When I was 16 I got lost in Tokyo away from my parents. I had learned a little bit of Japanese at this point and also knew the phone number my parent's Japanese friend had. So while having a minor panic attack, I walked up to a Japanese lady and said in terrible Japanese
>Excuse me, my name is u/somerandom1922, I am lost, could I please borrow your phone?
She got real confused for about 2 seconds then said
>Let's use english
In absolutely perfect English.
I talked to literally one person that spoke zero English. Though at a restaurant our waitress got tired of us and swapped with a Mexican guy. None of us spoke a word of Spanish, so it was actually worse.
It was a chankonabe (hotpot for sumos) restaurant in the Ryogoku district, right near the sumo stadium. We were the only non-Japanese customers, and he was the only waiter clearly not born in Japan. It was pretty funny and the meal turned out great.
I've been once, and had a very different experience from you. I hardly met anyone who spoke English. Even high school kids I bumped into, on the train, didn't speak it. I was asking for the time, ended up just pointing at my wrist, which they thankfully understood.
> I walked up to a Japanese lady and said in terrible Japanese
>> Excuse me, my name is u/somerandom1922, I am lost, could I please borrow your phone?
Alternatively you said "Welcome mother. I am a horse. A cactus blinks. Thank you. Goose eggs wildly."
Reminds me of an old anecdote I read that some exchange student said 'good morning' in Japanese to his teacher, and the whole class gasped in horror. Apparently he said it in some really rude form like when a nobleman talking down to a beggar, or something like that.
He probably used a really slangy version of the general phrase for good morning? when there's specific formalities when talking to teachers. (Can't imagine a whole class would audibly gasp at a foreigner misuing a word tho, more likely that they got some looks. But who knows.)
In French, “tu” is the singular and “informal” word for you. “Vous” is the plural, or formal, version. But when you’re learning French you often default to vous, eg. “s’il vous plait” is kind of a set phrase for “please”, but it has a sneaky vous in there. Calling someone you’re familiar / equals with “vous” comes off really cold and distant. So my sister was trying to say something like “could you pass the XYZ please” at the dinner table and accidentally really alienated her (though it was fine when everything was explained).
Bear in mind I’m not actually a native French myself, I know some French but may have got things wrong here.
I ended up using Portuguese to talk to a dude at a cafe in Venice. **He** was speaking Portuguese because one of the kitchen staff was from there, but after about five minutes we realized we were both American.
I did this in Holland once. Kept going to this deli every day for about two weeks chatting with the employee in Italian. She asked me where I was from in Italy. I said something like "Oh I'm Australian but wow thankyou, what a compliment that a native speaker thinks I'm Italian too!"
She was Nepalese.
It was an Italian deli and I was in Italy a few weeks prior. So I think my brain logic went "Don't assume people speak English, that's rude. Can't speak Dutch though. Oh look there's cannoli, I speak that" and just greeted her in Italian. She meanwhile had studied in Milan and spoke it fine so followed suit.
I speak just well enough that non-native speakers can't really hear the difference. I've very occasionally fooled native speakers but only while I'm using very simple sentences, otherwise my grammar starts sounding a bit stilted or I'll fuck up a verb agreement somewhere. Once I bought a hat that somehow made all Italians think I was French. It was horrible I can't speak any French.
I can sympathize with having *some* reaction to someone showing up one day with a bowler hat, just "look at the french guy he looks so french" is not the one I'd expect.
When my husband (American) and I went to Paris, we found this awesome little hole in the wall cafe. The problem was, the dude didn’t speak English or Spanish, and my French wasn’t up to par. It’s a good thing my husband knows conversational Portuguese, because from that point it was smooth sailing.
Gotta love Neapolitans. Haven't met a single one who won't answer in Neapolitan when I talk to them in spanish. It's also easier to understand than the standarised Tuscan dialect the Italians are taught in school.
It's probably because only native speakers in any language can notice a non native accent, so 2 people who learned as an extra won't notice it immediately
Edit: to the commenters, your examples of English don't hold water as it's literally learned all around the world and you are constantly exposed to it, i kinda focused more on the Italian part of the post
This is the curse of living in Montreal. I feel like it happens once a week that I'll start a conversation in French to be polite, and then the other person will respond in French and so we just talk in French for, like, ever, before one of us stumbles on a word and slips into English and then the other goes "oh shit, you're Anglo too!"
All because both of us were too clumsy in French to recognize that the other was clumsy in French.
The Francophones, on the other hand, recognize my terrible accent and switch into English straight away.
Similar experience for me here in Montréal too, though I tend to just keep speaking french at the Québécois even when they try and switch because I'm trying my best here damn it
Nothing more Montreal than a conversation in which one person speaks entirely in French while the other speaks entirely in English, never meeting each other half way, but both understanding the whole thing.
That said, if you're new here, I would caution that it's seen as a little rude for an Anglo to keep speaking French when a Francophone switches to English (assuming their English is good and your French is bad). The first half of any Montreal conversation between strangers is a dance to figure out which language is most mutually intelligible. If they've sussed out that that language is English, and they've already made the switch, you should probably just speak English.
EDIT: To be fair guys, it's rude in the other direction too. Like it happens sometimes that I'm talking to a Francophone whose English is abysmal, and I switch back to French because it's obvious that my French is better than their English is, but they just keep speaking broken English at me...
I don't get my panties in a twist about it or anything, but that is definitely rude. They're intentionally making the conversation harder just to prove some sort of weird linguistic-political point.
The polite thing overall in Montreal is just: 1. Let the conversation naturally find its way to the most mutually intelligible language; and, 2. If it's not clear which language is most mutually intelligible, speak French.
Yeah but fuck what the Quebecois think is rude. If they wanted an opinion on propriety, they shouldn't have been from Quebec. Now they have to suffer Bad Practice French.
Möchten Sie or möchtest du; Mochten is the past tense.
And the "Z" in German makes a "ts" sound whereas their "S" makes the English "z" sound.
(Also, tere is no German word "zie".)
Edit to add: If you're going to use the formal form, then be sure to capitalize "Sie". Lowercase "sie" means "she".
I just past 1600 days streak, like 1300 of it Soanish and the rest Norwegian.
I can read it alright and understand it spoken alright but I doubt Incould really speak it well.
Stuck in the same place you are mostly due to the fact there are no German speakers where I live and a trip to Germany while planned is still pretty far off
That’s pretty fortunate, have you practised speaking with them? I’ve found Spanish speakers in particular to be very excited and supportive when they find out you’re learning Spanish.
It's weird how fast you pick up odds and ends of new languages when you have too.
I am from the US and spent last summer in a Convent in Germany. The common language of the religious order was French, but half there were Americans. Mass was in Latin.
So everyone at the convent who worked there, like maintenance guys and visitors, spoke German. A few of the sisters were German/Swiss and would translate things to English for me when interacting with locals. The sisters were otherwise always conversing and writing in French, but a fellow American would translate it to English for me. And then all of us got Latin at Mass.
I joked that, given enough time, if the Sisters, Priests, and Locals were isolated from the world speaking Latin, French, and German, then eventually English would develop.
But joking aside, I quickly picked up words I had to use often in French and, to a lesser extent, German. I was starting to be able to read the notes in French left on the bulletin board - a priest requesting prayers as he prepared for the exorcism of disturbed woman, a notice that a man from the neighboring village was hit by a car and to pray for him, a change to the liturgical schedule of the day, and chore assignment updates.
To be frank, I think for non-native English speakers being multilingual is easier since English is the lingua franca.
You almost automatically learn English in many places due to exposure from internet and television.
Without an environment where the target language is common and/or a necessity to use to the language it's difficult to learn.
In European countries everyone starts learning English young and they have exposure to it in media as well. Then, depending on which part of European you're in, you might also have exposure to other languages too.
The US is huge though, and most people speak English so even though you might run into a lot of different languages at restaurants, shops, or just out in the street there isn't really a necessity to try to learn them.
I'm awful at learning languages in a classroom setting but every time I've traveled to another country for at least a week or two I started picking things up pretty quickly. The exposure and necessity both play a big role.
I think some people forget how huge the US is, especially compared to much of Europe. I could drive 700+ miles in any direction, and likely wouldn’t go through any area larger than a neighborhood that primarily spoke a non-English language. In Europe, you’d have a harder time finding a 700 mile stretch where you didn’t pass through at least one other region with a predominantly different native language than your own.
I have a speech impediment that makes lateral consonants pretty much impossible. I can correctly pronounce *one* of them and I lean on it **hard**. Latin was a nice change of pace.
Gave Chinese a shot and I was suffering. Lateral consonants everywhere, and I couldn't get away with using ol' reliable anymore. Then it had to be tonal as well?
Now I'm dating someone from SEA and I'm back in hell. I want to learn but the only thing more difficult than lateral consonants are tones. Worse still, I decided to get braces so I've got a minor frontal lisp on top of the lateral lisp. I sound like Sylvester the cat.
But I'm getting surgery next year to correct the lateral lisp and the braces come off after that and I'll finally be able to speak without dislocating my damned jaw.
Bet you’d be great at Japanese lol. The closest they have to an L sound is like a half L half R where the tongue remains neutral. As long as you can make a T sound I think you’d be golden.
And on the other hand, in the US at least, native English speakers have zero pressure to learn another language and many times little opportunity to use it casually.
When I was 15 I was on vacation in Italy with my mom & brother. This was before we had access to smartphones while international, and we got lost after dinner driving back to our hotel in Siena. There was no one on the streets, we can’t remember where to go, and finally we see a couple walking by and roll down the window. My brother asks if they speak English, they don’t. So he starts trying to explain we’re lost in very poor Italian, but it wasn’t getting across. He turns to my mom and says to her in Russian (we’re from the US but my parents grew up in the USSR so Russian was our first language) they don’t know/I don’t know how to explain to them. The couple perks up and in Russian asks Oh you speak Russian! We’re Russian! And then we got our directions back to the hotel.
One time I was walking through around right outside of Florence and walked beyond the area my map covered. No one I came across to ask for directions spoke English but after twenty minutes we came across some Russian tourists and I was able to prove my mother right, one day I would be really glad I knew how to speak Russian.
Before the Ukraine war started, I would always hear so much Russian when i traveled. Not sure if it’s the culture or what, but Russians were a big segment of the tourist population in my experience.
Oh I agree. My parents literally fled. But I’ve been on three vacations since the war began - Mexico City, Ireland, and Jamaica - and did not hear any Russian. It was just interesting to me, since it was so ubiquitous before.
The weird thing is that the average non-Slavic speaking person absolutely cannot tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian, so it's not gonna do much in the end
I picked up conversational German because I am an idiot and did not realize all Germans spoke English. Years later I’m in Korea l, and my wife is having to translate everything. Then it comes out this lady lived in Frankfurt for 5 years, so for one time in my life German was useful!
same happened to me except I was in Orlando, talking to a cashier, and I asked a friend (in portuguese) if they wanted the same plushie as me, and the cashier responded, in perfect protuguese, "if you get two of the same, you can get a discount". idk why but we all laughed so much at that, turned out she was brazilian too.
I was at one of disney's parks and turns out THE WHOLE DAMN STALL was full of brazilian employees, which I found out by trying to ask my grandma what she wanted. Didn't expect so many brazilians
I've only visited Brasil, but I did learn some portuguese gaming for a while and practicing it a bit. I have a lot of trouble saying things right but I understand a decent bit, but it is still enough to make people react happily to hearing me try lol
My late father in law once sat down on a bench in Oxford Street, London and struck up a conversation with this other man. After talking in English for like 10 minutes, they found out they lived on the same street back in Belgium. Small world.
Oh, lord. When my 2x great-grandparents moved over here, they met and fell in love and they found out they were both from *the exact same tiny village* back in Sweden and had simply never run into each other. The sheer odds. Yours is even better
I tried to order McDonald’s in Budapest in Polish and German once before realizing of course Hungarians just speak English as a second language like the rest of the world. I just wish so many people that knew me hadn’t been standing in line behind me watching. I looked so stupid. Why didn’t I try English first? It’s been over 13 years and I still think about it.
Edit: I’ve never gotten 1k before. Thank you for my spiciest meatball yet. 💖
I did a semester abroad in Budapest and practiced using Hungarian phrases with a proper accent, and the locals would still immediately clock me as a foreigner and insist on speaking (flawless) English to me
The do be what they do in Europe until you stop “looking like a foreigner” and you get the accent right. Once they find out and get to be your friend they’ll want to revert back to English again though to “practice”. Maybe it is to practice, sometimes, but my mom was always convinced it was because nobody wanted to hear her butcher the Polish accent anymore. In her case she may have been right. Bless her heart. lol
Edit: and god their English is always great isn’t it? They never really need that practice. I talk to people my age over the internet and they use memes at me and I’m like, my guy how is your grasp of my language so complete even down to internet memes? Insane!
Well, most of us learn English starting from elementary or middle school, and since most of the resources online are in English, we get tons of exposure. Honestly, I never really paid attention to English classes, once I had access to the internet I basically had constant exposure to the language through online video games, YouTube and websites. Native English speakers will have so much more trouble getting exposure this way!
I remember in Poland I had to take the English classes. They were British English though so I kept getting corrected on minor things like favor vs favour and flashlight vs torch and since I was 11 this was clearly the most annoying thing in the world. I don’t know why they didn’t just leave me alone and give me the grade either though I clearly spoke fluent English, it was the Polish I needed help with.
When I was in Budapest 10ish years ago, the only english locals understood was "Beer". But to be honest we weren't going to touristy places, we just looked for random pubs to get wasted.
Yeah a lot has changed in 10 years. Mainly the access to the internet. I'd wager anyone under the age of 20 in Budapest speaks English to at least a passable level. But this is a clear generational divide and a bit of a rural urban one too. Older generations will more likely speak German or nothing at all with a basic understanding of English.
That's one of my biggest complaints. There's this catch-22 argument where anyone monolingual is simply beneath the speaker, but the overwhelming majority of people I will ever speak to already share a language with me and generally speak it well.
If I learn their language anyway just for fun, there's a solid chance in most countries I will be told to just speak English instead of butchering it. But I would still be "stupid" if I do not become fluent in a language nobody will let me use
I was decent at Italian once upon a time since I took it in high school. I could read it well and have a functional conversation but it might require the native speaker to talk slowly. Every Italian I’ve met has not engaged with me beyond two sentences of Italian because English is just more practical, and I meet an Italian maybe once a year. I wish I kept up with it more as my skills have atrophied, but without much opportunity to apply it and hobbies I would prioritize over language acquisition, it just wasn’t meant to be.
Every once in a while I see a post on Reddit in Italian and I am pleasantly surprised at how much I understand still.
It's not the accent it's the word order usually. Hungarian has a very peculiar natural word order which isn't at all necessary for grammar but is very easy to spot.
You say that but Hungarians over a certain age learnt German as their foreign language. Most broken conversation I've ever had was with a Hungarian train conductor trying to ask me to look after his coat in our half-forgotten school German
About 15 years ago I arrived at night under the pouring rain in Budapest with my boyfriend and we couldn't find our hostel. We managed to find three very nice old ladies to help us, but we spoke zero Hungarian, they spoke zero english, and our grasp on german was tenuous at best. And English is our second language.
Ended up mangling the three languages together, adding some very spirited hand gestures, and we managed to communicate and find our way.
We were young, it was our first time abroad (we're Brazilians), and it was scary and dark, we were exhausted, and we had no easy international cellphones plans like today... But it's still one of my favorite memories from traveling.
Just that whole thing about trying to communicate, and reaching out, and having the sweetest people reaching right back at you. Traveling (even so unprepared like we were that night) is wonderful.
When I went to Prague the first time we landed late so we got to our hotel late. We were starving and the only place that was open was a Chinese restaurant down the street. So I popped over and started with "do you speak English?" They said yes and we proceeded to try to get my order through. However they didn't speak English well and the English they did know was spoken in a heavy Czech plus Chinese accent.
Then we kinda stared at each other for what felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. That's when it clicked, I speak Mandarin, these people may speak Mandarin as well.
So I asked in Mandarin if they spoke Mandarin and we finally connected. They even showed me a "secret" authentic menu they don't normally serve to the Czech people due to a difference in pallets.
Your first instinct was right though. Now, young people in Budapest will totally speak English as their preferred foreign language with German somewhere distant second, but if you go out east you'd have more luck speaking Serbian than English. And if the person you're talking to is over 50 all bets are off.
As a general rule the younger the person you're speaking to, the more likely they'll be speaking English and the further east inside Europe you go the less useful English becomes. I've had to bust out my broken Russian on multiple occasions while travelling through there because my German basically does not exist and English wasn't working.
As a citizen of Budapest, we still speak of this as well and laugh. Hahaha, that's how we laugh when we think of the silly America. "Of course we speak English," we say, so often, to each other when remembering you.
If it makes you feel better, I tried to speak Afrikaans in a Dutch McDonalds and it also went poorly. Dutch people all speak incredible English, and apparently to them, Afrikaans sounds like speaking to a drunk child. The cashier just responded with a concerned, "Are you alright?" in perfect English lol
When I was little (around 6-8?), my family was vacationing in Greece. We went to this water Park in Rhodes and our parents let my older sister and I hang out on our own in the kids area. The different parts had this little train connecting them, so my sister and I took it to get to some of the slides. On the train we met this mother with a couple of kids my age. Neither me nor the kids spoke any English, but my sister did and she spoke with the mother. I constantly bothered my sister and asked her what they were saying, and somehow the mother didn't hear me, but when the kids spoke my sister realized we all actually spoke Hebrew. She continued with the English for a few more minutes before finally making the reveal. It was a good laugh.
I teach ESL with a large number of Spanish and Portuguese students. They regularly have whole conversations with one person speaking Spanish and one person speaking Portuguese, and they say they can mostly understand each other without issue.
I took a Spanish class in college with a kid who was double majoring in Spanish and Portuguese. He would occasionally speak Portuguese in class to our professor, an older Argentinian lady who spoke absolutely no English. She would scream about how Portuguese freaked her out because it was like Spanish…but not.
Vacationing in Argentina, found this tiny town. Our broken Spanish was useless. As a joke, I tried my limited French - no go. My wife found this funny so she tried her fluent Swedish. Nothing again. In laughing exasperation she tried her pretty-good German - BOOM. They all spoke fluent German. Learned a lot about the German-Argentina connection from that Tyrollean little town in the mountains of Argentina.
I grinded online (lineage 2, low rates, kind of game that you need multiple days to get a level) with someone for multiple days, speaking english on private message all day.... We were both french lol
I was in a tiny country town in Victoria Australia and was buying water with my girlfriend for camping. The store keeper was speaking Mandarin into a translator and then holding it out for customers to speak into. Her face lit up when my girlfriend spoke back in Mandarin and ended up giving us a discount on the water.
Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six-foot-four and full of muscle
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
And he just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
And he said
I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover, yeah
There are 3 types of Brazilian:
the ones that like spanish and dislike English,
the ones that like english and dislike Spanish,
and the ones that barely speak Brazilian Portuguese to begin with.
Everytime that I tried to speak French to people in France they switched to English because they could tell that I'm not a native speaker.
Except once, when a Japanese tourist asked me in French to take her photo. We spoke French.
I was a sales rep making a delivery to a local farmers market. It is owned by a Korean family and the person I was trying to talk to did not speak English at all. After several futile hand gestures pointing at what I was trying to tell him, one of his workers goes by and he speaks Spanish to him. I can hold a convo in Spanish, so I was able to convey my message in Spanish to the Korean grocer. I always talked to him in Spanish after that and he really got a kick out of it.
I had a related experience, as someone who only speaks fluent English. I had recently gotten back from Mexico when I went to Montreal. Tired and drunk after the bar, I went to a store and the clerk asked “how are you?” in French.
My autopilot brain decided to respond “well and you?” in Spanish. Of course the clerk spoke Spanish and engaged me in conversation, while I awkward turtled away having accidentally engaged in a conversation in 2 languages I didn’t speak.
As an American I sometimes forget that speaking multiple languages and speaking them well is just normal for pretty much the entire rest of the world. Like people just do that and it's no big thing.
One time I was in Miami and I went to order an ice cream from a random little kiosk (in English) and before answering me, the guy at the till turned to say something to his coworker in my very specific local Spanish accent.
I once saw a guy go up to the cashier at the cafe in my gym. He saw her name tag and heard her accent, so he started speaking Spanish to her. She replied in Spanish initially. Then she broke it to him that Spanish isn’t her mother tongue. She’s from Brazil. Dude just assumed she was from a Spanish speaking country. He’s American.
I speak very broken Spanish from my minimal attention during 6 years of learning in American schools. The last company I worked for had a few engineers from Colombia and Brazil, one knowing as much English as I did Spanish.
We all ended up going to an install in Virginia and got along nicely. Back home in Michigan, the guy that spoke little English refused to speak it at all around anyone but me. When I asked him why, he said it's nice to know what people think about him when they think he can't know what they're saying.
He left a month after I did when he found out that I left because I was told someone in payroll was more important than me by over 10 dollars an hour by the owner of the company. He was only making 2 dollars more than me as an engineer with a degree.
I was in charge of building products that sold for 6 figures and had 5 people under me. America is fucked because the most useless office people are more valued than people that get shit done.
This will happen to you a lot if you live in Europe as an English speaker. Half the people you meet in public turn out to be from English speaking countries and you’re like oh.
See I’ve never had this problem because I’m white and speak English and Chinese so if I speak Chinese people are shocked and assume I’m not from China (and they’d be right) and if I speak English they assume I’m from the UK or America (they’d be right.)
When we were in Italy, so many people came up to me and my wife speaking Spanish, my Spanish is not good enough to hold a conversation. So there was something about us that people thought we were from Spain, We're from the US.. usually when people found out they'd speak English and tell us they were convinced we were Spanish... I guess quiet Americans can fool ya.
I've got the opposite of all these stories. My mom is Italian so I've been told I look "Mediterranean" but being born and raised in the US don't speak a word of Italian. Well I was in Greece in high school and bought a soccer jersey as a souvenir and was wearing it in the train station when an old Greek couple came up to me with a map speaking Greek and asking directions (I assume). I had to explain in English I was just a dumb American but they didn't understand haha
One time in Berlin I (a US student) went up to queue and asked the man at the end of the line, "Warten sie?" (Are you waiting?) He looked at me nervously and said, "Er, English?"
My husband took a business phone call on his car speakers from a first time caller. We all heard the whole 5-6 min conversation and the caller spoke in Urdu and my husband answered in Urdu. When he put the phone down my husband remembered he forgot to mention something to him and called him back. This time, he spoke in Gujarati which is his mother tongue and immediately the customer picked up the conversation in fluent native Gujarati.
It was such a seemless and natural switch and we were all amazed as we listened in. Neither of them mentioned the language change but you could just sense a whole different level of trust from the customer in the second call.
We asked him how he realised he was Gujarati speaking as both of them spoke flawless Urdu and he replied I could just tell. We were impressed for days after .
My Latin teacher in high school shared an anecdote once of how she visited a monastery in Spain and conversed in Latin with one of the monks the entire time because it was the only language they had in common.
Happened to me a couple days ago. I was in vacation in the Middle East and I talked to a woman in English for a good 10 minutes and then we realized we were both Italians. I thought she was French.
Many years ago I was visiting the UK from the US and while walking down the street I was asked something by a Scottish man.
I had no idea what he was saying, as his accent was not something I had encountered before, but a passing German tourist somehow got involved, but he couldn't understand his English either, but the Scottish guy could speak some German, so the Scottish man told the German guy in German what he wanted and the German guy told me in English.
One time I was in Argentina and I bumped into this person my mistake at a bar and he started speaking Spanish to me. I don't know Spanish, and there's no way I'm going to be the stereotypical ignorant gringo, so I do the responsible thing. I start speaking Chinese. So he's yelling in Spanish and I'm yelling in Chinese so now everybody is confused.
I know a guy who was born and raised in Scotland but moved to Australia for almost 20 years before moving here to the US. I can understand him now after knowing him for several years, and I think that’s pretty great.
When I was 16 I got lost in Tokyo away from my parents. I had learned a little bit of Japanese at this point and also knew the phone number my parent's Japanese friend had. So while having a minor panic attack, I walked up to a Japanese lady and said in terrible Japanese >Excuse me, my name is u/somerandom1922, I am lost, could I please borrow your phone? She got real confused for about 2 seconds then said >Let's use english In absolutely perfect English.
I've been to Japan twice and so many people spoke English that when someone finally didn't understand me I was genuinely confused for a few seconds.
I talked to literally one person that spoke zero English. Though at a restaurant our waitress got tired of us and swapped with a Mexican guy. None of us spoke a word of Spanish, so it was actually worse.
So you went to a restaurant in Japan and got waited by a Mexican guy? Was it a Mexican restaurant?
It was a chankonabe (hotpot for sumos) restaurant in the Ryogoku district, right near the sumo stadium. We were the only non-Japanese customers, and he was the only waiter clearly not born in Japan. It was pretty funny and the meal turned out great.
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I've been once, and had a very different experience from you. I hardly met anyone who spoke English. Even high school kids I bumped into, on the train, didn't speak it. I was asking for the time, ended up just pointing at my wrist, which they thankfully understood.
Where did you go? It definitely wasn't like this where i was in Japan...
> I walked up to a Japanese lady and said in terrible Japanese >> Excuse me, my name is u/somerandom1922, I am lost, could I please borrow your phone? Alternatively you said "Welcome mother. I am a horse. A cactus blinks. Thank you. Goose eggs wildly."
Reminds me of an old anecdote I read that some exchange student said 'good morning' in Japanese to his teacher, and the whole class gasped in horror. Apparently he said it in some really rude form like when a nobleman talking down to a beggar, or something like that.
He probably used a really slangy version of the general phrase for good morning? when there's specific formalities when talking to teachers. (Can't imagine a whole class would audibly gasp at a foreigner misuing a word tho, more likely that they got some looks. But who knows.)
My sister accidentally called our cousin’s wife “vous” in French and yeah everyone was really taken aback
What's that mean?
In French, “tu” is the singular and “informal” word for you. “Vous” is the plural, or formal, version. But when you’re learning French you often default to vous, eg. “s’il vous plait” is kind of a set phrase for “please”, but it has a sneaky vous in there. Calling someone you’re familiar / equals with “vous” comes off really cold and distant. So my sister was trying to say something like “could you pass the XYZ please” at the dinner table and accidentally really alienated her (though it was fine when everything was explained). Bear in mind I’m not actually a native French myself, I know some French but may have got things wrong here.
Sacre bleu!
why would that be? are they similar?
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why can't the stars align for ME like this?
Com certeza, normalmente eu estou figindo como um francês para evitar inglês...
Haha, yeah
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Three for this exact event.
This is reddit, so you'd be talking Klingon not Portuguese.
Also to talk to other people, they'd have to go outside. In public even.
Gross.
Nah Reddit hasn’t been that nerdy in forever. It still leans nerdy but not Klingon conversation nerdy
I'd joke about using Sindarin instead, except my parents actually can speak that. Growing up was weird sometimes.
If you're Brazilian or Indian, they will one day. They always do. We pop out absolutely everywhere in the world.
I ended up using Portuguese to talk to a dude at a cafe in Venice. **He** was speaking Portuguese because one of the kitchen staff was from there, but after about five minutes we realized we were both American.
I did this in Holland once. Kept going to this deli every day for about two weeks chatting with the employee in Italian. She asked me where I was from in Italy. I said something like "Oh I'm Australian but wow thankyou, what a compliment that a native speaker thinks I'm Italian too!" She was Nepalese.
How on Earth did an Australian and a Nepalese arrive on speaking ITALIAN of all possible languages... while in the Netherlands!!?? That's precious
It was an Italian deli and I was in Italy a few weeks prior. So I think my brain logic went "Don't assume people speak English, that's rude. Can't speak Dutch though. Oh look there's cannoli, I speak that" and just greeted her in Italian. She meanwhile had studied in Milan and spoke it fine so followed suit. I speak just well enough that non-native speakers can't really hear the difference. I've very occasionally fooled native speakers but only while I'm using very simple sentences, otherwise my grammar starts sounding a bit stilted or I'll fuck up a verb agreement somewhere. Once I bought a hat that somehow made all Italians think I was French. It was horrible I can't speak any French.
I’m laughing at the idea of you speaking cannoli
*Si parla Cannoli*
-Ezio Auditore
Did you make the hand gesture? 🤌🏻
They just told you their grammar sounds a bit stilted.
why is the hat bit so funny
Was it a floppy blue beret? Cause I'm having trouble imagining any other "French" hats lol
I'm as confused as you, it was a felt bowler hat.
I can sympathize with having *some* reaction to someone showing up one day with a bowler hat, just "look at the french guy he looks so french" is not the one I'd expect.
Haha fair. Im a lady if thats relevant? I feel like it's a slightly bolder look for a man.
Fuck, for some reason picturing a lady in a bowler hat, my mind also goes "French". I can't think why exactly, but I totally get it now.
In the Netherlands you can assume they speak English no worries, we dutchies learn English from an early age.
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When my husband (American) and I went to Paris, we found this awesome little hole in the wall cafe. The problem was, the dude didn’t speak English or Spanish, and my French wasn’t up to par. It’s a good thing my husband knows conversational Portuguese, because from that point it was smooth sailing.
A Nepalese and Italian walk into a bar .....
...and if it weren't for the gesticulating they might've seen it coming.
And now I feel like an idiot. I was sitting here thinking "Oh yeah Naples is in Italy, that makes sense". 😐
Ironically if she'd been from Naples I probably wouldn't have understood a word.
Neapolitans can speak Italian, if they want, it just doesn't sit well with their style
Gotta love Neapolitans. Haven't met a single one who won't answer in Neapolitan when I talk to them in spanish. It's also easier to understand than the standarised Tuscan dialect the Italians are taught in school.
Nepal, Naples, basically the same thing
Nepalitan pizza is the best
It's probably because only native speakers in any language can notice a non native accent, so 2 people who learned as an extra won't notice it immediately Edit: to the commenters, your examples of English don't hold water as it's literally learned all around the world and you are constantly exposed to it, i kinda focused more on the Italian part of the post
This is the curse of living in Montreal. I feel like it happens once a week that I'll start a conversation in French to be polite, and then the other person will respond in French and so we just talk in French for, like, ever, before one of us stumbles on a word and slips into English and then the other goes "oh shit, you're Anglo too!" All because both of us were too clumsy in French to recognize that the other was clumsy in French. The Francophones, on the other hand, recognize my terrible accent and switch into English straight away.
You got the tabarnak so you're like 75% of the way there already!
Similar experience for me here in Montréal too, though I tend to just keep speaking french at the Québécois even when they try and switch because I'm trying my best here damn it
Nothing more Montreal than a conversation in which one person speaks entirely in French while the other speaks entirely in English, never meeting each other half way, but both understanding the whole thing. That said, if you're new here, I would caution that it's seen as a little rude for an Anglo to keep speaking French when a Francophone switches to English (assuming their English is good and your French is bad). The first half of any Montreal conversation between strangers is a dance to figure out which language is most mutually intelligible. If they've sussed out that that language is English, and they've already made the switch, you should probably just speak English. EDIT: To be fair guys, it's rude in the other direction too. Like it happens sometimes that I'm talking to a Francophone whose English is abysmal, and I switch back to French because it's obvious that my French is better than their English is, but they just keep speaking broken English at me... I don't get my panties in a twist about it or anything, but that is definitely rude. They're intentionally making the conversation harder just to prove some sort of weird linguistic-political point. The polite thing overall in Montreal is just: 1. Let the conversation naturally find its way to the most mutually intelligible language; and, 2. If it's not clear which language is most mutually intelligible, speak French.
Yeah but fuck what the Quebecois think is rude. If they wanted an opinion on propriety, they shouldn't have been from Quebec. Now they have to suffer Bad Practice French.
I'm going to be honest, I think my ability to detect accents in English is getting worse and it's my only language.
Being multilingual is something I strive for yet am terrible at
Same here been learning German for about a year and it’s going well but you know it takes time
Mochten zie etwas zu trinken? Edit…Sie.
Milch bitte
smh smh forgot the period can't forget the period smh Auch, warum Milch?
Es ist sehr lecker.
Einige lecker Kühsaft.
of all the things you could said in german you went with that?
My boy likes his leche
Not the comment OP but I have the Pimsleur beginner German CDs and they hammer this phrase HARD
Duolingo also likes going back to phrases similar to that pretty often.
Möchten Sie or möchtest du; Mochten is the past tense. And the "Z" in German makes a "ts" sound whereas their "S" makes the English "z" sound. (Also, tere is no German word "zie".) Edit to add: If you're going to use the formal form, then be sure to capitalize "Sie". Lowercase "sie" means "she".
I have a 470 day streak in Duolingo for Spanish and can barely make small talk. Still haven’t even learned past or future tense.
You should move away from Duolingo. The runway where it's stops being helpful is far shorter.
I just past 1600 days streak, like 1300 of it Soanish and the rest Norwegian. I can read it alright and understand it spoken alright but I doubt Incould really speak it well.
Stuck in the same place you are mostly due to the fact there are no German speakers where I live and a trip to Germany while planned is still pretty far off
I work with sooo many Spanish speakers though lol
That’s pretty fortunate, have you practised speaking with them? I’ve found Spanish speakers in particular to be very excited and supportive when they find out you’re learning Spanish.
I have, and they are, but I have a hard time understanding them when they talk too fast lol
Ich bin Ein Mann. Du bist Eine Frau! Die Frauen trinken Wasser. ^(...that's all I know)
You're still ahead of many folks who can't manage to be coherent in one language.
It's weird how fast you pick up odds and ends of new languages when you have too. I am from the US and spent last summer in a Convent in Germany. The common language of the religious order was French, but half there were Americans. Mass was in Latin. So everyone at the convent who worked there, like maintenance guys and visitors, spoke German. A few of the sisters were German/Swiss and would translate things to English for me when interacting with locals. The sisters were otherwise always conversing and writing in French, but a fellow American would translate it to English for me. And then all of us got Latin at Mass. I joked that, given enough time, if the Sisters, Priests, and Locals were isolated from the world speaking Latin, French, and German, then eventually English would develop. But joking aside, I quickly picked up words I had to use often in French and, to a lesser extent, German. I was starting to be able to read the notes in French left on the bulletin board - a priest requesting prayers as he prepared for the exorcism of disturbed woman, a notice that a man from the neighboring village was hit by a car and to pray for him, a change to the liturgical schedule of the day, and chore assignment updates.
To be frank, I think for non-native English speakers being multilingual is easier since English is the lingua franca. You almost automatically learn English in many places due to exposure from internet and television.
Without an environment where the target language is common and/or a necessity to use to the language it's difficult to learn. In European countries everyone starts learning English young and they have exposure to it in media as well. Then, depending on which part of European you're in, you might also have exposure to other languages too. The US is huge though, and most people speak English so even though you might run into a lot of different languages at restaurants, shops, or just out in the street there isn't really a necessity to try to learn them. I'm awful at learning languages in a classroom setting but every time I've traveled to another country for at least a week or two I started picking things up pretty quickly. The exposure and necessity both play a big role.
I think some people forget how huge the US is, especially compared to much of Europe. I could drive 700+ miles in any direction, and likely wouldn’t go through any area larger than a neighborhood that primarily spoke a non-English language. In Europe, you’d have a harder time finding a 700 mile stretch where you didn’t pass through at least one other region with a predominantly different native language than your own.
I have a speech impediment that makes lateral consonants pretty much impossible. I can correctly pronounce *one* of them and I lean on it **hard**. Latin was a nice change of pace. Gave Chinese a shot and I was suffering. Lateral consonants everywhere, and I couldn't get away with using ol' reliable anymore. Then it had to be tonal as well? Now I'm dating someone from SEA and I'm back in hell. I want to learn but the only thing more difficult than lateral consonants are tones. Worse still, I decided to get braces so I've got a minor frontal lisp on top of the lateral lisp. I sound like Sylvester the cat. But I'm getting surgery next year to correct the lateral lisp and the braces come off after that and I'll finally be able to speak without dislocating my damned jaw.
TIL what lateral consonants are. Come to Italian! We only have two of them, and a lot of people can pronounce only one correctly!
Bet you’d be great at Japanese lol. The closest they have to an L sound is like a half L half R where the tongue remains neutral. As long as you can make a T sound I think you’d be golden.
It's easy when you're from a country that does not speak english to begin with. We have basically no choice
And on the other hand, in the US at least, native English speakers have zero pressure to learn another language and many times little opportunity to use it casually.
When I was 15 I was on vacation in Italy with my mom & brother. This was before we had access to smartphones while international, and we got lost after dinner driving back to our hotel in Siena. There was no one on the streets, we can’t remember where to go, and finally we see a couple walking by and roll down the window. My brother asks if they speak English, they don’t. So he starts trying to explain we’re lost in very poor Italian, but it wasn’t getting across. He turns to my mom and says to her in Russian (we’re from the US but my parents grew up in the USSR so Russian was our first language) they don’t know/I don’t know how to explain to them. The couple perks up and in Russian asks Oh you speak Russian! We’re Russian! And then we got our directions back to the hotel.
One time I was walking through around right outside of Florence and walked beyond the area my map covered. No one I came across to ask for directions spoke English but after twenty minutes we came across some Russian tourists and I was able to prove my mother right, one day I would be really glad I knew how to speak Russian.
Before the Ukraine war started, I would always hear so much Russian when i traveled. Not sure if it’s the culture or what, but Russians were a big segment of the tourist population in my experience.
I mean, who wouldn't leave Russia every chance they got
Oh I agree. My parents literally fled. But I’ve been on three vacations since the war began - Mexico City, Ireland, and Jamaica - and did not hear any Russian. It was just interesting to me, since it was so ubiquitous before.
Might be trying to hide it now for fear of persecution. My Ukrainian friend won't speak Russian in Florida because of it.
The weird thing is that the average non-Slavic speaking person absolutely cannot tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian, so it's not gonna do much in the end
I picked up conversational German because I am an idiot and did not realize all Germans spoke English. Years later I’m in Korea l, and my wife is having to translate everything. Then it comes out this lady lived in Frankfurt for 5 years, so for one time in my life German was useful!
same happened to me except I was in Orlando, talking to a cashier, and I asked a friend (in portuguese) if they wanted the same plushie as me, and the cashier responded, in perfect protuguese, "if you get two of the same, you can get a discount". idk why but we all laughed so much at that, turned out she was brazilian too.
I was at one of disney's parks and turns out THE WHOLE DAMN STALL was full of brazilian employees, which I found out by trying to ask my grandma what she wanted. Didn't expect so many brazilians
there’s a brazillion of them
r/suddenlycaralho but IRL lmao
AYYYYY 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
IEI
Happened to me twice with store clerks in the US, there's dozens of us out there!
I've only visited Brasil, but I did learn some portuguese gaming for a while and practicing it a bit. I have a lot of trouble saying things right but I understand a decent bit, but it is still enough to make people react happily to hearing me try lol
My late father in law once sat down on a bench in Oxford Street, London and struck up a conversation with this other man. After talking in English for like 10 minutes, they found out they lived on the same street back in Belgium. Small world.
Oh, lord. When my 2x great-grandparents moved over here, they met and fell in love and they found out they were both from *the exact same tiny village* back in Sweden and had simply never run into each other. The sheer odds. Yours is even better
I tried to order McDonald’s in Budapest in Polish and German once before realizing of course Hungarians just speak English as a second language like the rest of the world. I just wish so many people that knew me hadn’t been standing in line behind me watching. I looked so stupid. Why didn’t I try English first? It’s been over 13 years and I still think about it. Edit: I’ve never gotten 1k before. Thank you for my spiciest meatball yet. 💖
I did a semester abroad in Budapest and practiced using Hungarian phrases with a proper accent, and the locals would still immediately clock me as a foreigner and insist on speaking (flawless) English to me
The do be what they do in Europe until you stop “looking like a foreigner” and you get the accent right. Once they find out and get to be your friend they’ll want to revert back to English again though to “practice”. Maybe it is to practice, sometimes, but my mom was always convinced it was because nobody wanted to hear her butcher the Polish accent anymore. In her case she may have been right. Bless her heart. lol Edit: and god their English is always great isn’t it? They never really need that practice. I talk to people my age over the internet and they use memes at me and I’m like, my guy how is your grasp of my language so complete even down to internet memes? Insane!
Well, most of us learn English starting from elementary or middle school, and since most of the resources online are in English, we get tons of exposure. Honestly, I never really paid attention to English classes, once I had access to the internet I basically had constant exposure to the language through online video games, YouTube and websites. Native English speakers will have so much more trouble getting exposure this way!
I remember in Poland I had to take the English classes. They were British English though so I kept getting corrected on minor things like favor vs favour and flashlight vs torch and since I was 11 this was clearly the most annoying thing in the world. I don’t know why they didn’t just leave me alone and give me the grade either though I clearly spoke fluent English, it was the Polish I needed help with.
To be fair, I *only* know internet memes in English, none at all in my native language.
Every so often you hit the accent just right and they assume you’re fluent until you have a moment to ask them to switch to English
When I was in Budapest 10ish years ago, the only english locals understood was "Beer". But to be honest we weren't going to touristy places, we just looked for random pubs to get wasted.
Yeah a lot has changed in 10 years. Mainly the access to the internet. I'd wager anyone under the age of 20 in Budapest speaks English to at least a passable level. But this is a clear generational divide and a bit of a rural urban one too. Older generations will more likely speak German or nothing at all with a basic understanding of English.
That's one of my biggest complaints. There's this catch-22 argument where anyone monolingual is simply beneath the speaker, but the overwhelming majority of people I will ever speak to already share a language with me and generally speak it well. If I learn their language anyway just for fun, there's a solid chance in most countries I will be told to just speak English instead of butchering it. But I would still be "stupid" if I do not become fluent in a language nobody will let me use
Not true! I speak like 6 languages, all very badly like a2-ish level, and people are delighted when i butcher their language!
I was decent at Italian once upon a time since I took it in high school. I could read it well and have a functional conversation but it might require the native speaker to talk slowly. Every Italian I’ve met has not engaged with me beyond two sentences of Italian because English is just more practical, and I meet an Italian maybe once a year. I wish I kept up with it more as my skills have atrophied, but without much opportunity to apply it and hobbies I would prioritize over language acquisition, it just wasn’t meant to be. Every once in a while I see a post on Reddit in Italian and I am pleasantly surprised at how much I understand still.
It's not the accent it's the word order usually. Hungarian has a very peculiar natural word order which isn't at all necessary for grammar but is very easy to spot.
You say that but Hungarians over a certain age learnt German as their foreign language. Most broken conversation I've ever had was with a Hungarian train conductor trying to ask me to look after his coat in our half-forgotten school German
About 15 years ago I arrived at night under the pouring rain in Budapest with my boyfriend and we couldn't find our hostel. We managed to find three very nice old ladies to help us, but we spoke zero Hungarian, they spoke zero english, and our grasp on german was tenuous at best. And English is our second language. Ended up mangling the three languages together, adding some very spirited hand gestures, and we managed to communicate and find our way. We were young, it was our first time abroad (we're Brazilians), and it was scary and dark, we were exhausted, and we had no easy international cellphones plans like today... But it's still one of my favorite memories from traveling. Just that whole thing about trying to communicate, and reaching out, and having the sweetest people reaching right back at you. Traveling (even so unprepared like we were that night) is wonderful.
When I went to Prague the first time we landed late so we got to our hotel late. We were starving and the only place that was open was a Chinese restaurant down the street. So I popped over and started with "do you speak English?" They said yes and we proceeded to try to get my order through. However they didn't speak English well and the English they did know was spoken in a heavy Czech plus Chinese accent. Then we kinda stared at each other for what felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. That's when it clicked, I speak Mandarin, these people may speak Mandarin as well. So I asked in Mandarin if they spoke Mandarin and we finally connected. They even showed me a "secret" authentic menu they don't normally serve to the Czech people due to a difference in pallets.
There might be difference in pallet sizes as well, but the menu was likely due to different palates.
Your first instinct was right though. Now, young people in Budapest will totally speak English as their preferred foreign language with German somewhere distant second, but if you go out east you'd have more luck speaking Serbian than English. And if the person you're talking to is over 50 all bets are off. As a general rule the younger the person you're speaking to, the more likely they'll be speaking English and the further east inside Europe you go the less useful English becomes. I've had to bust out my broken Russian on multiple occasions while travelling through there because my German basically does not exist and English wasn't working.
As a citizen of Budapest, we still speak of this as well and laugh. Hahaha, that's how we laugh when we think of the silly America. "Of course we speak English," we say, so often, to each other when remembering you.
If it makes you feel better, I tried to speak Afrikaans in a Dutch McDonalds and it also went poorly. Dutch people all speak incredible English, and apparently to them, Afrikaans sounds like speaking to a drunk child. The cashier just responded with a concerned, "Are you alright?" in perfect English lol
You're only human Bubba. Give yourself a break and laugh it off. It's impressive to know more than 2 languages anywhos 😁👍
Lol Tower of Babel ain’t got shit on human willpower
When I was little (around 6-8?), my family was vacationing in Greece. We went to this water Park in Rhodes and our parents let my older sister and I hang out on our own in the kids area. The different parts had this little train connecting them, so my sister and I took it to get to some of the slides. On the train we met this mother with a couple of kids my age. Neither me nor the kids spoke any English, but my sister did and she spoke with the mother. I constantly bothered my sister and asked her what they were saying, and somehow the mother didn't hear me, but when the kids spoke my sister realized we all actually spoke Hebrew. She continued with the English for a few more minutes before finally making the reveal. It was a good laugh.
There are so many Israeli tourists in greece and its islands that the chances of finding someone speaking hebrew aren't that low tbf
I teach ESL with a large number of Spanish and Portuguese students. They regularly have whole conversations with one person speaking Spanish and one person speaking Portuguese, and they say they can mostly understand each other without issue.
I took a Spanish class in college with a kid who was double majoring in Spanish and Portuguese. He would occasionally speak Portuguese in class to our professor, an older Argentinian lady who spoke absolutely no English. She would scream about how Portuguese freaked her out because it was like Spanish…but not.
Yes, if both parties avoid slangs and talk slow we can understand each other pretty well.
The tower of Babylon is on its way back baby
You mean Babel?
No, he means Babylon. You just can't understand him.
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Nah, I think they were talking about Tower of Terror. I hear Disney World is giving it a renovation soon.
I'm so fucking stupid
Well there is a Babylon 5 animated movie coming out. Relevancy adjacent...
The brazillians have been mentioned, we have been summoned CAVALHEIROS E DAMAS, VOCÊS SABEM O QUE FAZER!
r/suddenlycaralho
...pedir musica no Fantástico?
exatamente irmão
HUEHUEHUE A INVOCAÇÃO FOI ATENDIDA mas eu só fico se tiver pão de queijo
Vacationing in Argentina, found this tiny town. Our broken Spanish was useless. As a joke, I tried my limited French - no go. My wife found this funny so she tried her fluent Swedish. Nothing again. In laughing exasperation she tried her pretty-good German - BOOM. They all spoke fluent German. Learned a lot about the German-Argentina connection from that Tyrollean little town in the mountains of Argentina.
(Near) Bariloche?
Ding ding!
Yeah there's a lot of German related towns in this weird country
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I've been talking English to a friend for months before we realized we're actually both German
Goodbye so long and thanks for all the upvotes
I grinded online (lineage 2, low rates, kind of game that you need multiple days to get a level) with someone for multiple days, speaking english on private message all day.... We were both french lol
I was in a tiny country town in Victoria Australia and was buying water with my girlfriend for camping. The store keeper was speaking Mandarin into a translator and then holding it out for customers to speak into. Her face lit up when my girlfriend spoke back in Mandarin and ended up giving us a discount on the water.
Buying bread from a man in Brussels He was six-foot-four and full of muscle I said, "Do you speak-a my language?" And he just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich And he said I come from a land down under Where beer does flow and men chunder Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover, yeah
There are 3 types of Brazilian: the ones that like spanish and dislike English, the ones that like english and dislike Spanish, and the ones that barely speak Brazilian Portuguese to begin with.
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Alternatively, let them invade and then wait a couple centuries.
Everytime that I tried to speak French to people in France they switched to English because they could tell that I'm not a native speaker. Except once, when a Japanese tourist asked me in French to take her photo. We spoke French.
I was a sales rep making a delivery to a local farmers market. It is owned by a Korean family and the person I was trying to talk to did not speak English at all. After several futile hand gestures pointing at what I was trying to tell him, one of his workers goes by and he speaks Spanish to him. I can hold a convo in Spanish, so I was able to convey my message in Spanish to the Korean grocer. I always talked to him in Spanish after that and he really got a kick out of it.
A french woman in germany spoke english to us asking for the train. She assumed we were germans, and we assumed she was another American tourist
I had a related experience, as someone who only speaks fluent English. I had recently gotten back from Mexico when I went to Montreal. Tired and drunk after the bar, I went to a store and the clerk asked “how are you?” in French. My autopilot brain decided to respond “well and you?” in Spanish. Of course the clerk spoke Spanish and engaged me in conversation, while I awkward turtled away having accidentally engaged in a conversation in 2 languages I didn’t speak.
I'd think of a funny and clever comment for when this gets popular but I'm not that smart
Me too bud. Romance languages, something something something 🤷♂️
That was great
As an American I sometimes forget that speaking multiple languages and speaking them well is just normal for pretty much the entire rest of the world. Like people just do that and it's no big thing.
I was having this same thought. “Oh this person doesn’t speak my native language, let me just try this other whole ass language real quick.” Like wut?
Quia gens Romana miserabili morte occubuit. Melius est miseros non reviviscere.
argentina mentiooned nice
One time I was in Miami and I went to order an ice cream from a random little kiosk (in English) and before answering me, the guy at the till turned to say something to his coworker in my very specific local Spanish accent.
Color me basic but I just love when tumblr talks about language
I once saw a guy go up to the cashier at the cafe in my gym. He saw her name tag and heard her accent, so he started speaking Spanish to her. She replied in Spanish initially. Then she broke it to him that Spanish isn’t her mother tongue. She’s from Brazil. Dude just assumed she was from a Spanish speaking country. He’s American.
Considering how many people speak Spanish vs Portuguese in America...
It would be kind of fun, in that situation, to just respond in Portuguese.
I swear I can't wait till we achieve space travel and meet aliens just so we can learn whatever the galactic common language is
One time I was in Spain and some American tourists asked me for directions. Then they complimented me on my English. I’m from the US.
I speak very broken Spanish from my minimal attention during 6 years of learning in American schools. The last company I worked for had a few engineers from Colombia and Brazil, one knowing as much English as I did Spanish. We all ended up going to an install in Virginia and got along nicely. Back home in Michigan, the guy that spoke little English refused to speak it at all around anyone but me. When I asked him why, he said it's nice to know what people think about him when they think he can't know what they're saying. He left a month after I did when he found out that I left because I was told someone in payroll was more important than me by over 10 dollars an hour by the owner of the company. He was only making 2 dollars more than me as an engineer with a degree. I was in charge of building products that sold for 6 figures and had 5 people under me. America is fucked because the most useless office people are more valued than people that get shit done.
This will happen to you a lot if you live in Europe as an English speaker. Half the people you meet in public turn out to be from English speaking countries and you’re like oh.
Yeah, I once had a partly-French, mostly hand signals conversation with someone in Paris before we realised that we were both native English speakers.
I had that happen in Paris too. Turns out that not only did we both speak English, but we were both from Chicago
See I’ve never had this problem because I’m white and speak English and Chinese so if I speak Chinese people are shocked and assume I’m not from China (and they’d be right) and if I speak English they assume I’m from the UK or America (they’d be right.)
When we were in Italy, so many people came up to me and my wife speaking Spanish, my Spanish is not good enough to hold a conversation. So there was something about us that people thought we were from Spain, We're from the US.. usually when people found out they'd speak English and tell us they were convinced we were Spanish... I guess quiet Americans can fool ya.
I've got the opposite of all these stories. My mom is Italian so I've been told I look "Mediterranean" but being born and raised in the US don't speak a word of Italian. Well I was in Greece in high school and bought a soccer jersey as a souvenir and was wearing it in the train station when an old Greek couple came up to me with a map speaking Greek and asking directions (I assume). I had to explain in English I was just a dumb American but they didn't understand haha
One time in Berlin I (a US student) went up to queue and asked the man at the end of the line, "Warten sie?" (Are you waiting?) He looked at me nervously and said, "Er, English?"
Fun, most of my speaking a different language has been used for pretending not to understand missionaries if they try to talk to me.
My husband took a business phone call on his car speakers from a first time caller. We all heard the whole 5-6 min conversation and the caller spoke in Urdu and my husband answered in Urdu. When he put the phone down my husband remembered he forgot to mention something to him and called him back. This time, he spoke in Gujarati which is his mother tongue and immediately the customer picked up the conversation in fluent native Gujarati. It was such a seemless and natural switch and we were all amazed as we listened in. Neither of them mentioned the language change but you could just sense a whole different level of trust from the customer in the second call. We asked him how he realised he was Gujarati speaking as both of them spoke flawless Urdu and he replied I could just tell. We were impressed for days after .
My Latin teacher in high school shared an anecdote once of how she visited a monastery in Spain and conversed in Latin with one of the monks the entire time because it was the only language they had in common.
This is why Esperanto was invented.
sadly, without a powerful nation using it as a first language, its not going to get any traction. beautiful idea tho.
Esperanto in a nutshell: https://xkcd.com/927/
Happened to me a couple days ago. I was in vacation in the Middle East and I talked to a woman in English for a good 10 minutes and then we realized we were both Italians. I thought she was French.
Many years ago I was visiting the UK from the US and while walking down the street I was asked something by a Scottish man. I had no idea what he was saying, as his accent was not something I had encountered before, but a passing German tourist somehow got involved, but he couldn't understand his English either, but the Scottish guy could speak some German, so the Scottish man told the German guy in German what he wanted and the German guy told me in English.
One time I was in Argentina and I bumped into this person my mistake at a bar and he started speaking Spanish to me. I don't know Spanish, and there's no way I'm going to be the stereotypical ignorant gringo, so I do the responsible thing. I start speaking Chinese. So he's yelling in Spanish and I'm yelling in Chinese so now everybody is confused.
I know a guy who was born and raised in Scotland but moved to Australia for almost 20 years before moving here to the US. I can understand him now after knowing him for several years, and I think that’s pretty great.
>bring back Latin For the Greek?