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Speaking with strangers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 25 of 32 15 September 2013 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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From Wikipedia, "African Americans, also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa."
From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/african-American, "Af·ri·can–Amer·i·can noun \ˌa-fri-kə-nə-ˈmer-ə-kən, -ˈme-rə- also ˌä-\ : an American who has African and especially black African ancestors" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4297 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 26 of 32 15 September 2013 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In that case what question should we ask if we want to know about their ancestry? It's not like I work a lot with African-Canadians but that situation will pop up some day. You also remind me of a documentary I watched on Youtube the other day, about 200 American university students volunteering to test their DNA ancestry. There was one guy who looked distinctively black, but he had a surname of Chen, so... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| davitamonfcg Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4784 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Flemish, Afrikaans Studies: Russian | Message 27 of 32 15 September 2013 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
pretty rasict, singling out an entire group of people how are racsist. its not all that black and white. differences between nations and cultures exist and pointing them out, and worst of all judging those differences is more racist then walking away. i dont see a problem with that, but i would like to point out that it is rather hypocritical 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4171 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 28 of 32 15 September 2013 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'd normally just go off the (sur)name, and then ask "is that Korean?" etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 29 of 32 15 September 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't ask about ancestry. If the person is comfortable enough with me, at some point the matter probably will come up and they'll volunteer the information. I may ask where someone grew up, which is different than ancestry. If I'm with a group of Mandarin speakers (I'm learning Mandarin) then I switch into a different mode. It's not uncommon for a native Chinese speaker to ask me 妳是甚麼樣的人 or the equivalent. Here the person is asking about my ancestry since I'm ethnic Chinese, am at a gathering of native Chinese speakers, but have mediocre Chinese language skills. Edited by Snowflake on 15 September 2013 at 6:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4297 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 30 of 32 16 September 2013 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
True. Now that I think about it, I can't tell one African country from another. If I ask about ancestry and can't think of anything to follow up the conversation, the situation would be as awkward as if someone asked me if I was Japanese. I'd better follow my own advice and ask about something else instead. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 31 of 32 17 September 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To get back to the original question, yes I have no problem speaking to people in any language I can, and I have no fear of mistakes. I have discovered that only an idiot will hold a mistake against you, and most people are nice. Because I have to deal with a lot of tourists, Greece is like language learning heaven during the summer. I can tell you, most people respond very well to any effort. Just speak, why else do you learn languages!
Of course talking to strangers works only if the situation calls for it. As for the rest of the conversation, I also try to avoid taking things for granted. This year we met a couple from Australia. The man though had a very distinct balcan accent. I know better than to assume, so I just said "you sound balcan". He was a Bosnian from Yougoslavia (his phrase), who left during the war all those years ago. Most of the times it's better to avoid non language questions and let people tell you themselves. Usually people can be very frank with strangers they will never see again. But you can't force that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 32 19 September 2013 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For me the problem isn't whether a person is a stranger - basically all local people I meet abroad are strangers. The problem is whether I (and they) can be satisfied with the level of conversation I can deliver, and whether I have a reason for speaking to them.
My personal preference is to wait to speak the local language at least until I am sure I can understand the answers. But there is a stage where I - and probably many others -resort to a typical nerdiness tactic, namely to discuss in English or some other lingua franca, but simultaneously translate the whole thing in my head (where I can permit any number of errors and omissions because the process is defined as extensive training, hehe). The first time I tried this was in a hotel room in Valencia where I watched a Spanish TV program and tried to translate it on the fly to Catalan, but since then I have used the same technique in Iceland and Greece and other places, and it is probably as efficient as trying to keep a conversation going in a halfbaked language. Btw I remember that Tim Doner (the teenage polyglot from New York) said something similar in an interview, and I faintly remember that the interviewer was almost awestruck by this statement, but actually it isn't harder to do than it is to keep a decent conversation going. During a conversation in Romanian at the conference in Budapest I was enumerating the places I have visited in Romania ... and then I got stuck on the placename Drobeta-Turnu-Severin, and being occupied with that problem I couldn't remember the Romanian word for travel (călătorie) because words like Italian viaggio and English voyage pushed me to think the Romanian word for life (viaţa) instead. Eventually I managed to get back on track, but then the conversation was over. One wasted opportunity to use a marginal language, arrgh, but the point is: when I do some thinking instead of speaking while I'm abroad I can get a much smoother entry into the realm of effortless and reasonably correct conversation than I can by just babbling along to the hapless local population from the first minute. At home the situation is very different. I don't just walk up to anybody who might speak a language on my list to strike up a conversation - if I don't have some specific reason I wouldn't think of bothering one of my countrymen by speaking to them in Danish so I fail to see why I should do it just because I meet a person who speaks another language. However once there is a good reason I have no qualms about speaking to anybody in their own language(s) if I can - like when I am asked about directions by tourists. But it may not happen for weeks on end, and then the language in question is rarely one of those I need to train. Edited by Iversen on 19 September 2013 at 11:32am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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