Quote:
Originally posted by Cloudbringer:
Alicat, this is a very interesting topic, one which I've seen bandied about for many years! I was a Russian language/literature major in college and when you do a BA and MA based on another culture and it's literature you find yourself hearing alot about how bad Amercians are because most of our population never bothers to learn a second language. As you noted, it can go both ways too, not only do the English speakers amongst us fail to pick up another language but those for whom English isn't the mother tongue frequently never bother to learn English.
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Wow you speak Russian Cloudy? Iīm so jealous! I have a few Russian friends who introduced me to Russain poetry. Alas I feel that a lot goes to waste in the translation.
Now about the topic. A lot of people fail to pick up English you say. Now I donīt know how to interpret that [img]smile.gif[/img] . Are you talking about in the US or in the world? First a believed it was the latter but now I`m not so sure anymore lol, since thereīs an obvious reason for a lot of people not being able to speak English. Lack of schools and education of course. Most of Africa and Asia lacks that. In Europe Iīve never met anyone who didnīt speak English and their English was pretty good as well. Since I live near the Quebec border (and my dadīs from Montreal) I was forced to learn French as well. Then I studied in Sweden for 1 year and a half and picked up a little of that. After that I learned that English speaking people have a terrible accent when speaking foreign languages lol. Why is that? Anyone know that? I mean our languages canīt be that different can they? (I also speak some Spanish and itīs the same about the accent).