The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

Somehow it's even worse in Yorkshire.

Marylebone and Holborn are ones I point to as someone moving into London

[Sheilbh]

Sometimes think academia must be really interesting to work in and then see things like this post that went viral today

Dr Aidan Norrie 🦄
@aidannorrie
I've dealt with some pretty shitty things in my life, but this is up there with the worst. Charles Beem has sought to bully me into silence and submission.

@PalgraveHistory @Palgrave: do you think it's acceptable that a series editor can send these kinds of emails? Do you think it's acceptable that an author feels they are above critique because they are a "senior scholar"? What are you going to do about this shamless attempt to bully me? What will it take for you to part ways with Beem? (because I *know* I'm not the only person he's wronged)
How does this behaviour from one of your series editors align with your belief in "inclusivity ... for all"?
Maybe I should have shared Beem's earlier attacks, but I thought it would be better to ignore them. Clearly I was wrong, and it only emboldened him.
As anyone who has contributed to one of my collections knows, I am incredibly supportive, constructive, and engaged. I object to the idea that anyone is above critique, especially when an essay contains... *checks notes* literal factual inaccuracies.
I am ashamed to be a @Palgrave @SpringerNature author, and I hope that this awful attack on me, both personally and professionally, has consequences. Retweets and replies welcomed!

Love that he's a "Safe Zone Ally!" But just can't imagine the type of work environment with that guy as someone senior - or that produced that type of behaviour or, frankly, where he thinks writing that down is a good idea. I mean imagine being more junior in his department

From the QTs I've seen a few people saying there's a particular reputations/"issues" in the US academic world around Early Modern, Renaissance and/or British Studies departments - but I'm not so sure. Although I imagine some areas do have a reputation for being more collaborative/open etc.

[Duque de Bragança]

Somehow it's even worse in Yorkshire.

Marylebone and Holborn are ones I point to as someone moving into London

For the lulz:

Marylebone (usually /ˈmɑːrlɪbən/, also /ˈmærɪləbən/, /ˈmærɪbən/[

Holborn (/ˈhoʊbən/ HOH-bə(r)n or /ˈhɒlbərn/[a]

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm not sure there is any real agreement on how to pronounce Holborn, I would recommend mumbling through it.

[Duque de Bragança]

Isn't that what most people do already anyways? 

[mongers]

I'm not sure there is any real agreement on how to pronounce Holborn, I would recommend mumbling through it.

I think it depends more on which after-works boozer there you're going to or returning from.   

My own favourite is the 'Princess Louise' if only for the stained class and the enamelled toilet walls.

[Josquius]

Not articulating is not a feature of French. It may be a feature of some speakers, however. Macron articulates but does have a lisp, mostly corrected in French these days.

If you are speaking of liaisons, which is another concept, it's not compulsory and actually seen as helpful by lots of foreigners since otherwise silent letters are pronounced. The problem is more linked to the "h aspiré" for words of Germanic origin mostly, where a stop has to be made.

So again, well-known only to you. You are the first one to complain about it. Difficult pronunciation is too vague and relative. Relative to what? What phonemes? Vowels? Nasals?

Again just Google it. Lots of complaints about it out there.

For one, seems at least some Portuguese have this same issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/r014yj/why_french_is_so_damn_difficult/

As to relative to what - Japanese in my case.

Hardly addressed in a meaningful way.
And their prejudices about the relevant language, such as you and the French.

I dislike French because it's difficult and nonsensical. I don't say its difficult and nonsensical because I dislike it

In translation?

Nope. In French. Sometimes translating on the fly, sometimes having a crack at reading them as written just to give the boy a cute accent in his mother tongue.

They still learned English however. Sometimes I doubt you have.
Apples and oranges, comparing their situation to yours.

I'm sorry your English isn't good enough to understand actual English as used by a native.

What about German?  Should be fun too, for the Anglo-Saxons to rediscover their true roots.

At my school it was the second language, which I should have chosen in hindsight. How life would have been better. And not just for the direct language link.
Not seen much of it these days.
A few demands for spanish/French but German doesn't get a look in.

That's what you claim, it's just false. You are willfully obtuse, again since you cannot prove it. Where's the incriminating quote, by the way if I said so? I can't find it. The ones I find only show you using a libertarian strawman over a French idiom, mixing up substance and form. 

By the way, compass = boussole in French, not compas. At best, you probably willfully misunderstood a linguistic reference.


Remember, I mentioned the quotes, not so much the pictures. The pictures were arranged for comical effect such as the fez-wearing Macron (cultural appropriation?  ) they do no match necessarily the precise circumstances when Macron uttered his infamous quotes.

What you said is irrelevant. I spoke about the political compass. You decided to insist it was French. It wasn't that long ago and hasn't been deleted if you want to look.

OTOH, you mentioned the not-so-good way English was taught in the UK. That would explain your shortcomings at French, given the English is not optimal to begin with. Harder to learn another language if one's native tongue is not at reference level.

This is where learning Scandinavian could really be useful. I learned a lot about English when studying Swedish.

[Duque de Bragança]

Again just Google it. Lots of complaints about it out there.

Not good enough. Give an example. Unsourced claims, without any metric.

For one, seems at least some Portuguese have this same issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/r014yj/why_french_is_so_damn_difficult/

Telling that to a Portuguese speaker?  Priceless!
A closely-related language, icing on the cake, with (South) French having a noticeable influence on the language. Brilliant!
Reddit? hardly  authoritative. Extremely vague besides, not a single example of a precise difficulty.

Pronunciation-wise, Portuguese has all the sounds of French, except the ü. Portuguese has even more nasal vowels and diphtongs.

As to relative to what - Japanese in my case.

Non-European language, much harder to write for alphabet-based languages speakers. Keep going for apples and oranges.

I dislike French because it's difficult and nonsensical. I don't say its difficult and nonsensical because I dislike it

Your opinion, not a fact. French has lots of rules, yes but not nonsensical. Difficulty is relative.
Your dislike is proven, however.

Nope. In French. Sometimes translating on the fly, sometimes having a crack at reading them as written just to give the boy a cute accent in his mother tongue.

Good!

I'm sorry your English isn't good enough to understand actual English as used by a native.

I don't understand one Little Englander chav? Perhaps.

What kind of native are we talking about? RP talker? Chav? Other?
How about you discover the concept of dialects and sociolects?
The day you will have any foreign language proficiency at my level of English will be the day.

At my school it was the second language, which I should have chosen in hindsight. How life would have been better. And not just for the direct language link.

With your real troubles with French, German would have been fun as hell. But in the long term, perhaps.

Hint: declensions, cases, gone from French since the Middle Ages. Plus lots of rules, some exceptions.

Not seen much of it these days.

A few demands for spanish/French but German doesn't get a look in.

That's a shame. Here it is still used as a social/elite marker (unfortunately?). First foreign language German = best classes. So not exactly liked for the good reasons.

With hindsight, I think its difficulty is overrated but then I studied Latin. Caveat emptor.

What you said is irrelevant. I spoke about the political compass. You decided to insist it was French. It wasn't that long ago and hasn't been deleted if you want to look.

It is relevant un compas politique does not mean anything in French. What the political compass made easier, was summarising up, by pictures in a new way, an already present notion in French. That seems too complex for you to apprehend, a native speaker but not so great at his language it seems.
Form ≠ Substance

ossibly, not just due to your obtuseness or bigotry.

You still cannot be bothered with a quote because you have nothing to support your claim.

Here it is for you native chav speaker when you tried to use the Libertarian strawman, irrelevant to the French situation:

As for the so-called "libertarian invention", the French concepts "girouette" or à "géométrie variable" predate your so-called libertarian invention. They are often used for politicians not known for their consistency.

#469

The political compass meme, maybe not reliable in general for coherent politicians, possibly libertarian propaganda, works for Macron, the girouette. A pretty damning statement for him.

As for the girouette concept predating the libertarian concept, that goes without saying, except for you. It's documented, unlike your unsourced reddit links or non-existant google searches, not scientific at all, just a collection of opinions by random dudes on the web.

Reminder

Josquius on June 22, 2022, 07:49:32 AM
I think it's a pretty interesting and not too well known fact.

It's a detail (French meaning) and not particulary relevant in a French context.
Nice try at a diversion (reading comprehension issues and not just in French for you I see).

You say they predate it but don't give a year. A quick Google and the references I get, which seem to have quite a different "changing with the wind" meaning, are fairly recent.

 

They are idioms, and have been used accordingly for a long time. Any francophone would know that. Sourced to 1856, at the very least.
But then you and the French language... 

TLFI

http://stella.atilf.fr/Dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/advanced.exe?8;s=150447705;

B.  Au fig. Personne versatile, qui change fréquemment d'opinion. Voilà, selon moi, comme on doit agir lorsque l'on tient au titre d'homme sérieux... Autrement on n'est qu'une girouette (BARRIÈRE, Faux bonsh., 1856, II, 10, p. 80) :
2. Il y avait aussi Mirbeau, plein d'une effervescence amère et joyeuse, girouette au cœur chaud et aux yeux clairs, dont les jugements littéraires étaient fondés sur le plus ou moins de sympathie qu'inspiraient, à la ravissante, mais guerrière Madame Mirbeau, ses confrères des deux sexes.
L. DAUDET, Brév. journ., 1936, p. 35.

Until you realise and admit that, there is point in arguing with an ignorant bigot like you.

OTOH, you mentioned the not-so-good way English was taught in the UK. That would explain your shortcomings at French, given the English is not optimal to begin with. Harder to learn another language if one's native tongue is not at reference level.

This is where learning Scandinavian could really be useful. I learned a lot about English when studying Swedish.

Learning another language helps improving one's native language. Would have happened with French as well.

Incidentally, Your crappy link even says Swedish is catenated like French. Not the best example you chose.

Portuguese is as well, to some extent, dialect-depending. Lisboetes are infamous for that, compounded by their awful articulation.

[Jacob]

Thank you both of you for keeping languish alive

[Sheilbh]

At my school it was the second language, which I should have chosen in hindsight. How life would have been better. And not just for the direct language link.
Not seen much of it these days.
A few demands for spanish/French but German doesn't get a look in.

German's absolutely collapsed as a language option in schools. Not fully sure why. French is holding pretty steady but is likely to be overtaken by Spanish in the next few years, while German is now down at about 35,000 kids a year doing GCSEs in it.

At my English school German was the first language and I needed to get special permission to opt out of it (because I'd moved from Scotland and French was the first - and only - language) and into just French.

OTOH, you mentioned the not-so-good way English was taught in the UK. That would explain your shortcomings at French, given the English is not optimal to begin with. Harder to learn another language if one's native tongue is not at reference level.

It has shifted dramatically since Jos and I were kids. The English curriculum is now heavily focused on phonics, grammar and vocabulary and there is a lot of emphasis on it.

Not learning grammar in your own language makes learning other languages more difficult. So I get Jos' point but I don't think it's specific to Scandi languages I think it's just the process of learning those grammatical concepts at all.

It should improve language learning and there's some curriculum re-design going on to mirror that for modern languages too - but there needs to be resources put into modern languages (especially in state schools). That's the key issue.

Although I accept that the big issue is just convincing kids that it's worth learning another language when America speaks English and most of the media they consume is in English - again I think currculum re-design might help with that. I never carried on beyond 17/AS Level but I'm always thankful for my French teacher at GCSE giving me a copy of La Haine to watch at home because she clearly spotted I was into film and it would resonate for me and make French come alive a bit more than talking about my summer holidays

Again I think resources probably plays into that.

[Duque de Bragança]

I see your points, though I believe we have been through this before.

For La haine the banlieue sociolect was not too hard to understand, for francophones I mean.
As for Entre les Murs or even worse l'Esquive 10 or 15 years later, people over a certain age (>40 in some cases) needed subtitles.
Some naturalistic excesses as some critics understated it. The "barked" delivery, lack of articulation made it painful to hear at times.

I pity the non-francophones trying to make sense of the dialog. 

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on numbers - I think 2004 was when the government stopped mandatory foreign langauges until 16 which explains a big part of the drop from 2002 (Scotland followed suit ten years later). Still not fully sure why German has declined so much - my guess is it's just seen as less "useful" than, say, French or German which are also spoken outside Europe.

Really interesting that Spanish is the most popular language for A Levels though.

Also striking is the rise of other languages and I think this is becoming even more common, particularly for kids who speak another language at home (Bengali, Gujurati, Urdu and Punjabi are also popular options). But again there's the resource issue of needing qualified teachers:

– Big languages flounder

Foreign languages have not been compulsory as a GCSE for almost two decades. During that time, their popularity has collapsed – and the trend has continued this year.

GCSE French had 129,419 entries in 2022 – down 2% on last year, a decrease of 16% on 10 years ago and a huge fall of 62% from 2002.

It is a similar story for German, which had 36,327 entries this year – down 5% from last year, a 37% decrease from 2012 and a massive 71% drop since 2002.

Spanish had risen in popularity in recent years, but it too recorded a fall in 2022, with 112,845 entries, down 2% from 2021.

Spanish is already the most popular foreign language at A-level. In a few years' time – should its numbers start to grow again – it might also be the most popular at GCSE.


– Small languages flourish

It is not all bad news for languages, however.

The number of entries for subjects classed as "other modern languages" jumped sharply this year by 47%, after dipping in both 2020 and 2021.

There were a total of 36,445 entries across the 15 languages that make up this category, the highest number on record and – perhaps symbolically – more than the 36,327 entries for German.

Within the group, the most popular choices were Polish (6,003 entries), Chinese (5,504), Arabic (4,931) and Italian (4,897).

But it's a bit like the long-term decline in arts subjects like art, drama and music, which I think is a shame.

Although I think a modern foreign language should be mandatory to 16 so I'm old fashioned

[Josquius]

Telling that to a Portuguese speaker?  Priceless!
A closely-related language, icing on the cake, with (South) French having a noticeable influence on the language. Brilliant!
Reddit? hardly  authoritative. Extremely vague besides, not a single example of a precise difficulty.

Pronunciation-wise, Portuguese has all the sounds of French, except the ü. Portuguese has even more nasal vowels and diphtongs.

It's because you're a Portuguese speaker that it seemed particularly relevant to see Portuguese speakers with the same complaints.

This shows its not just me. As said, just Google it and you find many more examples of the same.

Non-European language, much harder to write for alphabet-based languages speakers. Keep going for apples and oranges.

Yes. That's exactly what makes it so interesting. On paper it should be much harder. Yet... It wasn't. I found Japanese considerably easier than French.
Its easy and hard parts gel well with my strengths and weaknesses.

I don't understand one Little Englander chav? Perhaps.

Sayeth the gilet jaun.

With your real troubles with French, German would have been fun as hell. But in the long term, perhaps.

Hint: declensions, cases, gone from French since the Middle Ages. Plus lots of rules, some exceptions.

Yes. My friends and I were told this which led us to the fateful decision to tick the French box which landed me in one of the worst classes and learning French.
However upon examining German as an adult and my experience with related languages... Honestly I do think I would have done better with it. There are rules but they are far more logikal.

It is relevant un compas politique does not mean anything in French. What the political compass made easier, was summarising up, by pictures in a new way, an already present notion in French. That seems too complex for you to apprehend, a native speaker but not so great at his language it seems.
Form ≠ Substance

ossibly, not just due to your obtuseness or bigotry.

You still cannot be bothered with a quote because you have nothing to support your claim.

More because the search feature sucks and I don't care enough to find the post again.
I remember what was said and know I'm right.
Googling compas politique it is the American thing again.

Here it is for you native chav

That word again. I don't think you know what it means.
Also FYI it's a southern word. We have never said that up here.

speaker when you tried to use the Libertarian strawman, irrelevant to the French situation:

Mentioning the fact that the political compass was invented by an American libertarian as a promotional tool is very relevant when discussing the utility of the political compass.

As for the so-called "libertarian invention", the French concepts "girouette" or à "géométrie variable" predate your so-called libertarian invention. They are often used for politicians not known for their consistency.

We have a similar expression in English. From what I can see, including in your quote, its a completely different thing to the political compass and a bizzare goal post shift.

The political compass is a purportedly a way to break the left /right paradigm which doesn't work accurately (duh) and show that right liberals are teh bestest. It has fuck all to do with someone with a versatile opinion.

Until you realise and admit that, there is point in arguing with an ignorant bigot like you.

You're the one who can't stand the fact not everyone is frothing at the mouth about macron being alive.

Learning another language helps improving one's native language. Would have happened with French as well.

Yet it didn't.  And I'm pretty sure that's not exclsuvie to me.

Incidentally, Your crappy link even says Swedish is catenated like French. Not the best example you chose.

Yes. Honestly there's been several times these days I've heard spoken Swedish and had to concentrate a moment to realise it wasn't french. They've similar vibes. But Swedish is otherwise easy, lots of similarity to English in the simple words, so it overcomes that issue.
I do ponder whether Norwegian or Danish might be easier to learn. Despite what swedes say about danish's pronunciation issues.

[Admiral Yi]

Heinz UK has ignited a raging internet debate by announcing that they believe ketchup should be stored in the fridge.

[Sheilbh]

Brands

Although Which?, formerly the Consumer's Association have done this