Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

The English system of Education falls down on languages as well. I got a
C in GCSE French (Middle grade, not a really bad mark, you take GCSEs at
16) not having memorized most of the irregular verbs, nor knowing most
the non-present verb endings. I lost interest to be honest... but I got
through simply by guessing on the most part when i was reading what
infinitive each verb was from and what tense it was in (they let you
take dictionaries into the exams as well!) In the spoken exam I mostly
guessed what was being asked of me and used memorized phrases as much as
I could to answer back instead of forming grammatical phrases on my own.
I'm ashamed really... its such a pity as well since at one point I was
quite good at french, but then my school made me do french and german at
the same time for two years and I lost all interest. That was my
school's decision by the way, not all schools make you do two languages
I don't think, but my point is the bar is not set very high, and you can
pass a GCSE in a language without understanding it much. And then, when
you go onto doing an A level (A levels follow GCSEs) in that same
language, you're in way over your head and you struggle for the first
year or so.
 As for vowels Christophe, French has four nasal vowels doesn't it? I
can only distinguish three, so I have a similar problem to your u and U.
I also tend to turn final e into ei (forgive me, I'm not as good with
vowels as with consonants), and I'm sure there are a lot of other
problems with my pronounciation of french (like the typical english
tendency to insert very short @ sometimes). I think my etre is more
etR@_X instead of etR and I don't think the @ should be there (just
looked up the X SAMPA hope I got it right).

> And since the French system of education is not very good at foreign
> languages, the result is that after 10 years of English classes, most
> French people are unable to pronounce even two meaningful words in the
> language (and can't understand even one!).
>
> Christophe Grandsire.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.
>

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