5 ms·

No shit, learning English from a romanic language is hard. German to English is easy mode.

by gsich 7y ago

donkeyd 7y ago
I'm sure that's a factor, but it's also a bit cultural. Countries with the highest proficiency tend to use subtitles in stead of dubbing for foreign language movies. Because of this, you get much more familiar with other languages. I learned most of my English from watching movies and the internet. I was pretty much fluent in English before I even started getting English classes in High School, so I never had to actively learn it.
- tiagopc 7y ago
  I totally agree with this. Pretty much everything is dubbed in France, Italy and Spain. I also learned a lot of english by watching movies and series in the original language with subtitles.
- antupis 7y ago
  Also smaller languages usually don't have a lively community around niche topics (specific games, cartoons, startups, programming, etc) so you end up in discussing things in English. Personally I learned English from fantasy books and WOW.
- majewsky 7y ago
  I noticed my English skills improving after switching from watching German dubs to the English originals. It's really unsettling when you go back and notice that all the movie dubs are done by what feels like a dozen people in total.
tiagopc 7y ago
That makes no sense when you factor Portugal in, for example.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Yeah, but we love English, have centuries of relationship with UK (since 1386) and use subtitles. :)
  - tiagopc 7y ago
    I wouldn't say it is because of that relationship with the UK that I learned English xD
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Well, I have a lot to thank to those British series running on our channels, and also Bristh evenings on RTP2, specially 'Allo 'Allo!, Mr Bean, The Avengers, Thunderbirds, Danger Mouse, The Saint, Poirot and many others.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
It's not that straightforward. Finnish is wildly different from English, yet basically everybody there speaks English. And as late as the 1990s English proficiency in Germany was abysmal, particularly on the eastern side.
- usr1106 7y ago
  Because Finnland is a small country (5 million native speakers). They cannot afford to dub TV or movies, so every kid gets exposed to English every day. As soon as you have a somewhat rare hobby you need to read about it in English. There are many books not available Finnish, so people read the English one. In Germany none of those are an issue, there is little exposure to English. English is a theoretical thing in school. Quite some Finns over 40 years old have difficulties to speak fluent and somewhat correct English. (Source: I have worked in the high tech sector in Finland for 20+ years) That is caused by completely different grammar of Finnish compared to anything Germanic, Nordic, or Romanic and the fact that speaking was traditonally not taught a lot in Finnish schools.
odiroot 7y ago
If you think that's hard, try coming from a Slavic language with no concept of an article and perfect and continuous tenses.
gpvos 7y ago
English grammar has diverged a lot from the other Germanic languages, and its vocabulary is about 50/50 Germanic/Romance. And maybe things are different for Spanish and Italian, but French has had a huge Germanic influence (it is even named after the Franks that ruled it for a long time); e.g., there are many turns of phrase that you can translate word for word.
- davidw 7y ago
  Exactly; what English shares with German is mostly words from a small village in the year 1000. You can talk about water, bread, beer and brothers, but anything more complex is out of the question. "Complex" and "question" are both latin-origin words for instance. So are "instance" and "origin". I had a vastly easier time learning Italian than German as a native English speaker. Of course there were confounding variables, but I just found Italian to have a lot more that I could latch on to in the modern world.
  - dfawcus 7y ago
    'understand' is from German, 'comprehend' is from French. We get 'Fort' from French, but the equivalent concept 'Stronghold' has Germanic root words and construction. What does that prove? Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic.
    - davidw 7y ago
      "Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic." Of those words, the ones with latin origins are: * central * point * remains * core * language * Germanic I guess you can run some statistics on all this, but subjectively, to me, Italian felt much easier to learn because much if it - including the grammar - felt more familiar than German.
      - dfawcus 7y ago
        That is largely down to the choice of multiple words to express similar concepts in English (due to its mongrel roots), and those having subtly different meanings, hence the high information density in English. So in one having access to an expansive enough vocabulary, one will often use fewer of the core words. Partially as a way to remove ambiguity in written English (which can be very difficult), partially to write a shorter sentence than would be the case using Germanic root words alone. For the second phrase you quoted, I could have written 'the heart of the tongue', but that could be read to imply a different meaning.

No shit, learning English from a romanic language is hard. German to English is easy mode.

by gsich 7y ago

No shit, learning English from a romanic language is hard. German to English is easy mode.

I'm sure that's a factor, but it's also a bit cultural. Countries with the highest proficiency tend to use subtitles in stead of dubbing for foreign language movies. Because of this, you get much more familiar with other languages. I learned most of my English from watching movies and the internet. I was pretty much fluent in English before I even started getting English classes in High School, so I never had to actively learn it.

tiagopc 7y ago
I totally agree with this. Pretty much everything is dubbed in France, Italy and Spain. I also learned a lot of english by watching movies and series in the original language with subtitles.
antupis 7y ago
Also smaller languages usually don't have a lively community around niche topics (specific games, cartoons, startups, programming, etc) so you end up in discussing things in English. Personally I learned English from fantasy books and WOW.
majewsky 7y ago
I noticed my English skills improving after switching from watching German dubs to the English originals. It's really unsettling when you go back and notice that all the movie dubs are done by what feels like a dozen people in total.

tiagopc 7y ago

That makes no sense when you factor Portugal in, for example.

pjmlp 7y ago
Yeah, but we love English, have centuries of relationship with UK (since 1386) and use subtitles. :)
- tiagopc 7y ago
  I wouldn't say it is because of that relationship with the UK that I learned English xD
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Well, I have a lot to thank to those British series running on our channels, and also Bristh evenings on RTP2, specially 'Allo 'Allo!, Mr Bean, The Avengers, Thunderbirds, Danger Mouse, The Saint, Poirot and many others.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

It's not that straightforward. Finnish is wildly different from English, yet basically everybody there speaks English. And as late as the 1990s English proficiency in Germany was abysmal, particularly on the eastern side.

usr1106 7y ago
Because Finnland is a small country (5 million native speakers). They cannot afford to dub TV or movies, so every kid gets exposed to English every day. As soon as you have a somewhat rare hobby you need to read about it in English. There are many books not available Finnish, so people read the English one. In Germany none of those are an issue, there is little exposure to English. English is a theoretical thing in school. Quite some Finns over 40 years old have difficulties to speak fluent and somewhat correct English. (Source: I have worked in the high tech sector in Finland for 20+ years) That is caused by completely different grammar of Finnish compared to anything Germanic, Nordic, or Romanic and the fact that speaking was traditonally not taught a lot in Finnish schools.

odiroot 7y ago

If you think that's hard, try coming from a Slavic language with no concept of an article and perfect and continuous tenses.

gpvos 7y ago

English grammar has diverged a lot from the other Germanic languages, and its vocabulary is about 50/50 Germanic/Romance. And maybe things are different for Spanish and Italian, but French has had a huge Germanic influence (it is even named after the Franks that ruled it for a long time); e.g., there are many turns of phrase that you can translate word for word.

davidw 7y ago
Exactly; what English shares with German is mostly words from a small village in the year 1000. You can talk about water, bread, beer and brothers, but anything more complex is out of the question. "Complex" and "question" are both latin-origin words for instance. So are "instance" and "origin". I had a vastly easier time learning Italian than German as a native English speaker. Of course there were confounding variables, but I just found Italian to have a lot more that I could latch on to in the modern world.
- dfawcus 7y ago
  'understand' is from German, 'comprehend' is from French. We get 'Fort' from French, but the equivalent concept 'Stronghold' has Germanic root words and construction. What does that prove? Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic.
  - davidw 7y ago
    "Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic." Of those words, the ones with latin origins are: * central * point * remains * core * language * Germanic I guess you can run some statistics on all this, but subjectively, to me, Italian felt much easier to learn because much if it - including the grammar - felt more familiar than German.
    - dfawcus 7y ago
      That is largely down to the choice of multiple words to express similar concepts in English (due to its mongrel roots), and those having subtly different meanings, hence the high information density in English. So in one having access to an expansive enough vocabulary, one will often use fewer of the core words. Partially as a way to remove ambiguity in written English (which can be very difficult), partially to write a shorter sentence than would be the case using Germanic root words alone. For the second phrase you quoted, I could have written 'the heart of the tongue', but that could be read to imply a different meaning.