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tumblr post by seokoilua: it’s so wild to me that some people just speak english all the time… like they can’t switch it off to speak in a #real language when they need to
it’s so wild to me that people just speak with their mouths all the time… like they can’t switch it off to sign in a real language when they need to
Listen, I’m trying, men min dansk er stadig meget dårlig
and you try to learn Danish, one of the hardest languages in the world. I mean, same, jeg lærer dansk, but ayoo we need to chill and just pick up spanish or something
Hey same, talk about an uphill battle!
lol, maybe. But, I was in Copenhagen recently and fell in love with the place. Just kinda sparked an interest, you know?
patetisk
præcist
I mean I’m trying, but 한국말 is difficult (for me and apparently most other English as a first language speakers). And I’m the the sharpest tool in the shed to start with.
Although I don’t think English is that great of a language overall, imo it’s very very powerful.
What it lacks in logical consistency it makes up for with lots and lots of words (and idioms) that mean similar things but are slightly different for different use cases.
It has a very powerful toolbox for describing things in a very direct, specific manner.
Really? My impression is that most of the time English is more imprecise with the meaning of words than my native language, and tends to overload them a lot
The thing is that English can be precise, and often is in the written language, but people simply don’t speak like that. Indirect expressions and implied meaning are utilised more often than lengthy, often Latin or Greek based, terms in the spoken language of native speakers.
What’s your native language?
Italian
I saw a video of a Spanish author, fluent in English, who said in an interview that he preferred writing in English for more or less these reasons.
Found it: https://youtu.be/NJYoqCDKoT4
Some people never pressed Alt+Shift to change to another language keyboard layout…
Im more of a super + space person :3
I rebound that “menu” key nobody uses below R-Shift for language switching
Blasphemy! I use that daily. Brings up the context menu for whatever is the active item.
Hey! I use that button sometimes
Lol
I’ll have you know that I regularly do that by accident and switch from UK-US, which is the same except for a few symbols. I usually realise after the 3rd or 4th password attempt.
I was gonna say that I don’t use Alt+Shift because Linux Mint doesn’t have a preconfigured shortcut for that and I just assigned keyboard layouts to F7 and F8, but then I double-checked to make sure I wouldn’t spread misinformation and it turned out that Linux Mint DOES have preconfigured shortcuts in the keyboard settings. That’s something new I learnt today and that’s all because of you, so thank you :3
Or had to use the keybord by memory.
Hey, I didn’t switch to an English (well, US-ANSI) keyboard layout until my 40s!
…
Well, I’m still in my mid 40s. So not that long ago. But it’s so much better for programming. 😁
Folk lærer å bruke andre språk av nødvendighet eller interesse. Hvis du allerede kan snakke med utlendinger pga de allerede snakker morsmålet ditt til en ganske høy standard, er det mye mindre insentiv til å bytte til et språk som skaper enorme kommunikasjonsvansker bare for å få øve på språket. Og det er egentlig det vanskeligste ting med å studere et annet språk om man har engelsk som morsmål. Ihvertfall da jeg begynte å lære norsk, var det ekstremt vanskelig å få folk til å bruke norsk i det hele tatt. Ingen var tolmodig nokk å lytte mens jeg prøvde å forklare noe med barnehage norsk. Spesielt når de kunne bare bytte til engelsk og snakke helt flytende om nesten alt.
Det jeg synes er verre er når folk fra et annet land kan ikke engelsk. Hvis man ikke har nødt til eller interesse i å lære engelsk, er det fordi man ikke har lyst til å snakke med utlendinger eller reise til andre land, eller gjøre noe som helst som trenger kommunikasjon med andre kulturer. Og jo, jeg forstår at det finnes steder i verden som ikke har tilgang til undervisning i engelsk eller internett, men jeg snakker om steder som Spania og Tyskland. Selve litt utenfor Berlin var det ingen som ville prøve å snakke engelsk, bortsett fra et par hasjentusiaster ved en busstopp i Zeuthen.
Når jeg reiser til Storbritannia er folk veldig imponert av at jeg kan norsk, men utenfor Norge er jeg funksjonelt enspråklig. Fordi jeg kan ikke bruke norsk å kommunisere med folk fra for eksempel Latvia. Da må jeg bytte til engelsk. Selve om Norsk, Dansk, og Svensk er gjensidig forståelige, er det mange som fortsatt foretrekker å bruke engelsk i blandede grupper. Dvs, når vi snakker et annet språk er det kun med folk som bruker det som morsmål. Jeg kan ikke øve tysk ved å snakke med folk fra Frankrike eller Portugal, men en fra Tyskland kan øve på engelsk ved å snakke med mange folk fra mange forskjellige land.
For å trekke en konklusjon, folk fra engelsktalende land lærer fremmede språk hvis de flytter til et annet land, men i absolutt alle andre situasjoner er det mye mer effektivt å bruke engelsk selve om en snakker med utlendinger.
Beklager min dårlig norsk.
Det gode med norsk er at du faktisk næsten lærer tre sprog, I hvert fald på skrift. Dansk er nemt at læse hvis man kan norsk, og med lidt øvelse kan man også lære at forstå de kedelige typer ovre østpå.
Ja, det stemmer. Jeg har brukt norsk både i Sverige og Danmark men det var selvsagt ikke like lett å forstå muntlig dansk som muntlig svensk, men mye lettere å forstå skriftlig dansk en skriftlig svensk. Men det er mest sannsynlig pga alle innvandrere i Norge lærer bokmål selv om de bor i et sted som primært bruker nynorsk, som er mye nærmere svensk enn dansk.
Jeg forstår fint talt norsk men har flere problemer med svensk, sådan er det i Jylland. Sjællænderne derimod forstår bedst svensk.
Muligvis vil du have nemmere ved jysk - fx dialekter - end ved fx lavkøbenhavnsk.
三年前ぐらいから日本語を勉強している人です。あなたのメッセージを翻訳した。
英語はどこにでもある存在。故に、英語とコンタクトすることを世界中のどこでも逃さない。
が、他の言語を練習することが難しいとは言えない。
電子書籍を読む、動画や映画を観る、音楽を聴く、それにインターネットでネイティブに会うこともできます。
よって、目標の国を旅行しなくても、言語を覚えることができると思う。例え英語だけを話せても。
後、あなたはおそらく英語を覚えることが楽しいや簡単や有用だと思うだろうが、それは甘いだと思う。
人は時間がなかったりモチベがなかったり、私の思う日本人の場合、日本語との違いは大きすぎて、継続的に触れても覚えることがとても難しいのです。
上に、この頃大体の人々は強制的な英語授業を受ける。それでも授業を受けなかった人々もある。最初の一歩をしないと何も始まらないかもしれない。
英語を覚えなくても、自動的に文化交流をしたくないと考えるのが甘い。
悪い日本語でスマン。
I have no idea why I wrote this tbh
Personalmente, creo que el español y japonés tienen mucho en común, y hablarlo se me hace facil; escribirlo es otra cosa. Gracias por compartir eso.
I cannot understand this of course, I never figured out the shortcut to switch the language, but I read this anyway and spotted “pga” and “dvs” - they real …Norwegian…? (I saw Norsk a lot) words? You can respond in whatever language this is if you wish, I will surely understand it by the time you do.
I was just ranting about how much of a hard time native English speakers are given when it’s next to impossible to actually practice conversation.
Let’s say you have a German speaker learning English and an English speaker learning German. A Frenchman, a Spaniard, a Korean, an Austrian and an Australian walk in. The German uses English with 4 people and the English speaker uses German with none of them, because as soon as the Austrian hears them struggling with German they’ll instinctively switch to English. My own biggest challenge learning Norwegian was convincing the people I met not to switch to English and keep speaking Norwegian, even though it would have been easier for them.
I also made the point that the only way learning a foreign language is even close to a necessity is if you move to another country. And its also the only real way to get enough people to practice with.
Pga = På grunn av = because of Dvs = Det vil si = in other words
I agree with everything you said! I’m learning danish as a native English speaker, and I find the same struggles (also enjoyed slowly reading your Norsk)
I think a part of it is Scandinavian people being a little polite/power dynamic sensitive and switching to English for good intentioned reasons. But also, let me speak poor danish, it’ll be better for all of us in the long run!
Oo abbreviations hell yeah!
I did see you brought in the Franks (French), the Portuguese, and the good people of Tyskland (Germany apparently) in your orig! Kudos on learning Norwegian so well
It’s taken me long enough 😂
[removed minor grammar nitpicks]
It’s absolutely the difficulty I faced learning French as an American in the Midwest. My high school self thought it’d be more useful than Spanish because native English speakers who know French are more rare, but it also meant I never got immersion, even when I’d do my best to converse every chance I got.
Thanks for pointing that out. I tend to miss things due to dyslexia/ADHD. Either it’s a correctly spelled word, but the wrong one so spellcheck doesn’t catch it or I start writing a sentence and change how I want to word it half way through but forget to go back and edit the first part.
French was actually spoken by a large number of Brits until English replaced it as the common language in Europe, after ww2. My grandparents were all conversationally fluent in french.
I guess it’s the same in Norwegian as in Swedish, pga is an abbreviation for “på grund av” which means “because of” and dvs is an abbreviation for “det vill säga” which translates to “so to say”, someone is more than welcome to correct me on this, I had a difficult time to come up with the translation at this time xD
doslova
Jeśli język ma mniej niż 7 przypadków to nie jest prawdziwy /j
¿Que?
Er sagt, dass manche Leute die ganze Zeit nur englisch sprechen, als könnten sie nicht anders
ona li ken ala ken kama sona?
Domo arigato.
De nada
Du glemte tilføjelse med et ægte sprog
“sekoilu” means “mucking around, messing about” in Finnish. The last a is grammatically correct, but the first “o” turns it into a pun on SEO I guess. Somehow it all adds extra meaning. Like, Finnish being a #real language. 😈
The -a at the end marks the partitive, right?
yes
I wish I was better at learning languages. I know barely enough spanish that I think I could sort of communicate and a tiny bit of russian but it would be so fun to actually be able to speak them.
Easiest way to practice Spanish is to move to a Spanish speaking area where people are terrible at speaking English and just use it out of necessity.
Hmm, jingoism wrapped in sarcasm… humorous.
I don’t see how it’s jingoistic when it’s only putting down a language, not declaring the supremacy of another. Besides, English is dumb, and I say that as someone that’s mostly a monoglot
english is very practical and relatively easy
trilingual here. No language is “dumb”.
I hate the number of exceptions to rules there are and situations like read/read/red, lead/lead/led, threw/through/throw. I guess there’s homonyms in many languages (thinking of Chinese especially where tonality is everything).
I know a lot of the exceptions to pronunciation rules are just a result of English having so many different root influences. I’m comparing it to my (admittedly rudimentary) knowledge of Spanish where things are just pronounced how they’re spelled. I’m thinking back to my college Spanish courses where I asked my professor what kind of pronunciation exceptions there are and he said there weren’t really any. Then again, I suppose just like English, the exceptions come from words that are borrowed from other languages and he wasn’t looking at my question holistically. There’s a silent P in the word pterodáctilo borrowed from Greek in both languages, after all.
Curious as someone with more skill than me what you feel makes English practical, if you don’t mind sharing!
For basic, daily conversation, there are more irregular cases than cases that obey the rules.
Past tense verbs for example.
You add “ed” right?
Except for go/went sleep/slept come/came see/saw eat/ate…
Then for some topics, there ARE no rules. It’s just “remember how every verb works.” For instance, how to combine two verbs.
For “like”, you can attach either the infinitive or the gerund.
i.e. like to eat / like eatingBut some only take the infinitive.
i.e. decide to eatAnd some only take the gerund.
i.e. practice eatingEnglish is a mess.
Strictly, ‘like to eat’ and ‘like eating’ don’t mean the same either. ‘I (personally) like to eat’ and ‘I like eating (in general)’. Maybe you’re a chef and you enjoy watching others eating? Admittedly, that makes more sense when talking about eg. swimming or cycling, when you may enjoy the sport but not doing the activity.
Nice observations on other ways that English is a mess, though - I’d not appreciated those before. You can make them worse by negating them - all those sentences need ‘do’ support, with different forms of ‘to do’ to agree with the rest of the sentence.
Oh, absolutely. They have different meanings. But in a purely syntactic sense, which is the first step before learning nuance of meanings, just learning what structures are VALID requires a huge amount of memorization. It’s rightfully very annoying to students.
this is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
a cat is a cat in english.
i’m not saying that everybody should speak English in a Babylonian world. It’s just that it’s practical to have it as one of your languages.
Thanks for sharing. It is a bit of a hassle trying to remember the gender of certain words (thinking of mano being feminine, or día being masculine) but I found that less weird than a lot of English’s grammar exceptions.
Yep, matter of fact let’s make pig Latin the global language, as it is not dumb at all, not even a bit.
Yep, matter of fact let’s make pig Latin the global language, as it is not dumb at all, not even a bit.
says that it’s a “language game” and not a language
Who said this?
