yukkuri_kame Wrote:I could be misinterpreting the nuance, but I believe "palmetto bug" is more than just an ordinary roach... I've always understood it to mean GIANT FLYING COCKROACH.

Ahh...I've heard people use it just to refer to plain old roaches, because they don't want to call them roaches. Just that whole aversion to using the specific noun with all of its negative connotations, I guess.

But then again, I've never had the... pleasure... of encountering the giant flying... palmetto bug. lol.

yukkuri_kame Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:And I thought a 'closet critter' might be something with 6 legs that they call a 'palmetto bug' in parts of the South. (aka roach.)

I could be misinterpreting the nuance, but I believe "palmetto bug" is more than just an ordinary roach... I've always understood it to mean GIANT FLYING COCKROACH.

A palmetto bug is indeed a huge roach. They are typically 2-5x the size of a normal roach. And yes, they fly.

Florida's wonderful. hehe.

Are they the ones that you see in Japan?
They were huge and they might have flown.. I'm not sure though..

This has got to be the strangest subject of all time a thread has gotten derailed on :/

Smackle Wrote:Tobberoth and some of the other members that live outside of North America, the UK, Australia, etc. have a lot more natural sounding English to me.

This compliment means a lot to me, thank you

Unfortunately, if you and I had a conversation in English, you would probably change your mind . The English I use online is very different from the English I use in normal conversation, simply because of the massive difference in exposure. I write several forum messages in English every day but I converse in English about once a month... More empirical evidence that speaking "for real" and writing are two very different skills.

I really enjoy getting the different perspectives and information from everyone. I'm reminded how incredibly lucky I am to have this site and the opportunity to hear from people from SO many countries who share the same interest and goal. It's fantastic - thank you.

Tobberoth Wrote:The English I use online is very different from the English I use in normal conversation, simply because of the massive difference in exposure.

I have the same problem! Actually, I may soon be surpassing my speaking skills in English with my Japanese ones (if I get some practice...).

I'm fairly new here (as you can see from my post count ^_^), but I'll try to add to the discussion as best possible.

As with Sweden, in Norway we are exposed to English a lot! The only media you will ever find dubbed is the media that's aimed at kids below the age of 10 (Disney Channel etc.), and even then, you have the chance of having it subbed. Most DVDs also comes with the English subtitles, which is good if there's a lot of noise in the background (whether that is the background in the movie, or the background of your environments). A lot of Norwegian artists preferr to sing in English too, as opposed to Norwegian.
When it comes to the school issue, we do start at around 3rd grade, learning English, first learning the English pronounciation of the alphabet, and then move on to very very simple words. From that point on, it starts with the grammar that is similar to the Norwegian grammar, and then moves on to more advanced grammar, and eventually you're starting to learn the parts (advanced vocabulary) you don't know.
The school also encourages you to read books, and some schools also kinda forces you to read a book, and then write a short summary.
As for pronounciation, I'm not the most natural sounding, but I do have some people in my class that has very Petter Solberg-ish English.

When I think about it, the level in most English classes varies a lot, to a degree that I think it comes do the amount of exposure you've had. On my part, I was always at the top of my English classes, a lot thanks to the amount of exposure that I had. I was very early advised to read the Harry Potter books in English (I had read the first book 3 times, the second book once, and the third book too, once at that time), and so I did. After that, I've barely ever cared about paying attention when we had grammar lessons, since most of it just came naturally to me by then.
To this day, I still expose myself to English a lot, visiting mainly English sites (with the only expetion being 2 Norwegian forums, and lately a few Japanese sites too >.<).

I have also noticed that the pronounciation of Japanese is not too unlike the Norwegian, only having very minor differences. The only real difference, when it comes to romanizing the kana, is that お is pronounced more like 'å' than 'o', but I don't see the point in changing the way I romanize Japanese, so it's not that important (more like a fun fact to be hones ).

Whew, this became a small wall of text, sorry. >.<

Sleepyhead Wrote:I was always at the top of my English classes, a lot thanks to the amount of exposure that I had. I was very early advised to read the Harry Potter books in English (I had read the first book 3 times, the second book once, and the third book too, once at that time), and so I did. After that, I've barely ever cared about paying attention when we had grammar lessons, since most of it just came naturally to me by then.

Hey! Pretty much the same with me!
My English always used to be mediocre at best but then ran out of translations of the Wheel of Time series and began reading it in English! The first two or three 900 page books I read with a dictionary next to me at all times but after I have always been at the top of my class and only had to just occasionally look up some rarer words in http://www.answers.com/ .
In school my answer to all grammar questions has also usually been: "This is the right way to say this because it is, and otherwise it just sounds stupid!"
It used to drive my teachers mad!

That's been pretty much my answer on many questions; unfortunately, there are a few places where it puts me in conflict with established authority, especially as regards whether punctuation in quoted text bleeds out into the surrounding scope.

~J

i play WoW.. or i did before Japanese took over. (i still play at weekends but feel bad that im not doing Japanese. AJATT light method << )

I am English, but the people i play with in my guild are from every corner of europe, and i do not lie when i say the level of English profficency (sp) is very high.
One of our players spoke such perfect English on vent that i spent the entire time trying to figure his accent, turns out he's danish which blew my mind with how great his English actually was.

Im somewhat jealous of Europe in this way, we dont push ourselves in England to really learn any other language as we speak English, the language everyone else wants to learn as a second, so its made our education system lazy in regards to another language. Which is a shame, as it does disadvantage us. When i hear my bulgarian friend talking to my bosnian friend in almost perfect English, and i couldnt even begin to speak there languages I can speak a little french althought the way we were taught that in school was never to actually use, more just as another subject that you needed to take. Definatly the wrong approach to language learning.

This isn't Northern Europe of course but we are trying to do this in Mexico. More and more shows stop dubbing(our voice actors are terrible by the way) and more english media is coming through. The level of english fluency is rising recently even though we do have mandatory english education like many countries but had nothing to show for it. I guess its different as well since the education levels in Mexico in general are much lower than say Finland/Sweden/Norway so there is that.

It blows my mind how good some European countries are at learning English. Most Europeans I know have a better useage of English than my native friends do.

I tried to learn French and German in my schooling system and failed miserably.
The Japanese try to learn English in their schooling system and also fail miserably.

The exposure element (TV, music, movies etc) seems like a pretty important contributing factor. English is just seen as a joke in a homogenous society like Japan. Even if the Japanese government want 30% of their population fluent in English and even if they throw all the money in the world at it, it's not going to happen. The average Japanese person doesn't need, or want, to speak English.

Exposure is important, because everyone knows that things you do not use from school do not stick with you. People think the school systems are the way to learn, but actually they lack any power in whether you remember what they throw at you or not. It is all about your interests and what you are around.

woodwojr Wrote:That's been pretty much my answer on many questions; unfortunately, there are a few places where it puts me in conflict with established authority, especially as regards whether punctuation in quoted text bleeds out into the surrounding scope.

~J

Nah.. They have tried to teach me correct punctuation but its still all over the place in any language I write..
The Japanese punctuation rules seem to be about as difficult as I can handle..

alantin Wrote:The Japanese punctuation rules seem to be about as difficult as I can handle..

Are you sure? Not exactly punctuation, but there's a bunch of annoying rules when writing on a 原稿用紙.