"Average" person's language ability

[oh_meow]

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I was watching this old episode of QI the other day. If you're not familiar with this show they have a different theme each episode. The theme of this particular episode was France, and I realised that they were assuming that the viewer had some understanding of French. This is a fairly reasonable assumption in the UK, and it got me wondering

Comments

[k0dama]

I would be surprised if anyone knew any greetings and numbers in a language other than English and Korean in Korea.

Even though we're geologically neighbored by China and Japan, most people do not know how to say anything in those languages. Maaaybe "thank you" in mandarin?

[studentsnark]

Wow, that's really interesting. I'm actually a bit surprised to hear that, because, on my floor in my dorm, there is a Korean international student who speaks enough Japanese to hold a conversation with a student who speaks Japanese, and passable Mandarin to get along with a Chinese student. And he speaks French.

Maybe the kid's just amazing, though. He just gave me the impression that it was normal to learn Japanese in school.

[oh_meow]

People who choose to study in another country are probably more interested in travel and languages than average though

[maroon_ed]

Some students here (in Korea) learn Japanese in middle school, and a few more learn it in high school. Because Japanese and Korean are related languages, it's easier for the students than Mandarin or English.

English is becoming less prominent here--they just laid off native speaking teachers in the public high schools in Gyeonggi-do. Politics suggest that Mandarin is on the rise. Generally speaking though young folks here know some English, and that's the only foreign language most of them have in common.

[k0dama]

Also I think it's really interesting that people of the European nations are able to pick up on each other's languages so seemingly easily. Even if they can't form a sentence, the exposure is there if they wanted to pursue that language further.

oO surely this isn't merely a "well they are all part of a similar language group" effect.
Japanese and Korean are very similar in grammar and share a lot of Han-era vocab, but the cultural exchange is not so great thanks to political problems.

[oh_meow]

Well it's very common for British people to visit France and Spain for holidays, and there are a lot of cognate words that are easy to guess and pick up. Most schools teach French too. A lot of people visit Berlin too.

[oh_meow]

It's unusual to come across someone who hasn't visited the coast of Spain and Northern France here.

[studentsnark]

In America, I expect most people to know:

French:

Hello, goodbye, sorry, excuse me, yes, no (this is the extent of my knowledge, despite having a French-speaking mother. Oy.)
Some numbers, but probably not 1-10

German:

Hello, goodbye, yes, no, thank you but not please
Perhaps the most basic of swearwords
War-movie stuff
Probably no numbers
(I always expect more, because I'm conversational, but I'm always disappointed)

Spanish:

Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes, no
A few swearwords
Numbers 1-20, with some vague mutterings up to 100
Probably can read a fair bit of it, and get out some decent Spanglish, or at least enough to be understood

I also expect people to know some mangled Italian in general and quite passable Yiddish, at least in New England.

[studentsnark]

Ah, well, my idea of the average American's Spanish and Yiddish is probably colored by spending my early elementary years in a Spanish speaking community, and then I'm also a secular Ashkenazi Jew.

And I agree, German has definitely made my understanding of Yiddish so much better. I mean, they're so closely related it's not even funny; sounding it out should work for most German speakers.

But no Spanish in school? What language did they have? We had Spanish, French, and German at my high school with most students taking Spanish.

[crimsonmorgan]

With German I would have no problems, lol.

Anyway, I think you can assume that most people know some basic English here. You have to take at least one language in school and today that's always English. French and Spanish would probably look similar to your list (though I know almost no French due to not liking the language). In the right towns you might also find a little bit knowledge about Turkish.

[icanseenow]

Here in Germany: tons of random english (if they ar enot fluent anyway)

spanish: hello, good morning, good evening, girls, how are you?, yes, no, thanks

french: yes, no, please, thanks, goodbye, love, etc

italian: love, bye, yes, some random words maybe, especially food words..., beautiful girl/boy

dutch: I know a lot of people I meet in germany who know I speak dutch look at me for a second and then go "neuken in de keuken!" (fucking in the kitchen). I guess people also now the words for orange and elftal (for the dutch national tem) & maybe football totaal. and "lekker" (yummy) but thats only different spelling here

Despite Germany being near poland and scandinavia, I think most people do not know any words.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Dutch would probably really depend on where you are - people nearer the border in that direction naturally are exposed a lot more to Dutch than someone living in Bavaria.

I know a few Swedish words, but I think that's mostly because of my love for Astrid Lindgren.

[icanseenow]

Yeah, I can only really talk about the North of germany and berlin. and bavaria, mostly.

[icanseenow]

Oh and seeing as I'm in Berlin:

A lot of people definitely know some Turkish words, but often don't even know what they mean..