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Do you ever feel actively weird? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | "Louche" Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5337 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 25 08 December 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes we language maniacs can be a bit over the top. And over the last week I have felt myself blushing
when other people realise. The other night I was walking down my hallway past my daughter's room when my youngest goes "Mom, who are you talking to" , (shit, I hadn't even realised I was talking out loud) so I went "To Lexi (our oldest cat)". My daughter raised her eyebrows and said "In Russian"? "Sure", I said. "You know how much Angel" ( our youngest cat) loves Russian, and I just didn't want Lexi to feel left out". Her look made it absolutely clear that she knew that I had made that up, but mercifully she left it at that. A couple of days later I told my husband that while I was out driving and trying to talk to myself in Italian, Russian words kept popping up. "Now why on earth would you be talking to yourself in Italian" he said. "Because I was preparing for a conversation I was planning to have in Italian", said I. "But why talk to yourself" - Well that's the preparation part! This morning my daughter came in to give me a morning hug, and started talking. In English. She attends a school where part of her curriculum is in English, and sometimes she and her sister talk in English together. When Luca was here he told me how strange he found it, when my youngest daughter and I talked among ourselves in English, but that is nothing compared to when they speak English with me when there are no foreigners around. We have tried to speak Spanish together, but that rarely works more than a few minutes at the time. They don't really have the vocabulary for it. Please tell me I am not the only weirdo and that the rest of you do things like this too! 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 25 08 December 2012 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Hearing some English spoken in my household is not unheard of, because we all speak that
(although I don't think my mum likes it), but other than that the only language anybody else could manage something in is German, and that rarely happens unless someone happens to be going to Germany. They think I am weird for muttering to myself in Swedish or Russian, but that is their problem. English can get used more often as a subtitute for a single word. With some of my Dutch friends here, I sometimes speak more English than Dutch, which outsiders find a little bizarre. To say the least. But we have spoken English to each other like that since high school, it's just a trait we adopted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 25 08 December 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't feel weird about it, but your examples all sound quite familiar from my everyday life, Solfrid Cristin. I happily sing along to songs in a slightly ridiculous array of languages, practice languages, etc; yesterday, I was singing occasional words and phrases in Polish, Dutch, Persian, etc, though a sore throat kept me from singing much. I speak with my parents in the L2 of each at times. What I can't quite bring myself to do is repeat particularly silly language lessons in languages cognate with ones spoken in my surroundings: it just feels too odd to repeat some Assimil lessons, for instance, unless I'm quite sure I'm alone.
An example is lesson two of Assimil Dutch in areas where German is widely understood. I find myself absolutely unable to shadow it outdoors with a straight face. It's a dialogue, where the person being questioned says he has no house, apartment, car, income, or job, and then when asked "What do you have, then?" replies with "I have a wife, six children, and debts". Try repeating that whole dialog out loud a few times while walking downtown as part of a commute... Edited by Volte on 08 December 2012 at 11:15am 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 25 08 December 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Ha, during my Mandarin studying days I'd walk to and from work shadowing ChinesePod dialogs in Mandarin which were about gangsters and ninjas. Lines like "There's this Canadian guy, Peter. I don't want to see him anymore, understood?" and talk about cutting people's fingers off. I lowered my voice whenever I walked by people with East Asian features and counted on the rest not understanding, thinking I was some important businessman talking Mandarin on the phone or something. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 25 08 December 2012 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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At home is where I can feel safe saying whatever pops into my mind first and then explaining what the other person didn't understand. With outsiders I usually try to anticipate their comprehension and abide by conventions within a social group.
Of course I get very self-conscious shadowing etc when I'm outside. Though the funny thing is that I'm more afraid of being understood and randomly talked to than of being considered weird and left alone. I'm already considered weird anyways. Some time ago I took out my Chinese textbook during break time at work and one of my coworkers told me I should relax, not study. I did *not* tell her that I find it insufferable having to listen to other people talking about their family members and where to find the best bargains among themselves and to pretend I cared. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5672 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 25 08 December 2012 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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People always find it weird that my husband and I speak different languages among ourselves. He says something in Spanish, I answer in French and vice-versa.
I also get curious looks when I take out my Assimil Indonesian ;-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4704 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 7 of 25 08 December 2012 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always use Japanese, everywhere, all the time, unless I absolutely have to use German. This means I also self-talk everywhere. People don't understand me here anyways and apart from my guests, I never encountered any Japanese persons here. I can't care less if people think I'd be a weirdo or if they assume I'd talk on the phone. What they think is their problem, not mine. Edited by atama warui on 08 December 2012 at 9:23pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Phantom Kat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5066 days ago 160 posts - 253 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Finnish | Message 8 of 25 08 December 2012 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find myself muttering in Finnish all the time, as limited as my Finnish is. If I'm
hungry, I'll say I'm hungry in Finnish and what food I want. If I just listened to a Finnish song before going to class then I'll sing that under my breath with whatever lyrics I remember. In class I have a sheets of paper that I use to write Finnish when I'm bored. There might be a part of me that doesn't want to appear weird to other people, but that feeling is overruled by the fact that the more Finnish I speak, even to myself, the more Finnish I'll retain. The only person I speak Finnish to is my roommate (who doesn't speak Finnish) just for the sake of speaking aloud and having someone hear it. However, sometimes she stops me because she's afraid I'll confuse her (she's learning Russian). - Kat 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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