A minority language is one spoken in an enclave within some other linguistic community: a Hungarian-speaking village in Slovakia, Russian in Lithuania or Welsh in the UK. In these cases the minority often have to know the dominant language to get by. Czech in the Czech Republic is hardly a minority language.

Berwickshire: apologies. I was using the term 'minority' too loosely. Those languages are minorities within Europe though not in their own countries. I take your point.

Daniel Hannan (in the article linked to by Anglican't) makes much of the 'shared culture' of anglophone nations. But such a culture is impoverished if it isn't cross-fertilised by non-anglophone elements. If you look on any French or Italian (for example) station bookstall you'll find many translations of popular English or American novels. How many French or Italian (or German or Spanish or Dutch...) novels do we see over here? It's not all about high culture, it's about recognising that we live in the same world and share similar though subtly different experiences.

Undoubtedly the internet has made geographical distance less important for trade. On the other hand, Eurostar and cheap flights mean that travel across Europe has never been easier or quicker. It's a pity that our minds and tongues don't travel so easily.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

Oh another thing I think is better in France is the educatiton system; I have the impression the average French school is better than the "bog standard" British one - one thing you notice eg. is that few French people send children into the private system other than eg. for religious reasons (ie. sending them to a Catholic private school). So that also adds to less of a class divide. And I think they teach more facts in school and have less of an ethos that children go to school to express themselves and play etc. eg. from primary school everyone learns French grammar rules. And I think the baccaluréat probably makes for a population with a more rounded education than Britain's where you specialise so soon.

As far as language learning in the UK goes I think one problem is that in recent decades they stopped teaching almost any grammar in subjects like French and thought you could transmit everything by flash cards and oral repetition and games and role plays and things, but I think that is a throwing the baby out of the bath attitude - yes, those things have their place, but so does, eg. learning how a verb is conjugated.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

I also like the fact the French state and education are secular. I don't think it is the state's job to tell people what they should believe or not.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Well, I don't want to set myself up as the Ship's Expert on Czech Culture, but I do like the sound of my own keyboard, so:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
But might it not be the case that it, along with the other 'iron curtain' countries, has been cut off for so long from the rest of Europe that they have a different perspective from the west? Plus the fact that admiration for American capitalism is likely to be much stronger among peoples who suffered under the Soviet regime than it is among those who have evolved their own form of social democratic capitalism.

I think, 20 years after the fall of Communism, the Czechs have had time to get cynical about the Americans. IME you can hear Czechs express both pro- and anti-American views but they would generally see their future with the EU rather than America.

As Berwickshire says, I don't think the dominance of America in Czech political news is related to language, because Czechs are more likely to speak German or Russian than English.

On the other hand, it is true that the American election directly affected two points of national importance, namely the missile defence shield and Czech participation in Afghanistan.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
As far as language learning in the UK goes I think one problem is that in recent decades they stopped teaching almost any grammar in subjects like French and thought you could transmit everything by flash cards and oral repetition and games and role plays and things, but I think that is a throwing the baby out of the bath attitude - yes, those things have their place, but so does, eg. learning how a verb is conjugated.

Speaking as a language graduate - my school did place quite a strong emphasis on formal grammar. The problem is that standards at GCSE are absurdly low, and post-GCSE our education system is ridiculously specialised so pupils don't necessarily have the opportunity to carry on with a language.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
But such a culture is impoverished if it isn't cross-fertilised by non-anglophone elements.

Says who?

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
We're in danger of drifting off the point, which is about language. Mostly an English problem ISTM: the Welsh (at least the younger element) are more or less bilingual;

Bilingual in what? A lot of younger Welshmen will be bilingual in Welsh and English, but that isn't much help outside Wales. As I understand it, Welsh was made a compulsory GCSE subject in Wales which meant another subject (usually a foreign language) had to be jettisoned to make way for it. Or are you saying that the Welsh are more likely to learn a foreign language off their own backs?

Posted by FooloftheShip (# 15579) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
As far as language learning in the UK goes I think one problem is that in recent decades they stopped teaching almost any grammar in subjects like French and thought you could transmit everything by flash cards and oral repetition and games and role plays and things, but I think that is a throwing the baby out of the bath attitude - yes, those things have their place, but so does, eg. learning how a verb is conjugated.
Speaking as a language graduate - my school did place quite a strong emphasis on formal grammar. The problem is that standards at GCSE are absurdly low, and post-GCSE our education system is ridiculously specialised so pupils don't necessarily have the opportunity to carry on with a language.

Hoorah!! Another language graduate. We're a select bunch.

It will probably therefore come as no surprise that I entirely agree that our culture is actually European and that the monolingual culture we are imposing on ourselves is creating fundamental distortions...

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
As far as language learning in the UK goes I think one problem is that in recent decades they stopped teaching almost any grammar in subjects like French and thought you could transmit everything by flash cards and oral repetition and games and role plays and things, but I think that is a throwing the baby out of the bath attitude - yes, those things have their place, but so does, eg. learning how a verb is conjugated.
Speaking as a language graduate - my school did place quite a strong emphasis on formal grammar. The problem is that standards at GCSE are absurdly low, and post-GCSE our education system is ridiculously specialised so pupils don't necessarily have the opportunity to carry on with a language.

I agree with both points but think your school might have been a bit of an exception. Was it private, or maybe a grammar school or something? Anyway, I was speaking as a language graduate and as someone who did a languages PGCE at one point. With a bit of luck though things might be swinging back to being a little bit more traditional -- a bit like how they ditched traditional reading methods at one point (you know, A is for "ah", B is for "bee" cuh ah tuh spells "cat" etc , which had worked fine for centuries) and tried to get children to recognise the look of English words a if they were Chinese characters or something, and then realised loads of kins were leaving primary school unable to read... suprise... and now I understand more schools use "phonics" again (ie. the usual method with which everyone used to learn)

[ 21. August 2010, 19:15: Message edited by: Orlando098 ]

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
We're in danger of drifting off the point, which is about language. Mostly an English problem ISTM: the Welsh (at least the younger element) are more or less bilingual;
Bilingual in what? A lot of younger Welshmen will be bilingual in Welsh and English, but that isn't much help outside Wales. As I understand it, Welsh was made a compulsory GCSE subject in Wales which meant another subject (usually a foreign language) had to be jettisoned to make way for it. Or are you saying that the Welsh are more likely to learn a foreign language off their own backs?

I don't know. But there is a lot of evidence that children brought up bilingually (in whatever languages) find it much easier to learn other languages. I wonder if any Welsh shipmates could support or challenge Anglican't's suggestion that other languages got shoved out of the curriculum because of Welsh?

quote:

Originally posted by Angloid:
But such a culture is impoverished if it isn't cross-fertilised by non-anglophone elements.
Says who?

Well, I do, obviously. It seems like commonsense to me. Language and culture are closely linked, which is why dominant cultures often try to choke off other cultures by denying them their language. For example, the 'Welsh knot' which was a punishment inflicted on Welsh schoolchildren who were heard to speak Welsh to each other in the playground, certainly in the 19th century and possibly into the 20th.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Sorry, clarification: missed the edit slot. The comment 'says who?' above was made by Marvin the Martian.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

It is good that Angloid sees the point about Czech and that Ricardus can explain the current situation in Czech culture.

Orlando is, however, wide of the mark in leaping to the defence of Italian since there absolutely is no 'implication' to resent. It has been a couple of years since the last drive back over the Brenner but then Italy was still undoubtedly a peninsula, not, by definition, a place where 'insular natives' grunt at each other.

The point is simply that, glancing at a still-valid permesso di soggiorno per stranieri kindly issued by the Questura di Roma, mezzi sostentamento: da lavoro, Italian is simply bad Latin. Stripped of its oblique cases, the language degenerated into Italian, French and the like, in ways which may sound nice (or sing well) but are mutually incomprehensible.

It is obvious that the consensus here is that the state of MML/MFL, let alone the Classics, is past praying for in the UK. A likely development is that foreign languages will become, as they are in the US, a family-taught thing for Italian-Americans, Hispanics or whatever. Polish is already effectively the UK's second-largest language, no thanks to the schools.

The real point is that educated foreigners speak and understand English a lot better than most natives: the BBC broadcast some ethnic poet or other this morning whose 'English' was frankly unintelligible. If the degeneration continues, the result may be native-speakers grunting away within their little circle in a group of mutually unintelligible dialects. As once with Latin, the future of the language may be survival as the common currency of an international elite.

There is no hope of teaching English speakers generally to speak foreign languages but there might still be time to teach them English.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

Orlando is, however, wide of the mark in leaping to the defence of Italian since there absolutely is no 'implication' to resent. It has been a couple of years since the last drive back over the Brenner but then Italy was still undoubtedly a peninsula, not, by definition, a place where 'insular natives' grunt at each other.

The point is simply that, glancing at a still-valid permesso di soggiorno per stranieri kindly issued by the Questura di Roma, mezzi sostentamento: da lavoro, Italian is simply bad Latin. [/QB]

I was mainly joking, I saw your point. However surely all languages develop from previous ones - you might as well say that English is bad Anglo-Saxon, bastardized with a lot of Norman French, Norse, Classical languages, Hindi, Italian etc.

Posted by Pancho (# 13533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
It is obvious that the consensus here is that the state of MML/MFL, let alone the Classics, is past praying for in the UK. A likely development is that foreign languages will become, as they are in the US, a family-taught thing for Italian-Americans, Hispanics or whatever. Polish is already effectively the UK's second-largest language, no thanks to the schools.

I'm not sure I understand your point about the U.S. I learned Spanish in the home (it's my first language, actually) but all the local schools taught it at secondary, high school and college level.

All the local high schools where I live offer foreign languages (mainly Spanish, French and German and my high school still offered Latin) and I believe the local collages (well at least 2 of them, anyway) require foreign language credits to graduate.

quote:
Stripped of its oblique cases, the language degenerated into Italian, French and the like, in ways which may sound nice (or sing well) but are mutually incomprehensible.

Not every Romance langugae is incomprehensible to each other to the same degree. According to this page

quote:
Spanish and Italian share a very similar phonological system and do not differ very much in grammar, vocabulary and above all morphology. Speakers of both languages can communicate relatively well: at present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%.[9] As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. Spanish is mutually intelligible with French and with Romanian to a lesser degree (lexical similarity is respectively 75% and 71%[9]). The writing systems of the four languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.

I can personally vouch that knowing Spanish helped me a lot in my Italian and French classes. Castillian and Portuguese are intelligible enough that Spanish language television sometimes doesn't use subtitles for interviews with Brazilian football (soccer) players.

[ 21. August 2010, 23:23: Message edited by: Pancho ]

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

The point is simply that, glancing at a still-valid permesso di soggiorno per stranieri kindly issued by the Questura di Roma, mezzi sostentamento: da lavoro, Italian is simply bad Latin.

You might just as well say that American is bad English. Which is nonsense.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
We're in danger of drifting off the point, which is about language. Mostly an English problem ISTM: the Welsh (at least the younger element) are more or less bilingual;
Bilingual in what? A lot of younger Welshmen will be bilingual in Welsh and English, but that isn't much help outside Wales. As I understand it, Welsh was made a compulsory GCSE subject in Wales which meant another subject (usually a foreign language) had to be jettisoned to make way for it. Or are you saying that the Welsh are more likely to learn a foreign language off their own backs?

No, being bilingual in Welsh & English isn't much help outside Wales, but then being bilingual in Finnish & English isn't much help outside Finland if you're a Finn. But oddly enough, chum, people like speaking the language they grew up with, even if it isn't the language of the dominant neighbour. Funny, eh? (And actaully being bilingual in Welsh & English is helpful in Wales- not so much as a matter of functional communication, but in getting access to two parallel cultures in one space.)

Not havign been educated in Wales, i don't know wbaout the claim that Welsh pushed other languages off the curriculum. Certainly my wife, who went to a Welsh-medium comprehensive in the 80s, did O levels in English, Welsh, Latin and French; whereas my father-in-law, who went to an English-medium grammar school (as they all were then) in a Welsh-speaking area in the 40s, didn't do French because the choice was between Welsh and French, and he chose Welsh. So I suspect that now that Welsh is mainstream there may actually be more choice than there was formerly. But I don't know.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But oddly enough, chum, people like speaking the language they grew up with, even if it isn't the language of the dominant neighbour. Funny, eh?

Nice sarcasm, but rather misplaced. Angloid's original point - as I understood it - was that the Welsh were more European-minded because some of them are bilingual in Welsh and English. I was making the point - which I think is still valid - that being bilingual in those languages isn't likely to make one more or less European-minded because no-one outside Wales speaks Welsh (not in any significant numbers, anyway).

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

At the risk of cynical caricature, though, you could argue that the Welsh (and Scots) are more likely to be European-minded as a way of getting back at the English.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

Some of them might well be, particularly some elements of the ABE brigade. Not sure how many of those there are.

If so, there's a certain paradox (irony?) that some of them might want to get away from what they see as English imperialism by giving more powers to the EU. I've never really understood that.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

The real point is that educated foreigners speak and understand English a lot better than most natives:

That is, of course, bollocks.

English people speak English perfectly well, and don;t need to be taught it at school. Its just not always some fossilised form of English that you might like.

Languages change. Italian is not the same language as Latin, English is not the same as Old English.

American and British English still are the same language - though with a wide variety of different accents. Sometime in future its likely they won't be. Both are changing fast, and often in different directions.

So what?

Oh, and which poet and which Radio Four programme?

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Not that I have a canoe in this race, but there has been plenty of talk on this forum about how English people are like totally different from Welsh people and Scottish people, and how Americans are totally not like Canadians at ALL. And NEVER confuse Irish people and English people. Now Americans and English people are way different. Far more different than Belgians and Swedes!

Where DID this preoccupation come from anyway?

From trying to make the opposite point from the one you have derived from it. When living on a different continent amongst people of very different language and culture, the Dutch and Danish and so on started looking very much like us culturally. Americans a little less so.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Noah Webster and other 19th Century Americans indeed believed that British and American would become mutually unintelligible languages. Webster, in fact, was largely responsible for the simplified spelling of American English (notably the dropping of u in words like "colour" and the phonetically-based reversal of the re ending by which words like "centre" are spelt "center" in American English. However, the rapidity and globalisation of communications in the modern age would seem to insure that standard English used in various parts of the world will both remain mutually intelligible and in some ways become more linguistically integrated in terms of the sharing of slang and informal/contemporary expressions. Further, within the Anglophone world regional accents are generally becoming somewhat less distinct and tending toward a national standard. In the USA for instance the overall accent pattern has become more typically Southern over the last 60 years, while typically Southern accents and regionalisms amongst the educated urban population in the American South have become less regionally distinct, more influenced by the Californian-lower Midwestern speech favoured by television and radio.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
However, the rapidity and globalisation of communications in the modern age would seem to insure that standard English used in various parts of the world will both remain mutually intelligible and in some ways become more linguistically integrated in terms of the sharing of slang and informal/contemporary expressions.

You like totally pwned him!

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But oddly enough, chum, people like speaking the language they grew up with, even if it isn't the language of the dominant neighbour. Funny, eh?
Nice sarcasm, but rather misplaced. Angloid's original point - as I understood it - was that the Welsh were more European-minded because some of them are bilingual in Welsh and English. I was making the point - which I think is still valid - that being bilingual in those languages isn't likely to make one more or less European-minded because no-one outside Wales speaks Welsh (not in any significant numbers, anyway).

Fairy nuff. Realised this after I'd posted, in too much haste.
But to address the point that you actually made, rather than the point that my stereotyped image of you led me to expect you to make, I think that one possible advantage of being bilingual- and I know quite a lot of bilingual people, although admittedly most of them are pretty well educated- is that it can make you understand that there is more than one way of naming things and thus of thinking about them. You live in two cultures; you see that there is more than one way of doing things. Does this mean that you are more European-minded, or even more broadminded? Not necessarily (and Welsh people, whether monoglot English-speakers or bilingual can be terribly parochial) - but I think it's likely to help.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Further, within the Anglophone world regional accents are generally becoming somewhat less distinct and tending toward a national standard.

Yes and no. I heard a lecture recently from an academic, expert in the field, who showed persuasive evidence that northern English urban accents were converging, with the notable exception of Liverpool. Young scousers are becoming more scouse, it seems. I think to some extent the north-east maintains its own linguistic difference too.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Speaking as a language graduate - my school did place quite a strong emphasis on formal grammar. The problem is that standards at GCSE are absurdly low, and post-GCSE our education system is ridiculously specialised so pupils don't necessarily have the opportunity to carry on with a language.
I agree with both points but think your school might have been a bit of an exception. Was it private, or maybe a grammar school or something?

Yes, it was a grammar school that was pretending to be a public school.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that my school was typical - only that, even with proper traditional methods, we still won't teach languages effectively unless we aim for a higher standard than we do now.

[ 22. August 2010, 16:43: Message edited by: Ricardus ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
The real point is that educated foreigners speak and understand English a lot better than most natives.

I'll believe that when I see it. Most foreigners struggle with some aspect of English. For Slavs that tends to mean articles.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

It's not my experience in France anyway.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
At the risk of cynical caricature, though, you could argue that the Welsh (and Scots) are more likely to be European-minded as a way of getting back at the English.

Thinking back specifically to my politics and history courses at Glasgow University some years ago, this is more than just caricature IME.

Put very simplisticly, there was a lot of interest at the time in what it meant to be Scottish. This involved, for example, discerning what could be described as a Scottish political process (this was before devolution), disentangling Scottish history from British history, and discerning comparative Scottish and English cultural traits. It was basically an attempt to reconstruct a 'true' Scottish nation from the Victorian sham, and an attempt to challenge to challenge the view that in terms of historical development, the Scottish tributary merely joined and mingled with the English river.

Various Scottish academics worked very hard at finding whatever distinguished Scots from English. One thing that was often commented upon upon was what was perceived to be English isolationism from mediaeval times onwards. This was compared to, for example, the Auld Alliance, Scots studying at European universities, Scots (ie, civil) law, and various other things. In other words, the Scots were more strongly linked to the Continent than the English.

Of course the Nationalists turned this into the claim that the Scots historically tended towards European cosmopolitanism, whereas the English tended towards isolationist snobbery.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

And in Glasgow at any rate they speak a language fairly unintelligible to most English-speakers. Quite tricky of the government to put the benefits help-line in Glasgow. Most of my refugee patients who were otherwise reasonably fluent in the English language found themselves unable to understand their interlocutors on the other end of the phone and simply gave up.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

What people say is fair game; what they might have said is an Aunt Sally.

So Orlando's point that one 'might as well say' English is bad Anglo-Saxon rather misses the point. A couple of boatloads coming over from a then-illiterate language community hardly represents a deviation from an international, educated langauge. Diverge they did but twelfth-century English prayers are not that far off German and, as the English shed grammar, their insular grunts were but little less-widely-understood than they had been before.

By the same token, Angloid's notion that one 'might just as well' say American is bad English makes the mistake of supposing that the divergences between the mother-tongue and the first of its colonial dialects are anything like as great as between Latin and Italian. Yes, a few archaic forms are retained, some vocabulary items are peculiar and Webster's adolescent tantrums against mummy did make for some illiterate-looking spellings but the divergence is not remotely in the Latin-Romance class.

Ken's point that English people speak English perfectly well and 'don;t need to be taught it' would have been more convincing without the semi-colon. The poet caught on an overseas broadcast was probably West Indian but it was not easy to make out much beyond that he had worked in China. I am sure some English native speakers need no teaching but equally sure that the great majority are unintelligible outside their own circle.

Riccardus has a fair point that Slavonic speakers have a struggle with determiners but the educated ones master them and will for good measure spot your esoteric Nominative singular and be able to make an accurate plural. Few foreigners coming off the Channel Tunnel have much hope of understanding how to 'use the hard shoulder' at Folkestone and find the attempt to understand the patois of the workers at Maidstone Services pretty futile.

What I think is not understood here is how bad the English of most native speakers actually is. A trade union leader (who died quite recently) somehow or other picked up enough education, or the help of a good enough ghost, to deliver a rectorial address to one of the Scottish universities. It reads well and got reprinted in the US. His Glaswegian is admittedly the pits, with perhaps only the Belfast and Liverpool dialects much worse, but listen to the recording and just try to guess what a 'Schoemin being' might be.

The trend of the time is acutally to encourage - and broadcast - this sort of speech, so as another Imperial language sinks into a morass of mutually-incomprehensible dialects, I am sure that (like medieval Latin) International Standard English will become the preserve of an educated group of foreigners in the main with a smallish percentage of native speakers and perhaps a few Americans. If Italian is anything to go by, the dialects then diverge into barely comprehensible sub-dialects.

Valete diu et bene!

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

[Salute]
God Save our Gracious....
[/Salute]

[Projectile]

Berwickshire, you do know that Vulgar Latin, the common language heard in the markets and spoken by most people wasn't the same as the educated Latin you learned in school, right?

Between graffiti and "correct speaking and grammar" scrolls (yes, we have a few from way back then) we know that Latin then was as diverse as English is now.

Or French, for that matter. Like most Canadians I had a smattering of French in school, the Quebec variety mostly. According to our French shipmates Quebec TV programs and films are often subtitled in France. I have worked with actual French (from France) coworkers. The gulf between Francien and Quebecois is double that of the widest variation that English currently has.

It must drive a prescriptivist like you crazy.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Berwickshire: it may be true in your terms that Italian is 'bad Latin'. But that doesn't mean it is bad Italian. Language is what people make it.

As for your patronising jibes at the late great Jimmy Reid: he was from Glasgow for God's sake - what sort of English do you expect him to speak?

It would be a neat and tidy world if everyone spoke the same mutually intelligible language. It would also be an extremely boring world, even totalitarian. My gripe with anglophone dominance is that all suffer. Anglophones who miss out on the richness of other cultures; and those other cultures who risk their richness being obliterated.

Totalitarian regimes have always tried (and sometimes succeeded) to impose their culture and language on others. Now this is being done not by a political empire but a commercial one, so it is much more difficult to challenge but potentially equally destructive.

Posted by dyfrig (# 15) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
I was making the point - which I think is still valid - that being bilingual in those languages isn't likely to make one more or less European-minded

Like anything, it's a spectrum. Aspects of Welsh cultural and political life have looked to Europe and elsewhere for alternative ways of thinking about what being Welsh in (and out) of Britain could mean. This has included slightly unpleasant enthralment in the 30s to loony right wing French ideas, and a rather uncritical approach to Vlaams and Quebecois notions without quite grasping that it didn't often fit well with the open and internationalist spirit claimed for Welsh patriotism. It's also, however, looked at Catalunya which, somehow, manages to create a relatively workable bilingual framework (you can see the irony - Catalunya strongly anti-Fascist, Flanders ratherly nastily anti-Semitic and anti-foregng, all in one big melting pot of ideas).

However, in the north west there is also a growing (though small support) for a curious right wing party which is like a cross between a rate payers alliance and UKIP - it is probably as uninterested in European culture as you can get. Likewise, Simon Brooks has been developing a centre-right, "in Europe but not of Europe" mildly Conservative form of devolutionary thinking, which might work its way into the Welsh Conservatives and strengthen the breadth of thnking. (He points out how Welsh patriotic oppoisition to the Falklands War was coming from an anti-London stance rather than any coherent undestanding of history or colonialism - Argentina as a state, of course, not being any more of an idea indigenous to south America as a British flag over Port Stanley.) However, he's also a firm supporter of some stances taken by Plaid Cymru, even though the latter regards itself in the broader European Social democratic tradition. All very curious.

At our school, French was the only continental language on offer and it was up against CDT and Home Economics in the choices pool for GCSE, so wasn't displaced by the compulsory Welsh strand. My ability to learn languages effectively was more or less scuppered by two things:

Firstly, I'm of a generation where grammar really wasn't taught (there was a strand in Welsh A level, but we really didn't get taught anything in English).

Second, because there weren't any French to Welsh resources (and our first French teacher couldn't speak Welsh anyway - would shout at you for mispronouncing something in French, but mangled half the class' names on a regular basis - go figure), we were taught French using English textbooks, so learning French grammar through a language which has a very different grammatical structure didn't help. It's only recently I've discovered it's easier to think my way into French verb forms by drawing parallels with Welsh, but I'm crap at it.

Posted by St. Stephen the Stoned (# 9841) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
And in Glasgow at any rate they speak a language fairly unintelligible to most English-speakers. Quite tricky of the government to put the benefits help-line in Glasgow. Most of my refugee patients who were otherwise reasonably fluent in the English language found themselves unable to understand their interlocutors on the other end of the phone and simply gave up.

I was employed in the Social Services Department of a small city in the English Midlands when the Child Support Act was introduced. The helpline for the East Midlands area was conveniently located in Belfast, so a top-level team came over to introduce themselves and outline the workings of the Act. After they’d explained to us the duties of the “Aabsnt Purrnt” and the rights of the “Purrnt wuth Curr”, one of my colleagues raised her hand.

“Do you employ interpreters?” she asked.

“Why?” asked the head person from Belfast in an outraged and rising tone.

My colleague then sweetly informed her that 20% of the local population had English as a second language, and that interpreters in Gujerati, Urdu and Punjabi would be needed.

Posted by dyfrig (# 15) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Where DID this preoccupation come from anyway?

It stems from situations where groups who Have Power(TM) use that power (often unwittingly and sometimes in a well-meaning manner) to exclude peple who Do NOt Have Power(TM) from the public sphere, usually by promoting and subsidising a particular language or legal status (being Anglican, white, whatever) as normative over-against any other identities. Thus, at given points in the last 300 years you couldn't possibly be fully British if you wore a kilt, or spoke a language other than English, or went to Mass.

Sadly, the reaction usually gets articulated in nonsense and gibberish about "race", which is easily allows the majority group to ignore the real issues.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I heard a lecture recently from an academic, expert in the field, who showed persuasive evidence that northern English urban accents were converging, with the notable exception of Liverpool. Young scousers are becoming more scouse, it seems. I think to some extent the north-east maintains its own linguistic difference too.

It seems to be a common urban phenomenon in developed countries. A distinctive city accent that was once just one example of a more widespread form of speech becomes more concentrated and more distinct.

For example I am told that the distinctive Boston acccents are now used in a smaller and smaller area of the city, and the speech of the suburbs is becoming more and more like General American (North Eastern variety) But, so the story goes, the city centre remains distinct and prouldy so, and it cuts across class.

Something similar might be happening in New Orleans (which has not one but three local accents)

Here in England it seems to be happening in Bristol which gets more obviously oooh-arrr even as other south-western towns blend into a more standard southern English. (Swindon, Bournemouth and Southhampton woudl have all had south-western accents not long ago. Rumour has it they no longer do)

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
However, the rapidity and globalisation of communications in the modern age would seem to insure that standard English used in various parts of the world will both remain mutually intelligible and in some ways become more linguistically integrated in terms of the sharing of slang and informal/contemporary expressions.

I think the jury's still out. Written English might remain one language but speech diverge even more.

quote:

Further, within the Anglophone world regional accents are generally becoming somewhat less distinct and tending toward a national standard. In the USA for instance the overall accent

Yes but the accents of north American Englishes seem to be diverging from British and Southern hemisphere ones. Or maybe its the other way round since the regions that's changing fastest is probably the south of England.

The accents are changing in different directions. Just to use the most notorious examples (which we've often talked about here) - the cot/caught, and pin/pen, and merry/marry/Mary mergers seem to be spreading in North American Englishes, but in Britain they are dying out even where they used to be found.

On the other hand rhoticity is gaining ground in the USA - east coast cities were mostly non-rhotic eighty years ago now they mostly aren't for white people , though black English is a little more conservative. But Britain and Ireland are moving the other way. Non-rhotic pronounciation has taken over almost all of urban England and Wales (apart from the and the city of Bristol as I said above) and is spreading to rural areas, and in to Scotland and Ireland. The "long A" in words like "bath" and "dance" is spreading as well, even though it is almost dead in the USA. Glottalisation of "t", vocalisation of dark L, are becoming near-universal in the south of England, yet rare in the US or Canada.

That doesn't stop us understanding each other, but as new changes come in we might get further and further apart.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

Ken's point that English people speak English perfectly well and 'don;t need to be taught it' would have been more convincing without the semi-colon.

Well, that's obviously a typo. So what?

Even if it wasn't, punctuation is not the language. Its just one of many possible codes for representing the language. Again, so what?

quote:

What I think is not understood here is how bad the English of most native speakers actually is.

No, its just that you pretend not to like it. That's your privilege I suppose.

quote:

A trade union leader (who died quite recently) somehow or other picked up enough education, or the help of a good enough ghost, to deliver a rectorial address to one of the Scottish universities. It reads well and got reprinted in the US. His Glaswegian is admittedly the pits, with perhaps only the Belfast and Liverpool dialects much worse, but listen to the recording and just try to guess what a 'Schoemin being' might be.

You are a troll, aren't you? Probably someone we already know trying to wind us up?

Can you keep up this upper-middle-class twit fogey facade much longer?

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Ken, what is the "vocalisation of dark L" -- I'm not familiar with the concept, put that way at least. As to the glottal t, despite its frequency in (esp.) SE English colloquial speech of the post-war generations, it is hardly ubiquitous. People in my own London work and social circles would never use the glottal t unless they were strictly being ironic. Hence that really seems an educationally and class-related artifact, even if there may be frequent code switching.

Interesting about the long a -- it's had a very changeable set of fortunes in the Anglophone world. My understanding is that in England the a in words like "bath" was normally short until around the turn of the C19 (ironically shortly after American independence). Then there was a minor vowel shift from short to long a fairly quickly, at least in fashionable society (not so much outside the home counties). The conservative American way of pronouncing the stand-alone a as a short vowel, especially in single syllable words, continued unabated -- except for a fashion that developed quickly in and around Boston in the late C19, where the long a was substituted, even reaching such an exaggerated extent that words like "apple" were pronounced with a long a. That fad, of course, rapidly attenuated and has now largely died out. Yet, the American pronunciation of "rather" in the last few years has increasingly gone from saying the word with a short a to a pronunciation that almost rhymes with "father", using the long a (this is a habit of only some American speakers but one that IME seems to be spreading). There seems to be something intrinsically unstable about the phonemic representation of the letter a in the English language! Point being that I suspect that overall the mutual intelligibility of the language will hold up even if the spoken language especially is in a state of continual and fairly rapid evolution.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Ken, what is the "vocalisation of dark L"

like this
"Apple crumble" is more like "apuw krumbow" - increasingly common in midland & SE England.

quote:

As to the glottal t, despite its frequency in (esp.) SE English colloquial speech of the post-war generations, it is hardly ubiquitous.

No, but its spreading fast. Nearly everyone does it in some places, even in RP.

Also not just SE England but also Glasgow, maybe Bristol, Liverpool, and even Dublin. I was talking to someone with a strong Dublin accent just on Friday and its strange - not stereotyped southern Irish at all almost like Scouse, with a little hint of Belfast. Lots of glottal stops, and lots of non-rhotic words as well, though there was a considerable personal variation.

quote:

People in my own London work and social circles would never use the glottal t unless they were strictly being ironic. Hence that really seems an educationally and class-related artifact, even if there may be frequent code switching.

I strongly suspect that they did, just not as often as I would. I'm from Brighton, and since childhood I've habitually glotallised intervocalic "t". So for me "a pint of bitter" is something like [ə'paɪʔə'bɪʔə] An RP speaker (or even a speaker with a middle-class London or suburban south of England accent) wouldn't do that. They'd say something like nt [ə' paɪnt əv 'bɪtə] (I hope that RPA comes out right in the website!)

But they are very likley to glotallise /t/ at the end of a word, especially if the next word starts with a consonant. Almost anyone would use one at the end of "but" in "but now". And increasingly (in London at least) final /t/ in words like "what" or "hot". This is a short list of recent and current changes in RP by John Wells (whose blog is good for this kind of stuff) He lists five changes that completed in the early 20th century (three of which make RP more different from GA), five from the mid 20th century that are still going on - though I don't believe one of them is in fact that common - and five he thinks make a difference between the RP of younger and older speakers right now, including the two I mentioned.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
What I think is not understood here is how bad the English of most native speakers actually is. A trade union leader (who died quite recently) somehow or other picked up enough education, or the help of a good enough ghost, to deliver a rectorial address to one of the Scottish universities. It reads well and got reprinted in the US. His Glaswegian is admittedly the pits, with perhaps only the Belfast and Liverpool dialects much worse, but listen to the recording and just try to guess what a 'Schoemin being' might be.

The trend of the time is acutally to encourage - and broadcast - this sort of speech, so as another Imperial language sinks into a morass of mutually-incomprehensible dialects, I am sure that (like medieval Latin) International Standard English will become the preserve of an educated group of foreigners in the main with a smallish percentage of native speakers and perhaps a few Americans.

Well, I hope you feel the same way about the breakup of the Czechoslovak language into Czech and Slovak.

Maybe I should go to Bratislava and say: "What people don't realise is how badly Slovaks speak Czech."

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Interesting point about the glottalisation of the t at the end of a word, something that I didn't really think of as being part of the same phenomenon. I'm still not sure about that. Is Bu'now (But now) really differnt than the habit in some regional dialects of habitually leaving off the final bit of the -ing ending so that you get e.g. "leavin'...breathin'", etc. When the final t of a word is swallowed, it seems to me more a liaison than the glottalisation of the intervocalic t in a word like "bitter".

Know this is all a terrible tangent. Maybe we need a separate thread on the evolution of dialect and speech patterns in the modern Anglophone world. I'm discussing the same things on a thread over on city-data forums that someone started as a thread about whether the form "y'all" is spreading into the speech of Americans outside the American South (don't have time to link to it at the moment -- it's on the General US forum on city-data).

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
...the habit in some regional dialects of habitually leaving off the final bit of the -ing ending so that you get e.g. "leavin'...breathin'",

That's an interesting one, because nothing is actually being "left out" there. There is no "g" any more in those "ing" words in most accents. Not all, there is in some Midlands and Northern ones in England - but most of us dropped the "g" from most of the words long before the English ever went to America.

What seems to have happened is that "-ing-" at the end of the word had both an "n" and a "g" in it - which is why its written like that. Then the "g" was dropped so "hunting, shootin, and fishin" became normal.

Meanwhile, when "ng" appeared in the middle of words like in words like "singer" which was once also pronounced [ng], as if the word was "sin-ger" rather than "sing-er" The "n" (an "alveolar nasal" if I can trust wikipedia - i.e. the tongue rouches the ridge behind the upper teeth) was replaced by a "velar nasal" (tounge touches the roof of the mouth further back) so the word became first "sing-ger" (as "finger" still is "fing-ger" for almost all of us) and later lost the "g" entirely (except in parts of the Midlands & North)

In the 18th and 19th century this new way of saying "ng", the velar nasal consonant, spread to other words, including verbs ending in the participle "-ing", like "singing"

So firstly, nothing has been dropped - or at least not in the last four centuries - what has happened is that the tounge has been moved back and up in the mouth so that the alveolar consonant has become a velar one.

And secondly the "-in" ending is the older one. Its actually the conservative one. So the English aristocrats, Cockneys, Afro-Caribbeans, working-class East Coast urban Americans, rural Southerners, and African Black Americans who say it that way are really being conservative. Its the rest of us who changed - mostly in the 19th century.

This also explains why the so-called "g-droppers" use "in" at the end of verbs ending in "ing" but not in other places where "ng" occurs - no-one says "annal" instead of "angle" or "son" instead of "song" and almost nobody says "ban" instead of "bang". Those words have had the "ng" for centuries longer than the verb-endings have.

Explained at great and wonderful length here and here

Which is a sort of general rule - of some language habit turns yup in all soprts of odd places, especially if it is often deprecated or seen as socially inferior, such as the word "ain't" its probably a clue that it is in fact the older way of speaking and the majority have changed with a recent fashion.

quote:

... a thread about whether the form "y'all" is spreading into the speech of Americans outside the American South

It ought to! Its useful [Smile]

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Czechoslovakia was a fairly recent creation as well as a more recent separation.

The Czech lands were from centuries part of the Austrian state,while Slovakia was for centuries part of the Hungarian state.

Yes,they are both Slavs and share a similar language,but it's no surprise that their use of these languages should be just a different as the use of English by Glaswegians and Cockneys,not suggesting that either one is better than the other,but they are two quite different forms of what is basically the same language.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Yes, that was my point (not sure if you're agreeing with me or not).

The official language of Czechoslovakia was originally "Czechoslovakian", of which Czech and Slovak were considered to be dialects. Now they're considered to be separate. On Berwickshire's view of life this can only be a Bad Thing.

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Ricardus, of course I agree with you !

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Ken, quite apart from issues of conservative pronunciations retained amongst native English-speakers (or maybe I should say Anglo-Celtic English speakers), the "fishin', shootin'" pronunciation of the -ing ending is characteristic of a number of more recent immigrant groups in the USA and IIRC I think I've heard the same in Britain. Most notably in America bilingual Hispanics, even if raised with English exposure since infancy, often consistently use the -in' variant, I assume because the conventional modern English -ing sound doesn't exist in Spanish. This is also true amongst many native-born American Upper Midwesterners with their Scandanavian origins, although I'm unqualified to comment on Scandanavian phonology.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

Sober Preacher's Kid makes a valid comment that medieval Latin was not classical - the differences are mainly in vocabulary but the gain was a international standard for the Bible, liturgy, law, philosophy, divinity and much else. 'Vulgar Latin' is a term best avoided - it was given currency by Greats men who despised medieval texts and, since this field was dominated by women such as Helen Waddell, Beryl Smalley and Kathleen Major, it amused a certain sort to land spinster ladies with the teaching of 'Vulgar Latin'.

One will not get far in Bratislava telling people about a 'Czechoslovakian language'. It is a lovely little place and they are nice people but that sort of comment will, rightly, land you in the river. Slovak, Czech and Polish are closely related (and the written languages look close) but in speech the differences are immediately obvious and large - on the verge of the mutually unintelligible.

Angloid may deplore mutual intelligibility as in some way a totalitarian construct but if English has a future this is it. The basic anglophone conceit is that the langauge 'belongs' to the native speakers: the future may well be that it belongs to educated speakers of English as a Second Language. As the native speech degenerates to incomprehensibility, ESL speakers will carry it on in a standard form, not unlike medieval Latin.

Which gets one nicely to vulgar English. No, Ken, we have never met before so, the abuse is quite gratuitous. A mistake may be put down to a 'typo' or pure ignorance - either way it shows slack proof-reading, which fits the basic pattern of discourtesy to one's interlocutors. So what? Well, to say the English 'don;t' need lessons and then include a mistake in the very phrase is a bit of a hostage to fortune, 'innit'? The good English universities both manage to teach the lesson of not offering schoolboy howlers in debate. There is scope for legitimate disagreement or debate about how degenerate native English is or (it may be) 'isn;t'. There is no excuse for abuse.

It still seems arguable that the future for English is as an International Langauage - one where phrasal verbs such as 'wind up' will be avoided as ambiguous: in the sense Ken uses the phrase, poor bloody foreigners will never find it except in a very up-to-date dictionary. Once foreigners sort English out, the poor natives may even see a reason to learn it as a foreign language.

Vester servitor et orator!

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
.Which gets one nicely to vulgar English. No, Ken, we have never met before so, the abuse is quite gratuitous. A mistake may be put down to a 'typo' or pure ignorance - either way it shows slack proof-reading, which fits the basic pattern of discourtesy to one's interlocutors. So what? Well, to say the English 'don't' need lessons and then include a mistake in the very phrase is a bit of a hostage to fortune, 'innit'? The good English universities both manage to teach the lesson of not offering schoolboy howlers in debate. There is scope for legitimate disagreement or debate about how degenerate native English is or (it may be) 'isn;t'. There is no excuse for abuse.

Abuse? Discourtesy?? Because of a miskeyed semi-colon due to typing fast? Get real! [Eek!]

YOu are the one who has been abusive on this thread. You heaped abuse on Jimmy Reid, the city of Glasgow, trade unionists, the BBC, Caribbean people, Americans, Kent, and all Scots. You have been nasty, snide, crude, arrogant, patronising, and aggressive; I assume as a deliberate troll. And your obsession with grunting is quite off-putting. Do you really think working-class people, blacks and Irish are like pigs? Or did you use that word again and again for some other reason? You come out with all that nasty bile in post after post and then accuse me of being abusive because I put a semicolon in the wrong place? Where on earth were you dragged up to talk like that?

In the unlikely event that you meant what you wrote about Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast and so on I'll explain the reason you are wrong. The Englishes spoken in Glasgow, Belfast, or Liverpool is not some degenerate form of a pure standard English which was once spoken there. The different kinds of English developed in paralel with each other. descended from the original Old English spoken by the first English invaders. They influenced each other of course, and had different external influences, but they are not simply version of each other or of the same thing.

The RP accent - which is I assume the one you think of as correct - is in fact in many ways one of the fastest-changing and most innovative accents in English. One of the least like the way our ancestors spoke four or five hundred years ago. Which is why, as I said before, some now non-standard forms turn up here and there among apparently unrelated groups. Final "-ing" pronounced as "-in". The word "ain't". "Ask" said as "ax". These are all old forms, older than the spread of English to America, that still turn up here and there amongst people who haven't changed to the new fashion. The distinctive vowels of the north-east of England and Cumbria and the east coast of Scotland are the older forms - its the rest of us who changed. The working-class and rural English of the Lothians and Northumberland and Tyneside (yes, maybe even Berwick) has perhaps the most old-fashioned set vowels still spoken - RP and the English of the South East of England the most new-fangled. Everyone else (including the Irish, and the Americans) are somewehre in between - though recently the Americans have been forging ourt on their own with different changes.

So these people whose voices you despise and insult as "grunting" or "patois" have not degenerated from some ancient purity. Very often they have stuck to their old ways of speaking when other changed. They have been literally conservative, reluctant to follow fashion. Language always changes. The RP accent is the product of recent change.

Much the same goes for syntax and grammar of course. You can speak standard English in any accent - which presumably is what you meant by your vile description of the late Jimmy Reid's language which, you say "reads well", by which I assume you mean that it is in standard English, but was spoken in his own accent. Which for some reason or other you say you hate.

And while you are at it, dialect is not the same as accent, and you seem to have confused the two.

And yes, I say "innit". A word you don't seem to know how to use. Maybe you should learn.

[ 24. August 2010, 00:06: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :

Ken -- perhaps you'd like to moderate the zeal with which you are responding to Berwickshire. I'm not going to suggest that you are the only one coming close to personal attack, but you certainly are giving a good example of how to make expressing strong feelings about an issue with seem like an attack on the person expressing a difference of opinion.

John Holding
Purgatory Host

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

Angloid may deplore mutual intelligibility as in some way a totalitarian construct but if English has a future this is it. The basic anglophone conceit is that the langauge 'belongs' to the native speakers: the future may well be that it belongs to educated speakers of English as a Second Language. As the native speech degenerates to incomprehensibility, ESL speakers will carry it on in a standard form, not unlike medieval Latin.

I'm not denying the usefulness of an international 'lingua franca'. But medieval Latin was artificially preserved and gradually dropped out of use, perhaps for that reason. 'Standard' English, whether the preserve of an English elite or a more democratic form, is bound to change and indeed is changing right now.

While a second language can be very useful for certain levels of communication (commerce in particular), it is extremely rare for someone to be able to express their deepest thoughts in anything other than their mother tongue. That's why a strongly nationalist Welshman like R S Thomas wrote his poetry in English, because he learned Welsh as a second language.

And this:

quote:
The good English universities both manage to teach the lesson of not offering schoolboy howlers in debate.

is either an unfinished sentence or an accomplished piece of trolling. Only two good universities in England? Berwickshire ex-Poly and which other?

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

Radical Whig said:

quote:
Rejection of European thinking shifts British politics to the market-liberal right in ways that would be quite shocking to many European countries (remember: Walmart could not make a profit in Germany: it was beaten by mom-n-pop stores, because Germany regulates its retail market in ways which just don't fit with the Walmart model).

Not a very astute analysis of German retailing. Walmart had difficulties because the German food market is already saturated with discount chains. This is the home of Lidl and Aldi remember. "Mom and Pop stores" are as rare in Germany as they are in the UK.

Aumbry

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

What is a 'mom'n'pop' store ? Is it like an Aunty Emma shop ?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Small store, non-chain, usually family-owned and the members of the family work in the store.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

As regards the great semi-colon uproar, Ken and I have had our say and can leave it to others to judge.

There seemed no actual need to name the infamous Comrade in the post but others have done so, and not only named the unspeakable man but write in terms which suggest they have not been on the same continent as the rest of us. Angloid thinks of him as ‘great’ and Ken deplores one’s remarks about this hero. Come, come! Sancto subito is one thing but it would need something extraordinary to promote the Cause of Jimmy Reid, late of Govan, recently called to his reward.

Can Angloid or Ken seriously uphold the good faith of a man who did not immediately resign (as others did) from the Party when, in 1968, Comrade Secretary Brezhnev decided he would not czeka na Dubczeka? It may be that your Venerable Jimmy thought mere Czechs and Slovaks were not included in hypocritical cant about ‘Shoemin beings’ as delivered just a few years later.

The pose of helping shipyard workers was an attempt to sabotage a defence industry and foment revolution in general. That it was a nothing more than a pose could not be better illustrated than by Comrade Reid’s failure (yet again) to resign from the Party, this time when the fraternal PZPR had shot down hundreds of protesting Baltic shipyard workers only a few months before the UCS protest, killing forty-seven. Your Blessed Jimmy presumably felt some shipyard workers were more equal than others and found it convenient to go along with the United Worker’s Party line that those shipyard protestors were ‘wreckers of order in the People’s State’. Quite how seven dead lads from a technical high school had fitted in to that picture was not something the glib-tongued Comrade chose to share with his Clyde-side dupes, so easily amused by that nae bevvying quip.

Some names deserve to live only in infamy and the Party has contributed far more than any other source that anyone in this half of Europe can name. It beggars belief than apparently intelligent people in the comfortable west can hold in such high esteem half-educated, self-seeking party hacks who worked assiduously to undermine the western democracies. Had things gone the other way your Saint Jimmy might have deserved the title of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. But no good name.

And, back to the point, wherever the authentic voice of the late and unlamented Comrade is heard, it will be quite genuinely unintelligible to people in the wider Anglophone world. Which was, come to think of it, just as well for all our sakes.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

It is rather off the point but Berwickshire’s poly was an interesting guess.

No, Angloid, there was no mistake in the sentence. But then you knew that anyway! 'Trolling' is, one is to suppose, expressing a view which although correct, Angloid does not wish to see expressed?

If one looks at world-class universities, i.e. good in terms of actual undergraduate teaching, the UK has only two, Fen Poly and the Other University. Good supervisions are demanding of the participants and horribly expensive to lay on. Many places (one gathers this is true of even well-funded schools in the US) simply do not think that small-group teaching of beginning students is a sensible way of using distinguished and expensive researchers’ time. Unless pupils are reasonably quick-working, articulate and willing to risk the rough-and-tumble there is probably not much point.

The UK has evolved a remarkable system – which has produced the present Prime Minister and both archbishops – but never has found a way of funding it on a more widespread basis. To judge from endless and increasingly strident alumni appeals, it seems to be struggling to keep existing teaching groups from rising to three.

So long as quality universities survive in the UK, the language will be ensured a hard core of competent users. An annual cohort of only 6,000 or so will hardly allow many to reach the huddled masses in state comprehensive schools – where an MML man or woman would probably by defeated by the system in any case. In terms of this discussion, most native speakers will, sadly, encounter little to leaven the lump of their language or offer them high-quality intellectual challenge.

A pity but there it is. And so long as the little Berwickshireling makes it through, the rest can shift for themselves.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

No Berwickshire, I was speaking of Vulgar Latin, the popular language of the Classic period. We do know that the working classes regularly pronounces "au" as in Claudius as "o". The famous politician Publius Clodius Pulcher spelled his Nomen as such to reflect the popular pronunciation.

"Au = Ow (I stubbed my toe)" was the marker of upper-class refinement in late Republican Rome.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
As regards the great semi-colon uproar, Ken and I have had our say and can leave it to others to judge.

I'll judge. Jumping on somebody for a typo, except when done with goodwill in a spirit of fun, is infantile.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

It would be nice if both Brits and Americans would learn the use of the apostrophe and the difference between its and it's (what a sad epiphany it was to realise that the same mistakes were made in the homeland of the mother tongue as in America). Frankly, after living in the UK I came to the conclusion that the English spoken outside the educated classes was even more debased there than most of what we hear in America; or to put it more bluntly, the language is generally better spoken by a majority of the population in North America than in Britain.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

To return to the original subject of this discussion, there was a letter in yesterady's Guardian that I thought was spot-on:

quote:
We joke about Belgium's coalitions but don't look seriously at lessons for our own. We mutter about Germany's trading success but don't examine the differences in company structure which support it. We might just mention that French 18-year-olds are expected to write in more than one language to get their qualifications, but we shudder and move on. And then the BBC sends off its high-class multitudes to cover every inch of Route 61 and its barber shops (or whatever it will be this time) for opinion on the US midterm elections.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
If one looks at world-class universities, i.e. good in terms of actual undergraduate teaching, the UK has only two, Fen Poly and the Other University.

Can't speak for what goes on in England - you might well be right - but do the words St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh have any meaning to you?

As for the quality of teaching, I reckon that it is not easy to receive an excellent education at any university, but it is perfectly possible to obtain an excellent education at many (although probably not all). It just takes a bit of initiative.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
To return to the original subject of this discussion, there was a letter in yesterady's Guardian that I thought was spot-on:

quote:
We joke about Belgium's coalitions but don't look seriously at lessons for our own. We mutter about Germany's trading success but don't examine the differences in company structure which support it. We might just mention that French 18-year-olds are expected to write in more than one language to get their qualifications, but we shudder and move on. And then the BBC sends off its high-class multitudes to cover every inch of Route 61 and its barber shops (or whatever it will be this time) for opinion on the US midterm elections.

Couldn't agree more. O mia patria, sì bella e perduta.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

I still think that if Europe was ridiculously right-wing and America was a socialist paradise, most of those advocating greater integration with Europe on this thread would instead be extoling the virtues of ever stronger links with our Anglophone friends across the pond.

It's not about language or culture, it's about which brand of politics you want the country to emulate.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

No Marvin, this thread is about language and culture. It's about cultivating a multi-faceted rich view of the world, rather than remaining stuck in a blinkered mono-lingual and mono-cultural dead end. I don't want us to emulate French centralisation or Swiss isolationism any more than American capitalism, but it would be nice to get more exposure to their cultures and attitudes in our media.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I still think that if Europe was ridiculously right-wing and America was a socialist paradise, most of those advocating greater integration with Europe on this thread would instead be extoling the virtues of ever stronger links with our Anglophone friends across the pond.

It's not about language or culture, it's about which brand of politics you want the country to emulate.

I think you are probably correct.

The main reason why I lament a pro-American outlook, as opposed to a Euro-centric one, is that I believe the political, economic and social systems of Western & Central Europe are, on the whole, superior, from my centre-left perspective, to the political, economic and social systems of the United States.

I want what Arend Lijphart called a "kinder, gentler" democracy, driven by a parliamentary government with proportional representation, and characterised by greater economic equality, a higher quality of public services, stronger environmental protection, a less punitive justice system, better universal education and healthcare, genuine subsidiarity, and the regulation of economic activity in the interests of justice, solidarity, sustainability and the common good. In the USA - and in most of the UK, I think - that would make me a dangerous left-wing extremist; in most of Western and Central Europe in makes me normal and ordinary.

I also think that French wine and Czech beer are superior to coca-cola, so there is a cultural element too(*), but primarily the distinction is political.

But so what? What's wrong with our argument that we should look to Western and Central Europe, because they do things better there? (And that applies to foreign policy too...)

(*) I read in Vaclav Havel's autobiography about how he could never understand Americans who drank cola with meals. He regarded this as grossly uncivilised, even infantile, behaviour. His view was that adults should drink wine or beer with meals: full stop.

[ 25. August 2010, 12:20: Message edited by: RadicalWhig ]

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I don't want us to emulate French centralisation

Really? I long for the rigourous, active local democracy of a French commune. I wish my town (which, along with every other Scottish town, had its Burgh rights stripped away by Westminster in 1973) had an equivalent to a French conseil municipal, so that we could take charge of our own business; I wish we had our own Provost with the powers of a French maire, to provide a focus of civic leadership and get things done. Seriously, France is now much less centralised than the UK, and it has been since at least the 1980s. The "Napoleonic myth" of French centralisation continues, but the reality is very different. Again, it shows how the media and our culture misrepresent the continent, preferring old stereotypes to current realities.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

It surprises me that people on these boards think America is to the right and Europe to the left. America is just as protectionist of its big corporations as Germany but much more socially liberal than much of Europe. In social matters many European states are far more conservative than the Americans - for heavens sake at the moment many mainstream European countries are in the process of banning the Islamic veil from public places something I really can't imagine the Americans doing. Sweden is currenly forcibly expelling large numbers of Iraqi asylum seekers. The Far Right is one of the biggest parties in the Netherlands.

As for the idea that Britain never looks to Europe for solutions that is tosh too: Michael Gove's Free School Policy, which is very much at the forefront at the moment, is based on a Swedish model.

The muddle arises because generally the British right does not like the EU (a position which for a long time was taken by the left). The non-thinking left equate the EU with Europeans and therefore laud the European Way (whatever that is).

As for Ken's assertion that the country closest to Britain is Belgium - that is the utmost tosh. Have you ever been to Belgium Ken? Belgium probably has the same climate as Britain but the similarities end there. Belgium's culture was for centuries pervaded by Spanish influences which still exist in what is a very un-British sort of place. The closest places culturally to Britain are the Netherlands and (horror of horrors) parts of Northern Germany.

Those people who think Scandinavvia is a centre of socialist luveydom are thirty years out of date!

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I still think that if Europe was ridiculously right-wing and America was a socialist paradise, most of those advocating greater integration with Europe on this thread would instead be extoling the virtues of ever stronger links with our Anglophone friends across the pond.

It's not about language or culture, it's about which brand of politics you want the country to emulate.

I think this is the case with many posters on this thread.

Winston Churchill famously drew three circles of foreign policy - Britain's relations with Europe, Britain's relations with the United States, and Britain's relations with the Commonwealth. I think we've spent much of the last fifty or so years focussing on the first two at the expense of the third. I think any attempt at closer relations with the 'Anglophone' nations necessarily includes the third and, possibly, the third at the expense of the second.

I suppose, though, any hope of achieving this is as much a pipe dream as some of the other dreams on this thread.

Posted by New Yorker (# 9898) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cod:
UK constitutional law contains no fundamental principles as to what a state should do but what it can or can't do

This seems to be the whole positive v negative constitutional rights argument that Obama and others in the American left are making. They apparently want to change our Constitution to state what the State must do. What that would be I can only guess.

Regarding the whole common law v civil law debate, I am not an expert in the field, but it seems to me that both systems have been growing closer together.

Regarding differences between Britain and the US, I am always fascinated with this subject. So much alike, yet so different.

Finally, on language, as an American I regret almost daily that I cannot speak French, or German, or whatever. I suspect that I am in a minority group of Amercians who feel that way.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

aumbry - Yes, I think there are some good points there, but it ends up in the never-ending, and little-illuminating, debate about what "left" and "right mean. It's probably fairer to say that Americans have a more market-individualist, and most Western and Central Europeans have a more social-communitarian, political culture.

A social-communitarian political culture manifests itself in such things as universal healthcare and proper funding for public transport, which American market-individualists might find very "left wing", but it also manifests itself in things which American market-individualists find right-wing, such as banning the burka.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
What's wrong with our argument that we should look to Western and Central Europe, because they do things better there?

The assumption that they're doing things better.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
What's wrong with our argument that we should look to Western and Central Europe, because they do things better there?
The assumption that they're doing things better.

Ok..

Do things better according to values which we believe to be important (for definition of "we", see below).

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

Yeah, that's better.

What gets my goat is when people say we should be looking to Europe because of shared culture, or shared history, or any number of other good reasons, when they actually mean what you've just stated.

Posted by Moth (# 2589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
What's wrong with our argument that we should look to Western and Central Europe, because they do things better there?
The assumption that they're doing things better.

They do some things better. I'm constantly amazed by how much attention is paid to American methods of law enforcement, for example, when crime rates are lower in Europe than America. Why not learn from European success?

Actually, I don't think it should be either/or but both. America is undoubtedly a very successful nation at many, many things - but not everything. Why not allow influences from everywhere to help us become the best possible and most successful nation we can be? Surely the vast majority of us want as many people as possible to live as prosperous and fulfilling a life as possible, and be free to pursue whatever artistic and cultural interests they prefer? Isn't that more likely to be achieved if we learn from the widest possible range of cultures? Weren't we at our most successful when we did just that?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moth:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
What's wrong with our argument that we should look to Western and Central Europe, because they do things better there?
The assumption that they're doing things better.
They do some things better. I'm constantly amazed by how much attention is paid to American methods of law enforcement, for example, when crime rates are lower in Europe than America. Why not learn from European success?

This assumes that lower crime rates are caused by superior law enforcement methods. Has this been shown?

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

It also makes the false assumption that crime rates per capita are lower in Europe than the USA. Actually both Britain and germany have higher crime rates than the US.

Aumbry

Posted by dyfrig (# 15) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What gets my goat is when people say we should be looking to Europe because of shared culture, or shared history, or any number of other good reasons, when they actually mean what you've just stated.

So presumably you are equally incensed by arguments that we should look to America based on shared culture or history?

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
It also makes the false assumption that crime rates per capita are lower in Europe than the USA. Actually both Britain and germany have higher crime rates than the US.

Actually we have more of some crimes and less of others. So there is no easy answer. And perhaps everybody should listen to everybody else.

When people say they have higher crime than we do they usually mean murder, and they are a lot worse at that than we are.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I don't want us to emulate French centralisation
Really? I long for the rigourous, active local democracy of a French commune. .... Seriously, France is now much less centralised than the UK, and it has been since at least the 1980s. The "Napoleonic myth" of French centralisation continues, but the reality is very different. Again, it shows how the media and our culture misrepresent the continent, preferring old stereotypes to current realities.

I bow to your greater knowledge of French politics and culture, RW. Though by 'centralisation' I am also alluding to the fact that school students in the French Caribbean take exactly the same exams as their French counterparts at exactly the same time, which can mean the middle of the night.

But actually you prove my point. The fact that I was wrong in some respects about France suggests that there is a lack of information about these things in the British media. Once again, this debate is not about wanting to follow European models rather than American, it's about the way our monolingual culture restricts access to that of others.

BTW I agree that we are in some ways much more centralised in the UK, not just politically but economically and culturally. That's another way in which we could learn from other countries (America too, but it is too different geographically to be much of an example in this.)

Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :

It's very difficult to compare crimes rates from country to country given that the criminal codes, police reporting methods and court systems work differently.

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire

The good English universities both manage to teach the lesson of not offering schoolboy howlers in debate. There is scope for legitimate disagreement or debate about how degenerate native English is or (it may be) 'isn;t'.

I haven't heard that level of pomposity about British universities since Sir Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister in the 80s (he used to say things like: "....the universities - both of them").

And I also think it is below the belt to go on about an obvious typing error on an internet forum; this is not some academic journal from either of the universities.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

Not another word, Orlando, on the great semi-colon discussion: the English need no teaching.

But, Radical Whig, it is not immediately obvious why knowing the names of Scottish universities means those institutions are world-class teaching bodies in the class of England's illustrious pair.

Yes, of course, the six universities which existed in Scotland before 1800 have reputations of sorts. The first generation of protestant reformers knew the situation well enough to think that three was quite enough, although their wise recommendation of concentrating scarce resources on St Andrews was never followed through. Earlier generations of Scots had seen that the country was simply too poor to have any university, sent their sons abroad and concentrated endowments on Oxford and Cambridge: as witness Balliol or Malcolm Street near Jesus.

Good university teaching is grimly expensive – quality comes at a stiff price. Scotland has gone down the route of spreading the jam thinly, producing universities which were deeply provincial in recruitment and still struggle to muster concentrations of able students or teachers, or to amass large libraries. The post-1410 Scottish system is a classic example of never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-width thinking. It produces a sort of ‘democratic intellect’ where education is widespread and therefore rather thin – and generally takes an extra year to get students up to English standards.

The country might still, conceivably, finance one first-rate place but seems stuck in its more recent ways. One doubts that, in terms of this discussion, the system can do much to make graduates’ more articulate or their speech more widely comprehensible given that teaching groups are necessarily large.

Lady Dervorguilla (Sweetheart rather than Braveheart) knew how best to use scarce resources but then the dear lady had not a whiggish idea in her head.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
Not another word, Orlando, on the great semi-colon discussion: the English need no teaching.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by dyfrig:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What gets my goat is when people say we should be looking to Europe because of shared culture, or shared history, or any number of other good reasons, when they actually mean what you've just stated.
So presumably you are equally incensed by arguments that we should look to America based on shared culture or history?

Yes. I've already stated on this thread that we shouldn't necessarily be looking to either.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
But, Radical Whig, it is not immediately obvious why knowing the names of Scottish universities means those institutions are world-class teaching bodies in the class of England's illustrious pair.

Of course not. What one needs to judge that question is some variety of international league table that measures universities across the world with the same criteria. And, for fairness, it'd have to be compiled by a non-British institution.

Step forward Shanghai Jaio Tong University.

In their 2010 rankings there are eleven British universities in the top 100. I'd say being in the global top 100 counts as being a "world-class teaching body", wouldn't you?

Posted by Moth (# 2589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
It also makes the false assumption that crime rates per capita are lower in Europe than the USA. Actually both Britain and germany have higher crime rates than the US.

Actually we have more of some crimes and less of others. So there is no easy answer. And perhaps everybody should listen to everybody else.

When people say they have higher crime than we do they usually mean murder, and they are a lot worse at that than we are.

When people compare crimes rates they mean murder (or better still, homicide) because it's a crime that most countries count in the same way and few countries ignore. In the case of other crimes, they are sometimes defined differently and rules for counting crimes differ enormously.

Of course, there are many reasons why crime rates vary from country to country, not all of which relate to the criminal justice system. However, it is still not immediately apparent to me why politicians look so readily to the USA on matters of criminal justice rather than to Europe. I tend to put it down to a shared Anglo-Saxon punitiveness which regards Europeans as merely soft, regardless of whether their methods work.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder (although obviously the murder rate will have a weighting in this regard.

There are plenty of European countries with higher per capita murder rates than the USA although they are mostly in Eastern Europe.

This is also a mistaken belief afoot that the "Europeans" have softer (by which I mean shorter) sentences than in the UK for criminal activity and that too is not borne out by the actual facts.

Aumbry

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
Lady Dervorguilla (Sweetheart rather than Braveheart) knew how best to use scarce resources but then the dear lady had not a whiggish idea in her head.

An elegant Sweetheart pun. Considering Braveheart's end, I'm sure you're wise to have recommended that there be no further colonic references.

Lady Dearbhfhorghaill's inherited estates were vast so I'm not sure she ever had need to study the art of husbanding scarce resources. Her heart was in the right place though, which can't be said of all her family. She was rather a cosmopolitan lady as well, although possibly not a part of the anglosphere as we would understand it. However, she might well have been better equipped linguistically to understand the late Comrade Reid than most modern Englishmen ever were.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

I know not what it signifies but Europeans (both in the old and the new Europe) certainly commit suicide at a much higher rate than the British and Americans.

Posted by Moth (# 2589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder (although obviously the murder rate will have a weighting in this regard.

There are plenty of European countries with higher per capita murder rates than the USA although they are mostly in Eastern Europe.

This is also a mistaken belief afoot that the "Europeans" have softer (by which I mean shorter) sentences than in the UK for criminal activity and that too is not borne out by the actual facts.

Aumbry

Do you have any figures on this?

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

Is anyone else drawing the inevitable conclusion that Berwickshire is a stupid little prig who needs to be ignored?

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
But, Radical Whig, it is not immediately obvious why knowing the names of Scottish universities means those institutions are world-class teaching bodies in the class of England's illustrious pair.
Of course not. What one needs to judge that question is some variety of international league table that measures universities across the world with the same criteria. And, for fairness, it'd have to be compiled by a non-British institution.

Step forward Shanghai Jaio Tong University.

In their 2010 rankings there are eleven British universities in the top 100. I'd say being in the global top 100 counts as being a "world-class teaching body", wouldn't you?

Um, no, not necessarily. As far as I can see the criteria are almost all to do with research and publications: they do take into account (10%) Nobel Prizes and similar awards won by alumni, but that's the closest they come to anything at all that measures teaching. There's no necessary connection between quality of research and quality of teaching: indeed, there's been a (IMO regrettable) tendency in a lot of the British HE sector to pursue the former (the obsession with RAE/REF) and ignore the latter. And of course rankings like this just help reinforce that tendency.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
There's no necessary connection between quality of research and quality of teaching

There are connections though. The Russell Group was set up to comprise research-intensive universities, but with a few exceptions in specific subjects (Loughborough in Sports Science, for example) it's the best teaching universities as well.

ETA: besides, there aren't any other reputable international league tables that are run by foreign institutions!

[ 26. August 2010, 14:53: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
There's no necessary connection between quality of research and quality of teaching
There are connections though. The Russell Group was set up to comprise research-intensive universities, but with a few exceptions in specific subjects (Loughborough in Sports Science, for example) it's the best teaching universities as well.

Based on what? In the US at least I believe the schools that are rated highest by students for teaching tend to be small liberal arts colleges where not a lot of original research gets done.

Of course in a lot of disciplines "original research" means writing arcane papers about absurdly rarified subject matter about which only others in the same subsubfield give a rip, and which will affect life on earth only in the sense of consuming paper and ink and binders' glue, and taking up space on university data servers.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Is anyone else drawing the inevitable conclusion that Berwickshire is a stupid little prig who needs to be ignored?

It's been readily apparent for ages that he's a troll, but why do we have to let that stop us from having a little fun with him?

This one seems to have a bit of an education. Why is it the Ship attracts such a high calibre of Trolls?

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
There's no necessary connection between quality of research and quality of teaching
There are connections though. The Russell Group was set up to comprise research-intensive universities, but with a few exceptions in specific subjects (Loughborough in Sports Science, for example) it's the best teaching universities as well.
Based on what? In the US at least I believe the schools that are rated highest by students for teaching tend to be small liberal arts colleges where not a lot of original research gets done.

Of course in a lot of disciplines "original research" means writing arcane papers about absurdly rarified subject matter about which only others in the same subsubfield give a rip, and which will affect life on earth only in the sense of consuming paper and ink and binders' glue, and taking up space on university data servers.

Indeed. And from my knowledge of UK HE, I'd suggest that some of the most committed and innovative teaching happens in post-1992 universities which don't do too much star research. More research-intensive universities, by contrast, can have bit of a reputation for prioritising research over teaching.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moth:

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder (although obviously the murder rate will have a weighting in this regard.

There are plenty of European countries with higher per capita murder rates than the USA although they are mostly in Eastern Europe.

This is also a mistaken belief afoot that the "Europeans" have softer (by which I mean shorter) sentences than in the UK for criminal activity and that too is not borne out by the actual facts.

Aumbry
Do you have any figures on this?

Here is a chart reporting relative sentence lengths by country from the 8th United Nations Survey on Crime Trends.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sen_len-crime-sentence-length

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder

That's not quite what I said though. When people say that the US has a higher crime rate than the UK they usually mean murder.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Revisiting an earlier point:

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
As to the glottal t, despite its frequency in (esp.) SE English colloquial speech of the post-war generations, it is hardly ubiquitous.

quote:
To which I replied:

No, but its spreading fast. Nearly everyone does it in some places, even in RP.

... they are very likely to glotallise /t/ at the end of a word, especially if the next word starts with a consonant. Almost anyone would use one at the end of "but" in "but now".[/QB][/QUOTE]

I just heard a small clip of Vita Sackville West on BBC radio. She was about my grandparents age and about fifteen or twenty steps above them on the slippery ladder of late Victorian society, and had a marked RP accent of the sort you never hear any more.

And she certaintly doesn't glottalise intervocalic or final /t/ - or not in this clip anyway. But what she does seem to do is glottalise /t/ and sometimes /n/ when they occur together, whether within or between words. But its hard to be sure - it was only a small piece and I wasn't even sure whether the place she was talking about was Chartwell (as I assume) The name sounded almost like "Chantwell" or even just "Chat" With some glottalness in there!

Though the thing that stood out most was that she sometimes (not always) says "house" almost the way I would say "hearse".

Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:
Originally posted by Moth:

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder (although obviously the murder rate will have a weighting in this regard.

There are plenty of European countries with higher per capita murder rates than the USA although they are mostly in Eastern Europe.

This is also a mistaken belief afoot that the "Europeans" have softer (by which I mean shorter) sentences than in the UK for criminal activity and that too is not borne out by the actual facts.

Aumbry
Do you have any figures on this?
Here is a chart reporting relative sentence lengths by country from the 8th United Nations Survey on Crime Trends.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sen_len-crime-sentence-length

As an FYI, Nationmaster is a pretty lousy source of data. I stopped using it years ago when I realized almost anyone can post there and that there doesn't seem to much analysis found in the data.

Look at the comments under the graph on your link:

quote:
"What are the units? What is "37,488"? Years? That's ridiculous. Why is this chart so obscure? "

---------------------------

"Thank you, Ian Graham for your statistics which whilst interesting, no one requested. Why don't you actually explain as staff editor what on earth are the units of this currently meaningless data as everyone else has actually wants to know"

----------------------------

"I went back and looked at the questionnaire. The sentence lengths requested by crime type were im MONTHs not years. The numbers at the NationMaster website are meaningless until the data were weighted by crime time. I could not tell if they were or not.

The countries with sentence lengths of more than 1,000 might have a lot of consecutive life sentences, but more than likely the questionnaire questions were mis-understood.

Unforunately this chart does not tell us much yet."

Posted by FooloftheShip (# 15579) on :

English is my native language. A kind of universal second language can be created if necessary, but it will always be a register, if not its own language. I refuse absolutely to be told that I am not allowed to be idiomatic because someone else who does not have English as a native language can't understand it. Do what everyone else who wants to understand someone else's native language does: learn. Or do the other thing...

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

Well, Pottage, one is always keen to see the dear lady is appreciated. You are being a little less than fair to her son, who after all had trouble-makers like Comrade Wallace to contend with. Her family was Anglo-French, settled in Scotland but still in touch with France (where the boy was born) but her chosen home was by the Urr - it is certain she was at home in French and English and probably, in Galloway at that time, Erse as well; and the tomb imples she knew some Latin. She was in the anglophone world but knew the wider world. Yes, as a widow she had money but to manage to make foundations at Wigton, Glasgow and Dundee as well as Dulce Core and Oxford suggests she knew how to stretch finite resources.

So, Radical Whig, did you ever encounter the Union Society axiom that when the other side take to insults, they have either run out of ideas or are not first-rate people, or, probably both. One can take it from your failure that you concede the point that independent Scotland over-reached itself trying for six universities and, after 1707 ended up with nothing world-class. Dervorgilla good sense in sending men to Oxford is, realistically, the only way to make the grade.

Albertus has caught the error in Fool of the Ship's line: these 'rankings' become meaningless where they are tied to research output. American schools pay high prices to get researchers on their staff but that seldom means they do things like actually teach small groups for Part I of the Tripos (however that translates into American). Outside the Anglophone world the real unfairness is that to score points one has to publish in a restricted list of mainly English-language journals. Easy enough but not if the teacher happens to be a Lithuanian who wants to write in his or her own country's journals. That way the second-division provincial universities in England and Scotland get to score where the Balts are probably no better but certainly no worse.

The more sensible approach is to talk to the students who have just got their AS results about where they plan to apply to next year. In a representative sample, top-scoring 4AS student says she wants to try Oxford or Cambridge but perhaps Durham as accident insurance. Try a reality check and see if any able student thinks there are 11 world-class teaching universities in the UK.

Nothing has changed since the thirteenth century.

Posted by RadicalWhig (# 13190) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
So, Radical Whig, did you ever encounter the Union Society axiom that when the other side take to insults, they have either run out of ideas or are not first-rate people, or, probably both. One can take it from your failure that you concede the point that independent Scotland over-reached itself trying for six universities and, after 1707 ended up with nothing world-class. Dervorgilla good sense in sending men to Oxford is, realistically, the only way to make the grade.

It's people like you that make me proud to have been hit on the heid wi' John Knox's breeks.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I am not sure I buy this idea that when people refer to crime they mean murder
That's not quite what I said though. When people say that the US has a higher crime rate than the UK they usually mean murder.

I recollect finding a table of international comparisons that showed the US to have lower crime rates in general than Britain (and indeed, other Anglophone countries). I think it was here but I can't get the link to work.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
So, Radical Whig, did you ever encounter the Union Society axiom that when the other side take to insults, they have either run out of ideas or are not first-rate people, or, probably both.

Well, since you have insulted everyone who doesn't speak RP English, one can assume you have comprehensively lost the argument.

(And you can't spell Dubček, which makes posturing over a semi-colon even more absurd.)

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

On the point of journalists and non-Anglophones: a lady I know worked as a journalist in Barcelona, and found it extremely difficult to obtain translators and interpreters for reporters.

She was thus inspired to found her own translation agency with journalism a speciality. But she soon found legal and financial translation paid better and switched to them.

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
Nothing has changed since the thirteenth century

... aside from what "English" is, for instance in terms of its grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. Thirteenth Century English differed markedly (and every bit as much as modern English does) depending upon which part of the country the speaker was from. Lady Dearbhfhorghaill presumably spoke a Northumbrian dialect of Middle English - thought to be the source of Scots, the vocabulary and pronounciation of which was a great influence on the late John Reid's heavy accent. But as the daughter of an Anglo Norman aristocratic family growing up in Gaelic-speaking Galloway it would have been her third language at best.

I meant no criticism of her son, John Balliol by the way. The misplaced heart reference was an allusion to the story that Lady D kept her late husband's embalmed heart in a box.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
So, Radical Whig, did you ever encounter the Union Society axiom that when the other side take to insults, they have either run out of ideas or are not first-rate people, or, probably both. One can take it from your failure that you concede the point that independent Scotland over-reached itself trying for six universities and, after 1707 ended up with nothing world-class. Dervorgilla good sense in sending men to Oxford is, realistically, the only way to make the grade.

.

It is my recollection that only the most ridiculous undergraduates joined the Union Society. They were the sort of egotistical windbags who later became politicians and then proceeded to ruin the country.

For some unfathomable reason they also seemed to have a predisposition to corpulence.

I assume from the last post that you were a member.

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
It is my recollection that only the most ridiculous undergraduates joined the Union Society.

I'm having trouble following this - is this (and the preceding comments) a reference to the Oxford Union?

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
It is my recollection that only the most ridiculous undergraduates joined the Union Society.
I'm having trouble following this - is this (and the preceding comments) a reference to the Oxford Union?

The Oxford Union is indeed an example. Berwickshire did not stipulate a particular Union Society. These are student debating societies and not to be confused with student unions.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Any chance of the Brideshead tendency getting back on topic?

Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
The Oxford Union is indeed an example. Berwickshire did not stipulate a particular Union Society. These are student debating societies and not to be confused with student unions.

Oh, I see, thanks. I asked because no-one at Oxford refers to the Oxford Union Society as the 'Union Society', it's always the 'Oxford Union', which made me wonder what Berwick was on about. I didn't realise it was a generic term.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

Dear, dear, Radical Whig, still not up to much more than insults. So, since silence gives consent, it is granted that before 1707 the Scots over-stretched themsleves in establishing six universities, where with limited resources it would have made better sense to concentrate on a centre of excellence such as Balliol or St Andrews. It is is easy enough to translate your parochial dialect into 'proud to be hit on the head with John Knox's trousers', which, being interpreted, makes not a lot of sense. So far as one knows the only person to show any strong interest in John Knox's trousers was his mother-in-law. Something about these second-rate schools seems to coarsen behaviour. But, do by all means, rejoice in a worthy companion to your other hero, the late and unlamented comrade. Very well matched!

Potage may well be right on the linguistic influences on the Clyde-side comrades' heavy accents - one ought not, however, to rule out the possibility of more potent liquid influences. Their eastern comrades undoubtedly found it the only way to spout Party doctrines in the right spirit. Dear Dervorguilla's little trophy which you mention is much more than a story. She did indeed like to keep her late husband's vital organ in its box always with her and, as the tomb inscription attests, she had it entombed with her. Her worthy attempt to provide a world-class college to educate uncouth Scots has not, sadly, managed to reach them all.

An apology is very clearly owed to Ricardus who so generously points to an ignorant mistake in spelling of name of the late, great and genuinely lamented leader from Bratislava. Not being able to spell his name would indeed make a quibble over a misplaced semi-colon seem absurd. So, very sincere apologies for the fact that you have wasted your time detecting a mistake which is no mistake and sharing your discovery with us. Let us take it slowly. Firstly the passage you object to is a quotation, so is it correct? Yes. Secondly, let us look at the grammar. The man's name is not in the Nominative, is it? Might it just be, my dear boy, that that means the construction used requires the Accusative? And that spelling would be different. Do you begin to get the picture? Good, that gets us to the third point, what is the language? Yes, it looks Slavonic but it is not Czech, is it?, and if you look carefully, it is not Slovak either? So the name you say one cannot spell is in its Accusative form and in its perfectly correct transcription into another Slavonic language, the source of the quotation. And, after all that, the quotation was a rather nice joke! It rather looks then as if your criticism misses its target. Sorry! Who is it who is being absurd to complain about errors? Ordinarily, one might let it pass but when people say they do not need to be taught Engish (and make silly mistakes in the same breath) or claim to detect a spelling mistake in a passage which is faultless, then it is open season. And the 'preview post' function allows one to delete the pity Slavonic expression which originally ended this paragraph, but which, on reflection, would not be appropriate. It is the thought that counts.

The answer to the Anglican't - Ambry question is that there is an Oxford Union Society and a Cambridge Union Society, small but important elements in the making of world-class universities. Oxford people tend to say the 'Oxford Union' and Cambridge people usually call theirs the 'Union Society'. Either way, they provide an opportunity for debate. Junior Combination Rooms - college-based - are the closest equivalents to student unions elsewhere.

If one can get back on track despite the flack, the argument was that spread the jam thinly and the result is second-rate thinkers and speakers while a world-class language needs a stronger core if it is to develop as the world language.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

[Killing me]

Posted by Campbellite (# 1202) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
If one can get back on track despite the flack,

I believe the word you were looking for is "flak".

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Killing me softly with his thread, killing me softly, with his thread....

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
On the point of journalists and non-Anglophones: a lady I know worked as a journalist in Barcelona, and found it extremely difficult to obtain translators and interpreters for reporters.

I'm not sure why journalists would be working in Barcelona if they had no Spanish

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
'm not sure why journalists would be working in Barcelona if they had no Spanish

Unless they were fluent in Catalan.

Berwickshire: [Snore]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
On the point of journalists and non-Anglophones: a lady I know worked as a journalist in Barcelona, and found it extremely difficult to obtain translators and interpreters for reporters.
I'm not sure why journalists would be working in Barcelona if they had no Spanish

I was speaking generally, i.e. if the Barcelona Times (or whatever it was) did a special on Morocco, it was hard for them to get hold of Arabic interpreters. She herself spoke Spanish and English.

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
the name you say one cannot spell is in its Accusative form and in its perfectly correct transcription into another Slavonic language

Polish spelling of Dubček.

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Sorry,but this is an honest question.

What were the 6 universities established in Scotland before 1707 ?

I've heard of St Andrews,Glasgow and Aberdeen founded by the Catholic church before the Reformation and then Edinburgh,founded as King's College after the Reformation about 1582.

Are the others possibly Marischal College founded in addition to King's College,Aberdeen after the Reformation and Anderson's 'University' founded in the 1700s in Glasgow ?

By the way Jimmy Reid, from the point of view of a native Scot, spoke clearly,certainly with a distinct Scottish/Glasgow accent,but not with heavy use of dialect.Even his famous 'no bevvying' is ,I think ,a reasonably common expression in English or is 'bevvy' a Scotticism ?

Again ,even if he was connected with the Communist party,must every Communist accept that the only true expression of Communism,is that which was practised in the Soviet Union ? Could one not continue to believe in Communism as a theory and philosophy,whilst accepting that some of those who attempt to practise it fall short of the ideal ?

Don't Christians have to do that all the time ?

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

Communists are as schismatic as Christians when it comes to the True Faith, er, True Communism.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

If one makes a mistake, Ricardus, the honest response is to admit it. If Campbellite spots one it is as well mutter a quiet curse but remember the motto of merchant bankers everywhere and leave something for the next guy: so well spotted Campbellite. In this life there are flaki and one accepts the criticism in the spirit in which it was intended.

But, my dear, Ricardus, unwilling to concede the point that your claim to have detected a spelling mistake is itself a mistake you now tell us of a mistake in Polish spelling. Your second claim is as false as the first and your link is misleading. Any language can quote a foreign spelling: this is exactly what has happened in the Polish Wikipedia link you cite. The Slavonic languages have to give borrowed words the grammatical endings of the host language and especially where a foreign letter does not exist (as in this case) the word is often put into a native transcription.

Linking to a misunderstood site is unwise, no matter how badly one is struggling in a discussion, so just in case people might be misled, there is some (slight) point in citing a couple of texts by native speakers of Polish:
(1) … Aleksander Dubczek …. czeka na … Dubczeka …
and (2) … Aleksander Dubczek …. czeka na … Dubczeka …
The full versions can (in the unlikely event they are of the slightest interest) be given separately but is there any honest evidence than that the Polish spelling is anything other that Dubczek? Are you saying, Ricardus, that the slogan (which started you off on this fool’s errand) was anything other than ‘czeka na … Dubczeka’? Do you not, my dear Ricardus, have the honesty to admit a mistake? It really doesn’t hurt.

One appreciates an honest question, Forthview. Odd as it seems there were six universities established before 1707 (and indeed 1603) five more than Scotland could support with any hope of achieving world-class quality. You are right, too, about Marischal but the sixth was Fraserburgh rather than any proto-Strathtech. St Andrews started well, trying to build a collegiate system along the lines of the two English universities and managed a Pedagogy or two, St John’s, St Mary’s, St Salvator’s and St Leonard’s. Rather than build on quality, the deeply provincial instinct of many Scots then cut in with first a single rival college at Glasgow, then another at Aberdeen (St Mary’s, later and less popishly, King’s), followed by the Town’s College in Edinburgh (not King’s!), another separate University at Aberdeen (Marischal) and then, the crowning lunacy of Scottish parochialism, the College at, of all the unlikely places, Fraserburgh. So three times as many universities as England with a lot less than half the brains. The University of Fraserburgh quickly died the death and the two Aberdeen Universities got into such a squalid mess that they eventually had to be merged. Nowadays Bodley alone (not counting the college libraries) has more books than the libraries of all four Scottish survivors put together. Scotland is stuck with a plethora of second-rate, provincial schools when it might have made one university at St Andrews world-class. A pity to see a missed opportunity.

You may also have a point, Forthview, that some comrades were honest but misguided. It happens, but others are intellectually dishonest. Comrade Reid was an evil piece of work – adept, for example, at playing the Orange card which went down so well with the religiously-segregated shipyard labour force. He was very senior in the Party and knew exactly what was going on elsewhere. To be honest he probably did not care if 7 shipyard apprentices or 700 got shot for the sake of Party control and only gave up when his own bids for promotion had clearly failed. There is a deep irony if the fact that soon after the Party comrades had tear-gassed students out of Warsaw churches for supporting their Dubczek, students in Glasgow were foolish enough to elect Comrade Reid as their rector in happy provincial ignorance of what he and his colleagues represented. It is amazing that anyone is still taken in.

If that is enough for both honest dialogue and somewhat weary flak-defence against the New Members’ Welcoming Committee which seems to be operating here, are there any thoughts on whither the Anglophone world when the natives struggle with complexity and foreigners struggle with native inadequacy?

Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :

Thank you,Berwickshire.
your remark about 'protoStrathclydetech' shows me that you really do know about Scotland,certainly more than myself,who never have heard of Fraserburgh University.

In your dislike of Jimmy Reid,I should beware of saying that he played the Orange card,at his time in the shipyards.As did many other Communists of the period,I believe he sprang from the Catholic community,and whatever he may have abandoned ,he is unlikely to have played the
Orange card. Certainly when he stood for Parliament as an 'engineering worker' from the Communist party,the Catholic church warned voters against voting for those whose policies were 'inconsistent with christian values'. (I think that Tom Winning,later a cardinal,who was at that time in Our holy Redeemer's in Clydebank,may have been the priest who spoke out against him).

Most people saw him as an honest man of the people,who spoke clearly,without betraying his native accent in his speeches,but without the 'gruffness' of a person like Mick McGahy. I am not making any statement for or against Mick's ideas here,just talking about his accent,where in this case I can understand that it might be unintelligible to English people ,as well as to some Scots.

That Reid changed his political ideas throughout his life,doesn't necessarily show that he was 'evil' or a trimmer,but simply that,like many of us, he saw things differently as he advanced through life.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
Do you not, my dear Ricardus, have the honesty to admit a mistake? It really doesn’t hurt.

Setting Google's language option to "Polish" brings up both Dubczek and Dubček. So you are correct that Dubczek is not a mistake. (And I have never disputed the accusative ending.)

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

Nearly, Ricardus, and thank you for that. Google shows merely that a Slovakian name can be quoted in another language. The accent on the 'c' means it cannot be Polish Polish since no such accent exists there. Poles use 'Dubczek' which is a close transcription.

If, Forthview, Fraserburgh is unknown it is only a matter of time before some bright spark sees the potential of the brand – ‘Fraserburgh College, a University founded 1597’. One could probably sell it to foreign students as one of the oldest and best UK universities and all things considered the local accent is a lot better than many.

The Reid comment, which you think adrift, came from a modern languages student who had actually voted for him, remembered that his slurred speech had reduced several professors to apoplexy and surmised that the Comrade Lord Rector had partaken, in the words of a famous Clyde-side welder, ‘of a wee nippy sweetie’ to steady his nerves. She also mentioned that Reid was ferociously anti-Catholic and knew that that played well with the Orange shipyard trades in diverting votes away from Labour, which he equated with Catholicism. The local Romans gave as good as they got and preached against him (your example was eminent but only one of many). One knows nothing of Reid’s background, and cares less, but there was no suggestion intended that he was an Orangeman, just that he was adept at manipulating voters. He was even willing to quote the AV when it suited his purpose. There may be different views about Comrade Reid but you may have heard, Forthview, that Comrade Secretary Stalin went to his grave in high esteem among many. In the longer run there are few senior Party members who will be well thought of: what they knowingly did was just too evil for that.

And English incomprehensible to Anglophones was by no means the worst of it.

Posted by Pancho (# 13533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Ken, quite apart from issues of conservative pronunciations retained amongst native English-speakers (or maybe I should say Anglo-Celtic English speakers), the "fishin', shootin'" pronunciation of the -ing ending is characteristic of a number of more recent immigrant groups in the USA and IIRC I think I've heard the same in Britain. Most notably in America bilingual Hispanics, even if raised with English exposure since infancy, often consistently use the -in' variant, I assume because the conventional modern English -ing sound doesn't exist in Spanish.

I haven't really noticed this among Latinos myself. Could this be a regional thing? Maybe it's noticeable on the East Coast but not the West? As a bilingual Latino exposed to English all my life, I don't think I do this!

And now, I will be self-conscious about my us of "-ing" for the next couple of days.

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:
... are there any thoughts on whither the Anglophone world when the natives struggle with complexity and foreigners struggle with native inadequacy?

Perhaps we should begin by discounting those assumptions. There's no evidence that native English speakers today struggle with complexity of expression when previously they did not, or where equivalently-educated native speakers of other languages would not.

English is in a relatively unusual position. Those for whom English is a first (or perhaps only) language are outnumbered by those for whom it is a working second language which they use fluently most days, and both of those groups are outnumbered by those for whom English is a learned language, possibly used only for a specific purpose.

Whilst English has always borrowed freely from other languages that has previously been confined mainly to phrases and words. The sheer number of non-native speakers, and the fact that they often have little contact with native speakers, is giving rise to forms of English which don't only absorb vocabulary but freely adopt structural elements from the speakers' mother tongues. A good example might be colloquial Singaporean English (Singlish).

This process might lead to many different "Englishes" around the world, which are more or less the same language but sufficiently different that a speaker of one would take some time to get accustomed to speaking another. That isn't so dissimilar to the days of Berwickshire's heroine when English as spoken within the British Isles had a number of distinct dialects, so perhaps it isn't something to be feared? In keeping with the medieval theme, there may also be a form of "common" English which emerges as a lingua franca. English already plays that role in some specific areas, the language used between ships (Seaspeak) being an example.

Pushing against that process though are competing pressures. The expansion of the non-English internet for instance may mean that academics will be able to work in (and publish) top class material in other languages, and that large corporations may find they can adopt other languages to operate in. That process could lead to English enjoying gradually reduced status.

Posted by Berwickshire (# 15761) on :

You give an interesting view of it, Pottage, and doubtless have evidence. It is always good to see a medieval parallel or to hear the praises of Lady DdG. But you make a couple of points which less well-founded.

(1) ‘There's no evidence that native English speakers today struggle with complexity of expression when previously they did not’

Take for example the evidence of the book recommended by a Chelsea teachers’ college, ‘The English Language’ (24th edition, 1903). It is aimed at elementary school teachers who will go on to teach the average boy or girl. It is getting on for 500 pages, full of grammar, the history of the languages and a description of its literature. The basic level examination questions for the Teachers’ Certificate (Men and Women), 1896, are, e.g., to analyse a passage from Milton, parse selected words and discuss the relevance of his ‘Tractate’ for the conduct of elementary schools. The lessons these ‘pupil teachers’ would pass on were rules for grammar or copious notes for literature. They would sink average native English speakers today and few, if any, BEd (Hons) graduates could pass the 1896 examination.

(2) ‘or where equivalently-educated native speakers of other languages would not [struggle]’.

Take any one of a dozen continental countries, look at the compulsory foreign language requirements for age 16, and ask how they compare with the UK. Take the national-language grammar/ history/ literature requirement at 16 for the UK and find the continental country which is less demanding. The sad fact is that ‘equivalently-educated’ foreigners are not to be found in the OECD countries (at the equivalent-age) since none sets the national threshold as low as the UK. An average teenager in, say, Sweden or the Netherlands speaks better English than a typical GCSE student who for his or her part will be lucky to have ‘tasted’ a foreign language before giving it up as way too difficult.

The situation is grim and far worse than 1896. The future can only be for the language to falter or for the torch to pass to educated foreigners. The old textbook might come in handy when the missionaries set about re-converting the natives who have sold their birth-right.

Non Angeli sed Angli?

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

The situation is grim and far worse than 1896. The future can only be for the language to falter or for the torch to pass to educated foreigners. The old textbook might come in handy when the missionaries set about re-converting the natives who have sold their birth-right.

Thank you. I've been trying to work out the era of which you approve!

I think that a discussion of comparative education standards around the world is for a different thread. I would say though that that, with two teenagers at our local comprehensive school and experience as a governor at other local schools, you paint a picture of the current education system in England that I don't recognise.

But however well- or ill-equipped 21st Century Britons are to express themselves is surely of marginal significance. English outgrew these islands a long time ago and we can exert only a modest influence on its future. What may preserve English ubiquity is the continued strength of the economies of the countries for which English is the sole or principal language. Globally that means the USA of course, but regionally it also means Austalia and New Zealand. If those economies are overtaken then it may become less attractive for people elsewhere in the world to learn English and it may subside into a second tier language.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Berwickshire:

The situation is grim and far worse than 1896. The future can only be for the language to falter or for the torch to pass to educated foreigners.

You don't actually understand how language works, do you?

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