Stop speaking to me in English (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Stop speaking to me in English
Tags: Language Banditry \| Convincing native speakers \| Speaking
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51 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

eyðimörk
Triglot
Senior Member
France
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Joined 4089 days ago
490 posts - 1158 votes

Speaks: Swedish*, English, French
Studies: Breton, Italian

Message 49 of 51

03 November 2014 at 7:30pm | IP Logged

Tyrion101 wrote:

Unless you speak flawless French, and with a Canadian (not US American!) accent to boot, I definitely wouldn't recommend that approach. You'll be found out immediately.

Tyrion101 wrote:

Most people I talked to in Europe last week had no idea where South Carolina was anyway, my brother always explained it as: "You know Orlando Florida? It's kind of above that." I honestly thought most people had a decent grasp of geography, at least I thought that people from the UK would at least know the states nearest their country.

The states nearest their country? South Carolina is 6500 kilometres (or roughly 4000 miles) from the UK. The same distance in the other direction takes you to Islamabad (Pakistan). It's hardly near enough that the fact that it's closer than California will make a difference to its usefulness.

That said, I'm surprised you haven't met one person who knows roughly where the Carolinas are. When I was in school we had to take a test on all 50 states, with the state capitals, and major rivers and lakes. It was a far more important test than the one on South American geography, later the same year. Given that I was raised in Sweden, that should say something about the perceived importance of America in [part of] Europe... and not just by visiting Americans.
3 persons have voted this message useful

rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Joined 5226 days ago
881 posts - 1812 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

Message 50 of 51

03 November 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged

Tyrion101 wrote:

I've often thought that if I ever found myself in France, french being my target language, that if I ran into this problem, I'd simply tell people I was French Canadian, then maybe they'd get that I'd prefer french? Most people I talked to in Europe last week had no idea where South Carolina was anyway, my brother always explained it as: "You know Orlando Florida? It's kind of above that." I honestly thought most people had a decent grasp of geography, at least I thought that people from the UK would at least know the states nearest their country.

Do you know where Northants, Cumbria and Essex are (without googling it)? After all you should have a decent grasp of geography and you should know which counties are nearest to you.

:)

4 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Joined 6587 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

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Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 51 of 51

04 November 2014 at 1:20am | IP Logged

eyðimörk wrote:

Most people I talked to in Europe last week had no idea where South Carolina was anyway,

They can't find it on a map but they still know it's in the USA

1 person has voted this message useful

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