Speaking of linguists...this was cool. For several years I was taking a taxi quite regularly and from this one company. So i got to know the guys pretty well and they really treated me so well, the drivers and the office.
There was this one guy, i think he moved here from iran around 20. He went to school here, got his ph.D in linguistics. He taught up at SFU for 9 years. He just had enough of the boring daily monotony and he went to driving cab.
So we had some interestng talks.
Heh, kinda neat huh.

It would have made much more practical sense to have taken mandarine rather than german as nearly 40% of the mainland is Chinese (although likely a lower percentage actually speak mandarin).
But I had promised some friends I'd learn German formally when i was visiting them.

Are you saying that Cantonese would be more appropriate for communicating with the Asian population of "Hong couver"? Possibly, but most of the Chinese in Vancouver would also speak Mandarin, as they are the upper crust of their population, are they not?
LC

thats what i said, mandarin, only i spelled it with an E.

I actually had to look it up in the dictionary to make sure that I was using como correct lol Cuz "come" totally threw me off :p Good job on that trick lol

I wish wish wish that I could afford a teacher for my languages. I am learning all of these myself from library books, and buying used books. I have the skill for languages, but it's very difficult learning them on my own. Boo! I mean there's only so much you can learn before you have all these tiny questions about why, and where, and how! GAH it certainly keeps my mind stimulated!
M

Totally, i don't think i'd know german as well hadn't i taken it in college. It helps to learn it if u know WHY its said that way, WHY this word and not that word and the details behind things.
In a lesser sense it's like learning energy equals mass times the square of speed of light in a vaccuum. Ok great, but what the hell does that mean and why isn't it the square of the mass time the vaccum of the speed.
I think you remember and grasp things better when you know the WHY, and that's no different in language.

but of cvourse my friends 2 year old son knows and speaks better german than i do.

Except sometimes the answer with languages, is "just because", as they are generative, and not a man-made closed system like science. They are also very intuitive and creative, which is why I like languages.

There's this program, im pretty sure its a bbc series, i think in 6 parts, all about language, in particular the english language how it came to be as we know it from waay back when, how it permeated scotland and ireland and pushed certain pockets of the origin al old language into certain regions, how the dialects intertwined, how is faired in business, how it changed when it came to north america, why it still contains silly silent lettters. Really fun series.
Maybe you've seeen it. I'll try to find the title of it.

Ahh, "Speaking In Tongues". thats it. http://www.omnibc.ca/programming/signatureseries/details.php?id=5

Hmm, i was sure i saw one that had English in the title, simply The History of English or something.

Now it'll bug my unless I search.

edit: found it.
Ahhh! The Adventure of English. Thats the one.