Emphasis on French/German as foreign languages in Irish secondary schools

osarusan · 20-02-2014 10:56AM

Teach less language, more religion.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 11:22AM

Tomsh307 wrote: »

I'm not actually fluent but trying to get there. I learnt more in 3 months with linguaphone than 6 years of German in school. But ultimately I think you need to practice speaking a language daily with fluent speakers to become fluent.

The whole language teaching methodology being used here is highly questionable.

I know people who went through language degrees in university who still can't speak the language they've a degree in.

I did a couple of years of Spanish as part of a business-oriented degree and what we learnt was utterly pointless. There was endless focus on Cervantes and hours of boring, dull grammar classes covering obscure aspects of the language and then huge emphasis on literature (Spanish equivalent of Shakespeare) yet most of the class would have struggled to order a coffee in Spanish.

I wanted to learn Business Spanish, yet I felt I was being forced to do this huge broad cultural programme because the department felt it was 'more academically valid' and seemed to scoff at the idea of teaching Spanish language on its own.

In the end, I dropped the modules and did something entirely different.

There's too much emphasis placed on the abstract stuff like grammar and not nearly enough placed on speaking and interacting in the target language.

At university level, a lot of Irish degree programmes are entirely fixated on literature and cultural stuff too. So you get people coming out (often going into teaching) who have very poor fluency in the language yet may be very versed in literature.

The Irish programme at 2nd level has this issue too.

We need to distinguish between LANGUAGE and literature and culture. The two aren't the same thing.

If you've a BA in French Literature & Cultural studies .. that's what it should be called.

HalloweenJack · 20-02-2014 11:37AM

In relation to above, I did ten years of Spanish between secondary and college and agree about the way it's taught.

It was only when I went to Spain for six months of Erasmus and then came back here to live and work that my speaking actually developed. I had a lot of the grammar implanted in my brain, I just never got the chance to use it back home, and that's the most important part.

Legs.Eleven · 20-02-2014 11:39AM

Spanish should be an option along with French and German. I would've loved to have had that option at school and would've really enjoyed it (it's a fun language) and imo, it's a far more useful language than French as it's more widely spoken. It's also a relatively easy language to learn - easier than French, I found.

srsly78 · 20-02-2014 11:48AM

I worked in Belgium and Germany, having French and German came in very useful. As stated already, many people in Germany do NOT speak english! And even if they did, it's very rude to presume so and not at least attempt their native tongue.

Spanish is great and all, but look at the wages in Spanish speaking countries :P

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 12:08PM

srsly78 wrote: »

I worked in Belgium and Germany, having French and German came in very useful. As stated already, many people in Germany do NOT speak english! And even if they did, it's very rude to presume so and not at least attempt their native tongue.

Spanish is great and all, but look at the wages in Spanish speaking countries :P

It's the business opportunities from Ireland to Latin America that you'd be looking at rather than the wages.

HUGE opportunities for trade.

--

And yeah, I agree even making an attempt to throw in a few words of someone's native language makes a huge difference to how you're perceived.

I often find that a lot of English-speaking tourists don't comprehend the fact that French people (even in big cities) often do not speak English at all. They think they're just being rude/arrogant by responding in French.

Throw in a few words of French, even just a few politeness that make you look like you're making an effort, and suddenly you're very popular and often you'll get met half way with your bad French and their bad English.

Even in Dutch speaking places i.e. Netherlands and half of Belgium, I find that if you throw in the odd greeting and please/thank you and maybe a phrase or two of Dutch you suddenly go way up in people's estimation. It's not absolutely necessary as Dutch is so close to English that most Dutch-speakers tend to speak either very fluent or even nearly native speaker level English anyway.

Boskowski · 20-02-2014 12:12PM

Photo-Sniper wrote: »

Not necessarily true.

FWIW I speak fluent German and when I moved here I had none. I didnt struggle to get a job in the least.. English will suffice in most areas over here.

Germany certainly doesnt have a lot of opportunities. Well, that mightn't be true, but Berlin does not.

Berlin is one of the hardest places in the world to get a job, regardless of what language you speak..

Berlin is effectively part of the east. We know that the job situation is very different between east and west.

If you think that English will suffice in most areas you're simply mistaken. It will if you're a tourist but not if you want a job. Sorry but that idea is simply crazy unless you're looking for bar work in an Irish pub or something. Any half decent job you need the language.

Legs.Eleven · 20-02-2014 12:13PM

srsly78 wrote: »

I worked in Belgium and Germany, having French and German came in very useful. As stated already, many people in Germany do NOT speak english! And even if they did, it's very rude to presume so and not at least attempt their native tongue.

Spanish is great and all, but look at the wages in Spanish speaking countries :P

But look how hot their women are!

Lowest amount of English speakers in Europe here, so you'd have more chance of some canoodling/hanky panky if you spoke their lingo if ye get me wink wink.

Jinonatron · 20-02-2014 12:14PM

I live in Germany and speak German fluently. I also work in Beijing(long story that). However I learned German in school and travelled to Germany every summer as a teen. Really enjoyed learning it. I actually found secondary school language course effective simply because I enjoyed it and was getting exposure to real German in Germany. However if you are not getting this you won't succeed. Second you need to really want to learn it to suceed. Also in Germany not everyone speaks English that is rubbish. Far from the truth. If you live there and you have to speak English to everyone I would feel guilty speaking to some people because it takes then out of their comfort zone to speak English or they may not use it that often. The other thing is if you only speak one langauge you are doing yourself and injustice and missing out on so much. To be honest you don't realise what you are missing out on until you actually learn the new langauge and realise how much is going on in your surroundings that if you don't speak the local langauge you won't notice.

Second point is that I am also learning Chinese having travelled to Beijing every month for over a year. To be honest it is not as hard as you might think. The grammer for one thing is a lot more simple than German. The other difference is less people in China can speak English. On the scale of things it is hardly anybody. Only the guys working in foreign companies. Like if you go out on the street in Beijing and cannot pronounce the name of your hotel in Chinese with the correct tone you have no hope of getting a taxi home. Furthermore if you do and don't speak any chinese the chance is you will get ripped off. Speaking Chinese with Taxi drivers means they know you are more familiar with China and they will not rip you off as they don't think you are a tourist and are likely to know your rights etc. The opportunity to speak is everywhere because there is little English. When you speak to a Chinese person who cannot speak English you will become more imaginative and if you don'T know the word for something you invent and describe it using other words to get the new word. You cannot just switch to english like you could with a German maybe. It sticks in your memory. As a foreigner in China it is easy to get with Chinese ladies. Speaking Chinese increases the possibilities x100. I can also recognise about 500 common characters at this stage. This allows me to send text messages on the phone as you do not have to do handwriting and can input using pinyin. Doing this really helps you to learn to recognise characters. Producing them by hand is a different story. Another thing I do is shake my phone in WeChat and just start writing to randomers. In some ways learning Chinese is easier than a european langauge.

Also many people say they are not good at langauges. That's nonsense. Anyone can learn a language. Many people also say they wish they could but don't have time. Also not true. You just prioritise differently.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 12:15PM

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

But look how hot their women are! Lowest amount of English speakers in Europe here, so you'd have more chance of some canoodling/hanky panky if you spoke their lingo if ye get me wink wink.

That's because Spanish is a *huge* language and they don't feel the need to learn anything else. There's just so much TV, cinema, online content, music etc in Spanish you don't really tend to get a sense that there's any reason to learn a 2nd language. It's similar to English in that respect.

I was living in an area of Spain very close to the French border and it was mind boggling how nobody spoke a word of French.

I asked and they were like "meh! - there's nothing over there anyway!"

The result is that when it comes to second languages (other than local minority languages i.e. Irish, Catalan, Basque, Welsh etc) Britain, Ireland and Spain fare worst in Europe in terms of language learning. France is up the ranks of that list of slow learners too again, due to the size of the media and availability of content I think.

If you speak Danish or something, you basically have to learn another language or you'll have a *very* restricted view of the world. So, obviously you're going to at least learn Swedish and probably English and maybe German.

Being from a very small country with a small language is actually a huge motivator!

If you grow up in the Benelux region, particularly Belgium or Luxembourg you've no option but to speak French, Dutch and German pretty much interchangeably and you grow up thinking that's totally normal.

Ireland, Britain, the US, Canada, Aus/NZ etc are quite challenged in some ways by the fact that most of us speak the world's "international language".

English ended up becoming the language of business and the internet.

Muise... · 20-02-2014 12:19PM

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

Spanish should be an option along with French and German. I would've loved to have had that option at school and would've really enjoyed it (it's a fun language) and imo, it's a far more useful language than French as it's more widely spoken. It's also a relatively easy language to learn - easier than French, I found.

Once you learn French, other Romance languages are a doddle because you've mastered the most complicated one.

Can't say I find Spanish fun to listen to - it sounds like wet machine gun fire to me.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 12:21PM

Muise... wrote: »

Once you learn French, other Romance languages are a doddle because you've mastered the most complicated one.

Can't say I find Spanish fun to listen to - it sounds like wet machine gun fire to me.

It actually varies quite a bit depending on the region. As you get closer to the North of Spain it becomes a lot softer and more whispery sounding and some Latin American dialects are really quite musical too.

Standardised Spanish can be a little like 'received pronunciation' English - i.e. unpleasant to the ear and designed for clarity rather than flowing speech.

Spanish also has a quite different idea of phonetics to English or French - English actually has a huge amount of 'Elision' i.e. sounds are skipped / glossed over and merged together to make words fit. Spanish doesn't really do that at all.

In fact, a lot of Spanish speakers find that one of the most difficult aspects of learning English. A lot of our words are 'implied' rather than spoken.

Legs.Eleven · 20-02-2014 12:30PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's because Spanish is a *huge* language and they don't feel the need to learn anything else. There's just so much TV, cinema, online content, music etc in Spanish you don't really tend to get a sense that there's any reason to learn a 2nd language. It's similar to English in that respect.

I teach English here in Spain and there's a huge push right now to learn the language. They do realise the importance of it in the last 10 years or so but you're right when you say there's not much contact with English at all day-to-day. The problem is, the teachers can't even speak it (I've taught teachers before and their level was pitiful), so it's a vicious circle of shit standards, so parents panic and send their kids to private academies like mine where they expect miracles to happen but the kids aren't into the "extra school" they have to go to. Most see learning English as a subject/chore and don't like the language but you need to enjoy something to learn (which I try to bring about).

They also seem to resent having to learn it which leads to laziness among them. I teach in companies as well and those classes are a total joke with many students staying in the same level for about 5 years.

Things are changing though and I'll be out of a job in about 10 years time.

Wibbs · 20-02-2014 12:41PM

keith16 wrote: »

Can you please explain in detail why Mandarin is more beneficial than German?

+1, unless you're living in China or regularly dealing with Chinese folks, it's not much of a benefit. Yes it's one of the worlds most spoken languages, however the overwhelming majority who speak it are Chinese. Contrast that to English and Spanish, or French. Far more people speak it as a first language all over the world than actually live in England, Spain or France

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

But look how hot their women are! Lowest amount of English speakers in Europe here, so you'd have more chance of some canoodling/hanky panky if you spoke their lingo if ye get me wink wink.

Even when they speak English, few enough I've met speak it very well, or when they do without a heavy accent. I know one chap that if he was posting here you'd swear he was native english speaker(even narrowed down to native hiberno english speaker), but in the flesh there's more than a hint of Speedy Gonzales goin on. English seems to be a language not suited to them for some reason. Maybe it's a pronunciation thing? Apparently some sounds in languages are learned young and the ability to discern them when older is much lessened.

I've noted Spanish folks even with near fluent english have difficulty with E/I sounds in English. EG the words Peace, piss, peas, ship, sheep can sound almost identical to them. German speakers can have kinda similar with W sounds, sounding them with a V sound instead. Even with some english speakers there can be some weirdness. Take some British english speakers who add an R sound in the middle of words with an ahh sound(dunno what it's called). EG the word "drawing", they'll pronounce it as "drawRing". This can influence spelling too I've noticed. EG the word "drawer(s)" as in "chest of", I've seen it written as "draw" quite often. Almost as if the person thinks adding a R is wrong so removes it in the written word? Pattern is another one, where many british english speakers sound it as patten. The Hiberno english speaker can add extra sounds too, eg adding an aitch to Height, cos dropping aitches is baaaad, though we enunciate the R's in the above British english examples.

IMH native english speakers might have fewer such issues learning other languages as we seem have fewer such sound restrictions in general. Maybe because of so many loan words in the language and so many different cultures who speak it? Certainly with the romance languages anyway. I've known quite a few native english speakers who could pass as native Spanish/French/Italian over the phone, but vanishingly few in reverse who could pass as native English speakers.

Muise... · 20-02-2014 12:56PM

Wibbs wrote: »

I've noted Spanish folks even with near fluent english have difficulty with E/I sounds in English. EG the words Peace, piss, peas, ship, sheep can sound almost identical to them. German speakers can have kinda similar with W sounds, sounding them with a V sound instead. Even with some english speakers there can be some weirdness. Take some British english speakers who add an R sound in the middle of words with an ahh sound(dunno what it's called). EG the word "drawing", they'll pronounce it as "drawRing". This can influence spelling too I've noticed. EG the word "drawer(s)" as in "chest of", I've seen it written as "draw" quite often. Almost as if the person thinks adding a R is wrong so removes it in the written word? Pattern is another one, where many british english speakers sound it as patten. The Hiberno english speaker can add extra sounds too, eg adding an aitch to Height, cos dropping aitches is baaaad, though we enunciate the R's in the above British english examples.

IMH native english speakers might have fewer such issues learning other languages as we seem have fewer such sound restrictions in general. Maybe because of so many loan words in the language and so many different cultures who speak it? Certainly with the romance languages anyway. I've known quite a few native english speakers who could pass as native Spanish/French/Italian over the phone, but vanishingly few in reverse who could pass as native English speakers.

Hiberno English is Rhotic; Standard English is not.

Fact of the day: the international language of aviation is Hiberno-English. This is because our way of pronouncing 'th' - with the tongue striking further back on the roof of the mouth, is easier for speakers of most other languages than the English tongue behind the top teeth, almost 'f', sound. Mistakes in comprehension of 'free' 'firty' 'fousand' etc., could prove thatal.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 12:56PM

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

I teach English here in Spain and there's a huge push right now to learn the language. They do realise the importance of it in the last 10 years or so but you're right when you say there's not much contact with English at all day-to-day. The problem is, the teachers can't even speak it (I've taught teachers before and their level was pitiful), so it's a vicious circle of shit standards, so parents panic and send their kids to private academies like mine where they expect miracles to happen but the kids aren't into the "extra school" they have to go to. Most see learning English as a subject/chore and don't like the language but you need to enjoy something to learn (which I try to bring about).

They also seem to resent having to learn it which leads to laziness among them. I teach in companies as well and those classes are a total joke with many students staying in the same level for about 5 years.

Things are changing though and I'll be out of a job in about 10 years time.

Yeah, I've seen that first hand too.
There's a huge drive to learn German in Spain too at the moment.

I did a few months of language teaching in banks and companies and it varied enormously.

I had some classes in banks and internationally oriented businesses in the North of Spain and the level of English in those organisations was pretty high. Sometimes you'd wonder why you were even giving the class as they were basically native-speaker level. A lot of staff also had French or German. However, we're talking HQs of mid-sized banks so they did quite a lot of communicating in other languages (especially English) as part of their jobs.

We had a lot of classes with public bodies too. This was where the local government had decided that it was important to teach customer-facing staff etc enough to get by in English, French and German and there was funding from the regional government, the EU, Madrid and also from the public body itself.

You were basically starting from absolutely zero with a bunch of people who were often in their 40s and 50s and hadn't been in a classroom in maybe up to 35 or 40 years in some cases.

What surprised me though was that a lot of the previous teachers (from other language schools) had been trying to teach them through English only and were often starting out with quite complicated grammatical stuff.

We had some success with just working bilingually and sticking 100% to classes that were designed around their particular job. So, if you'd a group of say bus ticket inspectors, we'd do the class in a parked bus and role play everything.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 01:01PM

Muise... wrote: »

Hiberno English is Rhotic; Standard English is not.

Fact of the day: the international language of aviation is Hiberno-English. This is because our way of pronouncing 'th' - with the tongue striking further back on the roof of the mouth, is easier for speakers of most other languages than the English tongue behind the top teeth, almost 'f', sound. Mistakes in comprehension of 'free' 'firty' 'fousand' etc., could prove thatal.

Absolutely no language is 100% standardised and English is no exception. There is enormous variation in pronunciation in English as spoken in Britain and Ireland.

My accent is quite neutral broadcast RTE isn but I also lived in the US for quite a while and possibly have a little bit of a mid-atlantic thing going on.

During my few months teaching English abroad, I had one student in Spain who was 100% insistent that he could only understand me and that the two British teachers were not speaking properly or were from some weird region of England.

Both of them were from London!

I think basically he'd become used to watching US TV and movies and my accent was immediately familiar because I was pronouncing R and H closer to US English and he was totally lost when he heard Londoners.

We put on Eastenders and he though they were speaking Dutch or maybe Swedish. He didn't even recognise it as English at all.

The most important thing to impart when you're teaching English though is that there's a significant amount of variation. Most of the English language courses from the UK now use a range of accents in recordings and have moved very far away from trying to teach people to speak like the Queen used to in 1953 because in reality that's not what they're going to be faced with.

The other BIG issue with English is that its spelling system is totally insane!
When you come from a language like Spanish or Polish which is almost perfectly phonetic and you can basically pronounce anything if you can read it, English seems utterly bizarre.

We have so many quirks of spelling and nothing's quite standardised. There are also several different stress patterns used on words depending on their origin.

English grammar is also pretty alien to a Latin language speaker as we basically only have two true tenses. Everything else is made up on the fly by adding extra words. The other big issue is the use of phrasal verbs i.e. a verb made up with two words (which can be split into different places in the sentence) and they all have horrendously subtle meanings that don't always seem very logical to a reader.

"She stood me up!"
"I stood up against it"
"The clock stood on the floor for 200 years"

English can be messy enough!

Wibbs · 20-02-2014 01:02PM

Muise... wrote: »

Hiberno English is Rhotic; Standard English is not.

Ahh right. Is this down to the influence of Irish on our language, or something else?

Fact of the day: the international language of aviation is Hiberno-English. This is because our way of pronouncing 'th' - with the tongue striking further back on the roof of the mouth, is easier for speakers of most other languages than the English tongue behind the top teeth, almost 'f', sound. Mistakes in comprehension of 'free' 'firty' 'fousand' etc., could prove thatal.

Cool.

Makes sense too as you point out the hazards otherwise.

Muise... · 20-02-2014 01:03PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

Absolutely no language is 100% standardised and English is no exception. There is enormous variation in pronunciation in English as spoken in Britain and Ireland.

My accent is quite neutral broadcast RTE isn but I also lived in the US for quite a while and possibly have a little bit of a mid-atlantic thing going on.

During my few months teaching English abroad, I had one student in Spain who was 100% instant that he could only understand me and that the two British teachers were not speaking properly or were from some weird region of England.

Both of them were from London!

I think basically he'd become used to watching US TV and movies and my accent was immediately familiar because I was pronouncing R and H closer to US English and he was totally lost when he heard Londoners.

We put on Eastenders and he though they were speaking Dutch or maybe Swedish. He didn't even recognise it as English at all.

I meant RP. Oops!

I can't understand Cockney/Estuary either. All those glottal stops - they sound like angry seals.

Wibbs · 20-02-2014 01:10PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

During my few months teaching English abroad, I had one student in Spain who was 100% instant that he could only understand me and that the two British teachers were not speaking properly or were from some weird region of England.

Funny enough ST I've heard similar many times when speaking with non native english speakers, where they have said I was more understandable as a neutral Hiberno English speaker than other accents they'd heard. Especially British english speakers, but also inc American english speakers, which surprised me. One woman's take was my accent was like the US accent(s) minus the longer drawn out more open mouthed vowels and this was easier on her ear. Then again the Hiberno English accent and pronunciation varies sooooo much and I'm sure if she had been faced with say a Kerry accent in full flight she'd have been lost. I have been myself.

Wibbs · 20-02-2014 01:13PM

Muise... wrote: »

I can't understand Cockney/Estuary either. All those glottal stops - they sound like angry seals.

I'd find even the heaviest of them OK myself, where I have had to concentrate more was with some strong northern English accents. Some strong Scots accents require some concentration too.

Muise... · 20-02-2014 01:14PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Ahh right. Is this down to the influence of Irish on our language, or something else?

Most likely. Although Northern English accents are rhotic too, which means it could the RP (Ah P) that is the deviant. Maybe they're just lazy - 'r' is a difficult sound for babies to learn and is one of the last they get the hang of.

20-02-2014 01:16PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

The most important thing to impart when you're teaching English though is that there's a significant amount of variation. Most of the English language courses from the UK now use a range of accents in recordings and have moved very far away from trying to teach people to speak like the Queen used to in 1953 because in reality that's not what they're going to be faced with.

When I did a german course over here the girl teaching was spoke like a nice normal ordinary Viennese person, but when she spoke English she had this incredibly 'correct' upper class english way of speaking, it was slightly amusing, but pretty strange mostly.

The other BIG issue with English is that its spelling system is totally insane!
When you come from a language like Spanish or Polish which is almost perfectly phonetic and you can basically pronounce anything if you can read it, English seems utterly bizarre.

We have so many quirks of spelling and nothing's quite standardised. There are also several different stress patterns used on words depending on their origin.

Through, though, thought, (In Hiberno-english: true, doe, taut ). I was discussing this recently with a colleague, it's absolute madness and I'm glad it's not like that in any language I had to study to learn

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 01:27PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Funny enough ST I've heard similar many times when speaking with non native english speakers, where they have said I was more understandable as a neutral Hiberno English speaker than other accents they'd heard. Especially British english speakers, but also inc American english speakers, which surprised me. One woman's take was my accent was like the US accent(s) minus the longer drawn out more open mouthed vowels and this was easier on her ear. Then again the Hiberno English accent and pronunciation varies sooooo much and I'm sure if she had been faced with say a Kerry accent in full flight she'd have been lost. I have been myself.

Oddly enough New Zealand English throws a lot of 2nd language English speakers off really badly.

It sounds 'clear' to our ears but the vowels are all totally changed and shortened which makes it sound like a different language to someone who isn't used to hearing it as the fundamental sounds have shifted totally.

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 01:35PM

Muise... wrote: »

Most likely. Although Northern English accents are rhotic too, which means it could the RP (Ah P) that is the deviant. Maybe they're just lazy - 'r' is a difficult sound for babies to learn and is one of the last they get the hang of.

Actually, English was originally rhotic and some dialects, notably a large part of England, began to lose it in the mid-15th century.

I've never really seen exactly what caused it.

The non-rhotic accent didn't appear in the far Western England, the far North of England, Scotland or Ireland and in general other than around Boston and a couple of spots in the US, it's not existent at all in North America.

There's a bit of a non-rhotic accent around the old NYC areas too but, it's dead/dying out.

So, if anything the type of English we speak is actually closer to phonetics of the original language. Something in England changed, rather than Ireland mispronouncing things. We just ignored the memo and then taught the Americans how to speak proper!

conorhal · 20-02-2014 01:38PM

There's a very interesting article here for any that care to read it that outlines why Chinese is an insanely difficult language to learn. It's written by a westerner that is studying in China.

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

fricatus · 20-02-2014 01:39PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

"She stood me up!"
"I stood up against it"
"The clock stood on the floor for 200 years"

English can be messy enough!

We made up, made out, and then made off!

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 01:39PM

Fixed your URL for you:

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

SpaceTime · 20-02-2014 01:41PM

In the rhotic vs non-rhotic accent battle: rhotic has won big time due to the US influence on global English.

Rhotic accents definitely remove a layer of complicated phonetics that confuses people too, which is probably why it was more likely to catch on in the US where you'd a lot of 2nd language speakers.

----

One theory on the rhotic vs non-rhotic accent origin is that in the 15th century sometime the upper classes in England adopted non-rhotic accents and that became something that distinguished them from the peasantry. Then the peasants started trying to 'educate themselves' by speaking more like the upper classes who were trying to distinguish themselves from them in the first place!

So, ultimately you ended up with a situation where in the most class-system influenced parts of Britain, accents shifted.

That process apparently accelerated even more rapidly during the 19th century and that's possibly why there's such an enormous gap between US English and English-English.

During the victorian era there was a very strong attempt to wipe out regional accents in England and they became seen as something very negative. So, you'd a very rapid accent change occurring across England as a result.

Some of the regions with rhotic accents in England also have very strong regional identities and obviously Scotland and Ireland were hardly going to want to sound 'more English' so I doubt it'd have caught on!

fricatus · 20-02-2014 01:46PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

In the rhotic vs non-rhotic accent battle: rhotic has won big time due to the US influence on global English.

Globally yes, but it will take a long time to turn that London/Estuary boat around!

I really do wonder what foreigners make of "iron" being pronounced as "ion". And who is this Jessica Rennis person anyway? :pac:

Emphasis on French/German as foreign languages in Irish secondary schools

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