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Thread on "Language Banditry" | ||
Tags: Language Banditry | Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 97 of 140 21 April 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice story Keith. Japanese women are normally pretty timid. But some are tigers. I remember one agreeing to be my
language partner only to get me to help correct her English for some function she was putting together. I was apprehensive at first, but she bought me lunch. We only spoke Japanese during our meeting, which was very cool. She invited me to the function, which sounded really boring, but I was bored anyway so... It was a charity dinner, and I was one of the only men, but not the only westerner. I wound up getting two more language partners out of it, and (some text omitted to protect the innocent). So the victim turned into a beneficiary in this case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 98 of 140 21 April 2009 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
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The advice is always to go out and use a language, so I think maybe that means tracking some people down. Now you guys got me scheming "Language Banditory" strategies for here in the USA -- I should find some Japanese guys and torture them with my stiff textbook Nihongo. I just have to make really sure they're not Koreans.
There is a pecking order with these things, the less skilled person is the more needy one -- I'm not sure if it's related to how much sex one's had or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 99 of 140 21 April 2009 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not likely to be the victim of "Danish language banditry" anywhere in the world, but it has happened a few times with English, though not so often that I see it as a problem (and because I haven't lived permanently outside Denmark, the risk is limited).
In one case I was asked politely to help a woman in Sri Lanka to help her write a letter in English to an acquaintance, maybe another tourist who had given her his address in order to get an exotic penpal - not my problem. I saw it as a pleasant diversion from looking at streetlife and museums. In a few cases I have been approached by people "who just wanted to train their English", but who afterwards claimed that I had hired them as guides. But I always make clear that I don't want a guide from the outset, so these people just thought they could get away with it - they couldn't. In one case I simply asked for my fee as an English tutor, and then both claims were quietly dropped. But these experiences come from my life as a tourist. Expats who live for a longer time somewhere are probably in another situation. As for being an a**hole for speaking only the local language I haven't had that experience. Sometimes people are mildly surprised that I don't just speak English like other tourists, but then I just say that I'm in country X, and in country X the standard language is X'ish. In a few cases the local person continues to speak English and I continue to speak X'ish, - no problem as long as they do the things I want them to do. Edited by Iversen on 21 April 2009 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6352 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes | Message 100 of 140 21 April 2009 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
To me that sounds like a cool experience. Whatever definition of annoying forced use of English people want to use, I hope it excludes this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6751 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 101 of 140 21 April 2009 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
If you go to touristic areas getting spoken to in English, even when you don't want to, is inevitable. Except for Spain as I have found out. Spain was the place to where my parents always took me when I was a kid. Of course the touristic places. For some reason, Spanish people always seem to immediately change to Spanish as soon as I respond in Spanish. It is as if they welcome foreigners who come to their country and who have taken the time to learn the local language. Man I like Spanish people! Unlike in Asian where English seems in my opinion to be fetishized, you don't get people wanting to talk to you just for ONE reason in Spain. At least it has never happened to me so far. Iverson, the things I find are the problems are: When you are studying the language in the country of the target language (typically a university setting) where you get many students trying to befriend you for only one reason and see you only as a means to their goals. Being befriended when you speak English only then to have everyone lose interest in you when you tell your so-called friends from now I only want to speak X language (in my case Japanese) is a reason to be indignant. Some people only seek friendships for one thing. I personally avoid such relationships with these people as dishonest people will be happy to take up all your time which we are supposed to be using for our language studies anyway. Friendship is supposed to be give and take. For some people like these dishonest people I have just mentioned, it is all take. In one sentence, I would prefer people to befriend me for being me, not just for the language I happan to speak natively. In England, although I have had one language partner once, I don't really befriend Japanese exchange students and the ones I do speak to always want to be spoken to in English, so I just speak to them in English. I feel reluctant to set about making friends with Japanese people just because they are Japanese because I wouldn't want to feel like I am using them. However, if I encountered one who I liked just for being themselves, I would happily accept the friendship. Another thing I see as a problem is when you get people approaching you at unconvenient or even rude times when you are clearly in the middle of something and they only approach you because they think white person equals English speaker. I have had people in the past approuch me on public transport and insist that I listen to their barely understandable broken English which takes some effort to understand. However, all I wanted to do was rest and relax and not talk to anyone after a long day. And I was too polite to tell them to take a hike! More befool me! Probably the most major thing I find problematic is this one. When you are in gruop situations with many natives and just one person insists that you speak English with him/her when we don't want to. If we give in we betray our principals of speaking only the target language and also risk isolating everyone else from the conversation. If we continue to speak the target language, we look like a a$$hole. I we give a direct NO or just ignore them completely, we appear unfriendly in front of everyone. Making people do something in public can be really awkard for that person. I consider that rude in itself as I would never just attempt to change the language in a group situation when one language has already been established. Getting into public conflicts is an uncomfortable ordeal for me. Also condsider this. If you are in a group and one person only speaks to you in a certain language, wouldn't it automatically make you feel like an outsider and not really a part of that particular group of friends? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 102 of 140 21 April 2009 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maximus, I agree with most of what you say here. However my point was that the situation for a tourist is different from that as an expat who wants to learn the local language. That means that longtime stalking for linguistical exploitation isn't relevant for me. Crooks, people who don't take my attempts to speak their language seriously and plainly irritating fools can be a problem even for a short term visitor, and I don't want to spend my limited time on speaking English except where I don't have the choice. However I have not had too much trouble with these types, and sometimes I have even had pleasant experiences with people who genuinely needed assistance. As in a case like the one in Sri Lanka, where I didn't even loose valuable immersion time, because I wasn't trying to learn sinhalese.
There is one of your examples where I might be seriously annoyed, namely the one where one person forces a whole group to speak English. I have been to a meeting in my travel club where we had a guest from New Zeland. We decided then to do one meeting in English as a gesture. But I would not have accepted to do another meeting in a language just because it was spoken by just one person. And in a case like the one you mention where somebody just turns up and expects a whole group to speak English, I would probably get annoyed - especially if I had spend thousands of hours to learn the local language and time and money to get there, and now it's all wasted because of some lazy bum who just couldn't care less about the local language and culture. By the way, I have planned to make a series of trips to countries where I know the local language in order to prove to myself that I can survive a 99,9% monolingual holiday. In this situation I stay far away from Lonely-Planet-toting backpackers, and I would be very loath to utter a single word in English even to airport and hotel staff. And if I had arranged an immersion trip I would probably also be equally stubborn.. Edited by Iversen on 21 April 2009 at 8:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 103 of 140 21 April 2009 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Ha ha, well done! Was that in Africa by any chance? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5863 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 104 of 140 21 April 2009 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maximus, I don't see what the problem is. Just keep speaking your target language in any one of the dozens of
scenarios you mention, and you'll be ok. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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