Re: CHAT: Multi-Lingos

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, callanish wrote:

> >> It can be fun to hear someone speak in one lingo, and the
> >> person they are talking to answer in another. It can be
> >> interesting..
>
> Certainly! It's even more fun to be one of the parties in such a conversation
> ;-)
I do it at home all the time.  <rueful look>  For some reason or other I
stopped speaking Korean in the house (except "nae" for Yes, Mom, I know,
I'll get around to it) late in 5th grade, after we'd moved back to the
U.S.  So my mom speaks to me in Korean, and I reply in English, and
everything works out fine.  (My dad speaks English to me and my
sister--he's got much less of an accent, though I've had people who
assumed my mom was stupid or just not fluent enough to understand what
they were saying in English be unpleasantly surprised.  <sardonic g>
I've learned *never* to assume a heavy accent/English difficulty means
stupidity...especially with all the foreign grad students I tutor in
writing at Cornell....)

I also saw a lot of code-switching go on at my high school, which was
international.  :-)

> I say we should make everyone in the world learn Icelandic and make that the
> "official Germanic language of the world" ;-)
Any particular reason for Icelandic?

I think I remember one of Mario Pei's books stating that Danish was very
easy to learn to pronounce for an English speaker, but I won't swear to
it...and from hearing a Dane at my HS read the names in the Norse
creation myth (while the rest of us mangled 'em), I wouldn't bet on it.
Actually, philosophy of religion was quite, quite interesting.  We had a
Greek who laughed at us trying to pronounce the Greek gods' names, and....

YHL