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Importance of frequent vs rarer words? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5182 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 65 of 81 12 June 2015 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Without knowing the entire situation, how is that obvious that your family don't at least understand English? LOTS of people, not just in France, default to English when they a) hear a language they can't identify or b) hear more than one language between different people being spoken, because it's become a de facto standard for tourist situations (and yours was a tourist situation, no?) On a trip to visit a friend in Italy, we ended up having lunch just over the border in France with another friend of his who was from Sweden, but staying in Switzerland. We were all sitting in a restaurant speaking Italian, only one of us being a native Italian speaker. When the waiter approached us, guess what language he used? English. No big deal. We ordered our food in English, then went back to speaking in Italian. Honestly, the French waiter was just trying to get through his work day in the most efficient way he knew how to. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 12 June 2015 at 10:44pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4342 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 66 of 81 12 June 2015 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have a simple strategy for this: pretend that you do not speak English, giving 0
response (i.e. say 0 English words). Look confused and irriated, and say the equivalent of "What? I do not speak English." Should they continue to speak in English, do not respond in English, but just repeat after a pause in your target language, "What? I do not speak English". You can also choose your strongest L2 instead because they have either a choice of i) continuing in the target language or ii) trying to speak your strongest L2. This is what I do nowadays if anyone switches on me. This is just a sample of what it might look like: Me: Tre øl takk. Interlocutor: Okay so three biers? Me: ¿Eh? No hablo inglés. Interlocutor: You wants three biers then? Me: ¿Cómo? Pero che, te acabo de decir que no hablo inglés, ¡coño!/¡carajo! Tre øl takk. Interlocutor: Unnskyld!! (looks embarassed) Tre øl. gg Edited by 1e4e6 on 12 June 2015 at 10:02pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3588 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 67 of 81 13 June 2015 at 3:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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This reminds me of when I was in Japan. I was heading towards Ueno zoo and towards the entrance was a
French guy and his family trying to ask a Japanese guy for directions (or so it seemed since I don't understand French). This was basically how the situation went down: JG: Where you want go? FG: *Incomprehensible French* JG: Sorry no understand... FG: *More French* It was rather amusing to watch, but I suppose it would have sucked so hard to be in that situation as the French guy obviously spoke little to no English himself. Edited by basica on 13 June 2015 at 3:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4759 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 68 of 81 13 June 2015 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
The kicker is usually the fact that my accent doesn't sound English. I'm Dutch, so I'll revert to foreign accents that sound either noticeably Dutch or just... vaguely foreign to the extent people can't place it anyway. About body language - the French don't use the same body language at all as the Germans. It's a different culture. As for dress... I mean general style of dress. Not wearing a dress. But you should follow the example of the locals here. The other thing is indeed what company you're in. You're more likely to get a response in English if they hear everyone around you speak it - and if you're out with Erasmus students that is very likely to happen. I'm usually alone or with locals, which means I don't get switched on - and even if I am with non-natives I speak English with, I can get any salesman to speak Swedish with me since I just burst forward in it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4573 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 69 of 81 13 June 2015 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
The assumption is a faulty one at least for people over 50 without higher education (and the majority doesn't have that). In some countries (eg. Romance, German-speaking) there is no need for English in their daily lives and so people would forget the little they learned in school. In the old USSR countries English wasn't even taught as far as I know (might not be true for all, I don't know). Defaulting to German might often be more fruitful when talking to older people... Edited by daegga on 13 June 2015 at 1:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5061 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 70 of 81 13 June 2015 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not counting in those one or two sentence exchanges, in such cases it is not important.
In those longer ones, it is pretty obvious the group is not anglophone since the people wait for my translation all the time. They don't use any English among themselves because they simply don't know it. I can't understand what you mean by type of clothing. I don't dress significantly different from most girls my age anywhere in Europe, I don't wear touristy "sports" cloths many weird (and usually old) people wear in foreign cities. I tend to wear dresses and skirts more often than most girls these days, but that is "weird" in Prague as well and it's something you cannot tell unless you meet me more often. I totally agree with Daegga. Not only the USSR countries were without English until 1990's, every country imprisoned under their influence (so, half Europe) was without foreign languages with exception of Russian and, to lesser extent, German. Learning others was usually considered weird, suspicious, and totally useless. My granny now regrets not having learnt French and German from her mother but there was no point. But older people are in general bad at foreign languages including English, due to not using them that often, not spending time on american tv series and pc games without dubbing and so on. Well, thanks for tips. I think I'll be more direct in future. I will keep going and, if needed, I'll just simply tell the people the truth, which is usually: "Your English is horrible, just speak French." :-D 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6649 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 71 of 81 13 June 2015 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's not true, or rather, it wasn't limited to the USSR. English was simply less widespread. In the Romance countries many learned French instead, in the Germanic ones German. My impression is that travelling was also less affordable/easy even in Western Europe but maybe I'm wrong about that.
And in the USSR many people did learn English, my mother and aunt went to a school specialized in English (and later I studied there for 7 years too). Embarrassingly many of my uni classes and preparatory ones for uni used USSR-published English textbooks as well. Ironically I'd say the situation was quite similar to what you're advocating, apart from often not having a choice of what language to study (although I'm sure it affected the school choice for many). Edited by Serpent on 13 June 2015 at 7:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5182 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 72 of 81 13 June 2015 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
That seems like a lot of wasted energy just to be able to "win out" with your three words in Norwegian. Different battles for different folk, I suppose. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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