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Stop speaking to me in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 17 of 51 30 June 2013 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you sound confident in the local language and your accent doesn't impede comprehension, I think most
natives will respond in their own tongue. When I go to Germany, I would say that 90% of my conversations take place in German. Sometimes I experience service personnel attempting to use English, often they are young people. My strategy is to quickly throw in a difficult question (in English) and when they visibly struggle, ask the same thing in German. I find this usually works. A lot depends on where you go and who you talk to. But everyone is different. When my German was at intermediate level, I tended to assume that airport staff would prefer to speak English because it is the international language of travel but it is amazing how many were perfectly willing to speak to me in German. Perhaps they spend so much time talking in English, they enjoy it when someone communicates with them in their own language. Also, it's true that university students nowadays tend to have a vey good level of English. But these people are a minority of a population. Speaking to ordinary working people who rarely come across English in their everyday lives and who have little desire to re-activate their school knowledge (apart from stuttering out a few phrases when they themselves go abroad) is a great way to improve your spoken proficiency. Edited by beano on 30 June 2013 at 12:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vogue Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4244 days ago 109 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian | Message 18 of 51 30 June 2013 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
And even still I know several university students whose English is rather shaky, and they much prefer to speak to me in Italian (or Spanish). They could communicate in English if they had to, but they prefer Italian. I wonder, if maybe, it's actually more dependent on people's personality than their level of English because I've had people with very poor English use English with me, even when Italian would be the easier language (like the person in the example). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 19 of 51 30 June 2013 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I think some people have a hard time believing that a foreigner could possibly have a better grasp of their language than what they have of English. In Germany, I've met the odd person who, upon learning that I was British, automatically assumed that there was no way I would know any German. This irritates me slightly and I often let them ramble on for a bit before saying something in German. They usually reply (in English) "oh, you know German?" and I say (in German) "of course, but you don't?". I then switch back to English. That usually gets them scratching their heads. Edited by beano on 30 June 2013 at 2:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 20 of 51 30 June 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
At least in the languages I either speak or am learning, a response like this would be off-putting and they probably wouldn't want to spend much time communicating with me in any language. I've found that if I appear comfortable speaking what I *do* know and can easily ask about or elicit information about what I don't know, they'll stay in the language and not switch to English. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5197 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 51 01 July 2013 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had plenty experience of this. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: people often
only take you seriously if your level in the language is very high and you are very comfortable in it, but to reach that level and comfort, you need to speak with people! In France I found that service staff are far more willing to speak French with me than people who I meet socially. So any chance I had to have a chat with someone in a shop, restaurant, or station, I took advantage of. Socially, the "keep replying in French" approach has given me some results although not consistently, as has the "find someone who isn't good at English or doesn't like speaking it" one, although I realise that both of these are probably much harder in places where the general level of English is higher. I've found that it just depends on the person: some are more insistent that others, and some have a higher standard than others. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 22 of 51 01 July 2013 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
If someone in France suggests speaking English, you could say (in French) that they are welcome to visit you in the UK where you could drink a beer or coffee and speak English all day long. But here in France..... Or you could pretend to be Hungarian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4697 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 51 01 July 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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"I am a native Breton speaker from Bretagne and I have trouble with French as it is, ma
vère never taught me" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4037 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 24 of 51 30 October 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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o_O
did you find Italians that live in Italy and can speak English? Congratulations, I thought they didn't exist. Where do you live? Well, talk with 40+ yo people then. If they know how to speak Italian (and not just dialect) will not talk to you in English for sure. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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