Things I learned today (Part 1)

Don’t bother with the app just use safari

:eek:

No Harry, a nice family one.:oops:
Anyway I’ve decided that it wouldn’t be right. Her Oul fella more to the point drives a Harley and has businesses in Russia, so I’d feather not get caught posting pictures of his daughter on the Internet.

PM @flattythehurdler! :cool:

Not that extraordinary. Any Irish kid doing two foreign languages speaks four despite living in the mid Atlantic away from the language melting pots of Europe.

Incorrect. Most Irish kids doing a foreign language will never properly speak that language because we are shit at teaching them.

Or more likely because they will have zero need to.

French & German children would have far more exposure and need to learn English than an Irish child would have the exposure and need to learn German or French.

That’s true but it’s not the point. Students that learn a language for 6 years in school should be able to speak it with some proficiency by the end. That Irish people learn Irish in school for about 10 years and still come out not able to speak it is ridiculous. We are pathetic at teaching languages in our schools.

There is only so much you can do in a few hours a week. To learn a language you need to be using it and exposed to it regularly.
Unless you are very committed to it, which 95% of school children probably aren’t, then you just won’t go to the bother of trying to find a french film or whatever it is Germans do.

[QUOTE=“TreatyStones, post: 944704, member: 1786”]There is only so much you can do in a few hours a week. To learn a language you need to be using it and exposed to it regularly.
Unless you are very committed to it, which 95% of school children probably aren’t, then you just won’t go to the bother of trying to find a french film or whatever it is Germans do.[/QUOTE]
I had an an A in german. I don’t speak any German now and spoke little when I got that grade. I take your point about opportunity and need to speak the language, but it remains that our teaching of languages is pathetic. Anyone with an honour in a language should have at least a high intermediate proficiency in speaking it.

English, though not the most widely spoken, is effectively the language of world commerce thanks mainly to the yanks voting for it by a single vote majority over German as their lingua franca. This confers significant advantage on native English speakers. Tax have or no, the corporations wouldn’t be lining up to HQ here as readily if theis weren’t so. Not being great at foreign language teaching and learning is in part the price we pay for this.
Our au pair actually speaks these fluently. It’s amazing but she must have a gift for languages. As an aside , her father told me over a good few pints that Russia is the worst place in Europe to do business, and he really doesn’t like it.

I did German in school and can still speak it and understand it spoken. Maybe you had a bad experience?

They invade Europe.

But have you used it in a work/life environment?

To be fair they make good cars

Great at penos too.

Decent at the ol alcohol as well

Have had some very good experience with ze Germans Fagan. That was just my experience of learning a language in Ireland. Not many of my friends fared much better to my knowledge.

[QUOTE=“flattythehurdler, post: 944961, member: 1170”]
Our au pair actually speaks these fluently. It’s amazing but she must have a gift for languages. As an aside , her father told me over a good few pints that Russia is the worst place in Europe to do business, and he really doesn’t like it.[/QUOTE]
That’s because it’s a backward, racist, homophobic, alcoholic, crime-ridden, drug-ridden, AIDS-infested shithole.