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Most original place for TL challenge? | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 4 25 September 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
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I am sure you have all at some point been challenged to "prove" your language skills by people who speak
your own language. Today I experienced an episode which however constituted the most original place for such a challenge. The dentist's chair. I have the most unconventional dentist ever, and during our conversation he discovered that I was learning Russian, and wanted to know how good I was. Obviously I was quite specific in explaining all my shortcomings, and that I could just barely speak it, but then he calls out to a young woman, and goes "you speak Russian, right", and she said: "Yes, I am from Chechnya". So I explained to her in Russian that I spoke Russian, and that he had asked me to speak Russian with her. So she turns to my dentist and said in Norwegian: " Fine, I understand everything she says, she is indeed a Russian speaker, I can translate into Norwegan for her". Both my dentist and I just looked at her in disbelief for a moment, until my dentist said, "Thank you, I don't think that will be necessary." Then he asked her if she thought I was Russian, and she said yes, but that I spoke a different dialect than she did. (I'll say...). So she left, and I should of course have played along, because my dentist was super impressed, also because he said that I spoke quite fast. But I consider myself an honest person, so I told him that the few sentences I had used were very common, and that I have a fairly good pronunciation, which might have confused her a bit. But of all the unlikely places I might have expected to be challenged as to how much Russian I know, I think the dentist's chair would have been the last place I expected. So what is your most unlikely place/situation where you have been challenged to prove your language skills? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 25 September 2014 at 11:59pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 4 26 September 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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The last time I was travelling to Houston, Texas, someone at the airport came up to me and ask if I speak
Mandarin. A couple presumably from Taiwan wanted to know to about taking a shuttle bus from the airport into the city. I had just bought a ticket 5 minutes ago and the only thing I knew was that it cost me around $25. I told the couple that they can take the shuttle bus to their hotel and it would cost around $25. Being someone from out of town, I didn't know any more than they did except that I can speak English to book a shuttle bus at the counter. Having Mandarin as a second language even with a limited vocabulary I was able to pick up the conversation easily. However, I wouldn't be able to tell the couple whether taking a taxi would be faster or cheaper at a given time of day. They probably thought I live in Houston. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3 of 4 26 September 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged |
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Alas, I have no such interesting stories.
I've been asked to prove that I'm not a native speaker, though, on a few occasions. Straight out of secondary school, I took a holiday alone. It was the first time I went anywhere alone, and since English-language books were hard and expensive to come by, and I was going to start university as a Celtic major in a few months' time, I decided to go book-shopping and sight-seeing in Dublin. My first day, I was stopped on three or four occasions by tourists asking me for directions. It was my red hair and pale skin, I decided. They grabbed on to the most foreign stereotype of an Irish person they could find. Saying "Sorry, I'm a tourist myself" over and over was making me peckish, so I soon found myself at a small table with a tray, a drink, and a muffin of some kind, staring out a window. That's when the suit-clad gentleman at the next table leans over and says hello. We spoke briefly for a while, and then he asked me where in England I was from. Oh, no, I'm from Sweden. But your parents are British, he insisted. Oh, no, they're quite Swedish. He then asked me to prove it by saying something in Swedish. When he looked at me a little suspiciously afterwards I offered meekly that I had English-medium schooling, which satisfied him. People have been surprised to find out that I'm Swedish before and after that, but I think it's the only time I've been asked to prove it. Edited by eyðimörk on 26 September 2014 at 8:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4582 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 4 of 4 26 September 2014 at 10:32am | IP Logged |
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Two years ago I was taking a train from Zagreb in Croatia to Ljubljana in Slovenia. It's a short journey of only about two hours, but at the time Croatia was not yet a member of the EU and so there were quite rigorous checks on both sides of the border. The check on the Croatian side passed without incident and the train moved over to the Slovenian side.
The border guard entered my carriage (it was one of those old-fashioned trains divided up into compartments with six seats) and said something in Slovene which clearly meant that he wanted us to stand up. I don't know what he said, because I don't speak Slovene, but either the word was very similar to Croatian and so I recognised it or it was just clear from the context what he wanted, so I stood up. He checked under the seats for drugs or cigarettes or whatever it was he thought people might be smuggling, and then he looked at me suspiciously and asked me in Slovene if I spoke that language. I don't know exactly what he said but it was something like "Razumete slovensko?" so it was clear from Croatian what he meant. "Ne", I replied, which was true. He looked at me even more suspiciously, took my passport, and began peering at it with the sort of expression which implied that he might not want to let me into the country. I think border guards must go to some sort of school where they perfect that expression. "What languages you speak?" he asked me in English. "English" I said, which was presumably fairly obvious from the British passport. "Deutsch". There is a time and a place for Esperanto and this was not it. "Deutsch?" He looked like he didn't believe me. "Sagen Sie etwas auf Deutsch!" My mind went blank. I forgot every word of German I'd ever known in my entire life. Borders scare me at the best of times. It's an irrational fear, like when you see a policeman and start feeling guilty even though you have never committed a crime in your life. Part of me is glad I'm never likely to go to North America because I don't think I could cope with the immigration there! I managed to stammer out something like "Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch". Then my sister, who is doing a doctorate in German literature and obviously isn't as intimidated by borders as me, jumped in and saved me with a torrent of German that was evidently far more fluent than what the border guard could manage. He handed us back our passports and left. Not my most inspiring use of German but definitely the most unusual situation in which I've been asked to prove that I speak it! 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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