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Urban legends about languages... | ||
Tags: Stereotypes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5277 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 41 of 81 19 January 2013 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
And the myth part here was?.... :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 19 January 2013 at 8:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4650 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 42 of 81 19 January 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's definitely a myth. Practically all French people have been very eager to help
whenever I spoke French to them. But then, my accent isn't that torrid. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4608 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 43 of 81 19 January 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hearing so many contradictory reports on French reception of non-native speakers is making me kind of eager to test the place out for myself.
Wouldn't a torrid accent be a good thing? :-) Edited by tastyonions on 19 January 2013 at 8:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4579 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 44 of 81 19 January 2013 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I always thought that was just a Paris thing.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4650 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 45 of 81 19 January 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't had people in Paris so much as bat an eyelid at me for speaking French to
them either, even if it only got me the crappiest sandwich at Gare Montparnasse ever. And that was over half a year ago, and my French was worse than than it is now.
Nope. Pronouncing the language properly is quite important and gives off the impression you're taking the language seriously. Working on your "r" for example, ça vaut vraiment la peine. I find that if you make an effort to speak French, people are more than happy to speak back and help you. That is whether you are on holiday and meet people on the train (happened to me), in shops and restaurants, or even when you live with French people and ask them to speak French. Every time I spoke French people were very happy to have me try it out. The only one who didn't was my ex-girlfriend for some reason. In the beginning, they would speak English back to me in shops in Brussels sometimes, but my French was ass poor at that time. I was very insistent and spoke French back. Although the sweetest reaction I got was from a shopkeeper who actually returned the favour in DUTCH (Walloons NEVER DO THIS AT ALL), just because I bothered to speak French. I said I was trying to learn French and we continued in French, but he would continue to clarify in Dutch if I said something weird. Edited by tarvos on 19 January 2013 at 10:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4529 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 46 of 81 20 January 2013 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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One I come across frequently in Taiwan is "Chinese has no grammar."
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6068 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 47 of 81 20 January 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged | |||||
I've also heard this from native Chinese speakers here in the USA. I've never studied Chinese, so I don't know, but this can't really be true, though, right? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4715 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 48 of 81 20 January 2013 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Of course it can't, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a language (or a family of languages, but that's a whole other debate). The people who say that seem to be under the impression that the word "grammar" means "inflections". Those are indeed absent from modern Chinese (AFAIK whether or not Old Chinese had them is disputed), but morphology and syntax definitely aren't. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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