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Languages used for ending communications | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5642 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 17 of 35 22 May 2012 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
In Singapore, the situation is not that bad as you mentioned here, as we do have people (usually guest workers) that do not speak English. I know that in China, consumers' rights are not protected and there aren't much governance over the issue of force selling. What you experienced are perhaps the worst ways to sell you a product. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 18 of 35 22 May 2012 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
In person, I've only once feigned ignorance to unwanted address by replying in a language that I suspected that the speakers didn't understand. I used Estonian in that case. For the other times that this has happened to me I've either walked by without saying a word, spat out something curt in English or even once shook them off in the local language as in this instance when I was in Hungary. On the phone, I've shut down telemarketers by answering in Slovak or Estonian. It can be fun to have a brief one-sided "conversation" like the ones in "Кукушка". The next time that I get unwanted solicitation, I'll shut things down using Northern Saami. I may as well practice speaking the damned thing seeing that I don't expect to be going back to Sápmi any time soon :-(. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 35 23 May 2012 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread got me thinking a bit about using a script with a set of phrases in languages that are unlikely unknown to telemarketers, door-to-door types or plain 'ol weirdos but can be used to squelch them or make them drop the call/chase.
If I didn't know any "exotic" languages, I'd use phrases from certain languages on LangMedia or Omniglot and create a mini-dialogue in some language for memorization that wouldn't seem out of place for a phone conversation. To enhance the chances of squelching the other person, I'd respond using a language that's quite unlikely to be known to the other person. This means that I'd be reluctant to use a language with a large body of native speakers and/or wide distribution as the other person could turn out to know such a language. Languages such as French, Hindi-Urdu, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese or Spanish to name several wouldn't therefore be my top choices for this exercise. For example here's a script using Omniglot's Hungarian phrases as recorded individually as .mp3s. Telemarketer: "Hello! I'm Daffy Duck representing Acme Inc. of Walla-Walla, Washington..." etc. You: "Halló! Hogy van? Rég nem találkoztunk!" (Hello! How are you? We haven't met up in ages!) Telemarketer: "Uh, excuse me. Do you speak English?" You: "Bocsánat, Nem értem. Beszél magyarul?" (I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you speak Hungarian?) Telemarketer: "So you don't speak English. Is there someone there who speaks English?" You: "Tudna lassabban beszélni? Nem értem." (Could you speak more slowly? I don't understand.) Telemarketer: "Could you please get me someone who speaks English?" You: "Megismételné? Beszél magyarul? Nem értem." (Would you please repeat that? Do you speak Hungarian? I don't understand.) Telemarketer: "OK. Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice day." You: "Viszontlátásra!* Sok szerencsét kívánok. Beszéljünk máskor is." (Goodbye!* Good luck to you. Let's talk again another time.) [Hang up now with a big $h¡t-eating grin] *To be picky a Hungarian would instead use Viszonthallásra! (~ "Until we hear each other again") when ending a phone call but for the purposes of this script, it's just quibbling. This example is based on how it's gone for me when dealing with telemarketers but replace the Hungarian responses with Estonian or Slovak. The following lesser-used languages at Omniglot have the requisite phrases recorded allowing anyone to create a script identical or similar to the Hungarian example: Basque, Cornish, Czech, Farsi, Malay, Mongolian, Sundanese, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Zulu 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4552 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 35 23 May 2012 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
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In Manila, there are scam artists, who come up claim that they met you in the airport, invite you to their sister's birthday party, where someone is cheating at cards, and you can help catch them and make money at the same time, and the rest of the same silly scam which ends up with all your money gone.
When they would come up and say, "Remember me, we met at the airport," in English, I would usually answer in Tagalog, "Sure, do you have the money you owe me?" Not exactly what the thread was about, but it was fun watching the expressions on the faces. steve 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6490 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 35 23 May 2012 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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English: "goodbye" (I have used this even in India - but don't be tempted to say more than that)
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5642 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 22 of 35 23 May 2012 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the tools! However, I have some comments regarding the language to be used in these situations. I think the language used for ending communication varies from country to country. Tamil, Malay will not work well here in Singapore, as they are official languages of the country, even thought it is exotic in the West. In addition, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Thai will also not work very well here in Singapore either, because too many people have learnt these languages and are exposed to these cultures through the media. There is a sizeable community of native speakers in Singapore, which render these languages to be less useful to deny communication. On the other hand, despite being big languages, Portuguese and Russian will work very well to end the conversation. Very few locals learn Russian, Portuguese or any other Slavic languages and there is only a very small community of native speakers here. Therefore, many will back off the moment they hear you speaking in these languages because they do not know how to handle it. Edited by QiuJP on 23 May 2012 at 6:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 23 of 35 23 May 2012 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Indeed the language that you pick to shake someone off depends on location and your best guess of what the other person doesn't know (e.g. I doubt that you'd use Russian to try to shake off someone whom you suspect to know some Russian for whatever reason or even a closely-related language such as Belorussian or Ukrainian). However I suspect that anyone would figure that out quickly and choose an appropriate language (e.g. you'd have an even higher probability of flustering a random huckster in Singapore using Cornish rather than Portuguese or Russian even though I don't discount your observation on how few people in Singapore know enough of the latter two languages. Conversely I agree that Malay and Tamil wouldn't be great choices given the number of people in the city who know those languages).
However since it's a kind of game with odds, I do know that I'm most likely to fluster some random huckster/scam artist by using a language that is endangered or highly limited geographically and even better highly divergent from higher-profile languages (bonus points if the "international" loanwords are few or obscured so that the other person can't even begin to imagine what you're trying to say). Estonian and Slovak have fulfilled that role quite nicely for me but I'm always interested in making it as hard as possible for the pest by expanding my repertoire, *evil laughter*. A Saamic language could serve me well while globetrotting... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 24 of 35 23 May 2012 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
If someone is irrational, then I don't see how using a foreign language would help. Telemarketers make money by finding those rare people whom they can convince to talk to them and get something out of them. If you are clearly uninterested and consistently refuse to talk, they are losing money on you by calling you when they could call someone else. They may be too lazy to take you off the list (in the US there are legal reasons they may have to, but you're not in the US, I know), but there's no money in harrassing people who are calling the cops because they're just that uninterested. If you instead try to CONVINCE the telemarketer that REALLY, "I'm not interested," THAT is encouragement to them, however. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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