<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 23 September 2010 - Volume 03<br>
</b><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
Posting: <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a><br>
Archive: <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html</span></a><br>
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)<br>
Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</span></a><br>
=====================================================</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
Language learning</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Jonny, you wrote:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;">even 20 years after the reunion between East and West Germany
still is splitted in two parts as far as English is concerned:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;"><a href="http://www.zeit.de/2010/36/S-Englisch" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">http://www.zeit.de/2010/36/S-Englisch</span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;">In special the (Upper) Saxon pupils with their special, exceptional
dialect seem to have great difficulties to learn English, though the standard
of their schools is aspected to be high in the internal German ranking system.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="color: navy;">I would like to know if things are running better in
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, our Hanne's homeland and the most northern province of
the former German Democratic Republic (until A.D. 1990 "Eastern
Germany", behind the Iron Curtain). Is the influence of Low Saxon still
strong enough to make it easier for the people over there to learn English, as
it in my youth had been in comparison between the North and South of (Western-)Germany?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">If in this regard there is indeed
a difference between students inside and outside the original Low-Saxon-speaking
area, you first need to find out if this has anything to do with exposure to Low
Saxon specifically or with bilingualism more generally. <br>
<br>
People that already know a language other than their main one, even if they are
not fluent in but are at least exposed to it, tend to have an easier time learning
further languages, including those that are not closely related to the languages
they already knew.<br>
<br>
What would be relevant is finding out if students that grew up with Upper Sorbian
have an easier time learning English than do other students in the state of Saxony. Similarly, it would be interesting to see if all over
Germany
those students have an easier time that grew up with Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Farsi
and other immigrant languages.<br>
<br>
Then, <i>if</i> there is indeed something special about students with Low Saxon
background you can move on to seeing if it has anything to do with that language
in particular. Then you would also need to look at North German students that grew
up with Frisian or Danish.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=========================================================<br>
Send posting submissions to <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a>.<br>
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.<br>
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to<br>
<a href="mailto:listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;">listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a>
or <a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a><br>
<a href="http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;">http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html</span></a>.<br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#%21/group.php?gid=118916521473498" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498</span></a><br>
=========================================================</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>