THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD

Setanta - Indeed, I am a resident of York. It's a nice place, but spolit a little by the plagues of tourists. Still, it makes the council keep the place tidy, although the police move-on the homeless so the tourists can't see them.

You are pointing to a lot of differences between the denizens of the English speaking world, but there are a slew of similarities.

First there is the language, despite the various accents & colloquialisms, we can read a newspaper from Canada, the UK, or Australia with nary a problem. We all have a fairly high standard of living and it is similar in things like education, justice, equality and the treatment of women, job expectations, lifestyle expectations, even keeping small animals for pets and treating them well.

That's not likely in the Chinese speaking world. You won't even see that in the Hispanic world where pets are not so well treated and a single religion tends to play a greater role in human affairs. It seems to be almost completely opposite from what you might find in the Arabic speaking world.

Graham, Canada does that to the natives, most of the time. The white homeless are another issue entirely.

Reading.....

Sorry cav but I've lost you mate. Which natives does Canada do what to? I'm supposed to be working which is why I get distracted and lose the threads sometimes. I'll have angry men ringing me on Friday asking where their f*kin' wages are if I don't concentrate!

Ok, I need to ask some questions here:

First of all, I have been given to understand that English is an Endo-European language and not one of the Romance languages.

Next, Most of our grammar is taken from Latin. Right so far?.

English is the third most difficult language to learn with Chinese and Russian taking the top slots.

Finally, people in the lower forty eight do not have to learn other languages; consequently most don't.

The way that public school systems in America, and other English speaking countries, attempt to teach a foreign language, is backwards. Learning conversation first, then looking at the grammar, should be the logical way to learn, just as we learn the language as growing children.

And I iterate, the sounds of languages are quite meaningful. Portugese, to me, has a beautiful sound to it. I have heard it in song.

As to the mother of all bad words, I have heard that it originated in the early witch hunts when self appointed seekers were looking for scape goats to assure their power over the populace. ******* for witches, if you will. The word itself is harsh and thus does not apply to denotation...

In the late 70's and early 80's, i worked for a woman in the Department of French at the University of Illinois (as a bi-lingual secretary), who was Directrice des programme pédagogique. Her field of interest was communicative competence, and i rather think she would agree with you whole-heartedly, Letty, as far as the manner in which we teach foreign languages.

Graham, I'll be brief: Our native Indians in Canada mostly live on poorly maintained reservations. However, they now have rights to run casinos, so in the end, they will probably be okay.

Indian as in Cree, Mohawk, etc.

Where do they get the start-up capital from? It's the sort of thing the government should give grants for, since it's maybe their fault the native indians are having the problems in the first place?

I think I get you now - the police move on the Indians but not the white homeless?. Apologies for appearing dense!

Well, the government takes care of the reservations, but it is one of those sticky political/racial situations that tends to be hidden from the public at large here. It goes beyond the homeless situation, really. My apologies for being obtuse!

Ah, Set. You are soooooo tactful Please allow me this one thing. The discussion between Cav and Graham brought Chief Joseph to mind.

http://www.indians.org/welker/joseph.htm

If ever there was a great leader, we must include him among them.

That warn't no tactfulness, Miss Letty, that war the god's truth. Her point on the subject of communicative competence is that one should learn to "get along" in a language--go shopping, buy a meal at a restaurant, get a shoe reparied--before tackling grammar. She used some interesting examples--Joseph Conrad became one of the best novelists in the English language, yet he was born in Poland, was sent to Paris while still quite young, and eventually entered the French merchant service, later transferring to English ships, where he learned the language by usage. She also quoted Margarte Mead to the effect that her linguistic colleagues would learn the grammar, conjugations, syntax and the like, but the native inhabitants of the places which they studied always said she spoke their language best--she would ask if the pig was ill, want to know if that fishing net had gotten repaired: she involved herself in the day-to-day business of the community, hence, communicative competence.

Set, I didn't mean that particular part of my socratic post(sorta). I meant the rest of it which you carefully avoided.

My sister's advisor at UVA said that Margaret Meade's publication on "Coming of Age in Samoa" was like wind blowing through the palm trees. He was pretty damn intelligent, and I never questioned his acumen, but I have come to recently.

The things that you have said about Joseph Conrad are amazing. Bet he had a good ear for music.

doh rae me so far la te doe.



Do them scales
Learn them lyrics and
You lands in the choir
But I keeps singin' instead of cyrin'
I must keep singin';
Until I'm dyin'
And Ol' Man conductor
He just keeps rollin' along

Well, hello, Oak. My name is Letty. What's yours?

I'll have you know, my English friend,
That Brahms Motet was hard to learn.
I could not sight read ; ears to lend,
And so I memorized my turn.

Oh, Savior rend the skies in twain
And down to earth descend amain....

Wow! talk about hard to learn rhythm, and to make this fit the thread I think in Merican and sing in Southernese.

Where in tarnation is this thread going, from French sol-fah notation to Brahms motets, from bilingual secretaries who can type e with an accent, to Chinese and Russian, Friesian f-words and Letty's wonderful homemade poetry.
And questions without question marks.
A cornucopia of delights.

Having mulled it over for a few days, I now definately believe that the English speaking world is a mental construct only.

The reason why the countries that speak English do so is because of the colonial British, which gave us all something in common at some point in time - language (obviously), politics, monarchy, legal system, customs & traditions. But what if the Spanish had colonised America first, the French had kept all of Canada, the Dutch had kept South Africa or even if the Portuguese had found Australia & New Zealand before the Brits?

All of these places would now have Spanish, French, Portuguese or whatever as their first language, rather than English. The UK would enjoy a fraction of whatever we can claim now as 'world influence' if we were the only country in the world speaking English.

There would be far less cultural exchange. I can't imagine what it's like to watch Hollywood blockbusters in a foreign language with subtitles in my own language, but that's what it must be like for the rest of Europe now! It sounds crazy but that's what the world would be like!

Basically, since the Engling speaking world was created almost by accidents of history, I cannot believe that there is any shared interest or common goals. Apart from saving money in translators & interpretors, that is...

(PS. Anyone with better History than me please feel free to jump in and correct anything)

Graham, we Canadiens ne pas like to parlez aboot da Francais, eh?

Have I hit a raw nerve, Cav? I'm fairly ignorant about the French-Canadian thing, but since we've been fighting them for about 1000 years then I can see where you're coming from...!