Should German count as only one language?

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I mean, it is a sociolinguistic study, so I can't defend it too much.  The impossibilities of making sociolinguistics truly scientific are why I'm not very interested in sociolinguistics.  But they tested a hypothesis that people repeat over and over and over again without much evidence at all, found it lacking, and presented evidence to that effect.  Not too much out of the ordinary there.

Oh no, not this again...

[ilikeverin]

I mean, it is a sociolinguistic study, so I can't defend it too much.  The impossibilities of making sociolinguistics truly scientific are why I'm not very interested in sociolinguistics.  But they tested a hypothesis that people repeat over and over and over again without much evidence at all, found it lacking, and presented evidence to that effect.  Not too much out of the ordinary there.

Oh no, not this again...

Okay, okay, gratuitous attacks on correlational designs aside I think the debate here is more about whether the topic is a valid and interesting topic to study, and I don't really see how it's not.

[Sibboleth]

That's easy to say in hindsight, and I disagree.

No, it's obvious to anyone who knows anything about Glasgow, and to anyone who (alas) has at least a passing familiarity with a dreadful soap (what my Grandad would have called ket) set in a mythical Bangladeshi-free East End (a soap that is, by the way, not generally noted for its accurate rendition of current or former working class London dialects).

In any case, who said we were talking about accents?

[Sibboleth]

That's easy to say in hindsight, and I disagree.

No, it's obvious to anyone who knows anything about Glasgow, and to anyone who (alas) has at least a passing familiarity with a dreadful soap (what my Grandad would have called ket) set in a mythical Bangladeshi-free East End (a soap that is, by the way, not generally noted for its accurate rendition of current or former working class London dialects).

In any case, who said we were talking about accents?

Of course the main thing, the main thing, would be the decline of traditional communities in a wider sense, obviously. Mass media played its part in that process though.

[Vasall des Midas]

Egad, I accidentally edited my post instead of self-quoting. So the original is lost but here's the editted version reposted to the bottom of the thread.

People speaking fully-formed dialect  are usually what you'd term the traditional working class, especially rural working class.

I mean, I know men who come from villages around Butzbach or Bad Nauheim, commute to work in Vilbel, are only in their fourties, and who couldn't order a sandwich unassisted anywhere north of Frankenberg or south of Mannheim. But anybody from Frankfurt or Vilbel of whom you could say that is a farmer past the age of retirement.
[/quote]

[Vasall des Midas]

Arnold Stadler on the dialect he learned as a kid (born near Meßkirch in 1954. Well, born in Meßkirch but that's just because he was born in hospital rather than at home.)

In the beginning I was just matter, child matter, called die War. The word is not identical to German Ware [ware, merchandise] but dates back to proto-German and means the born (compare English to bear), ie all of a woman's live births. The word was preserved that long basically only in Schwackenreute, beyond the forest. But now it was retiring from circulation as we didn't understand it anymore, just like die Weiber [women] and other old words. Instead we were once again supposed to say Mädels, a nazi word, that had crept into standard language a second time via televison.
One day someone came back from the city and said "ich war" [I was]. And thus a false, superficial past tense had been introduced to us on top of everything else. Until then, that direction had been called "xai", Chinese as that may sound, "xai" - "ge-sein" rendered into standard orthography [ugh... "a-be"? "sein" is "to be", the infinitive form] , which meant anything not entirely lost to memory: I bi xai - "I am been".

[Beet]

What is the status of foreign language education in Europe? Is it normal for so many Europeans as we have on this forum to be fluent in English? In the US you are not expected to begin learning foreign language until age 11 or 12 and then it is only required for two to four years, and as a result most Americans do not speak a foreign language unless they have made a special effort or are in a peculiar circumstance.

[Insula Dei]

In Western Europe, at least, most people would have attained a certain level of command of English, yeah. English really is crucial to fully participate in popular culture and to further one's career.

[Beet]

In Western Europe, at least, most people would have attained a certain level of command of English, yeah. English really is crucial to fully participate in popular culture and to further one's career.

It strikes me that English is the greatest language of privilege in many places around the world, as are all lingua francas to some extent, but this one especially.

[Χahar]

Of course, English is the lingua franca.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Of course, English is the lingua franca.

Essentially this (though there are some stubborn holdouts - like French in the Western Maghreb).

In Western Europe, at least, most people would have attained a certain level of command of English, yeah. English really is crucial to fully participate in popular culture and to further one's career.

Not in Spain... (well, the thing about career is true but it is still a relatively recent development. In Madrid it was very rare to meet someone over the age of 30 who spoke English well or even at all - and I include quite professional people in this list, like civil engineers).

[Vasall des Midas]

What is the status of foreign language education in Europe? Is it normal for so many Europeans as we have on this forum to be fluent in English? In the US you are not expected to begin learning foreign language until age 11 or 12 and then it is only required for two to four years, and as a result most Americans do not speak a foreign language unless they have made a special effort or are in a peculiar circumstance.

You're still not legally required to start learning a foreign language before the age of 10 here... though opportunities to do so have certainly been proliferated since my time... and it's still technically possible to avoid that language being English.
But you'll be starting a second foreign language two years later. And you'll be doing at least one of them until the day you finish school.
Third foreign language education, though, once the norm if you wanted to go on to university, is much in decay.

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

In Western Europe outside of Latin countries, at least, most people would have attained a certain level of command of English, yeah. English really is crucial to fully participate in popular culture and to further one's career.

...fixed. That is France, Italy, Spain, Portugal.

Of course, English is the lingua franca.

Essentially this (though there are some stubborn holdouts - like French in the Western Maghreb and all over 'former' French African colonies).

...fixed too. I've always been amazed how some apparently classical citizens in DCR speak a so good French, including a very fluent accent, this is not the case to this point in other colonies from all what I've heard, ironically it is the former Belgian colony.

What is the status of foreign language education in Europe? Is it normal for so many Europeans as we have on this forum to be fluent in English? In the US you are not expected to begin learning foreign language until age 11 or 12 and then it is only required for two to four years, and as a result most Americans do not speak a foreign language unless they have made a special effort or are in a peculiar circumstance.

When I was a kid, it was also mostly the case, you officially start a foreign language at the 1st year of collège (middle-school), which uses to be 11. But for example the public elementary school in which I was had organized an initiation to English the year before middle-school. Then I was familiarized before some others, but still, it didn't prevent some pals who were with me in this initiation to be some of the worse at collège. The point was, you cared about it or not.

That being said, it kinda changed since then, for example my youngest bro had an initiation circa 6-8, I don't remind exactly, and this till collège, and not necessarily to English, he picked German iirc. And seems those kind of initiation are being more and more generalized nationally here.

2nd foreign language begins at the 3rd year of collège for everybody here, that is 14. And, classically, you can begin a 3rd one since the 1st year of lycée (high-school), but not all lycées provide it.

[YL]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not

A bit extreme as an example, as that's not even an issue of dialects. But even in England (and other English speaking areas) the idea that there is a correct form of English and that dialects were corruptions of something pure was a major part of the education system until quite recently. It's not uncommon to find people (usually over fifty) who switch their accents and grammar when talking to someone in a formal setting. And, obviously, it hasn't totally disappeared.

Here's a current example:
http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/accent_on_pupils_talking_properly_1_4266351