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Beware of "secret" languages ;-) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| GRagazzo Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4958 days ago 115 posts - 168 votes  Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 137 of 173 23 June 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I do this with my Mom in Sicilian and Italian, but we have to be careful because there
are Italians where I live. So we will usually use Sicilian since there are less Sicilians. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| J T Newbie Australia Joined 5684 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes | Message 138 of 173 30 July 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know what the situation is like in your respective countries. I'm from Australia and live in Sydney. However, if you travel to Australia sometime in the near future, I can inform you of the situation that the topic of this thread is concerned with.
Having travelled all over Australia and assuming that during your time in Australia you will be spending most of it in the MAJOR CITIES, I can tell you from my experience that regarding this whole concept of "secret languages" (as well as languages that are widely spoken around the world), I DEFINITELY wouldn't recommend Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese, which are the two main Chinese dialects spoken internationally) as your secret language due to the multitude of Chinese people (whether it be school/university students or workers) that are here, especially in Sydney. Unless you know a Chinese dialect that is vastly different from either Mandarin or Cantonese, there's lots of people from mainland China and Hong Kong in Sydney, which I believe has the highest % of Chinese people in Australia. In regards to the European languages, the majority of students in Australia have either studied French or German during primary and/or high school. However, only a small portion of these have studied them at a high level by doing them in the HSC (which is the equivalent of A-levels in the UK). So, unless you happen to come across a tourist who speaks either of these languages or a person who studied them in school at a high level, it is very highly unlikely that you will be understood if you speak them in public. Australia, much to the shame of the multilingual enthusiasts, is a very monolingual country. Unless the person was brought up in a multilingual home, or studied languages in school, there's a high probability that a person here only speaks English. There's a very high population of Greek and Italian people in Melbourne, dubbed by many as the "sporting capital of Australia" (although, generally speaking, everyone knows that Australians are very passionate about their sport), as well as a relatively high population of Japanese people in the tourist areas in Queensland (most notably Gold Coast and Cairns/Great Barrier Reef areas). Other than that, if you know a language like Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Estionian, Georgian, Afrikaans or something out of the ordinary like that, unless you come across a community that speaks it, there's a 99% chance that no one will understand it if you speak it whilst you're on public transport. I think this is largely attributed to the fact that Australia is very isolated, whereas in Europe, you have so many countries within close proximity of each other and so many different languages. So yes, there's lots of languages which you could use in Australia as a 'secret language' of communication. On an unrelated note, I went to Taipei in November last year. Although I spoke Chinese there 90% of the time, I noticed that barely anyone there spoke English (other than "Hello" "Goodbye" "Good morning" "Thank you"), even though Taipei is the largest city in Taiwan. English would be a very good secret language to use there, especially if you ventured outside of Taipei City and into the more remote areas in the South. Edited by J T on 30 July 2011 at 5:20pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4973 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 139 of 173 09 August 2011 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't comprehend how some people are silly enough to imagine that they can use English as a "secret"
language. When I'm in Europe, it's just my default assumption that everyone speaks English, or a bit of it, anyway, so I try to avoid using it at all (I opt for Serbian, instead). I have yet to be busted for use of a secret language, yet, but I do have a story of one of my friends, who is learning Portuguese. I copied and pasted the following from his FB status (he got 167 "likes" on it, haha). For background, he was working the lift elevator that day, helping new students move into the dormitories: "So some brazilian girl gets on the elevator in West End and is talking on her phone in portuguese about how some "stupid worker who obviously isnt qualified to do anything else" has to take her up to the 6th floor... I dropped her off on the 8th. When i closed the door she noticed and said something rude then was like "You idiot, I said 6!" My response? "Oh desculpa. espero-que gostas de escadas. Tchau! (Oh, sorry, hope you like the stairs. Bye!) Her face? Priceless" Edited by Tecktight on 11 August 2011 at 8:50pm 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| xander.XVII Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5051 days ago 189 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC1 Studies: French | Message 140 of 173 24 September 2011 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sincerely everywhere I went I just used Italian and nobody understood me, this happened
notably in England, but also in France,Spain,Greece or other countries. I have practically never met people who can understood Italian, except for tourists. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4961 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 141 of 173 24 September 2011 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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At least, they didn't show that they understood...
The other day we were wondering aloud what a fellow bus passenger was carrying. Not a notebook, not a musical instrument. Only as he was leaving, it turned out it was simply a computer keyboard turned upside down! "Una tastiera!" I said. "Una tastiera!" he unexpectedly confirmed, and left with a broad smile. We decided to change our secret language to Finnish after that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4973 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 142 of 173 24 September 2011 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I actually have a story to share from the other day.
So I live in Washington, D.C., and, as you probably know, the World Bank/IMF Conference is on all this weekend. Therefore, we have many diplomats walking around the area in which I live. Last night, my friend and I went to a local cafe for some coffee and dessert. This friend of mine is learning Russian ,and he fancies himself a god at the language, at that--i.e. he constantly corrects me (which is fine, but he does so rather rudely, going so far as to correct colloquialisms which I have picked up from--and later confirmed the accuracy of with--native Russian speakers). Anyway, lately he has taken to using Russian as a "secret" language, which, in an international city like D.C., is really not that secret, at all. He kept commenting to me in Russian yesterday with such comments as "look at that guy, the guy in front of you. Doesn't he look silly?" etc. He harangued me over some random guy and, lo and behold, when we approached said man, he was speaking Russian with his group of friends, and had overheard everything! I went bright red. My friend refused to believe it was the same man, however, and continued this use of Russian all throughout the night. Finally, I said to him, rather loudly, "Could you stop speaking Russian? It's not like no one else in this city speaks it!" and OF COURSE at that precise moment a trio of conference-attendees passed right by us, speaking Russian, and looked at us quizzically. I could only respond with a shrug of my shoulders and a meek 'здравствуйте'. Like Haukilahti, I plan to learn Finnish. -_- 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5331 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 143 of 173 24 September 2011 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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My best friend and I once met two really cute Italian guys in Oslo, and half an hour into the conversation we were chatting happily along,raving to each other about how sexy they both were,confident that they only spoke Italian and some English, when one of them said in Swedish, "oh, and by the way, did I mention that I am half Swedish?".
I was so embarrased I could have died. It taught me once and for all never to make personal comments about people when they are present, regardless of language. That lesson was useful yesterday, when I was sitting next to an extremely obese person on the bus in Paris. I am not exactly Twiggy myself, so it was just bearly that we both fit in, and I was on the verge of making a joking comment to my sister, but held my tongue. And thank God for that, because the next thing that happened was that her sister, who sat next to my sister (they are both skinny) said in a worried voice :Are you going to be o.k.? In Norwegian... Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 24 September 2011 at 7:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4825 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 144 of 173 25 September 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Indeed, one of my nephews works in London, and although of English origin, learned Afrikaans to quite a good level at school in the RSA, as did his siblings. And driving in the East End - I think it's the Stratford-Leyton-Leytonstone area, there used to be a fairly prominent South African club we always went past, but this seems to have closed in recent times. My Dad used to be a butcher and did his apprenticeship and had his early working experiences in pre-war and wartime London. They used a secret language to talk over the customers' heads, and of course it wasn't the well-known rhyming slang, but back-slang. You simply reverse the key words, but in such a way as to make them pronounceable. So, "what's the price of this beef?" would be "what's the ecrip of this feeb?" And "hair" was "riah", pronounced "rye-aitch". I was quite surprised and intrigued when watching the lovely film with Philipe Noiret about an old-fashioned police detective in Paris, to discover that he sometimes used a version of backslang in his Parisian French, for similar reasons. My French wouldn't have been good enough to spot this. It must have been explained in the subtitles. I don't have a secret language, but occasionally swear out loud in German, as it can be nicely explosive. I just have to remember not to do it in Germany. Edited by montmorency on 25 September 2011 at 2:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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