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I fooled a native speaker | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6837 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 25 of 56 20 May 2007 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let's not lose focus here... I didn't mean to take over this thread... I did not make this comment in response to any particular post, and as I mentioned above, I did not meant to belittle anyone's achievement. Please keep using this thread to post your experiences of being mistaken as natives!
It's perhaps a bit odd that the thread is called I *fooled* a native speaker which has very active and deliberate connotations. I really just wanted to make the point that we don't always tell others what we really make of their language abilities. For that reason it is difficult to tell whether we were mistaken for natives; and where we can be quite sure, the experience is difficult to put into words. Edited by virgule on 20 May 2007 at 3:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| agimcomas Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 6456 days ago 69 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Portuguese, German Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 26 of 56 18 June 2007 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I generally get very irritated by people who believe they speak Spanish well, when in fact they suck. Personally, I feel very much insulted (call me touchy) by french-speakers who believe that they can transform any french word into a Spanish-sounding word and speak that way. I feels like they are not making the effort, they just impose their french vocabulary on our (Spanish-speakers) language. I, for instance, have made the effort of going through a dictionary each time I had a doubt about a word in french.
Nevertheless, I do encounter some french-speakers, in my school for instance, that speak Spanish very well or even perfectly and I don't hesitate in congratulating them. And I say something like: "Your Spanish is really very good" or "your pronunciation is very good". That doesn't mean that they don't have a slight foreign (e.g. french) accent, but if the accent is merely slighly noticeable, who cares? Edited by agimcomas on 18 June 2007 at 11:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| agimcomas Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 6456 days ago 69 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Portuguese, German Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 27 of 56 18 June 2007 at 11:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Another story: Many french-speakers (not all of them) believe french is my mothertongue, but none take me for a compatriot.
In Quebec they ask me if I'm from Belgium. In Switzerland they say I sound as a frenchman and in France... well, I haven't tried yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7315 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 56 18 June 2007 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your accent is not Québécois enough, I guess?
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| agimcomas Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 6456 days ago 69 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Portuguese, German Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 29 of 56 18 June 2007 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Indeed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6534 days ago 93 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 30 of 56 19 June 2007 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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This isn't exactly fooling, but way back in high school we used to have "open house" at the end of the year. Open house was an evening event where parents went to their kids classrooms and got to see what they had been working on all year. When my parents went to my Spanish classroom, my teacher asked which of them spoke Spanish at home. I took this as a huge compliment, although it was not quite as cool as my teacher was not a native speaker.
I completed the last year of the Spanish program in college (with native speakers as professors), and while I barely got my pronunciation corrected, they definitely would not have taken me for a native speaker. My fellow students often asked me to help them with their pronunciation though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lastlife Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6470 days ago 85 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 31 of 56 22 June 2007 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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don't know if this counts but i'm always fooling native speakers online
「本当にアメリカ人？」"are you really american?" 「やっぱり日本人でしょう？」"you're japanese, aren't you?" of course, in person i always stumble too much at conversation. T_T 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| uman Diglot Groupie United States umanwizard.com Joined 6932 days ago 58 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 32 of 56 26 June 2007 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been able to fool people into thinking I'm French, but only for short periods of time. (And on the Internet, but that's different...)
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