A tip for language learners

[Biker man]

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.

Its the language I speak every day if you had gone up to them and spoke they would have spoken back to you doubt if they went to London anybody would speak to them.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

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.

My experience of Flemish speakers was that a significant part of being Flemish involved not speaking French. They'd rather speak English or German at a push.

 

[ColinJ]

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.

How did you get to Anglesey from London without crossing any water?

My experience of Flemish speakers was that a significant part of being Flemish involved not speaking French. They'd rather speak English or German at a push.

I met one young Flemish lad and he was hyper-nationalistic. He not only did NOT want to speak French, he made it pretty clear that he didn't want to speak English either, despite being fluent in it.

 

[yello]

Not as an affectation, or to exclude outsiders, just because that was the language they spoke.

I find such moments of realisation so cool. People making what seems to you to be just noises, yet is somehow understandable to them. Just freaks me out. I know I could make those actual noises, but I couldn't associate any meaning to them.

I went to my wife's father's funeral in Llanelli a few years back and, as we approached the church, could hear a group conversing in Welsh. I was clueless to what they were saying. They recognised my wife and switched to English as they spoke with her. Suddenly I understood them. From noises to words.

 

[swee'pea99]

Its the language I speak every day if you had gone up to them and spoke they would have spoken back to you doubt if they went to London anybody would speak to them.

Why do you doubt that? Londoners are nice to everyone. Famous for it.

 

[Lozz360]

How did you get to Anglesey from London without crossing any water?

Very low tide maybe?

 

[All uphill]

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.

No,no,no,

You were speaking and thinking foreign; not them. They were using the local language.

 

[Biker man]

Why do you doubt that? Londoners are nice to everyone. Famous for it.

😃😃😃

 

[All uphill]

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.

I found it similarly odd when I suddenly started thinking in Dutch after 30 odd years of only thinking in English. Very, very strange.

 

[Biker man]

water

😃😃😃

 

[glasgowcyclist]

When I worked in the Netherlands most people found it easier to speak English with me. I usually persisted in trying to speak Dutch for a few minutes then gave up with relief.

One day I was working with a chap who spoke only Dutch to me and never gave up; he stuck at it all day and so did I. By the end of the day I was absolutely exhausted.

His final words to me were (in English) to say that it is hard to learn a new language and he struggled when he first arrived from his native Edinburgh.

B@st@rd!

I'd a similar experience many years ago in a remote French village. We'd hired a gîte for a week so were way out in the countryside and I cycled the 5km to the village shop for some basics; mustard, pepper, cheese, bread, and some matches for the gas cooker. With very rusty school French I politely asked for the items and the lovely lady fetched them one by one as I fumbled for the right words.

Unfortunately I didn't know the French for matches so, drawing a blank look from trying to explain in English, I resorted to miming. I pretended to light a cigarette, then a pipe, then the fuse for a bomb. I mimed the match burning all the way down to my fingers and then burning me like some rubbish slapstick routine.

Nothing.

I resigned myself to not getting them and said "Merci, c'est touts."

Then she smiled and stood aside, pointed at the shelf that had been hidden by her sizeable derrière, saying, "Don't you want these?"
Not only did she speak perfect English, she was hiding the bloody matches!

I said yes, please.

"Ah non, en français monsieur: ALLUMETTES."

And she would not give them to me until I had pronounced the word to her satisfaction.

It was a wonderful little episode in a fabulous holiday and I loved that she did it.

 

[Fnaar]

I've worked with languages pretty much my whole professional life. One of the thoughts which first got me interested was that most people in the world are at least bilingual, and we should always encourage youngsters to persevere with language learning. And oldsters too, even if it doesn't come naturally to you 👍

 

[All uphill]

A question for speakers and thinkers of more than one language:

Do you think very slightly different thoughts in each language? In other words does the language and associated culture change your thoughts?

I know it does with me.

 

[yello]

Language and thought is an area that interests me greatly and had I gone on in my studies, it would have been my area of research.

My own belief, and I would have used it as motivation for my studies, is that thought has its own language; that is, thought is pre-verbal. You might formulate or convey a thought via language, but that is an act of translation in itself. So with that backdrop, I don't think you have different thoughts in different languages per se but you will certainly voice them differently.

Thought may not even have a language as such (not as we know spoken languages anyway). I became interested in sign languages because I thought it'd offer a different perspective to a 'language of thought'

There is another related question though that I can very much comment on. Are you you in another language? I ask that because, not being a fluent French speaker, I am restrained (and perhaps defined) by what I can and can't say. I can play with English in a way that I can never hope to in French. I certainly don't feel like me when I speak French (though that is obviously largely due to my limitations) and people talking with me won't get a clear sense of who I am.

Children, when they are learning to speak, can sometimes get frustrated to the point of tantrum because they can't say what they want to say, and are not being understood. I can empathise. I'm not quite losing it in shopping aisles (yet) but I do get the frustration bit.

 

[Fnaar]

A question for speakers and thinkers of more than one language:

Do you think very slightly different thoughts in each language? In other words does the language and associated culture change your thoughts?

I know it does with me.

Yes, to a certain extent, especially if I spend some time in the country.