Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for November 27, 2011

I’ll just bet it did. snicker

I started learning English (as a foreign language) when I was eight and it took me a long time to realise how these “foreign languages” work – so I kind of understand Alix’s logic. :)

I’ve barely mastered english and I’ve been at it for nearly 59 years..\\//_

English is a complicated language. Teen’s with their slang/naughty words, adults and their language and this does not include the language of texting.

There is nothing more fun than being in a country where you are barely competent with the language and you have children talking to you like you are a senile old person. Most teachers what you to know how to say “repeat please” is whatever language you are studying. “Repeat SLOWLY, please.” is a much more helpful phrase!

Very good, and your?

Laut lachend!

What are rednecks, exactly?

She must be educated in public schools! poor girl

I have a different take to second languages, kids need to be taught as babies up. I was born in Germany (Air Force brat) spoke 95% German until we moved to the states and then had to switch. My first grade teacher, due to me lapsing into German occasionally, told my mother to stop teaching me. I was able to go back at age 10 and while my mother had issues speaking I understood everyone completely. It’s also the only reason I passed high school German (failed every test but could carry on a full conversation with the teacher). Kids need to have second languages early.

We in America and the British Isles learn English as babies. It’s taught to us by all those around us.

All this talk of languages reminded me of a British sitcom that used to be shown on local TV in the ‘70s/’80s. Set in WWII France mostly at a little cafe run by plump Rene and his wife, who had an awful voice but loved to sing. They, her senile mother and the waitresses spoke ‘French’. Nazis,speaking ‘German’ and crashed British pilots, who were in hiding, spoke English. Plot involved the French Resistance movement and a valuable painting they all hoped to sell after the war. The viewer had to remember that the different groups were speaking languages although we only heard English. You had to keep track of who was who. Witty and funny. But what was it called? No one can remember the name, but they can’t forget the show.

Nein! This is quite racist!

Oh, Alix, you dummkopf.

One thing doesn’t ring true about today’s strip. Alix is supposed to be smarter than her years while her older sister is the clueless one.

@Monkeyhead,

I had a similar situation with my oldest son who was tri-lingual, but whose predominate language was German. When I came back Stateside after leaving the Air Force I was soundly chastised by his first-grade teacher for letting him continue to speak German or Spanish (his mother’s language).

And then we as a society waste a bunch of money on software and other options trying to get adults to learn or re-learn a second or additional language.

And today’s Stone Soup is hilarious, BTW. Glad I didn’t have anything liquid in my mouth when I read it!

That sitcom was called ‘Allo ’Allo.It’s always tricky to make a multi-language style of film when you don’t know how multilingual your audience might be. Some TVs are too small for closed captioning to be effective, too.

I was in K-8 school back in the early 50s, so learned proper English, while my grandfather (a retired professor of Greek and Latin) was playing with me by teaching me to count in Latin when I had just started to learn. I later took a class of French in HS (taught by someone who could barely speak it) and later I taught myself Spanish with the help of 2 textbooks used in HS; I practiced by helping out in a souvenier store and just conversing. I now keep it up by reading novels- I chose 2 so far by Garcia Mendez, this month reading “Cien Anos de Soledad”.

OH, forgot to say, I studied 2 years of Latin in college and had my own set of breviaries (one year was on the Caesars and the 2nd was church Latin). My first visit to Mexico just after college, I had a 4 hour bus ride to a small city shrine and managed to converse in church latin (of a sort) with a seminarian. Would have been a very long ride without conversation. On the trip, I took along a tiny Spanish/English dictionary (about 2″×2″×1/2"thick) -not sure if I had that on the bus.

This is so true, it’s funny, but also typical. At least Alix is too young to get that she isn’t the only one to think that everyone is born speaking English.

But this IS Funny!

@ Elderflower, Dry, crazymel and thrust: Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you! ’ALLO ’ALLO it is! Mystery solved :)

That’s kind of funnier than the comic itself… no offense, Jan. ;-)

My dad pushed me to study English when I was 6, boy I hated it. Then I went to live in Canada when I was 17 for 3 years and I thought the language was going to be a piece of cake….. HA. I ended up with a headache every day for the first 2 weeks, Now I know English, a little bit of French and some Italian and I believe it’s important to speak another language other than one’s own, so I have spoken in English to my kids since they were born, now we speak in either Spanish or English, but it’s funny because they pretend they don’t understand when I tell them something they don’t like, LOL

That’s cuz English is a poorly constructed language that tries to incorporate every other language but without the structure – I learned German in high school and it made much more sense! Sehr gut!

I thought she was going to say that she had known her family all her life and still didn’t understand them.

Je parle français et anglais et j’aimerais apprendrel’italien, maintenant.

Moi aussi, je parle le Français, and I speak English, Deutsch spreche ich außerdem、それで、日本語が話せます。

I speak 3 languages and i’m only 11