LL-L: "Multilingualism" LOWLANDS-L, 26.OCT.1999 (09) [E]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 26.OCT.1999 (09) * ISSN 1089-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Multilingualism

Henno quoted a news item about the European Commission wanting us all to
speak three EU languages by the year 2001 [sic].

Ron responded with his "dream" of people casting the net more widely and
learning languages from more remote areas.

Three points occur to me.

a. What is a minority language on the world scale? I met an Italian (a
teacher employed to teach the children of staff of the Italian Embassy in
London) who asked me why I bothered to learn her language "because only 50
million people speak it".

b. It seems plausible that there are dead languages with a much greater
claim on people's time (because they have a significant literature) than
living "minority" languages. I have recently started to learn Classical
Greek, and Latin also has an appeal. The "Old" and "Middle" forms of our
mother tongues have a particular claim..

c. Is it easier or more difficult learn a language closely related to one's
mother tongue than a linguistically  more remote one? I was told by a German
with almost perfect English that French is much more difficult for
German-speakers because of the lack of common roots of words. She argued
that English is a good place to start learning both Germanic and Romance
languages because of our "mixed" vocabulary. I don't really believe that
this is an important consideration. As soon as we think we recognise words
in French we find (or don't!) that a lot of them are "false friends".

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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