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How supportive are the native speakers? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5051 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 41 of 43 19 August 2011 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
When I got lost near Pinocoteca, I tried to ask a few people for directions, but they simply ignored me and kept on walking. I then got a wealthy-looking couple to help me, who also told me to "watch myself in this area" and not deal with "the people here." Something is the matter with social stratification in Brazil. People with good education were very friendly indeed. On the subway, I was looking at the map with a puzzled expression on my face when some guy approached me and offered help with a choice of three different languages! I was really surprised because it has been my experience that whenever somebody approaches you in a public place, they invariably want to get something out of you. Edited by espejismo on 19 August 2011 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4868 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 42 of 43 02 September 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the end I got lots of opportunities to have conversations in Korean. Only a couple of people always addressed me in English, because their English was so superior to my Korean that it just made more sense to speak English. Others were happy to speak Korean with me even if their English was quite good. People were definitely positively surprised that I know some Korean and made great efforts to communicate with me, use really simple speech, speak slowly, rephrase sentences I didn't understand...
It was so great to experience that I could converse about all kinds of topics in Korean, even if there definitely were severe limits. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Neri Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4863 days ago 16 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 43 of 43 09 September 2011 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my experience French Canadians are tickled pink if you speak French well and are a non-native speaker... especially once they realize I'm not Canadian. Some Quebeckers (a minority in my experience) have an attitude that you'd better learn French if you're going to be in Quebec, and others, here in Montreal, speak very good English and switch to it immediately if you seem to be struggling at all, because it's easier and they maybe underestimate your abilities.
So they're not always helpful in terms of learning the language, but most have a positive attitude about it and are suitably impressed by advanced learners. It tends to lead to greater social opportunities for me than I experienced back home, because everyone is always curious why I came here, and why and how I learned French. Some people ask me if I studied before coming here, which I think is funny/weird because they tend to do this after finding out that about two weeks after arriving I started studying at a French-language university... obviously you don't do that if you've only studied the language for two weeks! French people seem to have a similar reaction, but I know far fewer of them. Edited by Neri on 09 September 2011 at 7:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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