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English as a second language
English is a hard language to learn; mostly because of its relationship to pronunciation and meaning. However I cannot in good conscience barrage the English language as the most difficult, after hearing somebody speaking in Hungarian.
The fact is that learning a non native language is hard. How hard? Look at the toki pona posts and John's corrections. Even though toki pona is a pidgin language with only 130 words, with extremely regular grammar; I still manage to make mistakes. Why? Because learning a non native language is hard. (or I'm daft... )
Sister, o sister...
Which comes to what happens this morning with my sister. She posted a photo in Fakebook with some of her cohorts at the base. They seems to be playing a dice game in which she commented on a person that was having a winning streak.
I placed a comment on the thread asking:
What are you doing playing craps?
In which I got a personal message this morning saying:
Please put these kind of comments in Spanish being that wives of high ranking military personnel read these.
I replied to her with a link to Wikipedia that explains the game of Craps being that she actually understood that I was talking about the other brown thing.
We are all daft...
Which comes back to learning a language. One of the biggest hurdles to tackle are idioms. Why?
- Idioms is one of the least touched items when you're learning a new language.
- Idioms are region specific.
To be fair to my sister, I also did a lot of mistakes when I moved to New Jersey on simple things like:
- Asking for gas at the pump.
- Asking for a pop.
- Purchasing a capo for my guitar.
- Fixing a bike derailer.
Those mistakes were done because the lack of knowledge of American idioms that are specific to New Jersey. Sadly, those are only learnt over time.
Is this a big deal? Yes, it is. At my old job we got a memo in which stated that idioms should be discouraged when emails are sent because people from other parts of the world might get the wrong message. So yes, it is.
So now what...
Not much, really... Idioms are learnt over time and mistakes are made. Hence, don't despair, we all deal with all that... well... crap...
