TheHandThatThieves

I can tell right away from just one click on this site that it's quite probably a scam. I'd definitely avoid it, this guy sounds like a real full-on shyster.

I'd have to say almost certainly not - English is far too ingrained in my brain after nearly 21 years to just forget about it if I was living somewhere where it was not the lingua franca. I'd definitely make a considerable effort to learn the local tongue but I'd most probably still use English an awful lot.

Indeed, as the above poster says, there's no real point in attempting to force him - all you can do is ensure that he properly understands the benefits of a "proper" grasp of the English language. How old is he, our of curiosity? I feel like in time, if he's a smart kid, he'll probably grasp pretty quickly that he's not going to get very far in life without being able to master even the basic "norms" of civilised conversation.

Ooooh boy, you've opened a real can of worms with this question! The long and short of it is that it all boils down to exactly how you choose to define "language". Obviously, animals all have their own communication systems and these can all be evaluated against Hockett's design features to see how they hold up. New research is always forthcoming but I guess I'd have to say that I feel that although animals have communication systems that are certainly more complex than we might initially speculate, you have to be very careful when describing them as a "language".

There's no real problem with slang at all - it's a natural language phenomenon that occurs in the relaxed speech of a large majority of people. The problems only really start when people aren't capable of code-switching and end up using language that's inappropriate for a given context or environment. As long as you know when slang is okay to use and when it isn't, there's no problem whatsoever.

I think portmanteaus are a terrific example of the ever-changing nature of language, and they can also function quite well in terms of jokes... What is big, grey, and missing a glass slipper? Cinderellaphant. *baddumtish*

Read a lot, and every time you come to a word you don't recognise take the time to look it up. Then (obviously if it's not too subject-specific) try and see if you can work it into your every day lexicon. One of those "word of the day" calendars could definitely help too.

No matter how much revision I've done, I generally feel pretty nervous - university level English exams can be kinda tricky, especially with regards to things like formal semantics. Nonetheless, listing to Sandstorm by Darude on the way in usually puts me in a good headspace.

Scratch that - I should have listened to another topic on here that said learning Portuguese from scratch is very hard. Switched to German instead, which I'm having a better time with. Probably because of its genetic relation to English and the fact I did it for a little while at school.

Well, it was kind of a spur of the moment type of thing inspired by this forum, but I've finally registered for a Duolingo account to begin learning Portuguese. Wish me luck you guys!

Well yes, but I don't think that's what the OP was getting at. It was my understanding that "prejudge" here refers to making judgements of their intelligence or personality (for example), which isn't a good thing...

I must admit that, on occasion, in the back of my mind I will make a slight judgement when talking to somebody who has one of the "less pleasant-sounding" British accents, even though I know I shouldn't. As just about everybody in this thread has said, it's a terrible thing to judge someone for as they have no control over it. Linguistic prescriptivism applies not just to written language but to speech as well and is something that should really be avoided.