Re: URL: Nova goes belly up in Japan.

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:30:58 -0500, edgy wrote:

I see there is a debate going on in Italy about making English
a compulsory school subject (it isn't at present.) My experience in
Italy is that despite it not being compulsory in schools, English
competence, while low compared with Germany, the Netherlands, etc.,
is higher than in Japan, where it is compulsory.

I would describe them as equivalent. I had the occasional Italian tour
group stay in my hotel, and we always found it best to shift to mutually
broken Spanish to communicate. The Dutch do tend to do fairly well with
English, the only real exception being the group that was in school
during the Nazi occupation, when English instruction was not permitted.
Dutch is the language closest to English. English speakers have some
difficulty learning Dutch because of the pronunciation but Dutch speakers
find it very easy to learn English.


It's the damn vowels that drive me insane. They claim to have about 20
distinct vowels, but I can only hear about 10. I mispronounce words even
when I do my best, because I can't distinguish the sounds properly. I've
finally got that abomination they say for "g" mastered to the point of
being comprehensible, even though I still have a strong accent.

Reading Dutch is not so bad. I read "Panorama" (a true-life mystery
magazine, written at about the fifth-grade level) and "Donald Duck"
every week when they come out. I can make it through most of our
newspaper, the "Antillianse Dagblad" without a dictionary now. I go
through the exercises and stories in "Bobo", a magazine intended for
second-graders, whenever it comes out. I'm about halfway through Kurt
Vonnegut's "Slachthuis Vijf of De kindercruistocht", and, as usual, find
that Vonnegut's simple writing style turns into a simple book when
translated. I don't know how well I would be doing if I hadn't had two
years of German in high-school, though. You might be able to see the
parallel between "Slachthuis" and "Slaughterhouse", but the parallel is
certainly stronger between "Schlachthaus" and "Slachthuis."

Since my ancestry is Dutch and because I've had quite a few opportunities
to go to the Netherlands (although most of them are just an overnight stay
at the airport, I've made several attempts to start to learn the language.
However, I can't find anyone to speak with me even in Amsterdam.


Speaking Dutch and English, by the way, does allow me to understand
quite a bit of German - enough to get the gist of what is going on
anyway. To bring this topic full circle and slightly back on topic - I
watched the German movie "Nackt" with Japanese subtitles while living in
Japan - between my English, Dutch, and (barely) JLPT level 3 Japanese I
was able to basically fully understand it!

I studied German in college. It hindered me more than it helped me. As a
novice learner of Dutch, whenever I encountered an impediment, my mind
switched to German.
--
Phil
.

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