A tip for language learners

[Arrowfoot]

Not sure if this happens to others. The tendency to unconsciously emulate the accent of the other person's language while you are actually speaking in English. I tend to slow down when speaking to a French native speaker even when we are conversing in English to avoid this problem.

 

[Brandane]

Not sure if this happens to others. The tendency to unconsciously emulate the accent of the other person's language while you are actually speaking in English. I tend to slow down when speaking to a French native speaker even when we are conversing in English to avoid this problem.

You mean, like, 'owww you say, Joey Barton after joining Marseille?

 

[normgow]

When I was an apprentice car body draftsman in the sixties, people seemed to be leaving every month to go to work in Detroit.
They started to adopt a mid-west accent before leaving so that by the time they touched down, with their new language skills, they could converse fluently without being constantly asked to repeat themselves.
They were known as Dagenham Yankees.
A few years later I became one myself - it certainly saved a lot of confusion and uncomprehension.

 

[oldwheels]

This local language wasn’t Dutch by any chance? Dutch is the first language of 60% of the Belgian population.

Could be. Does Walloon mean anything to you?

 

[Lozz360]

Could be. Does Walloon mean anything to you?

Walloon is a French dialect spoken in the south of Belgium (Wallonia). You mentioned you were in the northern part. I am certainly no linguistic expert, but I would guess that if the local language was indeed Walloon then your (presumably standard) French would have been understood?

 

[Biker man]

Sometimes you'll speak to someone that is afraid of you. Not often but occasionally.

They're not afraid as in scared, but they are too aware of you being foreign. Sometimes you can see it in their eyes but not always. The rabbit in the headlights kind of wide eyed stare. They don't know what to say to you, they'll go silent for fear of you not understanding them. They've become so aware of the possibility of miscommunication, the possibility that you've said something wrong that they'll doubt their own natural ability to understand. The situation freaks them out.

This might give you the impression that you've said something wrong, or incomprehensible (and obviously sometimes that is the case!) but it's not always. They are just too aware of your foreignness, their brains freeze and they become overly focused on the words.

Most of understanding is not in the words. The majority of it comes from other factors, context being perhaps the biggest. When people go into this state of brain freeze, they're shutting out those other factors they'd naturally use in understanding (even in the same language) So panic not and don't doubt yourself. And, no, don't just repeat yourself louder!

I've even had one overly dramatic experience where the young shop assistant who, when I asked my simple intro question, literally exclaimed 'ah, anglais!' and ran off in search of a colleague! The exchange then progressed quite happily.

The best people to talk to, and happily most people fall into this category, talk as they normally would - albeit a little more slowly. One of my club mates in the cycling club would happily chat to me as we rode along, quite normally, for ages whilst others would steadfastly stay away from me. I didn't take it personally, they were just didn't know what to say.

I lived in Cambridgeshire for four years no one would say hello just took no notice of you ,just coldness and indifferent what a miserable way to be.

 

[Chromatic]

My brother-in-law tried ordering in French at a restaurant in Paris. The waiter got more and more irritated at the delays, before finally snorting and saying...

"Per'aps eet wud be betterrrr to orderrrr een Eeeenglish?"

He gave up!

I had something similar in Germany but without the irritation, quite the opposite in fact.

A few years ago I was over in Munich for a few days with work and every evening after dinner I would go to the bar for a few drinks. Now I could order my beer in German and apparently my pronounciation of danke schön wasn't too bad such that one night the woman behind the bar asked me if I spoke German and would I like to carry on in German. I replied I know a bit but didn't really speak it and certainly not enough to hold a conversation but may be able to get by if she spoke slowly and used simple German, her reply, very sweetly and understandingly said, was along the lines of 'we'll stick to English'.

One of my favourite memories of my work trips.

 

[byegad]

Unless you are trying to communicate with a Glaswegian. Or worse, an Aberdonian. It's hard enough to understand them when you supposedly speak the same language!

Broad Geordies fall into the same category. I've ridden with a friend from Darn Souff in a group where the leader was a Geordie. I had to translate for him, bless.

 

[Lozz360]

Not really about speaking a different language, but the way we pronounce other country's names is something I sometimes have a problem with. A few weeks ago, a BBC sports reporter was stating that we should not say 'Chile', to rhyme with 'hilly', but instead pronounce it 'Chill-aye', because that is the way it is pronounced in Chile. So therefore, should we be referring to all country's names the same way they are referred to in their respective countries? For instance, La Francaise, Deutschland, etc.? Surely we can't have it one way without the other?

 

[matticus]

I lived in Cambridgeshire for four years no one would say hello just took no notice of you ,just coldness and indifferent what a miserable way to be.

It's a little-known fact that their native tongue is in fact Luxembourgish. If you start a conversation in that tongue, they are the most friendly, helpful people on God's Earth!

 

[oldwheels]

Walloon is a French dialect spoken in the south of Belgium (Wallonia). You mentioned you were in the northern part. I am certainly no linguistic expert, but I would guess that if the local language was indeed Walloon then your (presumably standard) French would have been understood?

French was ok in southern Belgium but German was the language we managed to get by with in the north.

 

[oldwheels]

It gets mentioned by some that there should be subtitles when Scottish accents are on telly. Nobody seems to grasp that we should have sub titles to understand some of the bizarre English spoken.
Once somewhere on or near the Northumberland coast we came across a village where they did indeed speak a different language. It bore no resemblance to anything we had heard before.
It was a long time ago as we took a meandering route back home from Harrogate where we had been at a Trade Show.

 

[bitsandbobs]

French was ok in southern Belgium but German was the language we managed to get by with in the north.

Dutch is spoken in the north and French in the south of the country. I'm a bit surprised that German was much use (unless you were in the east of the country where there is a German speaking community). There is a certain degree of mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German, but most Flemish (the Dutch speakers in Belgium) speak pretty good English.

 

[swee'pea99]

It gets mentioned by some that there should be subtitles when Scottish accents are on telly. Nobody seems to grasp that we should have sub titles to understand some of the bizarre English spoken.
Once somewhere on or near the Northumberland coast we came across a village where they did indeed speak a different language. It bore no resemblance to anything we had heard before.
It was a long time ago as we took a meandering route back home from Harrogate where we had been at a Trade Show.

Reminds me of going to Anglesey and pulling over in a small village where a bunch of teens were mooching listlessly around outside the post office, as teens in small villages will do, and I suddenly twigged that they were chatting in Welsh. Felt kind of weird. I'd only left London a few hours earlier, we hadn't crossed any water, and here were these young people talking foreign. Very foreign. Not as an affectation, or to exclude outsiders, just because that was the language they spoke.

 

[ColinJ]

When I was an apprentice car body draftsman in the sixties, people seemed to be leaving every month to go to work in Detroit.
They started to adopt a mid-west accent before leaving so that by the time they touched down, with their new language skills, they could converse fluently without being constantly asked to repeat themselves.
They were known as Dagenham Yankees.
A few years later I became one myself - it certainly saved a lot of confusion and uncomprehension.

That reminds me of this...

A Mancunian friend of mine goes to Texas every winter. He doesn't like American beers much but discovered that a local bar serves a very tasty porter. American friends bought him the first few but he struggled to make himself understood when he tried to buy a round. In the end he had to spell the word out ...

Mancunian Brit: "P-O-R-T-E-R - PORTER"

Texan barman: "Ah, yeah - PODDA!"