Is it worth learning "German" in the U.S.A.? (1 Viewer)

[Christ Reynolds]

only at the mexican restaurant? get a job in a kitchen in boston, if you don't speak spanish, you're in the minority right away. i had a friend who worked in a bunch of kitchens, he said everyone communicates in spanish and portuguese. not just the mexican restaurants.

CJ

 

[Ryan Wishton]

I guess the point is is the following: I don't want to put years into a langauge just to lose it because there are no opportunites to use it.

That's why I said, "Is it worth it?" It's obvious with a little deduction that I didn't mean that in a bad way.

People have taken six and eight years of a language in school and can't speak a word of it. That seems like an absolute waste of time to me. I just don't want to waste years of my life to lose it, if in the future, it starts to phase out and not even Germans are using it due to English usage; everyone wants to know the language they study. It's all in vain if one studies for long periods over the course of years and gets nothing out of it.

It's nothing against German (I'm German. I like the stories and the culture). If I was against it, I wouldn't have an interest in learning it to begin with. A person needs everyday access to truly learn a language well which is why I'm concerned about it's stability.

If I wanted to just have fun, I can have sex and make balloon puppets. I like the cuture, but I don't think the actual learning process of language learning is fun; therefore, I want to maintain anything I put my time into.

The fluent person who learned the language as a baby/little child is always fun to deal with... It's so easy, they claim. Well, I should hope so.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Yes. There are four tones in Mandarin (Cantonese I believe has 9!), and so there are many instances of words that share the same sound, but have different tone. For instance, in Mandarin, 'ma' can mean mom, numb or hemp, horse or to scold, depending on whether it's first, second, third or fourth tone respectively.

Similarly, the Chinese superstition about the number 4 arises because both death and 4 are "si", third and fourth tone respectively. BTW, the first tone is silk (can't remember what second is).

A big problem in Chinese computer usage is that whilst Hanyu Pinyin is a way to transliterate Chinese into the Latin alphabet, it's important to keep track of tones and that's where it gets messy. In particular, say in business, to buy and to sell are both "mai", but third and fourth tone respectively. So imagine the confusion, indeed anarchy, where brokers or traders don't know which way to go if their instructions were missing just the indication of tone... but that's a historic problem, in the days of telex and telegrams, I think nowadays the geniuses have cracked it such that you can enter proper Chinese charcters into MS Word or email fairly easily.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> I would've thought for an American, Spanish would be far more useful.

It would be. My sister took German back in high school 30+ years ago. She is now a teacher in Colorado, which actually has a fairly high Spanish-speaking population. If she had taken Spanish instead, it would be a big help for her.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Don't forget you can tack it onto a sentence to form a question.

'Ni hao' (Hello) -> 'Ni hao ma?' (How are you?)

 

[McPaul]

why don't you try learning Canadian?

we're bigger and we're on top. if we were in prison, america would be our bitch.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Yee Ming wrote (post #2):


Uh, I wouldn't bet on that, if I were you, bunky.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

donkey/ass was the intention!

 

[Al.Anderson]

Not really, I thought everyone knew that and was only kidding around. Although I did have a good table tennis buddy back in college from Taiwan. He had a lot of interesting cultural tidbits; so maybe I picked it up from him. (But then again he went by "Dave", so he wouldn't have had to explain that much ...)

Anyway, a 9 tonal language boggles my mind. I have a hard enough time with the three tenses. And given my inability to sing even Happy Birthday" without people moving away from me, I'd effectively be a mute in Cantonese!

So Holadem, exactly how many tones does Ewe have? Do we have a tonal gap to rectify here! (What countries are associated with Ewe?)

 

[MarkMel]

Well German is the most romantic sounding language. Think of the ladies you will impress with your guttural sounding prose.

 

[NolanJ]

If you want to understand all the freakish porn on the Internet, since most of it is filled in Germany

 

[Janna S]

I studied German from 7th grade through high school, went to school in Germany the summer after I graduated, and applied for a job at the Munich Olympics (which I didn't take, thank goodness, since the terrorist events at those Olympics would have been far more than I could have handled at the age of 17). I then took several German classes in college in preparation for getting admitted to grad school, which I later abandoned for law school. I have had few opportunities to use German for almost thirty years, now, except for helping the occasional tourist on the street in Alaska, or watching WWII movies (or the current great movie, The Lives of Others). But it has been amazing to me how much of the language I have retained, and how easily I have been able to slip into it on those rare occasions. In retrospect I wish I'd studied Spanish, since it would be more useful in a practical sense, but I have never regretted knowing German (in part because I think it was so easy to learn).

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Al.Anderson wrote (post #29):


The grammars say it has 2 tonemes, high and non-high, which are realized, respectively, as high tone, on the one hand, and mid- or low tone (depending on the phonological context), on the other. Naturally, a native speaker can be more explicit.