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Avoid talking in English? | ||
Tags: Convincing native speakers | Germany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4574 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes  Studies: English*, German | Message 1 of 25 31 May 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to Germany again in August and don't want to speak English with people in order to practise my German. I
know that from previous experience some people will automatically switch to English... how do I stop that please? Do I just politely say that I want to practise my German? I know it probably sounds like a very silly question but I can be quite a shy person and don't want to possibly offend anyone. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 2 of 25 31 May 2014 at 12:37am | IP Logged | ||
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learn how to pronounce your r sound, and ask them. In German!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4574 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 3 of 25 31 May 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
Thankyou, I don't know how good my pronunciation but I think it's okay - I don't find the pronunciation particularly challenging, maybe it's because I've done a lot listening perhaps? :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 4 of 25 31 May 2014 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know how you feel about a bit of deception, but could you try a simple "Wie
bitte?" like you don't understand English? Or maybe repeat what they say in German so they would be like "This is not good" and you could reply "Meinen Sie dass nicht gut ist?" and maybe they would just realize that it's faster/easier to just stick to German. Or you know, you could just ask or even insist on speaking German regardless of which language the person replies in. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 5 of 25 31 May 2014 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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You could try to pretend that you are no Anglophone and feign to understand if they
respond in English. It actually works well for me when I tell people that I am from Spain, Chile, Portugal or whenceever, because people do not want to enforce speaking to someone in English if they are even worse in English than the target language. That would just result in a conversation where speaking several sentence would probably take more than one minute. This method is not for everyone though, a risk is always run that they might find out that you are an Anglophone. However, I am desperate enough that I simply care no more. Edited by 1e4e6 on 31 May 2014 at 2:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 25 31 May 2014 at 3:49am | IP Logged | ||
Then what do you do when there's the possibility of a friendship developing? I would think it would just be easier to be honest with them and tell them that you'd really like to be able to practice your target language and that it's important to you. My experience has always been that if you tell them you'd like to speak in the target language, they'll stay in it for you, provided you're actually able to hold some sort of conversation. If not and you're having trouble spitting out "Can I get some coffee?", well, consider that you're probably talking to someone who is working and would probably just like to get their job done in the most efficient way possible. R. == 3 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 7 of 25 31 May 2014 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
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An English person who travels around in Germany can be invisible. If your German is at a proficient
level, you don't have to introduce yourself by saying: "Hello, I'm from England" sort of thing. Then the local who are also fluent enough in English would switch to English. Just keep talking and answering back in German until the native notice you're not from the area and then you can explain where you come from. I have a Chinese friend living in the US. People in Taiwan normally classify him as ABC or American- born Chinese. When he travels to Taiwan or China, he can be invisible if he wants to except his Chinese isn't very fluent. Some of the time he can behave like a native while other times he would disclose he is from the US. If you are a European travelling to Asia, the locals automatically assume you don't speak the local language such as Japanese or Mandarin because of your skin colour. Edited by shk00design on 01 June 2014 at 4:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 8 of 25 31 May 2014 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I'd just ask if I can speak in my TL. I find it very wrong to
lie about who you are even to strangers, cause you never know what'll happen later, maybe you'll meet each other once again and the truth will come out. I'm shy too, but if I want to switch the language of conversation I just ask for it, nothing more, nothing less. I also can explain why would I need such a thing, and generally a phrase like "it's a rare case when I can speak such a beautiful language" should do the trick (if it's honest, of course). 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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