Personally, and anecdotally, I’ve found English speakers to be quite forgiving of poor English — that is, they usually make an effort to try and understand someone with broken English, and they don’t usually point out poor grammar (though, that could be because the majority of English speakers don’t have the best grammar to begin with 😉). Especially when one compares them with some other cultures, eg the French.
You haven’t tried speaking bad English in a new York shop apparently.
Oh that’s just New Yorkers in general really
Well, ok. But they’re still technically American.
This isn’t true of anyone I’ve ever known, and i believe it isn’t true for the majority of Americans. I believe it’s a loudly vocal minority who get angry at people speaking other languages or barely speaking English
Yes, but this is the Fediverse, so Americabad
Dear sir/madam, this is a meme.
Exaggeration for comedic effect is not a crime.
lmfao evidently a meme that makes people very angry. 15+ downvotes. fuckin americans man. you guys truly fucking hate each other. good job! great culture, just the best stuff… totally worth fighting for, and definitely worth inflicting on the rest of the world, buncha removed
I don’t understand your comment. What is the fighting happening here that you’re mocking?
“inflicting” Let’s not pretend your entire life isn’t wrapped up in American merchandise, food, and media. And no one forced it on you
“Merica bad”
Lol ok kiddo
This feels like French propaganda to deflect from how rude they tend to be if you don’t speak French
Even if you speak French or at least try to they go like: huh?!
Lean into it. Channel your inner Peggy Hill and repeat this phrase: Jay parlay fran-says tray bee-in. Jay-tude on lay-cole quart ons.
They will beg you to switch back to English
I speak French until they have enough of me butchering their language with my Jersey (New) accent. Bon Joor, je voo le pan. They beg me to stop and I keep going. Jaim vo d-nay. Mare C bo coo. They thank me for leaving.
Ever heard japanese filtered through a southern accent? Oh HAI yo guh ZAI muss!
This was our favorite thing to do in my HS Japanese class. I still remember “skydiving”: skah-daaaah-ben-goo.
I will continue to maintain a laissez faire attitude towards French language.
This is nonsense. Only English teachers do this.
Reminds me of a joke that you hear a lot in Europe:
What do you call someone who can speak many languages? Polyglottal.
What do you call someone who can speak two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language? English.
I disagree with this and its my experience that there are assholes speaking every language and that the English speaking world tends to be the most understanding when it comes to second language speakers using improper words and/or grammar.
I’m an American who speaks decent German. I’ve gotten this flak traveling in non-German speaking Europe - Stupid American only speaking English attitude thrown my way. Mother fucker I’m in France, a German would also be using English here. To some people the only way to not be “that American” is to speak all the languages.
On the flip side, I’ve had a few Germans ask me why I bothered learning their language when I could just use English.
Moin Brudi, finde ich ziemlich nett von dir das du dir unsere Sprache antust.
Ah cool, danke! Immer nett zu hören, dass jemand meine Versuche schätzt.
I’ve had a few Germans ask me why I bothered learning their language when I could just use English.
So, why? You can’t leave us hanging like this!
Haha I’ve lived there for almost a year between two stints and had a lot of free time for one of them so seemed like a fun thing to learn.
It very occasionally has been helpful traveling in more rural Germany speaking areas
I wonder if some English natives couldn’t believe as kids that the entire damn world just happens to speak their language
In my experience Americans find it cool when they hear another language, Anglo-Canadians though, they don’t realize how racist they are towards French-Canadians and hate their language with a passion.
Do you people just invent these problems because you hate Americans? Like… How do you come up with this garbage propaganda? Are you just reposting from tankie run bots designed to sow discord?
It’s pretty hard to learn another language as an American unless you’re able to travel to a place where that is used. I wasn’t even allowed to take a foreign language class when I was in high school because I scored too poorly on English in grade school (from not doing homework, not because of aptitude). I haven’t really had a need for it in my adult life either other than like 3 times where I had Spanish speaking customers when I worked at in retail and we still managed to overcome the language barrier.
I don’t get the downvotes here. Learning a language is not easy without immersion. Yes you can bang through literature and even multiple courses… but without frequent use our brains simply lose the connection. Neurons that fire together wire together. This goes doubly for speech.
Many Americans (most?) are taught a second language in school but the lack of places to use it sees this education go to waste. The US is a large country with pockets of ethnic groups throughout - but as far as immersion with another language goes… it is sorely lacking.
It’s unfortunate but a reality.
I did it in school in rural Ohio before the internet and with very few resources available. Basically anyone can do it. You don’t need immersion. Is it helpful? Yes. Is it necessary? No. Look at how many people live 40+ years in a country and never learn the language; immersion alone does almost nothing.
How do you know you’re pronouncing things correctly without native speakers to converse with?
I think there’s a big myth which I prescribed to back when I was a monolingual English speaker that somehow being “immersed” in a culture is how you become fluent. But my experience has always been that if you can’t understand what anyone’s saying, and are unable to say anything yourself, you just become mute and introverted.
I have no experience with Japanese, but the (in?)famous youtuber MattVsJapan detailed a time when he went to Japan without a base of knowledge and just went back home after every day to watch anime at home, then only really learned how to speak Japanese back in America afterwards. I had a similar experience in Germany — the first few years the only people I really spoke with were other expats and Germans in English.
The only real thing I think being immersed gives you is motivation to learn. But after you’re able to order in a restaurant and read basic signs, that motivation disappears pretty fast as you’re sort of about to just fumble through everything.
On the other hand, people speaking English has seemingly increased massively worldwide, despite the fact that in some countries it would be rare to even encounter an English speaking native. Notably, imo, the countries that are better at it tend to subtitle movies and TV rather than dub. Compare the Nordic countries with Germans, the Greeks vs the French, Koreans vs the Japanese.
It seems pretty clear to me (and I am by no means alone with this assertion) that the main way people learn is through exposure to the language, which is completely different than actually living in a place where you’re “immersed”.
So if you really wanted to learn a language, the best thing you could do is as soon as you’re able to (before, even) watch TV/films and read books in that target language. I think this book is an excellent explanation https://www.tesl-ej.org/books/lomb-2nd-Ed.pdf for German, I started really learning it only after listening to Deutsche Welle learning German radio shows and TV. The modern equivalent is this online TV show for beginners https://learngerman.dw.com/en/hallo/l-37250531 which is great. I learned more in a few episodes like this than I did with two years of formal teaching at school.
Sorry for sort of hijacking your comment, it just caused me to fall down a rabbit hole somewhat :)
Nice question :) A good textbook should go over the sounds in the language comparing them to something in the target audience’s language. This isn’t foolproof (a language YouTuber (Language Jones, I think?) was talking about trying to learn an African language, but the author expected reader to speak South African English where vowels differ from, for instance, US English), but it generally works pretty well. These days, wikipedia is also typically a great resource for reading about sounds in the language. Further, nowadays, you can toss stuff in Google Translate and have it speak. Finally, consume media from that country. When I was learning German, DeutscheWelle had a German-learning mp3 series. Also streaming radio in those days (no Youtube or anything yet).
Edit: and for output, the time-tested technique of shadowing is great. Record yourself if you can because your ears might do better picking up any mistakes when not speaking at the same time.
I find it funny that we both answered the same question and independently mentioned how Deutsche Welle’s
Deutsch: Warum nicht?taught us both German :)I don’t remember exactly which resource it was anymore. I did also use a lot of Deutschlernen mit Nachtrichten
Non-native English speakers are still often better at English than native English speakers that choose to write like they are illiterate.
You mean the french?
Broken english is one thing. Butchered is quite another
My personal hint for everyone learning a foreign language to be understood in another country: Pronunciation, pronunciation, pronunciation! You only need around 2000 words to get around, but no-one can understand you if you butcher each and every one of the 100k words you’ve learned. Also grammar is optional. Nouns, adjectives and verbs in their basic forms convey enough meaning.
As an American, when I learn another language I am taught to pronounce it correctly in the accent of that language. And yet when people from other countries learn English, it’s so heavily accented and poorly pronounced I can barely understand wtf they’re saying.
Especially looking at you, Indians.
What is the “correct accent” for English? Even within America there are so many. The southern accent is so different from the Minnesota accent. Most Americans will have difficulty understanding a Scottish or Irish person speaking with a strong accent, but I doubt anyone is going to tell them to speak differently. Given the plurality of accents, it’s on the listener to adapt. Unless, of course, everyone is expected to speak with RP.
What is the “correct accent” for English?
One that is understandable.
Most Americans will have difficulty understanding a Scottish or Irish person speaking with a strong accent, but I doubt anyone is going to tell them to speak differently.
Dunno what world you live in. I have two different coworkers who specifically have been told they need to work on their accent. One is Kenyan and the other is Welsh. People from white countries don’t get a pass.
It’s not racism, it’s understandability.
Is there a standard measure of how “understandable” an accent is? It is quite a subjective thing based on where one is from.
You mentioned India previously - there are 350 million English speakers in South Asia (with marginally varying accents) who can understand each other perfectly well. They may not, on the other hand, find it as easy to understand American accented English. Who should change?
I find German and Singaporean/Malaysian accented English easier to understand than most American accents, because they share phonemes with the languages I speak. Which is more understandable in this case?
The assertion I’m challenging is that there is a “correct accent” that is universally intelligible to all, especially for a language as widely spoken as English. I think the only way we can bridge this gap is to be better listeners. Realistically, it doesn’t even take a couple of weeks to become comfortable understanding a different accent, probably much less if you pay attention. Personally, I find this issue to be very intertwined with the tolerance we have to develop to live in a multicultural society.
Dunno what world you live in. I have two different coworkers who specifically have been told they need to work on their accent. One is Kenyan and the other is Welsh.
You said you were American (though it’s not clear if you work in America, so forgive the assumption) but if this was official feedback then it seems to be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. There seem to have been successful lawsuits (example, example - see Brown and Brown Chevrolet, 2008) for the same.
You are making this way more complicated than it needs to be. People need to be understood by the people they are talking to. There’s no “correct accent”, just whatever makes you understood by the other party.
but if this was official feedback then it seems to be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Not in the fucking slightest and it’s actually making me angry that you would imply “you need to be understandable” is in any way equivalent to
constantly made fun of their accents, ordering them to speak English even when they were already speaking in English. Some Filipino-American workers endured humiliating threats of arrest if they did not speak English and were told to go back to the Philippines. In a particularly offensive incident, an employee sprayed air freshener on a claimant’s lunch due to the offender’s self-professed hatred of Filipino food.
and
subjected to explicit and graphic commentary about their body parts by their supervisor; spreading rumors about their purported sexual activities; spying on them as they attempted to use portable toilets; engaging in sexual bantering and joking regarding the women with certain male harvesters.
If no one knows what the fuck you’re saying, it’s impossible to do your job. That’s all.
Most Americans will have difficulty understanding a Scottish or Irish person speaking with a strong accent
This tells you that Irish or Scottish is not the correct accent. However, someone who speaks Southern British English will be understood by everyone.
The only language that would be useful to know where I live would be Spanish.
And I fucking hate the Spanish language.
Edit: I should say I don’t hate Spanish speaking people. Just the language. I honestly can’t even say why I hate it I just do.
Prolly racism lol
Everything is racism
The only perspective from which one might see everything as racism is that in which they themselves are racist.
That’s racist
I can see how you’d feel that way from your perspective.
Perspectives are racist
They certainly can be
