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Getting people not to speak English | ||
Tags: Language Banditry | Convincing native speakers | Immersion | Swedish | Learning Technique/Method | Accent | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| HyeLezûn Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6686 days ago 33 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, Armenian* Studies: French | Message 81 of 169 26 August 2006 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is so interesting to hear! I was in France this past summer, and me and the native french speakers would speak in french until they realized I'm a native english speaker (after hearing me speak english with a friend of mine). They would then not speak french if their life depended on it! It actually became funny, the waiters would ask a question in english and I would respond in french.
I see the issue though, they want to practice their english as much as I wanted to practice my french. Edited by HyeLezûn on 26 August 2006 at 7:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 82 of 169 26 August 2006 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
This has happened to me in France on a fair few occasions. It's an unfortunate turn of events, but I just did the same as you, i.e. continue speaking in French and accept that they're replying in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7108 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 83 of 169 27 August 2006 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
Well I think my reaction would depend on the level of the waiter's English. Let us say that your French is much better than his English I think you can kindly ask him to keep up speaking French to you. In some extreme situations I even said in Spain (to ex-immigrants) "sorry I appreciate that you want to improve your Dutch but I really can understand you much better when you speak Spanish to me". Another situation occurred in a Spanish shoe shop where the shopkeeper kept on explaining me things in very badly pronounced English (and sign language for the English words he didn't know !) : finally I couldn't stand it any longer and said "Okay now either you speak Spanish to me so that we can understand eachother or I will buy my shoes somewhere else". :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7108 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 84 of 169 02 December 2006 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Again a very interesting link that discusses this topic this time from Estonia http://palun.blogspot.com/2006/06/most-annoying-habit-of-est onians.html
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 85 of 169 08 December 2006 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aritaurus Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6577 days ago 197 posts - 204 votes Speaks: Cantonese, English*, Japanese, Mandarin Studies: Spanish | Message 86 of 169 02 January 2007 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I never had this sort of problem in Asia other than in Singapore since every Chinese person's English is better than my Mandarin. I guess this trick can work if I tell them I only know Cantonese and Mandarin and no English.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 7138 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 87 of 169 02 January 2007 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed something interesting recently. For the last 6 months or so I've had 2-3 regular Japanese conversation partners. When we started, we spoke mostly (about 75%) in English.
However, over the last 6-8 weeks I've begun encouraging them to speak Japanese more: not by asking, but by making more and more encouraging sounds when they speak the language. The more I encourage them, the more it sounds like I understand them and they more they speak Japanese. Now English use has dropped to 40-50%. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| exocrist Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6552 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 88 of 169 15 January 2007 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just got back from Germany, and I haven't had a problem at all with people wanting to speak English with me. Over a three week period on my last "vacation", I don't think there were any times when any German insisted on speaking English over German, or even tried. The lady at the airport was a little surprised when she saw my American pass. :)
I think, unfortunately, accent is a really big thing. If your accent is "good", they feel like you speak the language better, and care less about any mistakes you'd make. I think part of the reason is because when they hear you talk for 20 seconds, if you have a good accent, they figure you're more likely to speak the language well, or be a native (if your accent is that good!). The problem is that that's not always true. There are also people who sound pretty good at first, but after a few minutes, it's apparent that the person isn't a native based on their acute grammar and vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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