<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
I was searching for Ann's excellent "exotic or maybe even
subversive" line (below) in preparing this email, and I decided to
reply to this old email thread since it follows quite neatly. I've
changed the original email subject though, to a more generic one.<br>
<br>
Anyway... perhaps some US-based subscribers could comment on the
recent kerfuffle in the Republican candidate grudge match, namely
that Jon Huntsman speaks Mandarin, and Mitt Romney speaks (shock
horror) French.<br>
<br>
I remember when the UK media used to (occasionally) mention that
Tony Blair spoke fluent French, usually including a clip of a TV
interview in France. I recall it being a mix of gentle mockery and
begrudging pride.<br>
<br>
I'm sure these sorts of things are either hilarious, baffling, or
both, to the world's bi-plus-lingual majority.<br>
<br>
Dave<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr. Dave Sayers<br>
Honorary Research Fellow<br>
College of Arts & Humanities<br>
and Language Research Centre<br>
Swansea University<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dave.sayers@cantab.net">dave.sayers@cantab.net</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers">http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 19:59, Ann Anderson Evans wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:%3CCAGO=pjD3MiAMOsqJMGT=K2ew0H+VvYyOfWG9j1j52-0o9j9xrQ@mail.gmail.com%3E"
type="cite">Coming from a country (the United States) where
speaking a second language is considered exotic or maybe even
subversive, I found your posting spot on.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ann<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 6:42 PM, <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:dzo@bisharat.net">dzo@bisharat.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Or is it
really so weird? I've sometimes wondered why countries with
essentially one "national language" (mother tongue) don't
seek to distribute second language learning more often.
Arguably it could have benefits in terms of external trade
and relations, and facilitate a kind of "crossroads" effect
to the extent that it facilitates selective borrowing (and
"digestion" in the nationally spoken language) from diverse
other parts of the world.<br>
<br>
Not sure if Hungary has considered that aspect, but could
there be any merit to this position? Examples? (Japan from
the late 1800s to WWII??)<br>
<br>
Could this be an advantage of more or less monolingual
states that Hungary has stumbled upon withou knowing it?<br>
<br>
Don<br>
<br>
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Harold Schiffman <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:hfsclpp@gmail.com">hfsclpp@gmail.com</a>><br>
Sender: lgpolicy-list-bounces+dzo=<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:bisharat.net@groups.sas.upenn.edu">bisharat.net@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a><br>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:48:35<br>
To: lp<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a>><br>
Reply-To: Language Policy List <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a>><br>
Subject: [lg policy] Hungarians Perplex World With Weird
Language Policy<br>
<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
Hungarians Perplex World With Weird Language Policy<br>
<br>
Ann Althouse picks up one of the oddest reports of the
week: the<br>
Hungarian government wants to discourage students from
taking English<br>
as their first foreign language because it is so easy!
The original<br>
article in The Wall Street Journal is a head-scratcher:<br>
<br>
Hungary’s government wants to dethrone English as the
most common<br>
foreign language taught in Hungarian schools. The
reason: It’s just<br>
too easy to learn.<br>
<br>
“It is fortunate if the first foreign language
learned is not<br>
English. The initial, very quick and spectacular
successes of English<br>
learning may evoke the false image in students that
learning any<br>
foreign language is that simple,” reads a draft bill
obtained by news<br>
website Origo.hu that would amend Hungary’s education
laws.<br>
<br>
Instead, the ministry department in charge of
education would<br>
prefer if students “chose languages with a fixed,
structured<br>
grammatical system, the learning of which presents a
balanced<br>
workload, such as neo-Latin languages.”<br>
<br>
Besides giving a deceptive sense of achievement,
English learning<br>
also makes acquiring other languages more difficult, the
ministry<br>
argues. Reversing the order, on the other hand, makes
learning English<br>
essentially effortless, it added.<br>
<br>
The mystery deepens as the WSJ reporter, Gergo Racz,
tells us that<br>
Hungary’s real problem isn’t that too many Hungarians
take the wimpy<br>
way out and learn English; it is that most Hungarians
don’t learn any<br>
foreign language at all. In fact, 75 percent of
Hungarians say<br>
(presumably in Magyar) that they don’t speak any foreign
language at<br>
all, and only six percent claim to speak one well.<br>
<br>
Surely a government in this situation would go for the
easiest<br>
language on offer?<br>
<br>
Few countries need foreign language fluency more than
Hungary. The<br>
Magyar language is distantly, very distantly related to
Finnish, but<br>
otherwise Hungarian is in a world of its own. A
traveler in Europe<br>
who has even a smattering of familiarity with a Romance,
Germanic and<br>
Slavic language will generally get around pretty well;
the language<br>
roots allow you to decipher some of the basics: words
like<br>
‘bookstore’, ‘toilet’, ‘train station’ and ‘trolley’
don’t vary all<br>
that much within the language families. Be able to
sound out the<br>
Cyrillic and Greek alphabets and you can survive if not
always thrive<br>
from Vladivostok to Valencia.<br>
<br>
In Hungary you can forget that; when I first visited
Hungary about<br>
twenty years ago, even a word like ‘restaurant’, which
is pretty<br>
recognizable all across Europe, was no use. The Magyar
word for<br>
‘restaurant’ is (if I still remember this correctly)
‘etterim’. At<br>
that time, Germany was the English of Budapest, and
English was the<br>
French. That is, if you needed to discuss directions or
money with a<br>
taxi driver or a news vendor, German was the language to
use. If you<br>
wanted to talk literature with a journalist or
professor, English was<br>
the way to go.<br>
<br>
Poland was a different case back then. Everybody over
fifty spoke<br>
German and everybody under fifty spoke Russian — but
given the<br>
circumstances attending the introduction of those
languages in Poland,<br>
nobody wanted to admit a knowledge of either. Almost
nobody spoke<br>
English there back then — the Soviets discouraged
English study even<br>
more than the Hungarians. If you asked for directions
in the former<br>
occupation languages people pretended they didn’t
understand you; the<br>
only way out was to be able to say in both German and
Russian, “Excuse<br>
me, please. I’m an American and I don’t speak Polish.
Can you tell<br>
me…” and then you ask your question. Once the ice was
broken, people<br>
were happy to help.<br>
<br>
None of this explains the mysteries of Hungarian
language policy;<br>
perhaps some Hungarian bureaucrats have a little too
much time on<br>
their hands?<br>
<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/20/hungarians-perplex-world-with-weird-language-policy/"
target="_blank">http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/20/hungarians-perplex-world-with-weird-language-policy/</a><br>
<br>
--<br>
**************************************<br>
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as
a service to<br>
its members<br>
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement
by the owner<br>
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's
contents.<br>
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to
post a rebuttal,<br>
and to write directly to the original sender of any
offensive message.<br>
A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.
(H. Schiffman,<br>
Moderator)<br>
<br>
For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/"
target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>
listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>
*******************************************<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list
mailing list<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a><br>
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange
digest format: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list"
target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list</a><br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list
mailing list<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu</a><br>
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange
digest format: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list"
target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
*Ann Anderson Evans*<br>
*Writer and Adjunct Professor, Montclair State University*<br>
*(201) 792-6892 or (973) 495-0338<br>
*<br>
*<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.linguisticsintheclassroom.com">www.linguisticsintheclassroom.com</a>*<br>
*<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.annandersonevans.com">www.annandersonevans.com</a>*<br>
The Abortion Wars: Is a Truce Possible?<br>
on Kindle ebooks.<br>
*<br>
*<br>
*<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>