4.0470 Learning Languages, Part II (3/69)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 11 Sep 90 23:26:40 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0470. Tuesday, 11 Sep 1990.
(1) Date: Tue, 11 Sep 90 07:01:20 EDT (18 lines)
From: Charles Elliott <CEE@CORNELLA>
Subject: Re: 4.0468 The Importance of Learning Languages
(2) Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 21:34 EDT (18 lines)
From: Ruth Hanschka <HANSCHKA@HARTFORD>
Subject: re:Lehigh Low
(3) Date: Tue, 11 Sep 90 16:49 PDT (33 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0468 The Importance of Learning Languages
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 90 07:01:20 EDT
From: Charles Elliott <CEE@CORNELLA>
Subject: Re: 4.0468 The Importance of Learning Languages
One can only chortle with joy at Brown's splendid spoof of the ancient
and misguided notion that somehow learning a foreign tongue can improve
one's grasp of English. This, of course, arose from the fact that
learning a language called for learning the metalanguage of grammar -
once you know what a noun is - you know it for all languages.
Unfortunately, language learning is dreadfully conserv ative, and the
theory of grammar used in language instruction has for years bee n
medieval, out of date, and just wrong. Hate to be so dull about this,
especially after Brown's delicate spoof !
Charles Elliott
CIT Cornell Univ
(standard disclaimer....views are my own and don't represent CIT CU or
the DMLL )
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 21:34 EDT
From: Ruth Hanschka <HANSCHKA@HARTFORD>
Subject: re:Lehigh Low
It's true that most students need help with their English; read some
Freshman English papers if you don't believe me. On the other hand,
dumping the language requirement is a lousy way to go. Learning part of
a second [or third] language can teach you about your own. The things
you learn in language classes may very well tell you things about your
own that you never knew before.[All of the things that Mother never
taught you...:-) ]
For me the best example is verb tenses. If my grammar school teachers
ever taught me the names for all of the verb tenses, it must have been a
long time ago. I do not remember the names for most of them in English.
But I do know them in French. One of these days I'll have to learn them
in English.:-)
Ruth
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------152---
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 90 16:49 PDT
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0468 The Importance of Learning Languages
Dear Clarence Brown, and interested et alia, Your argument is one that
is all too familiar, and I, though not Emeritus yet, sympathize with
it, as translator and writer. However, as you must realize all too well
yourself, one cannot meet those arguments, those barbaric reasons, on
the grounds upon which THEY set them out. I think myself that they
always act in bad faith, la mauvaise foi, if I got it right this time,
and that they are really talking about a struggle for budget controls.
I saw how over 25 years our Romance Language Departments were shoved
towards ruination at UCLA, partly because they themselves couldnt get
their act together (being often embroiled in internecine personal
quarrels), partly because the students are not serious and marched and
picketed and petitioned, and partly because the bad faith of the
Administrators took advantage to scoop up the vacated dollars and FTE.
What was really wrong was that the secondary schools dropped the misery
of their 3 years' first, or 2 years, and then it became a question
whether 2 years in College did anything by way of getting some footing,
some little bit of another language. Instead, they should have made a
chosen language a 3-4 requirement of all Liberal Arts Majors, history
included, chosen that is by each student, whether Chinese or Persian or
Italian, etc, as a principle of education. Leaving it at 2 years was
the limpest solution, and so it went largely by the board, with any
number of substitutions of mickey cour ses to satisfy breadth
requirements, including militant ethology of this that and the other, so
that the rankbreathing camel of sociology and anthropolgy got its head
into the Humanities too, to dilute and destroy any SUBJECT matter, even
the grammar of French or Spanish, until it was an option, and when there
are such options Gresham makes his gloomy forecast true for other than
coinage. Yrs, Jascha Kessler at UCLA