Subject:
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Re: Where did you lot spring from?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Thu, 4 May 2000 05:06:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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1566 times
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<!!!Potentially Offensive Joke About Language Proficiency Alert!!!> (heh)
Bram Lambrecht wrote:
> Mr L F Braun <braunli1@pilot.msu.edu> writes:
> > there's almost 300 million USians, ~250 million of
> > whom are fluent speakers of English (however one defines
> > that in the US, can you tell I've been grading student
> > papers again?).
>
> LOL! Ever noticed, even on LUGNET, that many of the non-native speakers
> of English use better grammer than quite a few Americans? Every now and
> then, some obscure idiom slips in, but otherwise, I must commend you
> ESLers on your proficiency[1]!
As the joke goes, if you know three languages, you're trilingual. If you
know two languages, you're bilingual. If you know one language, you're
English. If you know no languages, you're American. (This is very
North-Atlantic-centered, I know--in California, if you know one language,
the joke goes that you're either Australian or from Texas--be the language
English or Spanish.) A possible corollary suggested to me by a faculty
member here who is demonstrably fluent in sixteen (!!!) languages across
four major families is that "if you know more languages than you have
borders, you're Dutch."
> 1) well, actually, English is my fourth language, but I've spoken it
> since I was five, so it's the one I know best. In the meantime, I've
> managed to retain some of my Dutch, relearn my Spanish, and forget my
> German...
What's language #1? I've been trying to figure out where "Lambrecht" comes
from; I figured either Germany, Austria, or Denmark, maybe the
Netherlands--but maybe it's Scandinavia? (pardon my forgetfulness) As for
me, my German is atrophied, I can read most Romance and western Germanic
languages, and hopefully I'll be functional in Dutch come this time next
year.
best
Lindsay
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Where did you lot spring from?)
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| (...) I was born in Belgium to two Belgian parents. Then, in Argentina, I learned to speak Dutch and Spanish at the same time (probably a bastardization of both). At age 2.5, I moved to Germany, where I spoke German at school, but refused to speak (...) (25 years ago, 4-May-00, to lugnet.loc.au, lugnet.people)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Where did you lot spring from?)
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| (...) LOL! Ever noticed, even on LUGNET, that many of the non-native speakers of English use better grammer than quite a few Americans? Every now and then, some obscure idiom slips in, but otherwise, I must commend you ESLers on your proficiency[1]! (...) (25 years ago, 3-May-00, to lugnet.loc.au, lugnet.general)
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