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1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan
| Message 73 of 73 06 December 2013 at 10:45pm | IP Logged |
I do not enjoy to have English as my native language, because too play people speak it,
so one has to have a better command of a different language to avoid the switching than
a non-English native speaker. For example, if one goes to Norway, Finland, or Québec,
if an English speaker has A2 of Norwegian, Finnish, or French correspondingly, I have a
feeling that the people in those countries will switch once they hear struggling with
the language, or an Anglophone accent or pronunciation, instead of withholding English
switching and continuing in that language.
But someone who is A2 in those languages, but a native speaker of Fukien, Lithuanian,
Spanish, Uyghur, Croatian, Japanese, Swahili, Frisian, etc. basically any other
language, and provided that they do not know English, or their English is A1 at the
very most, then I have a perception that the native speakers will be more inclined to
continue in the language of the country, especially if that person's command of
Norwegian, Finnish, or French is B1-B2 or more. In this case, switching to English will
cause the native speaker from those countries even more confusion than continuing in
their language.
It has become annoying enough for me that to avoid English, I pretend to be a non-
English speaker during all travels, and pretend that I am from somewhere like Spain,
Chile, Singapore, Uruguay, etc. It certainly helps that Spanish is my strongest foreign
language, and that I have partly Spanish ancestry to pretend some of these, in case
they try to switch to Spanish.
But, it might sound crazy, but I honestly prefer to
struggle in a foreign country with its language during travels, or if I immigrated
there, than to have English in case I struggle. It makes me more determined to learn
better and more their language. If I take ten seconds to form an understand sentence
with someone listening to me, it feels better than being hesitant to say anything
because the other speaker shall switch into English, something for me that feels
extremely embarassing, since it gives me a feeling that the other speaker feels that my
command of the language is so poor that s/he must switch to my native language, whilst
being in their own country.
For the converse situation, there are many Spanish-speaking immigrants here in
Manchester, mostly from Spain, but
also Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, etc. Some that I have met struggled quite often with
English, sometimes taking 15 seconds to finish the sentence, but I never switch to
Spanish, which would alleviate the problem completely, because they need to learn by
practising, and I do not want to have them feel like they need to avoid English. If
they themselves ask to switch, then I would do so, but only on their prerogative. The
only time that I switch to Spanish voluntarily is when I go to the Spanish restaurant
for dinner, because I go there often and the staff, who are almost all Spanish-
speaking, know me, so they do not mind.
Edited by 1e4e6 on 06 December 2013 at 11:29pm
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