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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5384 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 33 of 80 12 June 2010 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that there's also an element of how isolated your target language is.
Larger "world languages" tend to have a lot of dialects and accents, so native speakers are programmed from a young age to have a larger amount of "error tolerance" when it comes to listening to non-natives. English is the prime example--most English natives don't bat an eye when hearing English spoken in dozens of different accents, and are used to "tuning in" to interpret what the speaker is trying to say. When I made a brief attempt at learning Kannada, however, people would have minor heart attacks when they heard it come out of my mouth, and the smallest hint of accent would render some people utterly unable to understand me. The kids and teachers at my school eventually learned to "tune in" for my sake, but for many people I spoke to it may have been the first time they'd heard a "non-standard" pronunciation of Kannada, since the only non-native speakers they interact with are Telugu and Tamil speakers, which have similar phonemic inventories. Even Hindi speakers who move to Bangalore usually don't learn it. So I could see Japanese and Korean speakers having trouble with foreigners to a higher degree than English speakers. It's less of a "mental block" and more just a lack of practice in hearing one's own language interpreted through a wide variety of accents. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6767 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 34 of 80 12 June 2010 at 5:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Japanese has a wider variety of accents and dialects than English does, I would say. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5384 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 35 of 80 12 June 2010 at 5:50am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm the first to admit that you probably know more than I do on the topic. But I would imagine that, while there are divergent accents and dialects, they're largely restrained to a small geographic area. Which might mean less overall phonemic variance from speakers. I can't imagine that a man from Tokyo listening to an Okinawan speaking Japanese would be as "phonetically challenged" as if he were listening to a Moroccan speaking Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5281 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 36 of 80 12 June 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
It does kind of cut both ways, doesn't it? If you're overseas and a guy tries to speak English (maybe thinking he's helping you!) and you just keep coiming back in the local language - well, it's kind of a kick in the balls for HIM too! Anyway, it's a no-win situation trying to learn a language from folks in shops and hotels. You need to hang out in a country long enough to make some friends among the local people, I think. Edited by Romanist on 12 June 2010 at 3:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5997 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 38 of 80 13 June 2010 at 5:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I must say I found it a bit odd, reading through these 5 pages of comments, that so many people invariably take the side of the other person: the shop clerk, the hotel desk clerk, etc.. Just because these folks are pompous enough to believe their English is automatically superior to your ability to speak their language does not make it so.
What about them just trying to do their job as quickly and efficiently as possible, you say? Well what about *me* trying to have my day go as quickly and smoothly as possible? Does this really not happen at all in Europe? In China many an arrogant McDonalds check-out girl will try their best to force English down your throat, but when they mess up your order or ask you to repeat yourself about ten times, it's you who will be troubled! For this reason I found str0be's comment very interesting. Surely China and Korea are not the only two countries? --
An oft repeated cliche -- but is there any truth to it? In the US I never hear an end to the bitching about out-sourced support lines for the electric company, bank, etc. because no one can understand more than 75% of what those fluent English-speaking Indians are saying. Beyond that, my dad and brother both complain about being asked to watched a British movie that isn't on DVD -- because you can't turn the subtitles on. They find it hard to understand just what the heck is going on, and get very annoyed at that. An audio book that I enjoy all the more, if anything, because of the very intellectual sounding British accent in which it was delivered, was not a frustration my dad would subject himself to even after my pushing him to listen to it several times. -- FINALLY (just too many interesting things to comment on in this thread, sorry!) I am shocked that no one brought up body language! I was getting broken English responses from even non-evil Chinese people long after I spoke well enough to talk circles around them because I LOOKED like I was uncomfortable and out of place. If our Polish learning friend had approached the hotel clerk with the look of someone who had just come from a convention room where he mingled with a few dozen acquaintances in Polish, a confidence and air that would make her feel out of place or awkward to steal the frame and change the language, perhaps the "incident" wouldn't have happened. I'm telling you guys, TRUST ME, body language is AT LEAST 50% of it. When people stop making stupid insulting hand signs at you and you have a 70 year old couple approach you on the street to ask directions in Shanghai dialect, apparently not noticing you are not even Asian let alone Chinese, then you've got it fixed! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 39 of 80 13 June 2010 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe if you really had to learn it almost from scratch. But as a short-time tourist with a fulltime job at home I can't hang out for months abroad. The cure of course is preparation: as I have written earlier in this thread I wouldn't try to speak a foreign language to the locals unless I already knew it fairly well. So I almost never have real problems, but sometimes people are curious. For instance I remember that I was well into my checkin at a hotel in Girona when the receptionist noticed my nationality in my passport - then I had to explain where, when and how I had learnt Catalan before we could continue. Of course this wouldn't happen if I had spoken Spanish because learning Spanish is quite common. So even in friendly situation I may have to explain why I stick to the local language. And there are of course several possible explanations such as respect for the country and its language, my confusion if I had to changes languages all the time and the simple fact that English isn't my native language. And under those circumstances even hotel personnel and other service persons normally can see the logic - else my conversations with that person would be both short and bilingual. But I would never use my need to train the language in my first contact with a local person - they are not there to give me lessons. You can admit it later, when they have had the chance to ascertain that you aren't a total newbee.
I totally agree on both points. However in Eastern Asia I must exude lack of local language skills, because none of the inhabitants have ever asked me for directions. In Europe and America it happens all the time. Edited by Iversen on 13 June 2010 at 9:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 40 of 80 13 June 2010 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I only have had foreign country visiting experience in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In all these countries really nobody spoke English with me because I'm fluent enough in Dutch and French. In Denmark speaking English was absolutely necessary because I didn't know a word of Danish at that time. So I don't have any experience at all with people speaking English to me when I talk a foreign language.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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