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Best Places to Find Native Speakers

 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages Post Reply
11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
tanya b
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4782 days ago

159 posts - 518 votes 
Speaks: Russian

 
 Message 1 of 11
15 December 2011 at 6:21am | IP Logged 
Having trouble finding native speakers in your target language? Here are some helpful tips on where you may have better luck finding them.

Spanish-

Soccer stadium
Soccer stadium construction site (U.S. only)

French-

Culinary schools
Over-priced hair salons

Portuguese-

Amazon rainforest
Amazon.com

German-

Oktoberfest
Police sobriety checkpoints after Oktoberfest

Russian-

Mercedes car dealerships
Going-out-of-business fur sales

Arabic-

Mosque (5 pm)
Any nightclub featuring belly dancers (6 pm)

Korean-

Your local dry cleaner
Your local school library

Japanese-

Your local karate school/ninja academy
Boardroom of any American company

Mandarin-

Your local Chinese restaurant
Your local top-secret science laboratory



1 person has voted this message useful



nway
Senior Member
United States
youtube.com/user/Vic
Joined 5419 days ago

574 posts - 1707 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 2 of 11
15 December 2011 at 7:00am | IP Logged 
tanya b wrote:
Oktoberfest
Police sobriety checkpoints after Oktoberfest

Alternatively, "all of Germany".

tanya b wrote:
Mercedes car dealerships
Going-out-of-business fur sales
Your local dry cleaner
Your local Chinese restaurant

Where I live, these would all be Spanish...

tanya b wrote:
Japanese-

Boardroom of any American company

This isn't the 80's (thank God).

tanya b wrote:
Amazon rainforest

Probably the last place you'd go in Brazil to find Portuguese speakers...
2 persons have voted this message useful



Carlucio
Triglot
Groupie
BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4862 days ago

70 posts - 113 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 3 of 11
15 December 2011 at 10:40am | IP Logged 
If you want to hear portuguese in US just go to Florida, there are a incredible number of brazilian tourists
there,inside best buy and wal mart you wont hear other language.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6015 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 4 of 11
15 December 2011 at 11:26am | IP Logged 
Hmmm... sometimes there's a fine line between "humour" and "racism".

The fact that most of us live in different countries from you means that we don't even have a shared frame of reference, so this isn't even funny. For instance, most Chinese restaurants in the UK are run by Cantonese speakers (as Hong Kong was formerly part of the British Empire). And in almost every country outside North America, football ("soccer") is the most popular sport imaginable, so any stadium will most likely be full of locals.
6 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6601 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 5 of 11
15 December 2011 at 1:57pm | IP Logged 
i'd call that nationalism rather than racism. not that one is "better" than the other.
some of these are funny though...
1 person has voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5266 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 6 of 11
15 December 2011 at 2:39pm | IP Logged 
Many people will click on this thread because of the title "Best Places to Find Native Speakers" expecting to find some useful help and instead will just find a list of language/ethnic stereotypes. To paraphrase @Cainntear, it is indeed a very fine line.

To those of you who actually want to meet native speakers for practice, there are many language exchange sites on the web for those who lack access to native speakers, conversationexchange.com and lenguajero.com for Spanish/English are two. For those who wish to meet native speakers face to face, there's meetup.com, couchsurfing.org, or there's always the old-fashioned way, just ask around your social/work/university network of people if anyone knows anyone who speaks "x" as a native language. You'll be surprised at who you will find if you just ask around for help. That's how I found people with whom to practice Portuguese here on a tiny island in the Caribbean- I asked around.

Edited by iguanamon on 15 December 2011 at 2:40pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5338 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 7 of 11
15 December 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged 
Could we please, please, please, stop accusing eachother of racism every time we get the chance? I totally disapprove of racism too, but I am starting to get really tired of people trying to pin racism on someone at the slightes hint of an un-PC statement. How about just not contributing to the thread?

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 15 December 2011 at 3:30pm

6 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5134 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 8 of 11
15 December 2011 at 4:12pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Could we please, please, please, stop accusing eachother of racism every time we get the chance? I totally disapprove of racism too, but I am starting to get really tired of people trying to pin racism on someone at the slightes hint of an un-PC statement. How about just not contributing to the thread?

I'm with Cainntear on this one. He's right that we don't all come from the same cultural references.

One person's political incorrectness is another's offensiveness. I don't see anything wrong with pointing that out.

R.
==


3 persons have voted this message useful



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