Re: True western view of new Baltic masters

On 17 Sept., 15:46, "santak...@xxxxxxxxx" <santak...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 17, 5:24 am, "J. Anderson" <anderso...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Dmitry" <dmitrijsfedot...@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1189973534.232912.47210@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Today, English is the most useful language
on this planet. Would an average Finnish
teenager speak fairly fluent English?

Yes, and not only through learning it in school (beginning with their third
school year, at age 9), but also because all our TV channels are spewing out
English day and night.

That's why mixed (franco-anglo) families in Québec are making a big
mistake when they send their kid to an English school for the spurious
reason of "So that his English won't suffer." Since when is anyone's
English going to suffer in North America? It is impossible not to be
exposed to it. It is the kid's French that needs a helping hand early
in life, not his English.

Re the words -- what do you guys use for wolf? Latvian uses all sorts
of euphemisms, like "pelēcis" (the gray one), "dieva suns" (God's
dog), and even "vilks" itself...

Re what you write above -- even I, with little experience of Québec,
know people there, in situ, who are genuinely concerned about the poor
English skills of their kids. Anglophones in Québec don't live in
"North America" -- they live, like speakers of any language anywhere,
in an immediate linguistic environment that is influenced, sometimes
heavily, by a broader one.

One of the major complaints of Russophones here with regard to the
education reform is a simple one -- their kids will grow up with bad
Latvian, bad Russian, and no real linguistic home ground. This
complaint is not so easily dismissed. Language isn't national. The
lists of the best schools in Latvia include at least a couple of
Daugavpils schools -- Russian ones.

In my personal opinion -- when you boil these questions down, you must
be careful about your pots and kettles. The sacred sufferings of the
accursed Lettophones vs. a terrorized mother tongue, for example. Most
Europeans focus upon the individual, not upon the imaginary,
legendary, or even imaginal nation-state. Tant pis.

I was taken aback the first time I met people from Québec who spoke no
English -- hey, it's North America? No problem, but weird and rather
debilitating. I was taken aback the first time I met Lithuanians (in
Lithuania) who spoke no Russian... when English didn't help, I was
taken aback yet again.

You seem to believe that this sort of environment helps the language
-- I don't believe that at all. In my experience, it's usually
provincialism taken into inanity. Those I know who have brilliant
Latvian tend to be those who also have brilliant Russian.

I spent part of this day performing a most absurd task: translating
letters by Latvian historians into English -- letters to Russian
historians. Now, I know perfectly well that these historians are
fluent in Russian -- in fact, they probably wrote their dissertations
in Russian. Can one really be so rude, then, or such an idiot? If this
is to prove a point -- what point does it prove?

In the end, what Balts will prove is that they can bash their heads
against a wall better than anybody, and Makarenko and maybe even MTRP
will be vindicated. Sad, but true.

Geriausio,
/P

.

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