LL-L "Language learning" 2010.09.23 (04) [EN]

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 23 September 2010 - Volume 04
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2010.09.23 (03) [EN]



From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: Language learning

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.

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.

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.

Then, *if* 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.


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.

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).

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.]).

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.

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').

@Ron: I guess I diverted from the original topic ;-) Feel free to change the
topic for this.

Marcus Buck



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