Sounds about right for the people who prefer to visit places that speaks English.
Right up there with “They understand if you SPEAK ENG-LISH LOUD-LY AND SLOW-LY” and “I want a refund from my travel agent because there were too many Spanish at the Spanish hotel I stayed at when I went to Spain!”
That’s utterly weird, Weasel. Maybe when they speak English they are trying to be so polite or are so focused on the effort of speaking something close to proper English, that they actually lower their tone unconsciously. Else I make no sense. Which country’s and in which situation?
I’m apparently weird as an American who thinks anybody in the US should know/learn English but I also think that everyone everywhere should learn at least one language other than the one they were born to and I’m currently working towards getting a job as a Spanish-English interpreter. I do not think the first two are in any way contradictory, but since so many other people seem to I figure maybe I can make a living by exploiting their ignorance in the name of cross cultural understanding.
Not having one common language will only worsen things in the end, since you will have a bunch of communication issues – and it will be more expensive when you need to make material in a lot of different languages.
I’m Spanish and I agree. It’s better if anybody in the US has a common language in English. In Spain there are several languages other than Spanish, and it’s a mess. Besides, English makes a better common language worldwide, as it is easier to learn; I love very much Spanish as it is a very beautiful language, but it’s somewhat complicated. I’m trying to pick up some French now, it’s beautiful too.
I did a summer study abroad trip for a month in Spain in college, wonderful place. I have to disagree on English being easy to learn; it’s convoluted as hell because it’s basically the bastard lovechild of Old German, Norse, and French. By comparison, Spanish is refreshingly straightforward and simple to learn, much more user friendly.
Also, English is a lot easier to learn if your first language happens to be among the Germanic tongues. Not so easy if it’s Cantonese, Swahili or Maori, for example.
Yeah, Germanic and Latin languages have different base grammar, which is kind of reversed in a lot of ways: translating directly and literally, word for word, from Spanish to English will generally result in sounding a lot like Yoda.
All I know, linguistically, about Asian languages is that they are even more fundamentally different from European ones.
English grammar is easy, excepting phrasal verbs, what is diabolic is English writing, I’m sure that Chinese ideograms make better sense than English abuse of Latin alphabet’s natural phonemicness (i.e. designed to approximate actual sounds). It’s like ten times worse than French, and French written rendering of spoken language is already very horrible. No wonder you have spelling contests!
Latin alphabet is rather bad for most languages. Most languages use between 30 and 50 phonemes (selected from around 200 for the entire world), so with only 23 letters the Latin alphabet doesn’t have enough symbols even if you reassign the values.
The other problem is just time. English has changed since it was first written often enough to fix some of its spellings. Most significantly by passing through the Great Vowel Shift, which is why which vowels go where are particularly terrible. This is also much of the problem with French. Some languages with long written histories ease that with occasional official spelling reforms, but English didn’t and it’s presumably too late now.
Did Mr Dork leave? I follow him on twitter (along with mr sausage and whatever Rikard from 2GAG called himself on here), but I can’t remember his handle, or mr sausage’s for that matter.
I think it’s been pretty much a solo effort by mr. Sausage for a while now. I really want to make a “sausage party” joke, but today’s strip makes that pretty hard. Uh, difficult, I mean.
Good going Tinkerbell, they were going to make on in a minute! :D
*Sigh* … make OUT …
Places speaks English? Sounds like her English isn’t that great.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who noticed that. Would have drove me nuts.
Sounds about right for the people who prefer to visit places that speaks English.
Right up there with “They understand if you SPEAK ENG-LISH LOUD-LY AND SLOW-LY” and “I want a refund from my travel agent because there were too many Spanish at the Spanish hotel I stayed at when I went to Spain!”
And that The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!
Oddly, the Spanish speakers I work with always about double their volume when they speak Spanish. Maybe that’s where the stereotype comes from
That’s utterly weird, Weasel. Maybe when they speak English they are trying to be so polite or are so focused on the effort of speaking something close to proper English, that they actually lower their tone unconsciously. Else I make no sense. Which country’s and in which situation?
I’m apparently weird as an American who thinks anybody in the US should know/learn English but I also think that everyone everywhere should learn at least one language other than the one they were born to and I’m currently working towards getting a job as a Spanish-English interpreter. I do not think the first two are in any way contradictory, but since so many other people seem to I figure maybe I can make a living by exploiting their ignorance in the name of cross cultural understanding.
Not having one common language will only worsen things in the end, since you will have a bunch of communication issues – and it will be more expensive when you need to make material in a lot of different languages.
I’m Spanish and I agree. It’s better if anybody in the US has a common language in English. In Spain there are several languages other than Spanish, and it’s a mess. Besides, English makes a better common language worldwide, as it is easier to learn; I love very much Spanish as it is a very beautiful language, but it’s somewhat complicated. I’m trying to pick up some French now, it’s beautiful too.
I did a summer study abroad trip for a month in Spain in college, wonderful place. I have to disagree on English being easy to learn; it’s convoluted as hell because it’s basically the bastard lovechild of Old German, Norse, and French. By comparison, Spanish is refreshingly straightforward and simple to learn, much more user friendly.
Also, English is a lot easier to learn if your first language happens to be among the Germanic tongues. Not so easy if it’s Cantonese, Swahili or Maori, for example.
Yeah, Germanic and Latin languages have different base grammar, which is kind of reversed in a lot of ways: translating directly and literally, word for word, from Spanish to English will generally result in sounding a lot like Yoda.
All I know, linguistically, about Asian languages is that they are even more fundamentally different from European ones.
English grammar is easy, excepting phrasal verbs, what is diabolic is English writing, I’m sure that Chinese ideograms make better sense than English abuse of Latin alphabet’s natural phonemicness (i.e. designed to approximate actual sounds). It’s like ten times worse than French, and French written rendering of spoken language is already very horrible. No wonder you have spelling contests!
There are actually two factors at work here.
Latin alphabet is rather bad for most languages. Most languages use between 30 and 50 phonemes (selected from around 200 for the entire world), so with only 23 letters the Latin alphabet doesn’t have enough symbols even if you reassign the values.
The other problem is just time. English has changed since it was first written often enough to fix some of its spellings. Most significantly by passing through the Great Vowel Shift, which is why which vowels go where are particularly terrible. This is also much of the problem with French. Some languages with long written histories ease that with occasional official spelling reforms, but English didn’t and it’s presumably too late now.
Looks like Mr. Dork was dying to use that punchline since the “elf” first appeared.
Don’t you mean ‘mr. Sausage’?
Did Mr Dork leave? I follow him on twitter (along with mr sausage and whatever Rikard from 2GAG called himself on here), but I can’t remember his handle, or mr sausage’s for that matter.
I think it’s been pretty much a solo effort by mr. Sausage for a while now. I really want to make a “sausage party” joke, but today’s strip makes that pretty hard. Uh, difficult, I mean.
You’re right, I am the wurst…
and now “Tinkerbell” will have all the power for sure…great guys.
so NOT smart.
Hey! She made them Listen!
¡¡¡YO HABLO ESPAÑOLLL!!! XD
(¡¡¡I SPEAK SPANISHHHH!!! XD)
Yo también. No veo el problema.