tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4578 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian
| Message 1 of 64 06 December 2011 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
Here are some hopefully humorous stereotypes which, of course, do not apply to any of the language learners on this forum.
Japanese-
You want to be the first in your small group of friends who can boast of watching a "Godzilla" movie without subtitles.
Mandarin-
You want to keep yourself busy for the next few decades.
Korean-
You wanted to learn an Asian language, and thought that Korean, compared to Japanese and Mandarin, would be "easy". You were wrong.
Arabic-
You are an overprivileged, overprotected white female who thinks that terrorists are just "misunderstood".
Russian-
You personally think it would have been "exciting" to live under Joseph Stalin.
German-
You have no idea that most Germans couldn't care less that you've gone to all that trouble to learn their language.
Italian-
You're a struggling lounge singer thinking of making the switch to opera.
French-
You're on a lifelong mission to convince everyone that French is just as useful as Spanish.
Spanish-
You want to be able to communicate with the hotel maid who suddenly doesn't understand a word of English when something valuable of yours is missing.
Portuguese-
You plan on hiding out in Brazil after embezzling $250,000 from your employer.
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Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4658 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin
| Message 2 of 64 06 December 2011 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
Mandarin-
You want to keep yourself busy for the next few decades.
Actually, that applies to me.
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tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4578 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian
| Message 3 of 64 06 December 2011 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
Please accept my apology, Carlucio.
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nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5215 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean
| Message 5 of 64 06 December 2011 at 6:33pm | IP Logged |
tanya b wrote:
Russian-
You personally think it would have been "exciting" to live under Joseph Stalin. |
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Erm...does that apply to you, tanya b?
Anyway, I'd venture to guess that most of the people learning Korean are doing so because of the "Korean wave", and are, in fact, Asians themselves.
Edited by nway on 06 December 2011 at 6:52pm
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tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 5920 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French
| Message 6 of 64 06 December 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
O Carlucio!!
Seja bem vindo amigo, é bom ver você por aqui.
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jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4834 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 7 of 64 06 December 2011 at 8:22pm | IP Logged |
I am curious if there are any funny stereotypes to go with the world's minor languages. For example, as a speaker of Finnish, I wonder if there is a joke for it. Of course, because fewer people speak them, maybe the other languages won't have anything.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6397 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 8 of 64 06 December 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
jdmoncada wrote:
I am curious if there are any funny stereotypes to go with the world's minor languages. For example, as a speaker of Finnish, I wonder if there is a joke for it. Of course, because fewer people speak them, maybe the other languages won't have anything. |
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among Russian youth the stereotype would be that your dream is to marry Ville Valo, or used to be :D almost anyone who learns Finnish and isn't a fan of Finnish music would be considered boring (if it's for job opportunities) or weird (linguistic interest etc).
in general, people who don't learn languages will probably assume you want to move there (except for English, German, French, obviously... but not even Spanish)
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