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<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 23 September 2010 - Volume 04<br>
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Marcus Buck</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
<span class="gi">LL-L "Language learning" 2010.09.23 (03) [EN]</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">sassisch@yahoo.com</span></a>> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Subject:
Language learning</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">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.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
The problem with these immigrant languages is, that many of their speakers come
from certain socio-economical environments. The adverse effects of this most
likely outweigh the positive effects of bilingualism.<br>
<br>
When I say "certain socio-economical environments" I primarily mean
'working class' as opposed to 'middle class' or 'white collar'. This is due to
the fact that their parents and grandparents came to Germany as guest workers to do the
jobs the Germans didn't want to do anymore. And as with all immigrants it takes
some time (generations) to blend in and improve socio-economically. I hope
nobody misinterprets this in any *-istic way. I have to add this disclaimer
since the German public opinion recently was stirred up a bit by statements of
politician Thilo Sarrazin which were turned into a campaign by German tabloid
'Bild' (Germany's
most-selling paper read by about 12.5 million people and the single most
relevant agenda-setter for Germany's
public opinion).<br>
<br>
Sarrazin wrote a book about how the Germans will go extinct if they don't do
anything about it ("Deutschland schafft sich ab"). He had nice
populistic theses like "I do not want to excuse myself for being
German", "German must be spoken on German schoolyards",
"too much young resident aliens are criminal", "lock away child
molesters forever" etc., and in interviews he offered nice wisdoms with
enormous scientific depth like "all Jews share a gene". 'Bild'
advertised his book and praised him for "expressing the uncomfortable
truth" and "being the otherwise unheard voice of the ordinary Joes on
the street". Sarrazin lost his job as a representative of the Bundesbank,
because Bundesbank was worried about their reputation and 'Bild' tried to spin
this suggesting that Sarrazins freedom of opinion was suppressed (although he
wrote a best-selling book and had more media attention than any other topic
over several weeks. [but 'Bild' doesn't care much about such little
selfcontradictions. They don't even see the irony when they put the headline
"Pornography corrupts our children!" in 6cm letters on the title,
when 'Bild' itself has the habit to put what England calls the "page 3
girl" on the title page. Nota bene: no bras, no bikini tops.]).<br>
<br>
After weeks of debate nothing has changed politically in German. But the massive
media campaign has changed public opinion. The inhibition threshold for
xenophobic comments was lowered. You can now publicly make statements that were
not possible before, which would have lead to a public outcry.<br>
<br>
One more remark: The 'Bild' basically _is_ right that the public opinion shaped
mainly by politics and media does not reflect the opinion of many of the
average people. But in this case that's a good thing because the average
people's opinion is based on ignorance and wrong facts (and many of these wrong
facts were spread by the 'Bild').<br>
<br>
@Ron: I guess I diverted from the original topic ;-) Feel free to change the
topic for this.<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck</p>
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