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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 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 17 of 27 28 April 2015 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||
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In China they really do assume you can't speak Chinese and fall over themselves tumbling
when you show them that you can. You can hear them whispering when you come in, and if you speak some Mandarin, like I do, you can correct them and say "listen, I speak Mandarin" and they are more than happy to oblige because it means they don't have to search for the two words of English that they know. Hello and bye. If they answer you in Chinese (which is often) it means they simply speak no English at all, instead of a few words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4989 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 27 28 April 2015 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
Yep, this reflects the experiences in Rome that I described. We were happily speaking Italian and it was going just fine, until I showed my passport (necessary when buying a SIM card and when checking into a hostel, to cite two of my examples), after which they were very insistent about using their English and acted as if I didn't know Italian... even though we had just been speaking it for several minutes! And since their English wasn't great and I have a difficult accent, it made the whole transaction much more difficult. I had to be very insistent about using Italian just to get the job done. Like I said though, in similar situations outside Rome it wasn't a problem. So the location still seems to be a factor too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 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 19 of 27 28 April 2015 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I've never had this problem, but my passport reads "Dutch" in big fat letters, so they
don't know a priori I am anglophone. Which I am, but they don't need to know. (And in hostels I tend to speak like 10 different languages based on who I am talking to, so everyone always ends up knowing I am the guy that speaks all the languages, which makes every hostel journey like a party trick). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 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 20 of 27 28 April 2015 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
It's more than just skin colour or hair colour. It's also the vague notion of whether you fit in. A person living abroad and not hanging out with fellow expats all the time will generally eventually adopt the local manners. (way of dressing, body language etc) A heritage learner is also likely to be culturally influenced by that or find it relatively easy to pick up. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4072 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 21 of 27 28 April 2015 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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An Anglophone country citizen has it harder in my experience, once people see an ID
card/driver licence or a passport that has on front cover any of these: UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND EUROPEAN UNION PASSPORT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PASSPORT CANADA PASSPORT PASSEPORT AUSTRALIA PASSPORT NEW ZEALAND PASSPORT URUWHENUA AOTEAROA this alert goes off and, as garyb said, sometimes even if you already had been speaking to them for minutes before, they might go back into English with a look asi if they were saying, "But you are from an Anglophone country. You know nothing but English. It just has to be that way. That is natural law of the world" Compare to those who have paspoorts that say this: EUROPESE UNIE KONINKRIJK DER NEDERLANDEN PASPOORT UNIÓN EUROPEA ESPAÑA PASAPORTE MERCOSUR REPÚBLICA ARGENTINA PASAPORTE РОССИЙСКАЯ ФЕДЕРАЦИЯ ПАСПОРТ and I think that there is more leeway here. This is a genuine pain in the arse for Anglophones. If you are from Canada, perhaps you can pretend to be from Québec, Eastern ON, or NB and only know French, or if that is the case, you do not have to pretend, but I think that most in Québec and the other Francphone areas are grouped into the rest of Anglophone Canada for these purposes. If you are from Vancouver or Edmonton this makes it harder. Maybe Canadian passport holders get more leeway for practise, maybe not. But as the OP probably has an American passport, that, along with a UK passport, usually adds up to the R2D2-style "Anglophone alert". Even in just basic commerce, this happens. My mother a couple years ago in Paris was doing fine with her broken French until she took out her credit card. That was cue for the guy to switch to English. I thought to myself, "Ah shit not again", and started facepalming internally. If you have a credit/debit card from, just to give an example, Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Bank of America, Chase, ScotiaBank, this is often equivalent to the switching that happens with the passport. Edited by 1e4e6 on 28 April 2015 at 9:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4226 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 22 of 27 29 April 2015 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last year while travelling in Hong Kong went into a barber shop. There were 2 ladies taking turns doing haircut
for customers. The first is a native and the second from Nepal. Both of them speaks Cantonese although the second had a bit of foreign accent which is understandable. The expat Chinese community in Canada is generally divided into 2 groups. Anyone from Mainland China or Taiwan is assumed to be Mandarin-speakers and the ones from Hong Kong are Cantonese-speakers. There are Chinese who are fluent in both Chinese dialects and some who would speak English to each other because they can't understand each other's accents. A few years back, a Canadian (Mark Rowswell) who became the Chinese actor Dashan and a Beijing native was in the Scarborough part of Toronto waiting for a bus. At the bus terminal were 2 ladies talking to each other. One speaks Cantonese and the other speaks Mandarin. Person A asked person B for directions but person B couldn't understand what she was saying. The Caucasian who is fluent in Mandarin and can pick up a bit of Cantonese told person A which bus to take to get to her destination. Person A was a bit surprised and said thank you in Chinese. Canada is basically an English-speaking country with French concentrated in Quebec. In between there are people from different parts of the world. In Toronto alone there are over 200 different languages spoken besides English. I once came across a Chinese who lived in India. His main languages for communications are English and Hindi. He probably know some Chinese but is very limited. He can communicate with an Indian in Hindi much easier than to a Chinese in their native language. Edited by shk00design on 29 April 2015 at 5:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4948 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 23 of 27 29 April 2015 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got switched to English much more often in Italy than in Germany. Not to mention the people who addressed me in Spanish (hey, he is Brazilian, he knows nothing but portuñol). In Germany people were much more patient even if my German level is much lower (on the other hand I may know more travelling vocabulary in Germany, who knows).
I wonder how people found out we were Brazilians on the sight in Italy. We needn't open our mouths. Body language and maybe a less tense sight were enough. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4072 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 24 of 27 29 April 2015 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you are going by clothes, some of the most ridiculous things that I have heard is
that people can tell that I am an Anglophone from the UK if I do not wear shorts when it is 40 C. And then people tell me that I am an Anglophone from the USA if I wear shorts in 40 C. I do not know how anyone can tell if I speak English or not because I look Hispanic instead of a WASP-like person from the UK or USA. Mix of light/dark brown hair, black beard, and 178 cm. If they can somehow guess that I am an Anglophone I am not sure what exactly causes that. If anything, I have used my looks to pretend to be from Spain or Argentina in the past during travels as a means of avoiding being switched to English. I think that one factor is family that accompany you. If they are native Anglophones and you have to communicate with them during holidays, the natives might hear. So you caneven be C2 in the language, but if at the same table are your Anglophone family with whom you speak, they might just switch to English for everyone. I wonder how often this happens, though, for non-Anglophone tourists. Edited by 1e4e6 on 29 April 2015 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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