What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Jul 2nd 2011, 8:27 am
#31
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
I mentioned to my Punjabi Sikh mate in England that one day we should meet in India and he can be my interpreter. His response was to burst out laughing and inform me that English is widely spoken as they learn it from 12 onwards. In school they start with the local lingo, then Hindi, and finish with English.
Despite that their spoken English was poor and their written English absolutely terrible. I am not exaggerating when I say that every sentence would have several mistakes in it.
My guess would be that whoever the English school teachers are in India and the uni lecturers, they are not native speakers and they teach "Indian English" - a version which a native English speaker sees as full of mistakes ...
Jul 2nd 2011, 9:14 am
#32
Mostly Harmless
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Location: Semi-rural wonderworld, Brisbane
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Jul 2nd 2011, 9:30 am
#33
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
My guess would be that whoever the English school teachers are in India and the uni lecturers, they are not native speakers and they teach "Indian English" - a version which a native English speaker sees as full of mistakes ...[/QUOTE]
It's true what you said, In india we actually recognise a person's native province/state, just by hearing his/her distinct English accent!.So we have 15 of them!.
Just forget the way it's taught in schools and colleges.Even the accent used by the so called English language news channels in India, will sure give a headache and stomach upset to Native speakers.
It's true what you said, In india we actually recognise a person's native province/state, just by hearing his/her distinct English accent!.So we have 15 of them!.
Just forget the way it's taught in schools and colleges.Even the accent used by the so called English language news channels in India, will sure give a headache and stomach upset to Native speakers.
Jul 4th 2011, 8:36 am
#34
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Is it practically possible to learn spoken chinese, without using their script?.I mean, using only pinyin english letters instead of characters.
If so, then why not chinese stop using their character scripts and fully switchover to pinyin?.If bhasa malaya and indonesia can be written in english, why not mandarin?
Last edited by Pollyana; Jul 9th 2011 at 8:59 am. Reason: fixing the quote.....
Jul 6th 2011, 1:46 am
#35
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Children do.
In chinese one spoken word can have many meanings so switching over to alphabetic transcription (which represents sounds not meanings) is not possible.
Jul 6th 2011, 1:58 am
#36
da Bonehead
Joined: Jan 2004
Location: Lion in da jungle
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Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Lots of words are spelt the same and pronounced the same but have more than one meaning.
Jul 6th 2011, 2:15 am
#37
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Posts: 5
Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
A very informative thread indeed!.So I need to brush up my linguistic skills.For me, it might help learning 4 languages!
1.) Reducing my English accent
2.) Recollecting and enhancing my Hindi, as it might help me connect to the larger indian community.I speak chaste tamil and a bit of kannada.
3.) Mandarin-atleast spoken, for the huge chinese presence in australia.
4.) French-for all its glamour and popularity
1.) Reducing my English accent
2.) Recollecting and enhancing my Hindi, as it might help me connect to the larger indian community.I speak chaste tamil and a bit of kannada.
3.) Mandarin-atleast spoken, for the huge chinese presence in australia.
4.) French-for all its glamour and popularity
Jul 8th 2011, 11:05 am
#39
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Location: Cairns, Qld.
Posts: 2,863
Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
This is incorrect.
I've been learning Chinese on and off for over 20 years and this is one of the many very persistent fallacies, even from learners.
There are many homophones in Mandarin Chinese, but the tones and the fact that most Chinese words are bi- or trisyllabic (i.e. consisting of two or three characters) means that you can distinguish meaning by context.
Some 'characters' have several meanings, but really no more so than English. Just take a look at how many meanings the word 'Set' has?
The characters are quite easy to learn. I managed to learn two and a half thousand in under a year whilst studying for a completely unrelated subject at Uni (I was bored...) The meanings 'leap out' at you, because they are not alphabetic, so even if you forget the pronunciation, you can usually remember the meaning. I have actually found the spoken language much harder; some difficult sounds and of course the tones to master.
Take Japanese (can't believe Japanese hasn't been mentioned)... They adapted Chinese to write their own language but because it is completely unrelated to Chinese they evolved a part phonetic script to write the bits of their language (inflections, clitics etc) that have no Chinese equivalents, phonetically. Whenever you read it, the characters are the bits you remember straight away because they have 'meanings'. The rest is just phonetic, so you have to concentrate much harder in many cases to work out what those bits mean.
For the record, the Japanese adapted Chinese in a rather horrible way; rather like trying to write English with characters: you could do it, but the result would be rather complex and unwieldy.
Speaking of which, I know the Japanese interpreter at work and she's a very busy person, but then we do have a large Japanese community here and despite numbers being down, lots of Japanese visitors to Cairns too. In my experience, they don't seem to be nearly as good at learning English as the Chinese, so maybe Japanese may be the go, though Mandarin would certainly be useful too methinks.
I've been learning Chinese on and off for over 20 years and this is one of the many very persistent fallacies, even from learners.
There are many homophones in Mandarin Chinese, but the tones and the fact that most Chinese words are bi- or trisyllabic (i.e. consisting of two or three characters) means that you can distinguish meaning by context.
Some 'characters' have several meanings, but really no more so than English. Just take a look at how many meanings the word 'Set' has?
The characters are quite easy to learn. I managed to learn two and a half thousand in under a year whilst studying for a completely unrelated subject at Uni (I was bored...) The meanings 'leap out' at you, because they are not alphabetic, so even if you forget the pronunciation, you can usually remember the meaning. I have actually found the spoken language much harder; some difficult sounds and of course the tones to master.
Take Japanese (can't believe Japanese hasn't been mentioned)... They adapted Chinese to write their own language but because it is completely unrelated to Chinese they evolved a part phonetic script to write the bits of their language (inflections, clitics etc) that have no Chinese equivalents, phonetically. Whenever you read it, the characters are the bits you remember straight away because they have 'meanings'. The rest is just phonetic, so you have to concentrate much harder in many cases to work out what those bits mean.
For the record, the Japanese adapted Chinese in a rather horrible way; rather like trying to write English with characters: you could do it, but the result would be rather complex and unwieldy.
Speaking of which, I know the Japanese interpreter at work and she's a very busy person, but then we do have a large Japanese community here and despite numbers being down, lots of Japanese visitors to Cairns too. In my experience, they don't seem to be nearly as good at learning English as the Chinese, so maybe Japanese may be the go, though Mandarin would certainly be useful too methinks.
Last edited by tonyk38; Jul 8th 2011 at 11:12 am.
Jul 9th 2011, 6:30 am
#41
Lost in BE Cyberspace
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Location: Brisbane
Posts: 20,821
Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
Afrikaans. 
Jul 9th 2011, 6:44 am
#42
Mostly Harmless
Joined: Jan 2010
Location: Semi-rural wonderworld, Brisbane
Posts: 15,109
Re: What foreign language would be most useful in Australia?
If people could learn to quote on BE then it would be a start.
