SteveH in "opinion based on fact" shock

Lies!

That article doesn't mention once that Italian Cars are any good at all!

Douglas

Most people my age I know from Europe can speak English, their own language, and perhaps a third (French/German typically).

I can manage English, a smattering of German, and about 10 words of Norwegian, none of which are any use.

Most British kids seem to have trouble with English, let alone anything else.

Richard

That like everything else is the fault of TV, the ever decreasing exposure to English we receive in prime time. Combine that with most schools offering a "choice" of French or German rather than languages that people actually want to learn (for most of my friends that's Chinese, Russian and Japanese we are admittedly over schooling age by a tad).

I give english a fair stab, and can get myself understood in Germany thanks to schoolboy german, and now a few words in Spanish and Turkish. Not many but enough to be polite, and make sure when talking money, we are both thinking of the same number. Makes a big difference to how you get treated, even if they end up using english out of politeness, or more commonly a chance to improve their second or 3rd spoken language.

In a customer satisfaction survey published today guess who came last?

That should keep him happy. ;)

news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net...

I speak english and a few words of serbian (former yugoslavian republic) because of my girlfriend.

3 words to be exact im ashamed to say... 1 pizza (means pussy) 2 pivo (means beer) 3 piva (means beers)

So far thats all that I needed to get by.

same in Czech I think

It's a small world *grumble*

Richard(k66)

agreed i had no interest in french, no one likes them, no one wants to go to france and so no one has a use for french. didn't get a choice for german and spanish because only people who did well in french got a choice!

i'd of gone for japanese or chinese myself. wish i knew chinese as for some strange reason i seem to know a lot of people from hong kong? and japanese would have been great as a kid for import games!

Perhaps sir would like a few English lessons first ;-)

why i'm shit at the english thing, might as well try something new :)

Chequed beer... Theres a interesting thought...

I just looked up beer, loo, and pussy in french, italian spanish, portugese, and german, so now I speak 7 languages at least enough to get by...

There's not much in this world that disappoints me as much as listening to people in their late teens and early twenties who've not got the faintest idea of how to speak their own language. It's embarrasing for me to listen to people who don't have the faintest grasp of English even though that's the only language they can speak.

I'm with Steve H on this, if people can't be bothered to speak and write their own first language correctly "Because you understand what I'm talking about", then what chance is there of them having the intelligence / drive to do anything else properly?

Genuinely dyslexic people have an excuse, but I've noticed a lot more people claiming to be dyslexic when it's really their own idleness that is at fault.

Whenever I hire someone to work for me, I make sure they take a written test to see if they know the basics. Simple stuff, "they're / their / there" for example. If they can't manage to do that correctly they don't get the job. If I get a letter from a company and it's blatantly obvious that they can't actually write a letter without making mistakes, that company doesn't get any business from me.

I openly admit that I think less of people who make simple errors with their writing. People who use "txt spk" for no good reason are just pathetic.

Teaching me and my schoolmates French was a bit of a nightmare, because we'd never been taught English grammar. They got as far as basic puncuation and paragraphs in English, and left it at that. Hence a room full of blank looks when the teacher starts going on about the past participle, conjugating verbs and so on. If you see anyone young writing halfway correct English, they either went to a good (ie, outside of the national curriculum) or picked it up by osmosis.

I'm dyslexic, and dysgraphic ;)

But I'm with you on the judgement; if the smartest people in the world present me with txtspk I'll assume they're thick.

Richard

school

Agreed.

Intelligence, is genetic. Education has no effect on this. Drive depends on many factors, and interest in correct English may not be related depending on circumstances.

But some people are really good at some thing and just have no interest or ability in others. But "generally" you are right. You find that most baseball cap wearing yobs cant do anything at all.

I have a need for carers. The best and most reliable, and caring of these is illiterate, and has never read a book or newspaper in his life. The worst one is full of fancy qualifications that mean absolutely nothing. It depends on what you are hiring them for...

So I wouldnt have the only good carer that I ever found!

Your choice, maybe you should look a little deeper.

I dont like it either, but its a culture thing. As long as we have mobile phones with limited keypads, and space, it will spread. After all its actually more efficient, faster, easily understood, takes less time and space. It can only get absorbed into the general writing eventually.

Or we would all still be writing ye, and thou, and other now outdated stuff...

Thou may say things such as this, but I personally find it easier and quicker to use predictive text to type the whole words than to faff about with abbreviations.

Maths, Science and Engineering is going down the pan too. Some Uni's now offer engineering degrees that don't need maths. Any subject that's not just an expression of opinion is hard as you have to get it right.

Any time now you be hearing that History and Geography are in decline too - both are just stuffed with facts that aren't a matter of opinion. Try arguing the case for the Battle of Hastings being in

1065. Or the Congo flowing though Egypt.

Forensic Science is currently a popular degree, thanks to CSI and other TV programs. Forensic Science is watered down Chemistry and Biology but even Forensic Science gets watered down by combining it with a junk subject - usually leisure and tourism. Now if the 1st week of term the students were taken out to exhume a 3 month buried dead rat each and do a post mortem on the carcass they might wise up.

Class room contact hours are expensive - you need staff to teach, a room, cleaners, power for heating and lighting. FOFO (F**K off and find out TM) is now the norm, less than 10 hours class / lecture / turtorial a week. Rest of the course is done by 10 min to hand out the assignment, 9 hours to do it and it could have been taught in a 2 hour lecture or class, with a 2 hour assignment. What used to be a 50 hour week now needs a 100 hour week, but a lot of sutdents have to work as well to make ends meet. A degree self taught this way should take 6 years (like an OU degree) or you have the to be in the top 5% for brains not 50%. It was called "Reading for a Degree" at the top universities that skimmed off the top 5%, the next 5% did taught subjects with 30 hours class a week at the other uni's.