Dillards 38: Still Chewing on that Foot in His Mouth

[Beermeet]

1 hour ago, lomo6 said:

Trump grew up wealthy and went to prestigious schools (including UPenn), so the theory wouldn't apply. 

That could be a case of parents buying his way through school to graduate.  It happens.  I'd like to see his grades.  Gradegate2017

[LawsonBatesEgo]

RE Spanish/Italian. I'm fluent in Spanish (my mother is from Colombia)  and when I was in Italy, I spoke Spanish when I needed something and was understood and could understand about 90% of what was said to me. They really are very similar languages. 

1 hour ago, Cheetah said:

Awesome!  My sister went to the Russian one back in the day (um, around 30 years ago...) so that's how they were on my radar, but I've been so impressed with them.  My son keeps busting out new German songs I didn't know he had learned.  And their immersion system with lots of fun activities means the kids get over the hump of being terrified of speaking when they aren't perfect.   (I learned the more traditional way with the once a day school class starting in 7th grade and was always great at grammar, conjugations, etc, but was terrified to actually speak German to a real German :-) .. .and you don't really get any better at conversational anything without trying it.

I used to be like this at French until I went and did a study abroad in Paris. Learned the traditional way at school/university and was very good at writing grammatically good French and reading French, but was terrified at speaking French to actual French speakers and had trouble with listening comprehension even though I could understand written French very well.

The emphasis my school/university put on being "grammatically correct" did a disservice IMO. Yes, it is good to learn correctly but mild grammatical missteps generally won't impede someone understanding you. And people get afraid to speak to native speakers because hey are worried about being correct. I'm fluent in German because my father is German and just as an example, if someone uses the wrong "der/die/das/den/dem/des"....yeah it "sounds" wrong, but I know what they mean so it's actually not a huge issue. It's like I'm English if someone said "I runned there" instead of "I ran there" or "Is you tired" instead as of "are you tired?" Yeah, it sounds wrong but you know what they meant. I wish language instruction had a better balance between teaching correctly while emphasising that the most important thing in the learning stages is being able to get your meaning across. Most native/fluent speakers are very understanding of learners and won't be a dick about a misconjugated verb.

It took me a while to let go of being afraid to make a mistake and be able to just speak to French people. 

[KnittingOwl]

1 hour ago, lomo6 said:

Trump grew up wealthy and went to prestigious schools (including UPenn), so the theory wouldn't apply. 

Trump went to Wharton at U Penn after going to Fordham for two years.  I suspect his family's connections and money had a lot to do with that admission, and biographers have said the same.

[feministxtian]

I can read books/newspapers quite well in Spanish. I can also make out Italian, French and Portuguese (understanding spoken language and reading). German is a little harder for me, I can sort of make out the gist of what's written. 

The interesting part...I come from what I would characterize as a lower middle class environment with parents who weren't really "native" English speakers. My father did not learn English (although he was born in the USA) until he went to school and my mother's first language was Spanish. HOWEVER, they did provide some intellectual enrichment for me...I remember reading the World Book Encyclopedia (remember that???) for fun. I'm woefully undereducated, formal education that is. However, I've written technical documents professionally, can intelligently discuss the things that interest me (see Space program and cars along with a whole lot of very useless trivia), and have a pretty extensive vocabulary (in English). 

If anyone wants to talk about the space program, nuclear power/propulsion or muscle cars, HMU. 

Why? Hellifino other than for some reason I was blessed/cursed with a fairly decent brain and an almost obsessive need to learn things that interest me. 

[FloraDoraDolly]

15 minutes ago, KnittingOwl said:

Trump went to Wharton at U Penn after going to Fordham for two years.  I suspect his family's connections and money had a lot to do with that admission, and biographers have said the same.

George W. Bush also came from an extraordinarily wealthy family and wasn't exactly an articulate speaker. Affirmative action for rich white dudes goes a long way.

[marmalade]

2 hours ago, Beermeet said:

That could be a case of parents buying his way through school to graduate.  It happens.  I'd like to see his grades.  Gradegate2017

Well, we know that Dubya had a C average at Yale and managed to get himself admitted into Harvard for an MBA. How big were the donations from Pere Bush to get Dubya graduated from Yale (probably even admitted to Yale, where I believe he was a legacy) and admitted to fucking Harvard? Whaaaaat? 

Love these rich boy Vietnam draft dodgers that have been elected president. Both failures without Daddy's wallet. 

[sawasdee]

WRT vocabulary, I think there is a difference between the total vocabulary, usually in the thousands of words, and the daily working vocabulary, which for many native English speakers is less than one thousand words. So Jill may have an average vocabulary, but a smaller than average daily working vocabulary

Fun fact: apparently the people with the largest daily working vocabulary of native English speakers are the Irish, with a daily working vocab as much as four times higher than the average English person.....

[Snarkle Motion]

4 hours ago, Beermeet said:

That could be a case of parents buying his way through school to graduate.  It happens.  I'd like to see his grades.  Gradegate2017

You can absolutely buy your way into prestigious schools. I think it's called the Z-list at Harvard. You make a donation of a certain amount and you get in (although sometimes they make you take a year off). Kushner was known for this.

[wikinggirl]

Talking about languages, all of the Scandinavian languages are pretty similar. I used to watch kids show in Swedish and Danish growing up, and I have no problems reading or understanding it now. A lot of Norwegians find Danish a little hard (because it sounds like they talk with a potato in their mouth) but written out it's pretty much the same as Norwegian. Of course, that has something to do with the fact that we were under Denmark for 400 years... Knowing these languages also made learning German a lot easier, because there's so many similar words. 

 

[LurkerOverThePond]

32 minutes ago, wikinggirl said:

Talking about languages, all of the Scandinavian languages are pretty similar. 

This. I'm a Finn (so no help there understanding any Indo-European language...) who studied Swedish for six years at school since it's compulsory here. Based on Swedish, you can pretty much understand most of written Norwegian or Danish and some spoken language, too. Icelandic, on the other hand... well, let's just say that having a pretty good understanding of Swedish hasn't helped me understand Icelandic, or their alphabets!

 

[Chewing Gum]

1 hour ago, wikinggirl said:

Talking about languages, all of the Scandinavian languages are pretty similar. (...) Knowing these languages also made learning German a lot easier, because there's so many similar words. 

 

True, I speak Dutch but live in Fryslân , the upper part of Holland where they speak Frysk, a language of it's own. I don't speak it past a few sentences for my kids (mostly anything related to "stop doing that" ), but I can read and understand it perfectly when spoken to me. And the Frysian people love their own language so you learn to understand it pretty fast. It's a mixture of Dutch, English and German, and very phonetically written down so if you read it aloud it's pretty easy to understand. 

[wikinggirl]

30 minutes ago, LurkerOverThePond said:

This. I'm a Finn (so no help there understanding any Indo-European language...) who studied Swedish for six years at school since it's compulsory here. Based on Swedish, you can pretty much understand most of written Norwegian or Danish and some spoken language, too. Icelandic, on the other hand... well, let's just say that having a pretty good understanding of Swedish hasn't helped me understand Icelandic, or their alphabets!

 

I agree! Icelandic is a bit difficult.I actually find Faroese easier, because it's so similar to our second written language, nynorsk (new norwegian, a constructed written language from the 19th century based on Norwegian dialects)

[Miggy]

On 12/08/2017 at 1:58 PM, ChickenettiLuvr said:

Thank you, @Miggy. Very informative! I'd also love to read more about this if you could direct me to source material, please.

Google: Bridges Out of Poverty

We attend the conference every year. There are many books written by those who run the conference. They make a lot more sense if you do the conference as well but they are still fascinating on their own. The book 'Toxic Charity' has completely changed the way we work and I would love to share it with the Duggars. I recommend reading 'Bridges Out of Poverty' first though.

[kunoichi66]

19 hours ago, nastyhobbitses said:

 And then once I get my Spanish and Mandarin up to snuff, I want to try working on German, since when I was traveling in Germany, I found myself picking it up fairly quickly. I was still just about at Drunk Three-Year-Old Level, but I could understand directions, ask where things were, ask for stuff, greet people, count, and understand decent chunks of conversations. Though I also think it might be useful and a fun challenge to learn Hindi (all I can say in Hindi right now is "hello, how are you", "my name is NastyHobbitses", and "what is this").

You are like me, I have this huge list of languages I want to learn (or relearn), as well! I'm learning German, but losing my French, so I want to keep that up somehow....and Hebrew sounds awesome, and so does Sanskrit...and and and...

 

Languages are just awesome

[Miggy]

To those who asked about the eleven criteria, I don't remember them by heart and my notes are at work. I'll fill you in when I go tomorrow, rather than possibly make an error tryi to remember. The two resources they have are spirituality and money. Spirituality in this sense is not the same as religious belief. We look at whether the person has some sort of belief that gives them a support system in their lives. I work with a Christian lady who does not engage with people at church so she has no social network there and her belief is just God loves me so when I die I will go to heaven. She does not get any support from her belief. She scores 0 for spirituality. Duggars get a lot of support and comfort from their beliefs, even if we think they are loopy, so they score pretty high on that resource. 

Someone commented on how language is acquired. I would be interested to sit down with you and have a coffee and learn what you can teach me. In my job, I help people where they are at, wherever they may be. When I recognise someone has language limitations due to their upbringing, I will help them fill in forms, or understand a court report or help them access welfare payments. If I recognise someone is struggling because they don't know English, I teach them English rather than filling in the forms for them. I try to keep it simple. . 

 

 

[elliha]

1 hour ago, LurkerOverThePond said:

This. I'm a Finn (so no help there understanding any Indo-European language...) who studied Swedish for six years at school since it's compulsory here. Based on Swedish, you can pretty much understand most of written Norwegian or Danish and some spoken language, too. Icelandic, on the other hand... well, let's just say that having a pretty good understanding of Swedish hasn't helped me understand Icelandic, or their alphabets!

 

I am Swedish and I jokingly say that Icelandic is like a drunk, slightly crazy Norweigan speaking with randomly made up words here and there. Some sentences to me sound like Norweigan although slurred and a bit misaligned but I understand but then all of a sudden there are 2-3 words that just sound derranged and WTF.

I find Danish quite hard to understand when spoken but watching all those episodes of "Badehotellet" has really made my understanding of Danish much better. I was in Copenhagen airport and actually had no problem what so ever understanding what they said in the restaurant I had lunch in except for the numbers. Sure they probably spoke a bit more slowly and pronounced words more clearly when they heard I spoke Swedish but so did I sometimes since longer words are harder in the other Scandinavian languages for most people. 

In writing both Danish and Norweigan is quite easy to understand and if I don't understand I often do if I read the sentence out loud with a fake Danish or Norweigan pronunciation then it almost always makes sense. With Norweigans I can normally understand what they say without focusing much more than I do when listening to Swedish but Danish requires me to focus in order to understand. 

Icelandic is too hard for me to have a meaningful conversation with someone who speaks it but many Icelandic people know Danish and they are much easier to understand when speaking Danish than actual Danish people since they tend to use a clearer more Icelandic pronunciation but the Danish vocabulary which is much more similar to Swedish. 

[Miggy]

Two important points made in "Bridges Out of Poverty";

(1) the 400-800 words and 10,000-15,000 is the words you are actually able to use - your working vocabulary. So I can teach my students new words but if they can't use them at home or in their community because others don't understand them, they won't become part of their working vocabulary. 

(2) Poverty and lack of vocab does not equal lack of intelligence. Wealth and a high working vocab does not equal high intelligence. There are intelligent people in all levels of society and there are idiots everywhere too. It's probably unfair to judge from what we see on tv but to me, Jill doesn't seem like she has much going on in her head while Jessa seems quite bright, just uneducated and with a diva attitude.

Natural intelligence will not move you from poverty to middle class unless you also learn the rules and values to operate in a middle class community. It can turn you into a very powerful leader within your poor community.

I am parroting what I was taught here rather than speaking from experience. It's an interesting thing to look at though ...

 

[lomo6]

@Beermeet @KnittingOwl

True, but @Miggy's point was that growing up in generational poverty, in the middle class, or generational wealth has an outsize effect on your vocabulary and ability to learn foreign languages. Donald Trump grew up in generational wealth but seems to have a very limited range of vocabulary, which would make him an exception to this rule.

I've seen the studies about children in poorer families being exposed to less language (oral and written) growing up and how this affects their intellectual development, but I don't think this is a full explanation as to why the Dillards didn't learn Spanish. As I said in a previous post, Derick grew up perfectly middle class, with just one other sibling and a dedicated mom and a dad with a college degree, and received a very typical education. Whatever his difficulties with learning Spanish were, they had nothing to do with his class status or early education.

 

 

 

 

[Jaedzia]

@Miggy  Thank you. You made me feel so much better. Lack of vocabulary does not necessarily equal intelligence.  I have a speech impediment/language issue that I was born with(not exactly what you were saying, I know). I'm quite intelligent but most people don't realize it. I've learned to live with it. I have a nice vocabulary in my head but it doesn't come out because I can't pronounce the words. I also can't spell well. But when I took all those state tests in school I usually scored in the 95th percentile or higher including vocabulary. My IQ was tested at well above average because I'm quite good at math and logic. As for vocabulary,  even if I honestly don't know the word's meaning, for some reason I can usually figure out what it means. I just can't pronounce it! Use to drive me nuts. It's like I have all this good information in my head but I can't release it! As for learning a second language, not possible for me. It is sad because my grandfather spoke nine languages, my father spoke seven, and my daughter speaks three(working on a fourth). It is like I was punished for them getting the "gift".  lol 

 

PS: Typing this reminds me of an incident in elementary school. I was a straight A student except for reading. I was able to memorize spelling words long enough to get an A on the test. I remember one time a week before a reading test, working very hard with my speech therapist on the passage I was going to have to read. I wanted for once to get an A. I practice very carefully and slowly every single word with the speech therapist and on my own for hours. The day of the test, I was told by the teacher that regardless that it was the best she ever heard me read that I was still only getting a C. When I asked why I was told because most of the other kids still read better than me, that I read a bit slow, and my speech impediment was still obvious. That was the day I gave up on reading out loud. I no longer cared about my reading grade. To this day, I have no idea what the teacher could have done differently but she did completely take the "wind out of my sails" that day.  When I took public speaking in college, the professor gave me a break on my speech impediment but not completely. I received a B in that class which I am still happy with. 

[Four is Enough]

13 hours ago, lomo6 said:

Trump grew up wealthy and went to prestigious schools (including UPenn), so the theory wouldn't apply. 

Apparently, NOTHING sticks to Trump. He clearly never actually read a book, and I'm certain most of his grades were purchased.

12 hours ago, SassyPants said:

It's even tougher to learn how to read and comprehend when books beyond the Bible and Prince Charming are forbidden.

Reading other materials would have enriched their reading of the Bible, IMO.. reading similar turns of phrase helps put things into context. But no... too bad, so sad.

I don't know what my life would have been like if I hadn't been able to read anything I chose.

[nastyhobbitses]

5 hours ago, kunoichi66 said:

You are like me, I have this huge list of languages I want to learn (or relearn), as well! I'm learning German, but losing my French, so I want to keep that up somehow....and Hebrew sounds awesome, and so does Sanskrit...and and and...

 

Languages are just awesome

I really should learn Hebrew; having prayed in it all my life and having had Israeli counselors at Jewish summer camp, I can pick out some words when I hear people speaking it, but I don't know the grammar and I'm losing my ability to read it. But it isn't a hugely useful language for me to know because most diaspora Jews speak their host country's language (or Yiddish because the super-duper-religious Jews believe that Hebrew should be a purely sacred language), and until Netanyahu sits naked on a thousand cacti and we get someone halfway sane/who views Palestinians as human beings worthy of rights and dignity running the country, I'm not going anywhere near Israel.

[Markie]

In the video from the wedding this weekend, Derick seemed more attentive and caring of Jill than he appears in their show or in their Instagram posts. It was kind of nice catching him being nice while they were not aware of being filmed. He had such potential to be an ideal husband for Jill when he was first introduced to the public. I don't know if he will pull it together again and support his family financially, but I hope so. I wonder if he gets angry at the hypocrisy of his inlaws? Derick's hate filled posts were merely expressing ideas that the family supports and spews on a regular basis. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

5 hours ago, kunoichi66 said:

Languages are just awesome

Oh for a Babelfish. I want to speak/understand so many languages!!!

[Kittikatz]

Interestingly, some scientists are saying that Trump's current working vocabulary appears to be greatly diminished from what it once was. Whether his speaking at a third grade level is a deliberate attempt to appeal to those who have a small working vocabulary or is a sign of some sort of neurological decline is uncertain.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/

As for Jill, I can see her difficulties with picking up Spanish being down to a combination of poor English language skills, a lack of practice absorbing new information (I doubt books/educational TV/internet were ever part of the Duggar's life), social isolation and stress. 

Dwrek is more of a question, but just because he got into university, doesn't mean he has a large vocabulary or any language skills - I know several people who have advanced engineering/science/math type degrees and they are great with numbers, and poor at expressing themselves. Dwrek may be inclined this way. Add in the stressors and general upheaval of his life over the past three years, and I can see learning a language could be problematic. 

That said, I'm glad they aren't going to be inflicting themselves and their beliefs in the people of El Salvador in the future. Hopefully, Dirty Jesus gets a real job with a company that won't tolerate his Twitter and he starts having to adult. 

Ha. Who am I kidding, he's probably going to be drafted to be JimBoob's book keeper....

[kunoichi66]

55 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

Oh for a Babelfish. I want to speak/understand so many languages!!!

Me too! me too!

 

Also, thank you to @laPapessaGiovanna for snipping the quote!  I completely forgot, sorry.