Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)

>Over the years, I've become amazed at the number of
>people who have a four-year college degree, but have
>never taken as much as one semester of a foreign
>language in either college or high school. Invariably
>they believe that learning another language simply
>consists of memorizing long lists of corresponding
>words with no thought that the grammars might be
>different.
>
>At my highschool, two years of foreign language were compulsory if one
Point one, we are mainly linguophiles here, so most likely we enjoy studying
different languages, and would  have done so even if not required (I was
required to take a language in high school and at the univsersity, for which
I chose Spanish; I also studied Latin, French, plus a bit of ASL, Russian,
ancient Greek, and Japanese while at the university).

Point two, I know and have worked with a vast body of university grads who
either graduated with no foreign language requirements or took as little as
possible and forgot it immediately. While a foreign language was required
when I was at the university (1973-1977), most such requirements were laxed
across the USA in the 80's and 90's.

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