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- Path: news.ios.com!usenet
- From: larrymb@gramercy.ios.com (Pacarana)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
- Subject: Re: Linux vs. Win95...Your grammar sucks, Smarty.
- Date: 21 Apr 1996 00:26:39 GMT
- Organization: Internet Online Services
- Message-ID: <1240.6684T1024T235@gramercy.ios.com>
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-
- > Heard a great American joke the other day:
-
- > Q: What do you call a person who speaks more than one language?
- > A: Multi-lingual (or bilingual, if they speak two...)
- > Q: Then what do you call a person who speaks one language?
- > A: An American!
-
- A joke just like that was published in a recent SW book:
- D: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
- H: Trilingual.
- D: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
- H: bilingual.
- D: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
- H: Monolingual?
- D: No, human.
-
- Anyway, what do you expect when they start foreign languages here in 7th grade
- at best and usually not until 9th grade? By then the brain is too set to make
- learning a foreign language a trivial process. Also, the US is so huge
- and dominating and the language is spoken so widely that it is not quite so
- important here. That said, learning a second language can still be
- quite practical and have other important benefits aside. Still, the US isn't
- like Europe or elsewhere where a different language is spoken every few
- hundred miles. With so many languages around used only here or there, it's no
- wonder that so many non- native English speakers pick it up as a second
- language.
-
-