[Foundation-l] New projects opened

[David Gerard]

2009/8/21 Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>:

> I can speak from a bit of personal experience here. Between the Dutch
> chapter, Jan-Bart, and people on the technical team like Mark and Roan,
> the Dutch were well represented at the meetings in Berlin in April. At
> one point I decided to invade a table full of Dutch speakers, maybe not
> eight but close to that number, partly just to see what would happen.
> (Personally, despite speaking both German and English, and Dutch
> occupying a linguistic space vaguely between the two, I can barely make
> out the occasional word in spoken Dutch, although I have a little bit
> more ability to comprehend it when reading.) Anyway, everyone was quite
> willing to switch over to English without any trouble, although some
> Dutch was still used occasionally for conversations I wasn't directly
> involved in.


I'm now thinking of a friend who emigrated to the Netherlands from
Australia, and has terrible trouble getting people to speak to him in
Dutch rather than English, even when he asks them to. They hear his
accent and switch into English.


> For the English language, I think the underlying problem is a bit
> different. Often we native English speakers never really learn any other
> language, and by reason of not learning how things are framed in
> comparison, end up neglecting the quality of our own language, though we
> use it constantly.


Speaking English a bit is easy, speaking it really well is a bit more
work. Many native speakers don't realise how much work, or that they
have to work at it too.

(What's the next lingua franca going to be? When?)


- d.