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Getting people not to speak English | ||
Tags: Language Banditry | Convincing native speakers | Immersion | Swedish | Learning Technique/Method | Accent | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7082 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes  3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 49 of 169 31 August 2005 at 1:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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Getting to people to speak Korean in Korea is pretty easy. Hardly no one here speaks English that I have met. And many of those that do are too shy to try it. For some people though, it's quite common to use "Konglish" ...which is fine by me to a certain extent - we both get to practice what we want, so it's all good.
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| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7381 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 50 of 169 06 November 2005 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just had to deal with this problem in Rome with an enthusiastic wine-waiter who could not speak any other language than English as soon as he was in the presence of a confirmed foreigner. A dose of a hefty medicine was needed and I started to translate everything he told me aloud in English back into Italian to people at my table. After two phrases we were safely back in Italian and everybody was happy.
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| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7097 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 51 of 169 06 November 2005 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for posting this. That is a good one I’ll have to remember. There is hope for native-born English speakers trying not to speak English. Edited by Farley on 06 November 2005 at 7:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6965 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 52 of 169 09 November 2005 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think much of "language choosing" is a subconscious process. People will mostly choose the language which they think will make communication easiest. Whether this is the local language is probably rather irrelevant.
Of course, they might be wrong because of false expectations ("Foreigners don't speak my language, they speak English."). So if your command of the target language is really better than their English, you should be able to get the idea across. This happened to me with several Mandarin language partners who talked more and more Mandarin with me (to my advantage and their own disadvantage). And e.g. in China and Korea there's no lack of people without functional English, so the problem is rather small. Administrator's trick is useful, of course, if English would really be the better choice of language - from a communication point of view. It helps you to force the subconscious "language negotiation" into your intended direction. I can imagine how talking English with an English native speaker in Germany would seem more comfortable to me than talking German. If I was not convinced that he could understand my German easily, I would feel obliged to talk slow and simple German, which would be more cumbersome than talking English in the first place. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7110 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 53 of 169 09 November 2005 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes I do recognise that. When I succeeded to convince Spaniards that they could speak Spanish to me, there came a stage that they would speak to me much more slowly then they would do to a native speaker, this can be helpfull for the beginner but frustrating for the advanced speaker who feels like " okay, I do understand you hurry up please". In some cases I could get rid of this problem just by explaining them that they could speak to me as if they were speaking to a Spaniard. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7082 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 54 of 169 09 November 2005 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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oops ;) Edited by andee on 09 November 2005 at 9:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brent Groupie United States Joined 7019 days ago 55 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English* | Message 55 of 169 09 November 2005 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Keep in mind that he said there are lots of people without functional English.
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| Linas Octoglot Senior Member Lithuania Joined 6917 days ago 253 posts - 279 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Lithuanian*, Russian, Latvian, French, English, German, Spanish, Polish Studies: Slovenian, Greek, Hungarian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese | Message 56 of 169 14 February 2006 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I must admit that if an American would try to speak to me in broken Lithuanian in a street of Vilnius with huge American accent so that I must stretch my ear in order to understand him I would propose to switch to English although my English maybe would be so ugly as his Lithuanian. Yet if he would ask me to speak Lithuanian in order to practice Lithuanian, I would consider the request.
However people should not forget that in order to have a better accent one should at first listen passively for 6 month or maybe even a year to the target language(even without understanding) and only then start to learn actively. In this way accent would be significantly reduced. Because when we listen our mouth organs move. If we listen an unfamiliar language, our mouth does not know yet how to move correctly therefore we understand nothing, since only by moving our speech organs we can understand. Be if we peresevere, the sounds of the target language pervade our brain and our mouth and set them into a correct motion. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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