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Felt like an alien | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5654 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 18 27 May 2012 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I speak Czech well. However, this weekend I attended a wedding in the Czech countryside, and as the day and night progressed I felt more and more like an alien.
Before the ceremony, things were fine, and I chatted away merrily. After the ceremony the drinks started to flow, and the conversation became more and more slang based. Normally, Czechs kindly take into account that I am a mere foreigner, and keep obscure slang to a minimum. On the merry and relaxed occasion of a wedding celebration, this was not the case. As the night progressed, the band (musician and singer) belted out hit songs from the distant past, then folks songs I had never heard of, and finally theme tunes from shows and films I had never seen. Everybody except me was singing along and laughing out loud, and I felt like a real party-pooper. The more time I spend immersed the more I realise that catching up on the cultural background is close to impossible, and unless native speakers are constantly adjusting for your own alien background you will soon be lost no matter how good your grasp of the language. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6422 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 18 27 May 2012 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aw man, weddings are usually a ton of fun!
As I was reading your post and I saw you were at a wedding, I was thinking "he probably just needed to have another drink to relax," but in fact it was quite the opposite! I feel for you. When you don't fit in, you don't fit in, and thinking about it just gets you more and more inside your head, which means you have even less fun, and it gets worse and worse. And then you start thinking to yourself "well should I just pretend like I'm having fun?" and that's the worst because everyone can tell. Edited by IronFist on 27 May 2012 at 10:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5944 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 18 27 May 2012 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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My husband periodically reminds me that no matter how good my Mandarin becomes, native speakers will always be able to run rings around me. The opposite is true too. That no matter how great their English seems, I will always be able to run rings around them in that arena. So I take it as another variable that comes into play in interactions.
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| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6110 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 4 of 18 27 May 2012 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe it's the older you are, the worse this is, because other people the same age are expected to have experienced so much more stuff.
I was thinking about this myself, and for Czech, couldn't you cram this? For Finnish, at least, the top 100 movies lists seem to cover about everything. How many folk songs could there be? Wouldn't a few hundred or so basically cover it. Maybe with the top 250 pop and folk songs, and you'd have them well enough to fake it. I admit where this all goes wrong is with Japanese TV. That the amount of TV in Japan is vast. There's no catching up, ever. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5258 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 5 of 18 27 May 2012 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I get this all the time here in Spain - jokes from stuff from twenty years ago, songs I
don't know, quotes from radio shows that you've never heard of. It's rotten, especially since it often doesn't even occur to people that you won't get it and just behave as if you're a weirdo. At least here, people usually aren't exactly tactful about it either. I have no idea what to do about it. I don't think you can just look it up, since no-one writes it down. Eventually, as you spend more time immersing yourself in the culture, you start to get things from two years ago, things from five. I know people who've lived here long enough to get almost all of that straightened out. About twenty years seems to do the trick. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5330 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 6 of 18 27 May 2012 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
I fail to see how the depth of the culture associated with the language you spent years learning is something to lament. What a bitter disappointment were it otherwise. If your Czech is as good as you state, you're in a position to imbibe it all. Simply relax and enjoy! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5751 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 18 28 May 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
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That's exactly the reason why I don't purposely aim for a perfect accent. I'm not a native speaker, and as much as I try to fit in, it's not always possible.
But weddings and family celebrations are something special altogether, because they bring together not only people who share a language and a culture, but who also share a lot of their own personal history with many other members of the group. I've never been good at keeping track of my extended family and all the intricacies of their relationships, and that easily makes me feel out of place when I attend their parties. I can catch up on the pop culture with enough effort, but not on personal experience. Just like children whose entire family lives in the city probably never experience how it is to play in fresh straw and hay and all the hundreds of things you can do on a farm, just like I never will experience how it feels to pee your name in the snow, there are some differences that just have to be accepted. Just fit is as much as you can keep up, smile as long as it's not forced and laugh when you actually get the joke. I doubt they expect you to behave like your average Czech man who grew up with all of the others - and yet you were invited, included. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5115 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 8 of 18 28 May 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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On the other hand, what a great learning experience!
I hope it didn't get you too down, and you were able to appreciate the opportunity. We can live in another place for 20+ years and STILL get to experience new things. Maybe a few days on, you can ask a native what some of these new things mean (assuming you're able to recall them). R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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