Comment by olakease | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olakease | Hacker News Reader

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What makes English an elitist skill is precisely its natural language nature. I hope you had some time to visit europe. All of us get English as a second or third language at school.In european countries were films and tv programs are translated to their own language is not that easy to find common people that can speak English beyond the pretty basic. And this is a reality in countries like Italy, Spain, France or Germany.

In such countries, when you want to learn english —and you do not have a lot of money— your best deal is to travel to UK and get a crappy job so you can learn the language.

If instead of a natural language they got taught a non natural one, they will not need to that, because one of their advantages is that you get them really fast.

    > I hope you had some time to visit europe.

I've lived there my entire life, and not in native English speaking countries. As I said at the start of this thread I'm not a native English speaker.

    > In european countries were films and tv
    > programs are translated to their own language.

This isn't the case in all European countries. I don't think Germany, Italy, Spain etc. are doing themselves any favors by doing this. Not dubbing your movies is the perfect opportunity to teach your population the lingua franca, they're missing out, and it shows in their English skills.

I didn't grow up with dubbed movies, and I think it helped by language skills immensely.

    > your best deal is to travel to UK and get a
    > crappy job so you can learn the language.

Plenty of people learn English a near-native level without living in a natively English speaking country. I did, just watch some TV (not dubbed) and read lots of books (not translated).

    > If instead of a natural language they got
    > taught a non natural one.

I guess, maybe, but really this is never going to happen, we might as well fantasize over how easy it would be if we did away with this whole communication via sound waves fad, and just all learned the same sign language instead.

We live in an increasingly globalized world, English is the de-facto world language by sheer inertia. States that don't have it as a native language that aren't teaching their children it at a native level are at a distinct disadvantage.

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