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There is a very simple explanation for this. Second languages must be imprinted before the age of about 12, during the years in which multilingualism is perfectly fluid and natural
They must? I learned French at age 15 and Spanisch at age 23 and am still able to communicate fairly well even though I'm not super-fluent. Which i mainly attribute to me not using those languages very often, not to my age. I am sure any English native-speaker could do the same. No one expects people to speak a foreign language perfectly. That, indeed, is hardly possible.
Also, I started learning English in 5th grade, yet I am fluent and barely have a noticable accent. There were even a few studies in my home country that compared children who had their first English classes in 1st grade or kindergarten even to children who started in 5th grade, like myself. There was no difference in English proficiency when they reached 6th grade.
Are foreign language classes a compulsory part of every students' curriculum in the English-speaking world?
for me, I just don't care for the weird letters they sometimes use and the order they put them in to make words that don't make any sense. I do sometimes think its funny when I travel over seas and some guy is yelling at me, with veins sticking out all over his head and his spittle is flying. I sometimes imagine he's saying something like "Hello, welcome to our country. Would you like some ice with that?" I start to laugh and am brought back to reality as he tries to wrap his boney fingers around my thoat.
I'm a native English speaker from and English speaking country, my primary school taught Indonesian, my high school taught Japanese and German. Everyone I've ever met did some language at high school. But there are so many languages in the world, which one do you choose? And wha are the odds that on ay given holiday you'll be in a country that speaks it? Even amongst the popular langages like Italian, French, German, Japanese and Chinese the odds of not speaking the lanuage of a person you meet or country you're in are pretty high. I can tell from your grammar you're not a native speaker of my second language so how would you know I speak it?
And by English speaking countries you mean America, don't you? Not Ireland, UK, NZ, SA, Australia, Canada, Barbados, Kenya, Samoa, Singapore India, Fiji, etc, etc.
I 'learnt' Japanese and French in school, it was never taken all that seriously though. I always felt it was nothing more than a token gesture to foreign languages to recognise trade relations or history. Doesn't help when teachers are barely fluent in the language either.
It seems Japanesse and French are the major languages pushed in Australian schools, I took Japanesse for 3 years. Trouble is if you never use it you loose it.
Do Australian schools still teach French? It seems really stupid if they do.
Most native English speakers live in countries that are insular (i.e. they have no land borders with countries speaking other languages) or think they are, namely the U.S.
And by English speaking countries you mean America, don't you? Not Ireland, UK, NZ, SA, Australia, Canada, Barbados, Kenya, Samoa, Singapore India, Fiji, etc, etc.
UK, Australia, NZ, Ireland, USA, Jamaica... I've been in 3 of these countries but I've met people from all of them.
They must? I learned French at age 15 and Spanisch at age 23 and am still able to communicate fairly well even though I'm not super-fluent. Which i mainly attribute to me not using those languages very often, not to my age. I am sure any English native-speaker could do the same. No one expects people to speak a foreign language perfectly. That, indeed, is hardly possible.
Also, I started learning English in 5th grade, yet I am fluent and barely have a noticable accent. There were even a few studies in my home country that compared children who had their first English classes in 1st grade or kindergarten even to children who started in 5th grade, like myself. There was no difference in English proficiency when they reached 6th grade.
Are foreign language classes a compulsory part of every students' curriculum in the English-speaking world?
In the USA,, with all our tens of millions of immigrants, it is quite rare to find a person who immigrated after the age of 20 who ever during his lifetime mastered English without an accent. But most who came as children have no detectable accent at all.
Children who grow up in homes or communities where two languages are spoken DO speak both languages with native fluency, usually with an accent. Yes, it IS expected that these children will speak both languages fluently. Nearly everyone who has been to school or grew up on cosmopolitan cities in countries like India and China and Nigeria speak two or more languages, because they have been speaking them from childhood, when the accents, intonations, and rhythm of both languages are just naturally a part of their their own linguistic development.
You started learning English at age ten, which is soon enough for you to master it. You were than already bilingual, and once you are a bilingual child, an unlimited number of languages can be added with much more ease than if you are monolingual into late childhood.
The answer to your last question is that in the USA it is possible to get a PhD without ever spending a single minute studying any foreign language. Foreign languages are rarely compulsory for any school curriculum. In some American schools, students have actually been suspended from classes for speaking Spanish in school, even outside classes such as in the lunch room. There have been only about 4 or 5 presidents who were able to carry on a simple conversation in any second language.
They don't have to. It sounds rude, but that's the main truth. Learning a new language can be hard (especially if English is your first language, more on that later), and native English speakers generally lack the need to learn another language that most multilingual people have.
The other reason is English is pretty different from all languages other than Germanic Scots. So there's not nearly the built in easiness of going from Danish to Swedish or something along those lines. I have a buddy who's pretty good with languages, and at last count he was at 5 or 6. English was his first language. The US Army trained him in French. He picked up Italian while living in Italy when his wife was stationed there. He rolled that into Spanish (As the two languages share something like 85% of the same vocabulary), and he recently learned Romanian. So he speaks his native Germanic language, and then in the last 10 years or so has picked up 4 Romance languages. It's easy to roll from one to another because they do have a fair number of similarities.
There are several languages I would like to learn, but it isn't exactly easy. Also, most people in the world who speak English as a first language live in countries that are developed, so there isn't much need to migrate around to thrive.
Spanish would actually be pretty easy to learn living in America. They are relatively similar languages and there are more than enough speakers to practice with. But I think most Americans, including myself, have a 'refuse to give in' attitude towards Spanish.
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