allo allo
 

Albert Ross wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:05:33 +0000, Terry Casey
wrote:
More recently, though, we've noticed, both in northern France and
Belgium that, in towns which would be considered off the tourist trail,
the number of young people working in bars, restaurants and shops who
speak surprising good English.

I often wonder what would happen if the situation was reversed. How many
youngsters (late teens - early twenties) in this country speak fluent
French?

When I worked in industry, most of my foreign suppliers spoke better
English than some of the British ones

"Most" (of an unspecified sample) versus "some" (of another unspecified sample).

Got any other truisms you'd like to share?

allo allo
 

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:45:01 +0000, JNugent
wrote:

Albert Ross wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:05:33 +0000, Terry Casey
wrote:
More recently, though, we've noticed, both in northern France and
Belgium that, in towns which would be considered off the tourist trail,
the number of young people working in bars, restaurants and shops who
speak surprising good English.

I often wonder what would happen if the situation was reversed. How many
youngsters (late teens - early twenties) in this country speak fluent
French?

When I worked in industry, most of my foreign suppliers spoke better
English than some of the British ones

"Most" (of an unspecified sample) versus "some" (of another unspecified sample).

Got any other truisms you'd like to share?

Foreigners learn English pretty quickly when you point a gun at them?

And when you bombard them with US TV programmes

(the former point is also true of Spanish/Portuguese cf. South
America)

allo allo
 

On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:25:43 +0000, Albert Ross wrote:

And when you bombard them with US TV programmes

Even when they are dubbed into the national languge eg French or German?

allo allo
 

"J G Miller" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:25:43 +0000, Albert Ross wrote:

And when you bombard them with US TV programmes

Even when they are dubbed into the national languge eg French or German?

When I lived in South America, the US TV shows shown there were dubbed into
Spanish/Portuguese but the movies in the theatres were English with subtitles.
which is probably the reason I can read Spanish better than I can speak it ;-)

allo allo
 

On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 12:43:33 -0500, "Petronius" wrote:


"J G Miller" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:25:43 +0000, Albert Ross wrote:

And when you bombard them with US TV programmes

Even when they are dubbed into the national languge eg French or German?

When I lived in South America, the US TV shows shown there were dubbed into
Spanish/Portuguese but the movies in the theatres were English with subtitles.
which is probably the reason I can read Spanish better than I can speak it ;-)

Thanks to my "education" in French, German and Latin I can understand
langauages much better than I can speak them: subtitles are a great
boost to this ability (the Latin helped with Fellini and other Italian
films)

My speaking abilities are much along the lines of the Allo Allo
characters but I can understand Foreign fairly well, even Dutch.

I've had exposure to numerous dialects and accents within the UK which
I find easier to deal with, and of course many of them are based on
eg. Norse which makes them even more of a ******* language than
Standard English with its roots in Latin, French and Germanic
languages among others. Also some of the African Creoles based on
English or French can be entertaining

"Is how much o'clock?" - what's the time

"A wi' talk to you back" - see you later

Glaswegian and some southern US dialects I can't do without subtitles
though

allo allo
 

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 13:02:38 UTC, Albert Ross
wrote:

Glaswegian and some southern US dialects I can't do without subtitles
though

Glaswegian an' some southern US dialecks ah cain't does wifout
subtitles though

Well sort of related :-)

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/

--
Regards
Dave Saville

allo allo
 

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:18:27 +0000 (UTC), "Dave Saville"
wrote:

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 13:02:38 UTC, Albert Ross
wrote:

Glaswegian and some southern US dialects I can't do without subtitles
though

Glaswegian an' some southern US dialecks ah cain't does wifout
subtitles though

Well sort of related :-)

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/

Heh heh

http://www.strangebusiness.com/content/item/4597.html