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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 73 of 164 17 December 2009 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
I do this a lot. I always say I'm just studying a language in which I don't feel completely competent. For example, I was at the library the other day and someone saw my copy of Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen. They asked me: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" I replied: "Ja, aber nicht fließend." We got into a nice conversation. They asked me if I can speak any more languages. I replied that I was learning Russian, Swedish and Czech. He found it quite interesting, and although it didn't feel as good as saying I spoke it, it felt better to be truthful and modest than say "Oh yeah I can speak Swedish pretty well." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5507 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 74 of 164 20 December 2009 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm very analytical and pick up things quickly so people often take me for more fluent
than I am. For example, I don't know any German at all and still don't, have never studied it or even looked through a textbook, but I sat in on my friend's immersion German class for 50 minutes and at the end of it I could ape a little German with mostly correct grammar (I didn't get the dative tense though, oops). Obviously I couldn't "speak" German and because I had only been there for 50 minutes and didn't have any textbooks/grammars to reference my vocabulary was tiny and my grammatical knowledge equally limited, but because I had figured out how to say a few things that were appropriate to the situation (Where are you going? Hey, that lady is going to the cinema. What movies do you like? etc), my friend was really impressed. "Oh my god!! You're good at German!!!!!" Now this is a cool party trick and can get you girls sometimes, but because it's all straight analysis and no "learning," it's very short-term memory and within an hour I had forgotten everything I picked up except some really useless stuff like Orangesaft and Kino and whatever (don't know how to spell, sorry). Luckily my friend and I had continued to speak in beginner's German so she knew that it was just a trick and that I couldn't actually speak German. But I've been in situations where I do this with another language and then go away and the next time I see the person, they're like, "Hey! Annette! Come talk to my friend Pierre, he knows French too!" But, you know, I'm not fluent in French. In fact, I don't speak ANY French at ALL. So I tell them that, and then they're all like, "But you totally were speaking French! Now you're just trying to be modest! Hey Pierre, come here!" "No, I'm really not trying to be modest. I just DON'T. KNOW. FRENCH." "LOL you're funny. Pierre, Annette is good at French, you should say something to her." And because I don't know enough French to say "I don't speak French," I am forced to go through my routine, which in this case, several hours after the completion of the trick, consists of only two phrases, learnt over a decade ago. "Je m'appelle Annette." "incomprehensible French I don't understand" "............." "more incomprehensible French" ".........." "Oh. You don't speak French. I can't believe you told us you spoke French!!!!" "Au revoir!" I just reread this post and it makes me sound like I'm some sort of a genius or something - I'm not, the party trick is not that cool, if you guys had talked to me while I was regurgitating German or whatever you would have totally known that I didn't REALLY know German. Unfortunately, some people are easily fooled. And once they are fooled, nothing you tell them about how you DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW the damn language will convince them otherwise. Edited by annette on 20 December 2009 at 9:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6187 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 75 of 164 21 December 2009 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a cool party trick. I would love to have that, as frustrating as it may get sometimes.
I often get that from people when they hear me speaking one of my languages. Especially in Japanese, which is a bit halting these days. They hear me talk to someone and think I'm fluent. Or in Korean I may be talking about something slightly complicated and I tell a bystander that I might just be talking about what I did the day before with all sorts of grammatical errors and they wouldn't know. So I rate a person's abilities based on confidence if I don't know the language. It's not surefire but it beats the hell out of just assuming. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5507 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 76 of 164 21 December 2009 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I rate on confidence too. I'm always surprised at how hit and miss it can be, though. I
find that a lot of people who actually are very interested in languages - the kind of people who would be on HTLAL - are often very sensitive to just how much they still don't know, so they can come off as less than confident even though they are actually not that bad. On the other hand, many people who are at a low beginner level will be very confident because they don't yet know how far they have to go (or, in some cases, that they are misusing grammar/vocabulary). An anecdote about how judging on confidence did NOT work out for me the other day: I was wandering around a Chinese store a few weeks ago, the kind with lots of household items and $1 crap as well as specifically Chinese-related wares. Everything was really disorganized and all over the place, which is characteristic of these kinds of stores and totally fine. Anyway, I was looking at the plates and chopsticks, trying to find a cheap present for a friend, when this white girl wanders into the next aisle directly across from me and starts investigating whatever it is that is on the shelves there. As I watch, she picks up something and starts to investigate the tag which is printed in Chinese. After a while, she reads out loud, very clearly, in Mandarin, "Tie3 pan2 zi!" To say that this was "unexpected" would be an understatement. Now, as we at HTLAL know, there are definitely people who study Chinese and are just absolutely awesome at it, but for the most part I rarely meet Mandarin learners who have such excellent pronunciation. Her tones were pitch perfect. Amazing!! What's more, "iron plate" is not exactly common vocabulary in Mandarin textbooks. In fact, I am vaguely embarrassed because I do not know what the character for tie3 (iron) looks like. In short, I am Impressed. And so is her friend (another white girl), who comes over and squeals, "Wow! You can read that??" "Yeah, totally, I've been taking Chinese for a couple of years, didn't you know?" After they leave for other parts of the store, I go to the other aisle to find the steel plate and learn the character for steel. But where she was standing, there are no plates, steel or otherwise. However, there is a beginner's Chinese textbook. On the cover: "Xue2 Han4zi4." tie3 pan2 zi xue2 han4 zi4 Well, she had me fooled. Edited by annette on 22 December 2009 at 12:07am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6187 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 77 of 164 25 December 2009 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I actually was referring to someone who is conversing or giving some sort of a speech in the language. Anyone can read a single word and sound confident, but can you talk to someone with a loud and clear voice with minimal pausing, as simple as the topic may be? Can you get up in front of an audience and start talking? I know people who can give a fantastic speech in their native language but falter when giving a speech in their second language even if they're fluent, but I've been on national television speaking Korean and I didn't say anything that gave the idea that I was fluent. In fact some of my body language is hard evidence I didn't understand everything being said around me.
I can't speak Mongolian or a Slavic language at all but I can read Cyrillic without sounding unsure of myself. That is a humorous story about the girl though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5507 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 78 of 164 25 December 2009 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||
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In that case, I agree with you all the way. Although I do have a bad habit of judging
people from their confidence in saying just a few words too. I think part of this is because it can be hard to convince people to really speak to you in another language, even if they're good at it, and probably another part is that the language that I am best at (Mandarin) is relatively hard for the average American to pronounce without a lot of practice, so if someone pronounces it well and confidently, I can generally assume that they've at least spent some time on the tones and probably some time on grammar as well. Not at all foolproof though. Funnily enough, I apparently often come off as more confident during prepared speech in Chinese than in English, my native language. In terms of spur-of-the-moment type stuff I am obviously more comfortable with English, though, mostly because I always start second-guessing myself in Mandarin: what if I'm actually saying this WRONG and they're all just too polite to tell me?! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6373 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 79 of 164 25 December 2009 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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This has been happening since the dawn of language. It's annoying though. I agree.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tulibu-Dibu Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 5446 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, French | Message 80 of 164 28 December 2009 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a funny phenomenom, one I have witnessed myself. It's weird that some people are adamant that person X speaks language Y when they may have just heard him have a short, simple conversation in it. Or sometimes just a couple of random sentences. 'I like apples, they are green' or sth like that...."Oh, you speak Italian?" Reminds me of when I was in high school and were playing football. My friend who was 4 years my senior used to go on with live commentary in French when the ball was in play, especially when he had the ball himself. We were sure that he spoke really good French since it seemed real. In retrospect, he probably just pieced together a pseudo-French of sorts on the fly. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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