For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By rusty eagle
#1848844
Fellsteruk wrote:Gutted Iceland should have won.

Based on our performance we didn’t deserve any points so I’m less bothered by that.


They would have with 'Ya Ya Ding Dong' (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga)
By Paultheparaglider
#1848851
Rob P wrote:
To be fair, anything with Bill Nighy in has to be better than Britain's Got Strictly Masked Celeb Island

Rob P


Bill Nighy has been presenting an excellent series entitled World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys on Channel 5. The most recent one featured Taiwan which is a truly stunning country. A recent one also featured New Zealand. Well worth watching.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1848872
Rob P wrote:One sad thing is that many will have missed the film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society that ran concurrently on another channel.

If you haven't seen it, it's well worth a watch.

Rob P


Yep watched it at the weekend Cracking yarn The tasty Lily James seems to be everywhere at the moment.

I rather rate Jessica Brown Findlay too : ever since she played Lady Sybil Crawley in the early Downtown Abbey series…,,,

Husky voice and nurses uniform ………

Time for my pills, methinks…… :wink:
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By kanga
#1848882
I've rather given up on ESC since Radio Times stopped previewing the full titles (in original languages and, where appropriate, fonts) of the entries, and since more entrants started singing in English (or gibbberish!). I was never very interested in the music, not having an apposite ear, but enjoyed trying to follow the lyrics. One particular treat was the year when the French entry was singing in Corsican, a sign that the times had indeed changed from the era when interest shown in any minority language in France was deemed by authorities in Paris to be inherently suspect :roll: I got my language fix by watching the Danish crime drama on BBC4, where the Saturday evening foreign language series has become a regular treat. :thumright:

At the end of the Danish at 2230 I did happen to switch over to BBC1 intending to catch the regional weather, but which had ESC still on. Serendipitously, it was just when the presenter was calling Tirane for the Albanian vote result. The Dutch lady's pronunciation of the Albanian 'good evening' (mirembrema) was excellent :) It was also interesting that the Albanian answered in English; a generation ago it would have been far more likely for an Albanian to know French, as this was commonly taught in Albanian schools in the Communist era. UK (and US) had no diplomatic relations with Albania 1938-1991.
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1848903
Somebody called Amanda Holden seems to have caused annoyance with a crass joke about language.....
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By Flyin'Dutch'
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1848912
johnm wrote:Somebody called Amanda Holden seems to have caused annoyance with a crass joke about language.....


No, for her ignorance.

But then I never thought she was on any show for he intellect.

The apparent upset is because she stated her lack of knowledge of other languages was so inadequate that she could not differentiate between Dutch and French.

I've long learned that there is a faction of people who thinks that all that is required to make a non-English speaker understand what is wanted by ad-jus-ting-the-speed-of-speech and arrrrtttticuuuuuulllllatinggggggg explicitly with generous lip and hand movements.

:D
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By Bill McCarthy
#1848916
Well, I’ve been to some far flung places and never ever had any trouble communicating with the natives. Someone said to me once - walk into a dense jungle, and sooner or later you’ll come across a Coca Cola sign.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1848919
Flyin'Dutch' wrote:I've long learned that there is a faction of people who thinks that all that is required to make a non-English speaker understand what is wanted by ad-jus-ting-the-speed-of-speech and arrrrtttticuuuuuulllllatinggggggg explicitly with generous lip and hand movements.


This is not limited to the English. The French do the same thing.

The thing that most of us get wrong when talking to people who are not fluent in your own language is that they try to shorten sentences down to just key words. I know from experience that you can often guess words you dont know if the entire sentence is spoken - but by cutting this down to just a few verbs and nouns, its much harder to fill in the gaps and unfortunately most people do this if you ask them to repeat something. If you understand 8 out of 10 words spoken its very rare to not know what was said. If you understand 4 or 5 words out of 10 spoken, you can get the jist of a conversation and mostly know what was said.

Regards, SD..

PS : My GF thought that alot of what Mr Norton said was much more offensive than the ingorance Ms Holden displayed...
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1848926
It’s idleness on the part of many Brits that they feel that they don’t need to learn a foreign language .
In the main because rightly or wrongly over the decades English has become the world-wide ‘universal language’.

Reinforced by the fact that Tony Blair’s mob removed from the schools curriculum the need to learn any foreign language , even French.

Further compounded by the disappearance of Latin from the classroom.

How long English will remain this way remains to be seen: Spanish and Cantonese are strong contenders . :wink:

It’s heartbreaking to see how many youngsters fall down on these :clown: mega-bucks TV quiz shows where a smattering of Latin would at least allow an educated guess .
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By Paultheparaglider
#1848929
Flyin'Dutch' wrote:I've long learned that there is a faction of people who thinks that all that is required to make a non-English speaker understand what is wanted by ad-jus-ting-the-speed-of-speech and arrrrtttticuuuuuulllllatinggggggg explicitly with generous lip and hand movements.

:D


You forgot to mention saying it ever louder. :wink:
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By Propwash
#1848966
PeteSpencer wrote:How long English will remain this way remains to be seen: Spanish and Cantonese are strong contenders . :wink:


Probably for as long as Hollywood films and most pop songs use English (or a rough approximation of it in the case of Hollywood films) :wink:

And I really can't see English being replaced in ATC or computer systems worldwide now.

PW
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By kanga
#1849033
PeteSpencer wrote:..

Reinforced by the fact that Tony Blair’s mob removed from the schools curriculum the need to learn any foreign language , even French... .


<continuing drift :oops: but only to correct a commonly repeated myth >

on the contrary: what that government did was to remove the requirement that secondary school Y9-10 pupils in English [sic] LA schools [sic] continue with a foreign language to GCSE. This was in response to complaints from some such schools that pupils were uninterested to the point of disaffection. At least 1 foreign language was still required in the first 2 secondary schools, and must still be offered in all schools in those GCSE years, but now pupils could choose to study other subjects instead to other GCSEs, if the pupils and parents had by then discovered and agreed that such language(s) held no interest for them.

At the same time, and importantly, all English LA Primary Schools had to start offering at least 1 foreign language, initially only for last 2 Primary years and either in class or as an after-school club; but eventually to lead to some foreign language in the classroom timetable at least once a week for all such Primary pupils. The intention was that any language teachers now not needed in Secondary would (if they wished, and with retraining support grants available) be able to retrain for and find ready employment in Primaries, which would also provide more opportunities for new language graduates.

It was the incoming Cameron government which prevented the fruition of this carefully planned long-term scheme by abolishing the requirement for any language in Primaries with their first overhaul of the National Curriculum. As a result, it remained true that many pupils had their very first encounter with another language at age 11, ie at an age where lots of early 'fun' activities in language like songs and games are too 'childish'. Unsurprisingly, many did not keep it up after those first 2 years.

</>

Language teachers from Secondaries, made redundant (by schools whose budgets were anyway being eroded by other cuts), whom I knew, simply abandoned teaching. Many found employers very willing to use their talents; some came to my last employer. I'm please to say that our local LA Primary, where all 3 of ours went, carried on with some French for all years by paying a native speaker teaching at one of the local Secondaries to come for 1 day a week. I (after retirement) volunteered to join in conversations (not speaking anything except French in pupils' hearing). Unfortunately, that French lady left at the end of her Secondary contract after the Brexit vote. The Primary still tries to do some French, using its own regular staff, but none of them is French-qualified.
Last edited by kanga on Tue May 25, 2021 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By eltonioni
#1849064
Mrs E says that Bill Bailey has said he'll have a crack at it. I nominate this piece, a perfect fusion of British and continental culture.

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