As a developer in a non English speaking country, in the last decade having English in your resume has moved from nice-to-have to mandatory, now the nice to have is having a third one.
One random thought I had about this the other day was that I feel sort of bad for the British, Irish, Americans and Australians. Well, the monolingual ones.
Anytime they go abroad, it’s like “oh they didn’t even bother to learn the language”, but then when we who didn’t grow up on English do, we’ve already learned at least English, so not knowing the local language is somehow more understandable. Or perhaps people don’t feel that way, but it’s just a thought I had. Like it feels less polite when a native English speaker just addresses someone in English in a foreign country, but if a non-English speaker asks “do you speak English” with broken English, it’s much more… sympathetic.
I’m just babling nevermind me.
I do agree with you though and can’t really understand people in my country who still say they can’t speak English. I mean, people who still use the internet and consume media that’s in English. I don’t get it. Language acquisition gets worse sure, but it’s never gone away from me at least. I watch one season of some show in a language I don’t understand and I already start picking up the very basics. Nothing I could use, surely, but like my brain is clearly structuring and trying to make sense of the language, so with enough exposition to a language…
I know, and I’m sorry for not putting up a further disclaimer, but the English have destroyed so many cultures and languages that listing them all would’ve just taken up too much space.
Gabh mo leiscéal, I have the utmost respect for the Irish.
I have to admit that this doesn’t work nearly as well when I’m watching anything Asian. I mean I’ve got a tiny tiny tiny understanding of the things Japanese people put at the end of words and I can now hear those a little after watching the samurai show that came out what was it. Absolutely amazing.
Uh… “Shōgun”, yeah.
Anyway, it works much better for PIE-languages, and obviously the easiest ones are Nordic/Germanic, seeing as they’re coursing languages to English and I know Swedish.
I think having a native non-PIE language really helped, as once I learned English properly (and had some Swedish) the others just started making sense more or less. Eastern European languages are harder, but I haven’t watched any shows in Polish yet…
Finnish must be a fucking nightmare, seeing how many grammatical cases we have and those are applied to all words in a sentence basically. So just modifying the verb will mean that you probably have to conjugate every other word differently.
Like one simple example “I want a car” “haluan auton” but do you want your car (you not thee, so plural second person) would be “haluatteko autonne” but if you want to say “would you like to have your car” it’s “haluaisitteko autonne”, and in the singular second person it’s “haluatko auton”, but also in informal Finnish you can sometimes drop the conjugations and indeed using them might seem too formal, and also you’d use some sort of dialect so in reality second person singular informal would be “haluaks auton”, but you can also put in the word for you “sinä”, (which informally is mostly “sä”) and its the same thing “haluaks sä auton”, but if you change it to “haluaks sun auton” it becomes “do you want your car”.
Whops rant. I’ve had a glög. My point being Finnish must be crazy hard to learn. I’d need to learn an Asian language to get into that whole market of languages better.
I’ve always been into languages though, and didn’t even need to be taught to read, as I picked it up myself from newspapers, as I was annoyed my older brother had a skill I did not.
When I watched the latest season of Babylon Berlin, I dreamt in German for a few times. And I do not speak it enough to have a conversation. Enough to order in a restaurant, sure, but not enough to chat like in my dreams.
I understand the chorus from that song, and some of the Lyrics. I just wish I was in a position to go live abroad for a few years, I’d like to see how fast I become fluent in some of these European languages I’m somewhat primed for. Plus they legalised weed in Germany, so that’s another good reason as well.
It’s been years since I had glög; I should make that again since it’s starting to get chilly.
Unfortunately, part of living in the US is that most people aren’t exposed to other languages to any significant degree. If you are a native American English speaker, and grow up in a large city, you might hear enough Spanish to learn it, but that’s about it. I learned Spanish in school, but there was no opportunity to practice until I moved to a large city close to the Mexican border.
To be fair. Learning english is a must nowadays. The closest we have to an universal language.
And I say it as a non-native English speaker.
As a developer in a non English speaking country, in the last decade having English in your resume has moved from nice-to-have to mandatory, now the nice to have is having a third one.
A third what?
Language
Eye. Clairvoyance really helps with bug testing.
One random thought I had about this the other day was that I feel sort of bad for the British, Irish, Americans and Australians. Well, the monolingual ones.
Anytime they go abroad, it’s like “oh they didn’t even bother to learn the language”, but then when we who didn’t grow up on English do, we’ve already learned at least English, so not knowing the local language is somehow more understandable. Or perhaps people don’t feel that way, but it’s just a thought I had. Like it feels less polite when a native English speaker just addresses someone in English in a foreign country, but if a non-English speaker asks “do you speak English” with broken English, it’s much more… sympathetic.
I’m just babling nevermind me.
I do agree with you though and can’t really understand people in my country who still say they can’t speak English. I mean, people who still use the internet and consume media that’s in English. I don’t get it. Language acquisition gets worse sure, but it’s never gone away from me at least. I watch one season of some show in a language I don’t understand and I already start picking up the very basics. Nothing I could use, surely, but like my brain is clearly structuring and trying to make sense of the language, so with enough exposition to a language…
The Irish are increasingly bilingual it’s just that they’re learning their own language, not anyone else’s
I know, and I’m sorry for not putting up a further disclaimer, but the English have destroyed so many cultures and languages that listing them all would’ve just taken up too much space.
Gabh mo leiscéal, I have the utmost respect for the Irish.
I wish my brain worked that way; I’d be watching Finnish television and movies all day, every day.
I watch a fair number of shows in Swedish or Norwegian, and I’ve never picked up anything from what they’re saying. I always have to have subtitles.
I have to admit that this doesn’t work nearly as well when I’m watching anything Asian. I mean I’ve got a tiny tiny tiny understanding of the things Japanese people put at the end of words and I can now hear those a little after watching the samurai show that came out what was it. Absolutely amazing.
Uh… “Shōgun”, yeah.
Anyway, it works much better for PIE-languages, and obviously the easiest ones are Nordic/Germanic, seeing as they’re coursing languages to English and I know Swedish.
I think having a native non-PIE language really helped, as once I learned English properly (and had some Swedish) the others just started making sense more or less. Eastern European languages are harder, but I haven’t watched any shows in Polish yet…
Finnish must be a fucking nightmare, seeing how many grammatical cases we have and those are applied to all words in a sentence basically. So just modifying the verb will mean that you probably have to conjugate every other word differently.
Like one simple example “I want a car” “haluan auton” but do you want your car (you not thee, so plural second person) would be “haluatteko autonne” but if you want to say “would you like to have your car” it’s “haluaisitteko autonne”, and in the singular second person it’s “haluatko auton”, but also in informal Finnish you can sometimes drop the conjugations and indeed using them might seem too formal, and also you’d use some sort of dialect so in reality second person singular informal would be “haluaks auton”, but you can also put in the word for you “sinä”, (which informally is mostly “sä”) and its the same thing “haluaks sä auton”, but if you change it to “haluaks sun auton” it becomes “do you want your car”.
Whops rant. I’ve had a glög. My point being Finnish must be crazy hard to learn. I’d need to learn an Asian language to get into that whole market of languages better.
I’ve always been into languages though, and didn’t even need to be taught to read, as I picked it up myself from newspapers, as I was annoyed my older brother had a skill I did not.
When I watched the latest season of Babylon Berlin, I dreamt in German for a few times. And I do not speak it enough to have a conversation. Enough to order in a restaurant, sure, but not enough to chat like in my dreams.
I understand the chorus from that song, and some of the Lyrics. I just wish I was in a position to go live abroad for a few years, I’d like to see how fast I become fluent in some of these European languages I’m somewhat primed for. Plus they legalised weed in Germany, so that’s another good reason as well.
I feel like I’d struggle learning Hindi like that
It’s been years since I had glög; I should make that again since it’s starting to get chilly.
Unfortunately, part of living in the US is that most people aren’t exposed to other languages to any significant degree. If you are a native American English speaker, and grow up in a large city, you might hear enough Spanish to learn it, but that’s about it. I learned Spanish in school, but there was no opportunity to practice until I moved to a large city close to the Mexican border.
It is. I’m Estonian, it’s the closest related language to Finnish, and I’ve found nearly any other language easier to pick up on than Finnish.
Apparently on average, it’s easier for Estonians to Understand Finnish than it is for Finns to understand Estonian.
One of those asymmetric mutual intelligibility things. Interesting video, that.