Stumbled upon this from another community, do you agree?
Stumbled upon this from another community, do you agree?
Source post: https://lemmy.world/post/13376939 !funny@lemmy.world
121 comments
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In Germany, it will absolutely depend on where you try this. Bigger cities? Yeah, likely. Countryside? You're lucky if you find someone speaking understandable German, let alone English.
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As a Russian, I agree. Like okay, man, you have challenged yourself to the level when you easily construct sentences in accusative case, but why? To read Bakunin or understand Letov's metaphors?
Foreigners who learn Russian out of curiosity are true madlads.
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I took Russian in 6th-8th grade and switched to Spanish the second I could. It's a cool language but it's so hard. The only thing I remember are a couple common words and a weird poem about killing a fly with a gun. I don't even know if it was a real poem or if my teacher was a lunatic.
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Definitely a lunatic 😂
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i kind of want to, i had no idea it was that hard?
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Basic Russian ain't hard, and it's easy to get yourself understood. Some are scared by Cyrillic letters, but that's essentially a fusion of Latin and Greek, and there's nothing special about it - it's not hieroglyphics or something. Many, if not most, letters are same as in Latin scripture. Some are a catch though, and designate entirely different sounds - like "c" letter actually meaning "s", "B" actually meaning "V" etc.
Advanced Russian is a bloody meat grinder. Grammar is such a pain in the ass locals struggle with it, and there's a LOT of synonymic words to learn if you expect to be fluent or understand what we're talking about.
On a positive side, despite the huge size of the country, most Russians speak roughly the same standard Russian. There are some regional words, but nothing I would call a dialect is popular anywhere but deep rural areas. You don't have to learn all that to be fluent.
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I'm native Russian speaker and I often reflect on what I'm saying and how I say things. This is very counter-intuitive.
Do you know the joke that 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean almost the same things? Guess what, in Russian I can give you a dozen of such pairs, some of them are essential in a casual conversation.
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I just think сука блять иди нахуи дурак мне похуй дебил козёл ёобаный урод блин ёб твою мать and пиздеч are fun to say чувак.
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You lost me at cyka
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Swede here. We all speak English. Heck - my kids use English whenever they're speaking about games or Youtube anyway.
Come to think of it. We should just drop Swedish altogether.
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The last time I went to Systembolaget I said "hej" to the cashier who replied "you're from Finland aren't you?"
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Isnt rinkebysvenska swedish turning into a mix of english, turkish, arabic and serb? Tbh im really interested in what will happen to the swedish language in the future. Will they just switch to english or will it slowly turn into a mix like rinkeby? Idk but its interesting to see the lamguage develop. In hungary the state regulates the language so much that we dont really see any development.
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Why do you hate yourself and your country's language?
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I was in France and when I tried my best French (which admittedly is not that great) all I got was an angry stare. Like, not one time, but in several cases. I did not understand why. I was just doing my best. 😢
So, I think the map is correct for France.
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Did you perhaps forget to say bonjour/excusez moi or other necessary greetings? That'll make people look angrily at you regardless of how good your french is
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I think I did say hello. I know I said s'il vous plaît and merci. However, I am Dutch and we are known for being a bit rude sometimes. So, maybe I did not behave completely correct according to French customs. I am not sure.
Edit: Or maybe they thought I was German. I did not think that happens anymore, but when I was a child and I would go on a holiday people were sometimes rude if they thought we were German because of WW2.
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We’re you in Paris mayhaps?
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I was actually in the Loire Valley on a holiday. It is quite touristy there, so I would expect them to be used to something.
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I had only very friendly reactions to speaking okay French in Paris which goes against everything I expected. It happened multiple times that people spoke English to us and we answered in French because they forgot we were able to speak it but they obviously didn't mean to be rude with it, much thr opposite. Maybe I just ran into some very foreigber friendly servers etc.
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This was in the Loire Valley, not in Paris. This never happened to me in Paris. Maybe some cultural difference between different regions.
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I know a lot of people have had similar experiences to yours, but mine was quite different. I was there in 2003 and 2006, so it’s been a while, but most everyone I spoke with was fine with my broken French. I only encountered two people who were outright rude, and they seemed to be rude to everyone, including other French people. During my first visit, I stuck to the touristy areas of Paris and Nice, but my second time was spent mostly in the countrysides of Provence. I ran into a lot of people who spoke no English, and they all seemed reasonably patient with my attempts at communication. The worst I ever got was people correcting my pronunciation and grammar, which I actually appreciated.
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The correct legend for France is:
"Please don't.
Also, don't speak foreign. Especially not English."
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“In fact, just don’t speak to me at all.”
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Really should be a gradient ring around Paris tbf. Lovely welcoming Alsace and smelly dismissive Paris isn't really a fair characterization at all.
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This is why expats in the Netherlands never learn Dutch even after years of living there. I know of people who lived in Amsterdam for 10 years and still don’t know any Dutch beyond “Hoe gaat het? Één stroopwafel alsjeblieft” the worst thing is that their kids who have spent most of their lives in the Netherlands don’t speak a lick of Dutch either, because these elitists send their kids to international school.
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I hate the term expat. It’s completely made up to not be grouped with the not white immigrants. It also goes with the condescending attitude of not really wanting to integrate with their new country, such as your international school and not learning the language examples.
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I think it has its place. There is a clear difference between someone coming to a country for a limited time to do some specialized work with the intention of leaving, compared to someone who has little or no intention of ever returning to their country of origin. Both categories are incompareble in the type of support they need (or want), where they live, whether they need to learn the language, etc. Just ignoring the difference is a bit silly.
Although I agree the term is misused sometimes.
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Lol what? In sweden for example i go to an international school because i dont speak swedish. And when i want to learn it they tell me that i cant attend the lessons because i cant speak swedish. When i try to speak to someone in swedish they notice that im making mistakes and automatically switch to english without even asking me. Its not the immigrants its the native speakers who have an attitude.
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when i want to learn it they tell me that i cant attend the lessons because i cant speak swedish
What courses exactly? What's your knowledge level? Because you won't be able to join SAS (svenska som andraspråk) classes until you have a good basic comprehension from for example SFI (svenska för invandrare). Depending on your age, your town should have Komvux (adult education) classes for both SFI and SAS.
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expats
You mean immigrants?
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Somewhere's emmigrants
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NotJustBikes moment
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German here: There's more than enough Germans who don't master the language so please don't torture my ears with your butchery, too.
You're welcome.
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I spoke Spanish at a shop in Barcelona and they were not my friend.
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Barcelona is the capital of Cataluña. Try a few words in Catalán next time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement
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Coneixeu alguna comunitat catalana a Lemmy? Hi havia lemmy.cat però el servidor es va tancar fa una estona. He trobat https://info.prou.be/ però és l'únic que tinc la impressió
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That's because you spoke Castilian, not Catalan.
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Yeah Spain is brutal for that, catalan is the least friendly region pretty much anywhere in Europe but the rest of Spain you get the same rudeness for not knowing exactly what their special local custom or dislect is. Mostly from older women and loud men.
It's funny because they have a lot of really laid back folk too, it's very polar.
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Germany might be like that in Berlin and to an expect in some other big cities, but in most of the country, das ist Deutschland, wir sprechen deutsch!!
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Das Leben ist zu kurz um Deutsch zu lernen.
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Mein deutsch ist sehr schlect. Ich kenne alle wort zu Eine Insel Mit Zwei Bergen though.
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As a Belgian, I'm a bit annoyed with the lack of Dutch/French distinction, but at least they mentioned that on the side
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How should I feel? We have four languages ffs
(Switzerland)
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I feel like this goes for both sides though
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As a german I can say this seems legit. I'd rather speak english to a non-native speaker than german, because most of the time it is hard to follow their speaking due to their faults in pronounciation and grammatics. Well, except when they speak german good (at least A2 or higher) or need it for their training.
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Do you think this is because English is a more flexible language or simply because Germans are more exposed to English culturally?
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I think a bit of both. English is definitely more flexible in terms of understandability as a second language for non-native english speakers. You can learn it relatively easy, unlike german (if you are not raised by german speaking folks). In the past we had a few TV programs that came unlocalized in german TV (Jackass, Beavis & Butthead, Celebrity Deathmatch). This exposed many of the younger people to english. The school system picked up english to the curriculum already in 1964. Back in my day (late 90s) we learned english since the 5th grade, today it seems to be third year primary school. Everyone learns english here, but too many people don't bother anymore after school and practically unlearn it.
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Went to Turkey once and people seemed genuinely impressed when we attempted to speak Turkish. They also seemed impressed we were Americans. Almost all the other English-speaking tourists we met were older Brits, many of which acted pretty haughty. I guess they're less used to Americans visiting. Turns out on the West Coast at least a large portion of Turks speak English
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There's a huge contingent of Brits who go to a place that's sunny, reasonably close by, and relatively cheap and just stay on a gated resort for the entire week. I've had lengthy conversations about holidays with people before where it took a good while to discover that they saw literally none of the country they visited beyond the resort and the route between the resort and the airport
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There's a portion of the population doing the same in any country
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Is the blue bit in Sweden near the Norwegian border a dialect area or a lake?
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Lake
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It's Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden and the EU.
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The thing with France is that their reaction is the same if you don't speak French either.
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Learning Danish at the moment. The language is fun but the pronunciation is so cursed, God help me. German pronunciation was a walk in the park. So glad they all speak fluent English.
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Try Norwegian instead. Basically the same language, but without the potato shoved down your throat!
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I'm from Marseille so not strictly speaking french but if you speak my language I'm going to be delighted and will let you know. France should really be sliced in half at around waist height
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French should really be sliced in half at around waist height
FIFY
Sorry, I've spent too much time in UK, lol.
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I know a lot of people who don't speak German as their native language and who don't or barely speak English, so I'd rather speak in German with them, or French with some of them.
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I don't think I agree with Spain unless you are in Barcelona and managed to say a few words in Catalán.
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In blue countries people will make a point of correcting your mistakes
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As a Lithuanian can confirm why would you learn this language unless you are staying for a long time.
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Japan is also in the red category.
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I don't see why parts of that map are blue and grey. Why not also make it a different shade of red. Or in fact, make everything the same shade of red.
Because fuck readability I guess
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It's not quite a spectrum
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121 comments