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Why won’t she speak Croatian with me? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| oziohume Bilingual Hexaglot Newbie Belgium Joined 4749 days ago 30 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan, Italian, French, German Studies: Dutch | Message 25 of 33 09 December 2011 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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Like many others here, I myself had a similar experience with my partner. We met in
spanish, but she was a native català speaker. Once I got my català to a fluent level, I started to adress her in conversitions in català. I disagree with people who say you should drop the issue. It is probably more natural for her to talk to you in English, but since it shouldn't be a problem for either of you to speak croatian,I think you should try to lightly change everytime you can conversations to croatian. I do not think this will upset her, because it's only natural that you want to improve your language. And since it's her native language, you will end up understanding her better, no doubt. Just my two cents. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jonás Diglot Newbie United States jake.wasdin.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4747 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 26 of 33 10 December 2011 at 4:33am | IP Logged |
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I have had a similar problem with friends. A girl who has become one of my best friends
is Mexican. She has always been willing to help me learn Spanish and explain things to me as best as she is able. She finds it a bit strange that I am so set on learning Spanish, and that even before I began, I had the interest. I want to speak Spanish with her, but it just seems weird to her. I just throw random questions at her in Spanish from time to time and she just responds in English with no acknowledgement I used Spanish. However, when I am with her parents, who speak almost no English, I will join in in Spanish and no one thinks it is anything weird. It works the other way. I have become friends with the sister of a friend I talk to in English. I met her at an event for Spanish club where we were talking Spanish, so it is just natural. Today I said something in English to her because it was a mixed group talking, and she said, "Wow! So that is what you sound like in English!" It is weird to switch when you are intimate in any way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jordan152 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5832 days ago 39 posts - 35 votes Studies: English, Finnish | Message 27 of 33 23 December 2011 at 6:48am | IP Logged |
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This can be tough at times but keep at it.My wife is Finnish and we live in Helsinki, at the start we had a
similar problem. We met at university in the UK and only spoke English for the first couple of years because my Finnish was quite poor. .When we moved to Finland I started studying seriously and got a lot better, but my speaking was still lagging behind due to the lack of speaking with my wife. Eventually I stuck 20+ little sticky notes all around the flat to remind us to communicate primarily in Finnish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lightning Groupie United Kingdom livelanguagelove.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5349 days ago 58 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 28 of 33 13 January 2012 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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I've experienced this too, except, the other way around. When I met the man I'm dating, we met in English and conversed mainly in English. He would often try to get me to speak in Japanese (he's a native Japanese speaker) but I would never say a word. It wasn't because I was shy, it was simply because it felt odd speaking to him in it. I think it's because his English was so good so we did just fine in English. I eventually got over it by sometimes replying in Japanese to his English questions and then eventually, it'd be full blown Japanese after a while.
I'm not sure why she won't speak Croatian with you but I think it's probably the same reason as me... it would just feel a tad weird considering you met in English, she's probably so used to just using English with you. edit: grammar and spelling Edited by Lightning on 13 January 2012 at 12:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zgarbas Triglot Newbie Romania goblinjapanese.wordp Joined 4722 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 29 of 33 13 January 2012 at 12:55pm | IP Logged |
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I always thought of talking in my native tongue to people who were learning it was weird. For example, I had some friends over a few years ago. The situation was like this:
They were native Spanish speakers. 3 of them spoke English, but weren't exactly fluent. All of them wanted to learn Romanian and had already learned quite a bit, and were complaining that they had been living in Romania for 3 months and had barely talked to anyone in Romanian. I knew English, Spanish(very rusty back then) and am a native Romanian. Yet I would almost always turn to speak to them in my rusty Spanish, compensating with English when I couldn't find the word. it was a huge effort for me to try and speak Romanian to them. I really wanted to, since they expressed a strong desire to converse in Romanian, but I found it nigh impossible. It sounds weird and counter-inuitive, but I think it's because us speakers of more obscure languges are used to speaking in English and not being understood in our native tongues. Speaking with a non-native is just extremely weird and hard to do. Maybe it's the same with your girlfriend? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4726 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 30 of 33 13 January 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged |
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I have the SAME problem.
I'm Brazilian, native Portuguese speaker, and I met my (Russian) wife when she was learning Portuguese. Her Portuguese was very bad that time, but quite understandable with my approach. I lowered my "level" and we developed our own vocabulary, pretty much a B1 level, so she would understand everything I said. But then she kept studying, and her Portuguese got really better, being between C1 and C2 nowadays. While that, I was learning Russian, but since Russian is MUCH harder than Portuguese it took me a while until I could have a decent A2 conversation. And that was the problem, she got used to speaking to me in Portuguese. Now, my Russian is between B1 and B2, but whenever I try to speak to her in Russian, she tells me to stop, because "I'm being weird" and "I have a baby accent" or "I'm trying to show off". =/ She says she has no patience to give me proper classes, though she always helps me when I have some doubts. Now I'm having a Russian course at university, so it's not being a big deal, but the only shots I have to speak Russian is when I meet her girlfriends (but they always speak Portuguese and English MUCH better than I speak Russian) or when we go to Moscow visit her parents (twice already) and I can't enroll in a conversation for more than 10 minutes. Anyway, at least your girl is open to speaking Croatian with you if you try harder. I think mine would just be annoyed. Edited by fabriciocarraro on 13 January 2012 at 1:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5419 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 31 of 33 15 January 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged |
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I'm in about as similar a situation as I think you'll find, and my advice is to seriously chill out.
I've been dating a Japanese girl (now engaged) starting about 4.5 years ago. I started learning Japanese slightly over 2 years ago for many of the same reasons you stated. To this day we speak almost always in English, but as time has progressed we've played around with Japanese and very slightly increased it's frequency. We are still using English almost exclusively. As long as your girlfriend is better at English than you are at Croatian, it is reasonable to expect that most of your conversations will occur in English. She is not your Croatian teacher, get over it. Seriously, get over it. Although I'm sure she would love it if you learned the language, to assume she is anywhere near as interested as you likely are in learning the language (remember that she gave up Croatian to some degree because of her interest in English, not Croatian) would probably not be correct. Very few people are all that interested in their native tongue, from an academic standpoint. If she has to deal with you on a day to day basis, she is very likely to prefer the path of least resistance ... English. Time has an opportunity cost, and she seemingly isn't inclined to spend the likely significant amount of time necessary to seriously help you at your current language levels. My advice would be to learn as much as you can, interact with her friends in Croatian as much as possible (an advantage I do not have btw), and after many years as your skills progress, and her opportunity costs of helping you decrease, you can SLOWLY start working things toward a more equal footing. It is not unreasonable to expect her to help you out, and even spend certain blocks of time, speaking with you in Croatian, but I DO NOT feel that it is reasonable for an L2 learner to expect their partner to play a major role as their teacher. If my fiance wanted to learn everything about Economics (I'm an economics professor) I would be more than happy to teach her some of the basics and answer questions from time to time, but I would very likely start pointing her toward certain books and expect her to do much of her learning on her own. I would have no desire to hold her hand through the many years of schooling I had to go through. I suspect your Croatian girlfriend to some degree is similar. She will help you out with many questions, and be willing to spend some time with you on things, but most of the work you are going to have to do on your own. You were probably not her English teacher, don't expect her to be your Croatian teacher. When you really get good, it won't even matter to her which language you speak. Edited by Sandman on 15 January 2012 at 7:01am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| xees Newbie Joined 5063 days ago 28 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese | Message 32 of 33 21 January 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged |
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I'm in a situation which relates to this...but is some what different.
You have to realise that when she talks to you she obvously thinks in English. When I speak to my Vietnamese girlfriend we primarily use Vietnamese (despite her knowing English, and speaking English very well). When we communicate in English then i struggle to find the words I want to say because the Vietnamese comes to my mind first. I find that i speak in English, but sometimes I will say things which are unnatural because i've thought of the idea in Vietnamese first then translated it to English. So it's hard to switch the way you think if you get used to thinking in another language. If you want her to speak more you in her language you have to tell her, if you don't tell her then she won't know. Make her tell you a story in Croation, or make her tell you about something in Croation, a controlled situation when she's only required to speak like that for a short period of time. After that then you can ask her to speak more and she'll become more comfortable speaking her native language with you when she sees you can understand everything and she sees she can tell stories and things like this without having to concentrate. Be patient and understand that speaking to you in her native language is perhaps more difficult because she understands the language learning process and would thus have to grade her language so you can understand - that can be a difficult thing if you know you can switch to a different language and have the other person understand everything. Take things step by step! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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