Latvian?

[stoutfellow]

Here is an interesting LanguageLog article, discussing how foreign languages are treated in USAn film (and TV), and how things have changed over the last sixty years or so.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

One trend I find truly astounding is the number of television commercials which are partially or entirely in foreign languages, sometimes without subtitles. FedEx even plays on this by having commercials entirely in, say, Cantonese with "FedEx" the only recognisable English word. These would be unimaginable even thirty years ago, let alone sixty.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Huh. Yeah. I hadn't noticed that, but... yeah. (Of course, I hadn't noticed the original problem either, and I've seen "Foreign Correspondent".)

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Very interesting article. Basically I agreed with it, although I think the Chinese spoken by Firefly cast members didn't seem truly well coached to me. I wasn't sure for a while that it was *supposed* to be Mandarin. OTOH, it has been twenty years since I last spoke with any fluency.

As for Lucy and Ricky, well, I don't think that is totally ridiculous in today's world. If one spouse is fluent in two languages, and the other only in one, both parties tend to use the *common* language, especially if that is the dominant language of their place of residence. YMMV, of course.

I know that whatever Spanish I speak is due to the fact that my mother-in-law insisted on making me repeat lists of words when she came to stay (for which I *now* thank her), and I *wanted* to understand and participate in conversations when family members were there. If Ricky had had no relatives in NY and wasn't part of an expatriat group, it is possible that Lucy would not have needed any Spanish for her daily married life with Ricky. She would certainly have been linguistically impoverished for it, but I don't see it as a totally impossible situation today.