I would guess that it's because of your train of thought. If you're writing what looks like English, you still think English. If you're writing in Russian or Hebrew or Arabic or a dialect of Chinese or whatever, it's probably much more difficult to think in English and you probably have to learn not to think in English anymore.

Maybe it's more complex; I don't really know.

Makes sense to me.

bo_sox, I can't think of any words capitalized in French that are not capitalized in English... Or the other way around... I might be missing something though... Oh wait, think I got it... languages are not capitalised in French right? So English is anglais instead of Anglais? surely that's not a big deal? Is it? I understand how German might be a problem though, although I don't have that problem...

I don't think other languages make my own better or worse, btw... So far at least... However, if I don't know something in German or French, and I do know it in the other one of the two, I can't get that out of my head until I know the right word/sentence/whatever...

I was on page 3... Still makes sense though, just saying...

@steephie ... I was referencing the grammar as a whole, which often is completely different (comparisons, for example). The capitalization isn't a huge deal and you figure it out after awhile (though since I've taken on a major project on the ESA, French Guyana turning into "le Guyane française" is quite weird).

Ok, that makes more sense! So like questions in French? "What's that?" becoming "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" for example, which would very literally be something like "What that is?"?

Or not that kind of thing either?

Just got a little idea... Anyone up for a French or German game of diplomacy? It would definitely help me learn the languages... If no one cares I prefer French I think, since I won't drop that one next year :)

@bo_sox: "le Guyane française" just can't be right, must be either "la Guyane" or "francais" (without the final "e"). Not sure, but la Guyane sounds a lot better to me...

^True, didn't notice it but he's right.

@Alex ... Typo on my end. It is la. Good catch.

@steephie ... in a sense, yes. In another sense that a native French speaker learning English would say, not at all. So, for all intents and purposes here, yeah, that's the same kind of thing, but don't tell that to a French person ;)

Oh wow Gambia huh? I had the chance to go but never did. Couple of my friends did. Do you ever miss it?

IMO, one of the keys to success in full press games is the ability to understand the other players. Understanding enables you to better anticipate them and manipulate them. I would expect that successful diplomacy players are good at relating to a wide variety of people. Ability in multiple languages does not guarantee this, but at least suggests exposure to other groups and cultures. Someone who speaks only his native tongue, has not traveled far afield from his hometown, and who interacts with mostly the same type of people is probably not going to thrive in a full press game on a site like this with such diverse membership. That's a generalization, of course, and I'm sure there are exceptions.

Since some of us expressed interest in seeing how many languages we spoke compared to how good we are at diplomacy I decided to plot the data:
http://images.vfl.ru/ii/1365706131/ffa79fae/2128323.jpg

Surprisingly there was a negative correlation between how good we are at diplomacy and how good we are at languages.

For people interested, here how I calculated the scores. If you disagree with anything, feel free to create your own graph without whatever method you want:

Linguistic skill would be: y=10(log(4x+5)-1)+1.5, where x is the value of all your languages added up, as described below:
I gave you 6 if you could speak a language fluently, 3 if you described a high ability to speak the language but admitted you weren't fluent, 2 if you took a language in university for 2 or more years, or took it in high school for 3 or more years. 1 point if you took it in university for 1 or 2 semesters or took it in high school for 1 or 2 years. Native languages were counted as 1 point, to increase the importance of being multi lingual.

Since not every post gives exact details I made some approximate estimates.


For diplomatic skill, it was calculated by y=10(log(x/10)-1)+1, where y is our diplomatic skill and x is our peak ghost rating, since not all of us our in the more recent rating due to not enough games played recently.

This isn't a perfect depiction of our ability to learn languages or of our diplomatic skill. But I think its the best I could do given the information provided. Once again, if you disagree with anything, feel free to create your own graph with whatever method you want.

Just note for a question as to why I gave myself a 2.5 even though I said I can only speak English. I know a bit of French, as I took it from grade 4 to grade 9. I also know a bit of Latin from taking it last semester, (I know hardly any vocab, but I the current and future tense for the first 3 declensions and conjugations. So I am half decent at grammar). When the question was originally ask, I chose to answer it in the arrogant, I'm too good for other languages tone, rather then answer it truthfully.

Also I gave Draugnar 5 bonus points for knowing half a million computer languages

That's very interesting, and I love seeing it plotted. Is it really a strong enough correlation to assert that's it negative?

@dipplayer, I could not agree more. I dozed through high school English class discussions about conjugation and subjective, nominate and dative, past particles and all that shit ... Who cares, I know how to talk! It wasn't until I took German in college that I had to understand it, and I most definitely applied it to my understanding of English.

@stephie, yes it was a joke. We've had a lot of prior discussions on the differences between American English and "proper" English. English adds "u"s where they aren't needed and substitutes "s" for "z" in many words. So I couldn't possibly hope to remember when I should add a u or not and when a z should be an s, ... But you don't notice this those differences when you speak it. But yeah, just a joke.

Sorry, I was apparently replying to messages a few pages old. Oops.

I speak English, and I can read Latin moderately well. I generally recognize the grammar, though I have to look up meanings of words pretty regularly. I hope to start German next semester.

But I do agree that learning another language helps with the "nuts and bolts" of grammar in your native tongue.

PROTIP
Unlike the good old days, there's no longer an advantage to be won being a polyglot. The level of education in the world is steadily rising and English is being more and more accepted as the world's lingua franca. I say learn 1) to speak and write your native languages flawlessly 2) do the same for English 3) choose a language you really, really want to learn, perhaps because of its beautiful sound, or its radically different structure, etc.. but don't bother knowing a little German, a little French and a little Spanish anymore. Seriously. And there's also no more advantage to being able to order a beer in German. You just point to the tap and to the size of the glass you want, then pay in the same currency you use all over Europe.

dealwithit.gif

The slope is negative .11, so its not a strong correlation, but its more negative then any of us would have guessed.

@redhouse -- please do not encourage that behavior universally. I agree with your suggestions #1 & #2 only on condition that they are different languages. I am in the language industry, and there is a lot of difference between culturally aware international business English and the clue-free monolingualism exhibited by many of my fellow Americans.

I don't understand entirely. Culturally aware international business English? I think that's a sophisticated form of language and teaching all the world to speak it would be a great thing.

You know what would be fun? The serious polyglots (not me) get a game together (public press of course) where all press has to be in the official language of your nation. Sure Germany and Austria would both me in a flavor of German (Austria would have to use Bavarian) but French and English and Italian and Turkish... England would have the easiest relaying ideas assuming a native English speaker got it. Or you could have to write it in the language of it's intended audience (writing to Italy would have to be in Italian).

I know 4 languages and I'm fine with a lot of things with these 4 but I don't speak Italian, Russian, Turkish or Bavarian... And I don't think you can find 7 players who do...

I know Spanish fairly well, and I've taken only a year of Chinese and Russian, so they're a bit rusty

I again suggest playing in French/German... Who's up for that?

That would be quite.. uhh... weird.