Bilingualism

Cool, I've never heard of these guys. I very much liked David Mitchell but Jack Dee was my favorite. I couldn't understand Frankie Boyle, though - lol. The accent was too deep for my American ears. Ross Noble sounded like Izzard, not my favorite but quite funny.Here are a few of my favorites that may not be as well know as someone like, Hicks or Carlin, to you fellas in the UK.1. Dave Attel - (talking about drinking)2. Louis CK - (it's a long video but as a dad you'll hopefully enjoy it / plus it ends with the "why?" bit from the other video I posted)3. Mitch Hedburg - ( he passed away but still one of my favorites)4. Bill Burr - (I believe at a show in the UK) plus Bill Burr @ Opie and Antony Show - (this is the worst crowd EVER!!! Insane!!! He destroys them, though) I would say both. They are 20 years behind the trends and there's no way to make sarcasm sound like a joke. - I'd say it's a challenge then. First one to get chastised by Moose or Percy wins. - OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

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If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
~George Carlin

Sorry, I'm recovering from what all medicos describe as "major surgery" (abdominal, bowel resection), so I guess I'm a bit out of sync with all "normals."You are doing it better than I was. I tried my German with my son when he was a lot younger and gave up.Your wife is trying Spanish with your son much later than I was and had established it as a mode of communication with her. By my figuring, esablishing a language as a mode of communication with the child is the main point, so that crucial point has indeed been made. Hu-rah! (ie, you have accomplished your objective!).Children's morality is "rule-morality" oriented. That is to say that they have learned rules for what must be. Those rules are kind of arbitrary, but that is how they think. The classic test is if your family needs bread or a particular medicine. If your family or a family member requires that bread or medicine to survive and you cannot buy it but must instead steal it, then did you do right or wrong? If they decide that you did wrong, then they are stuck in rules-based morality (which would have been my entry into another thread). But if they think you might have done right, then they are starting to employ moral reasoning.IOW, your son's reaction to your parent's using the "wrong" language is completely normal.His level of bossiness is quite normal. It looks like you have very little to worry about with your son!Your wife has established with him Spanish as a means of communication. Hu-rah!You establish with him English as a means of communication. Hu-rah!As I described regarding my ex and her siblings: her parents had them speak Spanish with them so that they could correct their Spanish. And they had them speaking English with each other so that they could correct their English.Looks to me like you are there! Hu-rah! (Sorry. I'm a 32-year veteran in the US Navy Reserve, so US Marine culture has leached over.)In case I need to elucidate, my personal experience with German as when he was much younger. Your wife has established with your son that Spanish is a means of communication, and to me that is the vital point to be made with your offspring. In my opinion (such as it is), that is the all-important deciding factor. To my own limited opinion and experience, you are leading your son in the right direction.

Eddie Izzard? To be honest, I had never heard of him until The Riches came on cable TV here a couple years ago. Looking at the YouTube links, I was honestly surprised that he had ever been so young. Yank. What you donna do? (to quote Homer Simpson). Of course, I am better known among my peers as being totally out of touch with popular culture.Enjoyed the YouTube links. I could follow the French and German with very little difficulty. Actually, the "German" he breaks into in that one link was more a mixture of German, French, and Italian. Reminds me of a Hebrew test question I encountered wherein I had to come up with a sentence that illustrated a particular grammatical point, so I started out in Hebrew, but half-way I hit a word I didn't know, to I switched to French and ended in with the German word, "damit" ("with it").

Since my own experience growing up has made me extreamely anti-sports, my reaction to your concerns is: FRAK THEM ALL!!!!! (Seriously, whenever a sports report comes on the radio, I switch to another station, that is how distasteful sports is to me)More seriously, with what country should his loyalties lie? That is a kind of serious question to consider. Citizenship-wise, shouldn't he be British? Culturally, isnt' that a hazier question? Should he be tied to one particular national identity? Or should he transcend individual national identities? He is, after all, more than just merely British, is he not?

Educationally, knowing more than one language is incredibly enriching. English is basically a fusion of two languages: German and French. Most things have two words for them, the Anglo-Saxon word and the French (ie, Norman) word. Here's what a philologist radio show offered a few years ago as to the size of different language's vocabularies:
English 616,000 words
German 185,000
Russian 130,000
French 100,000My mother-in-law (Mexican by birth and by education into the start of her adulthood) took an English writing class and her instructor's most common criticism of her was that she used words that were too fancy and not very common. Well, the common words in English are of Anglo-Saxon origin, whereas the fancier words are of Romance origin. The Spanish word for "to chew" is "masticar", like the "fancy" English word, "masticate". Those words that she would choose were the common Spanish words, whereas the common Anglo-Saxon words were not known to her.My own experience with German was very instructive of the history and structure of English, especially when I took a seminar in Old English (which is a very Germanic language).

I guess that I would have to say that a lot is cultural.In the Los Angeles area there's a German shopping Center, Alpine Village in Torrance. Back in the 1970's, they had a cinema, which is no longer there -- I departed the area in 1976 and returned by the mid-1980's, and I assume that the cinema had disappeared during that time.Anyway, circa 1970, a German native (in my French class, BTW) had informed me of the existence of that cinema and she immediately warned me that the German sense of humor was much more physical and slap-stick, as opposed to the word-play that is so prevalent in English.In my own opinion, what with English having 2, or 3, or 4 times the vocaulary of other languages, English humor has a lot more room to play around with words than other languages have.Here's the Spanish joke that I was taught, albeit from a Mormon co-worker:Cul es el animal ms flojo del mundo?
El pez.
Por qu el pez?
Pues, qu hace el pez todo el da?
Nada.
Pues!Which is the most lazy animal in the world?
The fish.
Why?
What does the fish do all day long?
It swims.
Well????"It swims" happens to be "nada", which is also how you say "nothing".Try it on your son and see what his reaction is. OK, you might need to have your wife do it with him.

Curiosity.There was an episode in a (relatively) recent episode of Doctor Who. The Daleks were laying waste to Earth and a main character teleported to Germany and there was about 5 or 10 minutes in which the dialog was entirely in German.Now, in the US SouthWest, many people are bilingual in English and Spanish. My question is whether a lot of Brits tend to be bilingual in English and German. To be honest, I would expect a lot more English/French bilingualism, since France is the first foreign country that a Brit would be likely to visit.

Really?I have no official stats to hand but I would be amazed if more than a very tiny percentage of Brits speak any German at all beyond the ability to order beer and sauerkraut. Many might have a smattering of poorly learnt French from long forgotten lessons at school but not much else. We are notoriously monolingual. French certainly was, and I think still is, the most commonly taught second language in school. But the number of people genuinely bilinigual even in that is pathetically low. German is probably second to that in terms of officially taught languages.Again purely anecdotally I would guess that the majority of Brits who do speak a second language do so as a result of being descended from immigrants in their recent ancestry. Thus Hindi, Swahili and other languages associated with ex British colonies are probably widely spoken. But my anecdotal "evidence" is inevitably biased by the part of the country in which I live.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

sounds like a variant on the Chevy Nova sales problem in Mexico."no go"

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- xongsmith

The Daleks, especially when led by Davros, are caricatures of Nazis.

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- xongsmith

The day after 9-11 I went looking for a United Nations Flag. I think there were deaths from some 87 different countries that day, although the exact number was never mentioned again or corroborated after a careful analysis. In any case, I felt a huge sense of emotional unity against Evil and my immediate thought was to display a flag - a silly notion actually - but this was so way bigger than the little Untied States & the 4th of July & stuff - this was the earth. And currently the best flag of the Earth is the UN flag, like it or not. But I was unable to find such a flag. Here, perhaps more than at any other time in the world, was a chance to make a significant leap forward towards world unity, to expose the stupidity of nationalism - that macho male dominated bellowing, chest thumping & remnants of a testosteronic bravado from our animalistic evolutionary past.BUT WE HAD AN IDIOT IN THE WHITE HOUSE!Ah, so much was lost. So much vaporized by assholeness. Think of this:If extra-terrestrial aliens from outer space ala' "War Of The Worlds" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still" or, even better, "The Lathe Of Heaven" by Ursula LeGuinn, - if these aliens had shown up and Dubya was in office, or even to some less extent, Al Gore as well, what an unmitigated disaster this would have been. For me, Fermi's Paradox is answered by the simple observation that we arent ready. I am also emboldened by the patience that they wait for us to be ready. On the other hand, 1000 years is nothing to the vastness of space. A million years is nothing. Perhaps even a BILLION years is nothing. 7% of the age of the universe as we currently think it is.Out where I live, in a relatively conservative corner of Massachusetts, I still have yet to find a UN flag for sale anywhere.I think maybe I should mail-order one. The UN may be badly implemented, badly regulated and badly executed, but it is the UN. Loyality should be to the Earth, not any particular country or state or county or college or high school, unless there is ZERO chance that physical and mental violence or persecution will erupt in the process - i.e. if it's just for FUN.Ah - just venting. Never mind.Remember: Fish Eulogize Whirled Peas.Earth???!!! - Loyalty should be to HILFs across the universe."Jai Guru Deva Om...
Nothing's gonna change my world..."Loyalty, pride - maybe forget them all. They only get you in trouble.Never mind.

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- xongsmith

There are many such commercial snafus.Like the Mist Stick. In Germany they named it the Miststock and couldn't understand why it didn't sell. In German, Mist means animal manure.And I saw a chocolate candy bar in Germany that would have never done well in the US. It was called Zit.

So then when the British go on holiday on the Continent, they make like Americans and expect everybody to speak English?I guess then my question shifts to British TV. In US productions, if meaningful dialog takes place in a foreign language and nobody's going to translate afterwards, they'll subtitle it. Is it customary for British productions to forego subtitles?

Notoriously so. To an extent it is one of those "class" things. The more educated and "middle class" will probably "have a go" at speaking the language so as not to seem presumptious and rude. But in any practical sense they will still basically rely on others speaking English to a large extent. At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum a certain sort of belligerent pride in making no effort whatsoever can be found. These are undoubtably stereotypes. But ones with some truth to them IMHO.AbE - The stereotype of American tourists I think is somewhere in between. There is no hand-wringing, feeble minded token gesture attempt to speak the language and no belligerent refusal to compromise. Just a complete assumption that everyone will speak English and an almost bemused impatient indignance at the situation if this is not the case. No. Anything not in English would generally be subtitled.Is it true that in the US some British, Australian and other accented but English speaking films are subtitled? I find that quite funny.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This was so spot on. Nearly everything he said had me pointing at the screen and yelling "Yes. Exactly. That's me!! That's me" Easily my favourite. Christ! That crowd WTF? As for the comedy... crude, harsh insulting... I loved it!! Mrs Straggler (watching over my shoulder) hated it. So thumbs up all round.BTW: The first clip was shot in Aus. from the accent. You obviously have a problem with accents When I listened I thought he was very funny. But there was something annoyingly distracting about his mannerisms. I am being too picky. This was OK. I like the subject matter. But this was my least favorite of your links.So, Doctor Onifre (Phd), professor of comedic studies at the university of harsh crowds and holder of the Perez chair of international humour - What do my choices say about my psychology and personality defects? A language without humour laden sarcasm.......? How does that work? I would be speechless 90% of the time (and just intentionally insulting the other 10) I was going to just reply to your entire post with a simple "fuck you" and see what happens. But I thought better of it. Coward? Yep.