----- Original Message ----- From: "Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2002 7:11 AM Subject: Fine tuning: Understanding is more than just learning a language very well, was Re: And here we go again.
> > Robert Seeberger wrote: > > > Do you watch many American movies in english? (I mean without dubbing or > > subtitles) > > If not, it may help fine tune your understanding of the ins and outs of the > > less formal forms of english speech. > > Almost exclusively. (The Dutch don't dub, it's too expensive for a too small an > audience, except for the occasional children's movie that is) Still constantly > hearing English doesn't really help to fine tune to that level. And anyway the > Hollywood genre mostly contains the f*ck, sh*th**d and b*st*rd style. I do like > watching BBC programs. But they are notorious for silencing *anything* that > might even be slightly abusive to anyone. Thats good actually. Its probobly the second best way to pick up a language after "total immersion". > > There is that finer grade of understanding. Being a German (with a strong German > background) in the Netherlands I do sometimes have problems with it in the > (absolutely very tolerant, calvinistic, informal) Netherlands. I have > experienced at times, that as soon as soon as you speak the language without any > obvious accent, people become very unforging towards the slightest language or > social mistake. There is that something (the je ne sais qua) in a Here we spell that "Je ne sais quoi", probobly after the way the French spell it. <G> Here there are a lot of non-english speaking spanish speaking people. I've noticed that when people here are speaking to someone who knows very little english, they tend to avoid idoms and idiomatic phrases. I think people instinctively avoid idioms when speaking to someone whose understanding may be limited. It seems notable because most of the people I know dont know what an idiom is and some likely couldnt recognise when they are using idioms unless it was pointed out to them. > Sonja > > Wadda ja mean, multicultural? :o) > Is "J" a "Y" sound in German? I noticed the "ja" where an American would use "ya". Or is that phrase a derivative from a cultural reference? xponent Knows Very Little Actually Maru rob
