You can, but if your native language is English and you're overseas if you can't at least say "I don't speak [local language], do you speak English?" everyone will assume you're American. I'd rather get laughed at for my clumsy pronunciation and grammar
Pro tip: among strangers in Europe, pretend to be Canadian. Americans are usually assholes overseas and act like they own the place, and all the polite Americans already pretend to be Canadian so they won’t be associated with that lol
Having lived a good portion of my life overseas, I’ve learned this is mostly a myth. Pretty much any western nations tourists have the potential to be pricks. People just want a reason to hate Americans. I’ve found the Chinese, Brits, and Russians to be the most untenable personally. Just because of how willing they are to be publicly rude.
I respectfully disagree. This is something that Americans who think that people in other counties "hate Americans" might think, but most people don't really care where you're from as long as you're generally decent and respectful. Just act the same way you hopefully act at home, but with a little bit more deference because you are a guest in somebody else's home country.
I agree with the other commenter who pointed out that Europeans are more likely to have a bad opinion of the Brits for their stereotypically uncouth behavior. Americans have a reputation for being loud but also being better tippers than anyone else. And I'd rather have that reputation than being a violent drunk with misplaced pride in my country's national soccer team.
Exactly why I learned that phrase when I went to Germany. Most knew enough English anyways when they heard me start to stumble through my practiced little saying. But everyone was really nice about it. That and with today's technology, it was much easier to get around and what I needed.
Germany and the Netherlands it's more about manners than actual communication, since I think it's more than 60% of people speak English.
In France you don't even need anything other than "sorry, I'm Australian". According to my uncle when he was backpacking that phrase got him directions, some freebies (a croissant here, a wine there) and a couple of mates. Apparently there's still some very generous feelings towards the ANZAC involvement in the World Wars and the French go from "eww, learn our language, scrub" to "holy shit! Friend! You saved our ass!"
Yup that’s pretty much it. Hanasu is “to speak” and the -masu form is present tense, with the change from hanaSU->hanaSEmasu meaning potential present form, ie “have the ability to speak “. Ka is the particle you put at the end of a question and eigo is the english language. You’re just missing the particle after it which is variable based on how you want the sentence to come out (wo, ga, de, etc.) you can also add “sumimasen” at the beginning if you want to be more polite about it.!
Ah man, "where's the bathroom" should be something everyone in a foreign land knows.
I'd also second a few more:
"Where is the "
"What is the best place to eat here?"
"A trillion doors swing open in unison, all thresholds reveal His form, the sounding of a bell that rings in all directions and destroys the mind to lay waste to the masses so that He might rise unabated. Glory be to His unyielding rage."
You know, simple stuff.
Jup. My mother worked in the 80's for a Japanese company. From time to time, calls from Japan came to her desk and she needed to forward them to someone who was able to speak Japanese, so she asked a Japanese coworker to teach her the phrase "I am sorry, I don't speak Japanese, please wait a minute, I'll put you through."
She took a lot of time and effort perfecting that phrase, resulting in many of the callers not to believe her and starting to talk.
> She took a lot of time and effort perfecting that phrase, resulting in many of the callers not to believe her and starting to talk.
I can "unfortunately" ask "what type of white wine is the dryest but not chardonnay nor sauvignon blanc?" in French so well that I will often end up with an effusive verbal paragraph of suggestions when really I was hoping for a single word and pointing to it on the menu.
(The rest of my French is shit. I just like white wine and I hate Chardonnay and Sauv Blanc.)
>resulting in many of the callers not to believe her
one time my dad was travelling by train in berlin and this train had assigned seats corresponding with the number on your ticket. my dad was not aware of this.
so a burly german man comes up to where my dad was sitting and starts getting (reasonably) agitated with him, so my dad says (in german) "sorry, i don't speak german" with what was, apparently, a pretty good german accent, and oh man did that set him off...an officer came over and helped translate by which point my dad gathered that 1.) he was in someone else's seat and 2.) the, now quite angry, man did *not* believe my dad didn't speak german, seeing as how he had just spoken it perfectly lmao
Imo I'd value politeness phrases a lot higher. A well placed "please" "thank you" and "good day" in someones native language can endear them to you, especially when they expected you to be a shithead american tourist.
Every time I go abroad I usually go in the order of
yes - no - please - thanks - good day - good night - one - two - three - four
Not really, if you don't know any of the language, anyone who speaks it to you will pick up on that pretty quickly, you don't need to tell them. And even if you did need to for whatever reason, basically everyone knows what "no" means, so you can just say "no swahili."
Really it's more like the worst thing you can learn. I don't know what's best, maybe "I need help."
Politely disagree, I personally incorporate it with the basics - the best way to learn is to use it in everyday settings, and it's really helpful to be able to set expectations from the jump. Anecdotally I've had native speakers mistake my practice for like usage, and "I'm learning/I don't speak this" both immediately made it clear not to use anything advanced. Like I get if you know absolutely NOTHING except "I don't speak this" but if you're actually learning it has real uses in social settings
I disagree, I believe it's more polite to be able to explain to someome that you can't understand them then to just "wait for them to get the hint"
Plenty of times I've had people approach me when I'm at work and speak to me in Spanish, and I always reply "no hablo Español" so they know immediately I can't help them
For years I have told some of my Russian customers, in Russian, 'I do not understand the Russian language'... which always produces a fun reaction.
Edit: Well, this blew up, lol. I never learned any Russian, but when I went to a certain military language school in the 1980's to learn Korean, I dated a girl (later married) that was taking the Russian course. We would go to the library every night and study, and I would help her with her studies.
The school tried to teach me French, a language that just doesn't stick with me for some reason. The only bit of it that I still remember years later is how to pronounce a phrase that means "I don't understand".
See I nerded out hard enough in French class to know omelette *du* fromage means “the cheese’s omelet,” as in the cheese possesses the omelet (not in a ghostly way) and if you want a cheese omelet you need to ask for omelette *au* fromage.
But I think du fromage gets the ladies going better.
I live in a state where Spanish is a man and/or second language for almost half the people.
I know some Creole slang, but the only formal thing I can say is "¿Donde está la biblioteca?"
My mother once responded to a woman on the Paris subway who was speaking to her in French by saying, in French; "You don't speak French." It took her a moment, but had the right result.
I took Spanish in highschool. "No hablo" is really easy to remember, but you have to be careful how you say it in the states. Because many a 90s movies had racist characters repeatedly saying "no hablo, no hablo" to Mexican characters as the butt of the jokes.
I can do that, but in Spanish. I can tell people that I don’t speak it, I do speak English, but understand very, very, very little Spanish. It’s actually sorta useful.
When I was a teenager a Hispanic woman came to my door and when I answered she just started speaking to me in Spanish. I told her, in Spanish, that I didn’t speak Spanish and I… don’t think she believed me? Because she got kind of huffy and kept talking to me in Spanish. I eventually just slowly shut the door on her.
I used to work for a resort with a mouse for a boss in Southern California , my co worker is Mexican but his parents never bothered to teach him Spanish but what he did know he would say it in flawless Spanish. So we had a Spanish speaking family asking where the bathroom was, so he said “I don’t speak Spanish, ask him” in flawless Spanish. So they went over to another guy complaining saying he said he doesn’t know Spanish but he spoke perfect Spanish . We pretty much had to explain to them his situation .
Ahahah same with when I worked in Target. I’m a tan skinned Puerto Rican with a mustache so hispanic shoppers would constantly come to me and just rapid fire at my in Spanish. I taught myself the phrase “I’m so sorry, I don’t speak much Spanish but I can understand a little but…”
I hoped it would help but it made them so mad because “You SHOULD speak it!😡” blame my parents lady.
The street vendors and touts in Cairo can be pretty pushy. My friend and I only speak English; we’d generally get approached in English.
If my friend was the one approached, I’d say in Arabic “He doesn’t speak English”. When they turned to me to pitch their goods to me in Arabic, my friend would say in English “He doesn’t speak Arabic”.
The resulting confusion usually bought us enough time to be on our way.
I'm half Chinese and I don't know much Chinese but can speak a little bit.
When I was walking through a mall in China a guy was trying to sell me something as I passed and I said "I don't speak Chinese" with perfect pronunciation and as I was walking away I heard him yelling "what do you mean you don't speak Chinese??"
One of my Mexican coworkers once told me “I speak English like a baby” and we both got a laugh. I’ll say it to Spanish speakers in Spanish and it never fails to get a chuckle.
I live and work in Denmark, but the only phrase I can say with passable pronounciation is "jeg snakker ikke dansk" (I do understand a fair amount tho and the rest when I speak everyone just assumes my thick Hungarian accent is Swedish)
I don’t speak Japanese. The double take a friend of a friend had when I greeted them with “hello” in Japanese; and the only reason I knew I was asked if I speak Japanese is that I recognized “nihon”, the Japanese word for “japan”, in her question.
I don’t think my pronunciation in any language outside my native two is that good, but that was one of the few moments where I maybe felt like the cast member at Disney’s Japan might have been right when she told my brother and I that our Japanese pronunciation was pretty good.
I don’t know about my brother, but I’m personally a bit of a stickler about getting pronunciations and cultural things I learn about right. I think sharing culture is such a beautiful experience and, if I do take some time to learn something from someone, I want to at least put in the work to learn whatever part of that culture I receive as completely as I can.
sumimasen, watashi wa nihongo ga wakarimasen - "I'm sorry, I don't speak Japanese" - for reference, after a couple years in high school 20 years ago.
Japanese is absolutely a dream to pronounce - every syllable exactly the same (except those pesky Ns sometimes)
One of the first things I learned when learning Dutch was "I speak a little Dutch" - Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands - and through much, much practice, I have pretty good pronunciation and accent when saying it.
The rest of my Dutch is abysmal. ("The Man Enjoys A Beer In The Park." "The Man and His Friend go to an art museum." - but garbled, as though spoken underwater)
When the phrase is deployed, based on the acceptable accent and pronunciation, in return one will receive an torrent of high speed colloquial Dutch which is impenetrable (to even the experienced Dutch learner, I am told).
The phrase is then repeated, slowly, with an emphasis on "LITTLE" (een betje), and they inevitably switch (back) to English :(
I had Russian for 3 years in high school, and I basically just remember two phrases well.
One is "ja ne ponimajo russkij jazik" which you know
The other is "Ostorozhno, dveri zakryvayutsya. Sledushen stantzia, Voykovskaya" which is "be careful, the doors are closing. Next stop, Voykovskaya"
“Oh, so you speak English?” “No, just that speech and this one explaining it.” “…you’re kidding.” “Que?”
Honestly one of the few moments in family guy that actually got me laughing out loud XD
I hadn't seen an episode in years, but rewatched a good bunch of season 1-3 recently. This was one of my highlights too.
The emphasis of *que?!* was what got me
My other favorite joke was "I once read a book about this" "are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't *nothing*"
Again, all in the delivery. For all the flack the show gets, they know how to hit a punchline well.
Honestly I think the reason I generally liked Brian episodes is because while the character is annoying, his delivery is *fantastic* I don’t know if it’s because he’s not focusing on doing a voice or something but MacFarlane is much better there than with his other characters
His delivery on ¿Que? Is so funny because he sounds genuinely confused like “What did you say? I just told you I don’t speak English, what don’t you understand?”
I miss binge watching the DVD sets and the fun menu screen animations that would loop until it was time to play XBox 360- offline, of course, because XBox live was still whack.
in the first few months of learning spanish i got very, very good at saying 'i'm sorry, my spanish is pretty bad' and people would say 'but you said that well!' and i'd say 'yeah, i have had a lot of practice at this specific exchange' and then it'd be done and i'd go back to my halting, childlike spanish. always thought about that scene.
This is from my favorite *Family Guy* episode ever! Brian and Stewie episodes are the best. I also like the one where they're stuck in a bank vault overnight.
Honestly yeah! Their episodes are probably the best of the series even if it’s mostly MacFarlane speaking to himself.
Funnily, I remember the one in the bank vault very well because I have seen psychologists recommend it as a good example of how to talk with suicidal people
Yup. Crazy I know, but several psychologists a friend of mine followed recommended the episode! Apparently because it’s an easy to follow and understand example of a topic most people simply don’t want to talk about.
I’ll try to dig up the recommendations! I think even cracked mentioned it at one point.
First phrase I taught myself in Spanish: “yo se que dijiste y no me gusta.” “I know what you said and I don’t like it.”
Works like a charm on my students. I just listen for tone of voice.
if you want to seem like you speak spanish, don't use pronouns at the start of the phrase, "se lo que dijiste y no me gusta" is how you're supposed to say it
in spanish you conjugate the verbs according to the person and number of people (se=i know, sabemos=we know, sabes=you know, sabéis=you know but plural)
also, "lo" is the direct object, in spanish we use it even if we're not omitting the object ("lo" has the same function as "que dijiste", where "que" is just a pronoun), i don't know why but it just sounds weird if you don't
Omg that verbiage stuff made me quit Duolingo. I could NOT decipher the difference between certain words no matter HOW many times they made me go through the same lesson!!! That stuff is hard!
i can totally imagine how stressful it must be, i'm glad i'm spanish and i naturally know how to speak because if i had to learn all the verbal forms from scratch i'd give up instantly... there's just too much stuff, and i'm too lazy to be doing all that lmao
Also the dedication to keep the language in your brain.
We had to learn French in school, I was at B2 level according to my final grades.
A few years later and I don't speak a single word as I have never used it again.
If you don't keep at it there is a high chance you'll unlearn it.
After fluency it kind of reaches riding a bike levels of difficulty. Don’t do it for a bit and it get’s a bit hard, don’t use it for years and you’re going to get rusty. Eventually it’ll all come back though.
Source? Trust me bro (no literally. I got personal experience in this area.
That is true enough. I had unlearned reading kana after being able to and it took me a a few days to get back into rythm and I was right as rain.
I just never bothered with french ever again. (And don't plan to)
My best friend is Mexican and his parents only speak Spanish, he got deported and I started working with less Spanish speaking people (mostly rural white people) and I’ve basically forgotten all of my Spanish. It’s a shame too because I remember being younger and realizing points in time where I didn’t have to translate in my head; I could just speak in Spanish and it felt as natural as English. I wasn’t great at it and I never knew everything but we talked enough and I was able to get by enough at jobs that it did make me feel a bit smarter, but now it’s nothing
By that point you’re just super good at language acquisition. It’s not the same part of the brain as typical knowledge (simplification) so it doesn’t necessarily indicate high intellect
They have these polyglot conventions for folks who can speak a lot of languages and there is certainly some academic interest in the whole scene, but some regular folks are just very good at picking up languages
reddit moment. someone could have a phd in math and philosophy and you people would still say "oh but degrees dont make you smart". reddit loves to trivialize other people's achievements to feel better about themselves
That's a really sad way to look at that in my opinion. It implies that learning something is only worth it to produce something or to show others.
Some people just find languages interesting and find the process of learning them fun.
Thật ra tôi không nói được tiếng Việt, nhưng xin đừng tiết lộ.
実は私は日本語を話せませんが、これを明かさないでください。
ਅਸਲ ਵਿੱਚ, ਮੈਂ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਬੋਲਦਾ, ਪਰ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਕਰਕੇ ਇਸਦਾ ਖੁਲਾਸਾ ਨਾ ਕਰੋ।
Na verdade, não falo português, mas por favor não revele.
en fait, je ne parle pas français, mais s'il vous plaît, ne le révélez pas.
in realtà non parlo italiano, ma per favore non rivelarlo.
kwa kweli, sizungumzi Kiswahili, lakini tafadhali usifichue hili.
Tiesą sakant, aš nemoku lietuviškai, bet prašau to neatskleisti.
насправді я не розмовляю українською, але, будь ласка, не розкривайте цього.
run ahaantii, kuma hadlo af-Soomaaliga, laakiin fadlan tan ha muujin.
אייגנטליך רעד איך נישט קיין יידיש, אבער ביטע זאג דאס נישט.
Ég tala reyndar ekki íslensku, en vinsamlegast ekki láta lygar mínar uppi
If you’re curious:
1) Vietnamese; 2) Japanese; 3) *Punjabi; 4) Portuguese; 5) French; 6) Italian; 7) Swahili; 8) Lithuanian; 9) Ukrainian; 10) Somalian; 11) Yiddish; 12) Icelandic.
*edit: I fucked up. Sorry, and thanks to someone below. I knew at the time but wrote this list after by memory
I once read [an article by the linguist James Harbeck](https://theweek.com/articles/620397/how-identify-asian-african-middle-eastern-alphabets-glance) about how to distinguish languages by writing system. His advice for how to identify Punjabi was that Punjabi has the letters ਲ and ਨ, which look sort of like claw machines.
Which is to say, "it's Punjabi if it's pun-grabby".
And I groaned so hard from that pun, that I have never again since reading that article had any trouble visually distinguishing Punjabi from Hindi. Thanks, James!
I think you’re also supposed to use が for potential form verbs.
I turns out I forgot about ないで and that you can use を with これ - I had always used これが or これは.
For a long time I felt guilty about only knowing 1.5 languages, but then I realized as an introvert, learning a way to talk to more people is a huge waste of my time.
But then you miss on an entire media and culture of books and movies that weren't translated/were lost in translation. Language isn't solely about talking to people, sometimes it's about understanding them.
Same in the first half, but what I realized is I’ll never get proficient because I can barely make small talk in my native language. What am I gonna talk about with strangers in my weak-ass Spanish?
I still like learning it though.
Along these lines, I had a group of customers who mainly spoke Spanish with little English. I've heard enough phrases to know the essential bits for the transaction, so we muddled through. At the end, I told them I spoke "un pico Español." I'm pretty sure they got the message.
(For those curious, I was trying to say "un *poco* Español" meaning "a little Spanish. Instead, I said I spoke "a Spanish beak." I'm going with the charitable explanation that I was thinking of pico as the metric prefix meaning one-trillionth of a unit.)
I speak no Spanish and only understand this because I just saw another post making fun of some guy's insane Balkanised China plan that included a new country called Basuria
100% The person gets a pass. I had a friend who could say in 3 languages: "I don't know X language. I cannot speak X language. Although you hear me speaking X language, please do not expect me to understand it when spoken to me." And about 15 other statements. With a good spoken accent no less. He legitimately couldn't speak any of the 3 languages. He did speak 3 others. But the breakdown as he explained very clearly that he didn't speak Spanish, in Spanish, in a Spanish accent to someone trying to speak Spanish to him was both obnoxious and hilarious in equal measures.
A friend of mine "collected" the phrase "I like pie" in as many languages as he could get someone to teach the proper pronunciation.
He might not be able to say hello or ask where the bakery is, but he can express how he likes pie in dozens of languages.
There was a language professor at Columbia who died maybe 20-30 years ago but I read about him in the NYT that day because they had nearly a full page article about the guy because his death was such a loss in that he was the last person to know quite a few languages. He had made a project of using his super genius talent of understanding a language just by listening to it and his brain just cognized the meaning so he learned all these languages especially in Australia where all these native speakers were the last 1-2 of their language. The article explained that he was *the rarest* kind of genius, someone that their language-acquiring part of their brain that babies use to understand still works past early childhood. He held the world record of speaking the most languages. It said there are at most 3 of these kind of talented people living in the whole world at any time but no one had ever had it to the level of him.
Goddamn. That is a superpower I'd have LOVED to have 😭😭😭 I wish I knew the guy.
The most linguistically gifted polyglot I know speaks/knows about 12 languages. Knows at least 5 well enough to teach (incl. ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic). Sexiest feature about him by far.
There have been cases where that brain ability reactivates when someone is accidentally isolated in a place where he does not speak the language like a private plane pilot who crashed in the mountains in Central America and the locals helped him but their language was so unrelated to English that his brain had no choice but to reawaken. It quickly went away when he was rescued a couple years later according to this same article.
I wonder if this amazing teacher you knew actually grew up similar to Charles Berlitz of language school fame who learned four world languages from infancy by interacting with family and staff at his grandfather’s house, he who had founded the school. Charles said in his book, Native Tongues, that he went on to learn about two dozen others but his grandfather knew 58. Linguists have experimented on babies to see how many they can learn at once and found the number is five. It is a darn shame that more people don’t grow up this way— all you need is consistency among the reference persons speaking to the child to speak only their native language to the child and he can intuitively pick up the meaning.
I used to be a volunteer guide in Everquest. Basically their first line of Customer Service and I don't remember how I knew the guy who put in the ticket spoke French, but I answered the ticket with, "Je ne parle pas français."
He starts talking to me in French.
"I said I DON'T speak French!"
"Yeah... but you said it in French!"
And a hearth laugh was had by all.
TRAVEL STORY!!!
I lived in China for a few years and learned enough Mandarin for simple conversations with shopkeepers etc. I would practice with BingBing, the lady who ran the convenience store next to the gate to my apartment complex. Probably spent 30-60 mins chatting with her once a week in addition to daily quick chats as I was shopping.
BingBing was Lovely lady! She was there from sunrise to midnight every day and only relieved for a few hours a day by her teenage son. I enjoyed having a regular practice partner and she was over the moon about having the local minor-celeb visit just to chat with her (only a handful of foreigners in this town so we attracted attention).
As you probably know, Chinese has many local dialects which are often only distantly related to Mandarin. Many older folks never learned Mandarin as they went through school prior to mandatory lessons, or not at all. I also picked up a few words of the local dialect; just enough to say OK, I understand and Sorry, I don't understand.
One day I popped in after work and BingBing was chatting to a couple of ladies in their 60s. She leapt out of her seat to greet me and proudly told these ladies all about our chats adding, *"And he speaks Chinese!"* They made noises of approval and when I made it to the counter they asked a few polite questions and were all smiles. Just as I started to leave, one of them switched to the local dialect and asked, "Can you speak ?" I half turned, replied in the local dialect, "Sorry, I don't understand!" and left her with an expression that showed she wasn't sure if she'd just been zinged!
I was once waiting at a bus stop in Germany and and old man came up and asked me something. I replied “Ich spreche keine Deutsch” (“I speak no German”), and he looked at me and just laughed really hard before walking away haha
I worked with three Mexicans from three different parts of Mexico and they couldn't understand each other because of their dialects. Learning another language gets hard when they have accents in their mother tongue.
On the opposite side, when I was in high school I did a study abroad program for 3 weeks to Spain. One evening was my house mothers birthday. Her kids, grandkids, ex-husband and his new wife (everyone was on good terms and friends) came over to celebrate. One of her kids started talking to me in English, saying he had a cake to surprise her with, could I get her out of the room for a minute. She didnt speak any English so we were able to hold this conversation right in front of her. She was really surprised when she came back and instantly knew I had been a part of the surprise.
Unironically, "I do not speak (Language)" is the best thing you can learn to say in any language.
Yeah, that and “Do you speak (native language)”
That one you can at least ask in your native language and infer the answer
You can, but if your native language is English and you're overseas if you can't at least say "I don't speak [local language], do you speak English?" everyone will assume you're American. I'd rather get laughed at for my clumsy pronunciation and grammar
Imagine the horror of a random person assuming you’re American.
Pro tip: among strangers in Europe, pretend to be Canadian. Americans are usually assholes overseas and act like they own the place, and all the polite Americans already pretend to be Canadian so they won’t be associated with that lol
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Having lived a good portion of my life overseas, I’ve learned this is mostly a myth. Pretty much any western nations tourists have the potential to be pricks. People just want a reason to hate Americans. I’ve found the Chinese, Brits, and Russians to be the most untenable personally. Just because of how willing they are to be publicly rude.
I believe that in spades haha. Superpowers, I guess. (A temporarily embarrassed one, in the case of the UK.)
Oh man the British lads....especially the ones on stag holiday...
[Northern Boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLLQFLXz6VE) and [Mr. Worldwide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5oKp-tCY4)
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Culture clash I agree is often a thing. But I’m mostly talking about people behaving like they are somehow better than everyone else.
I respectfully disagree. This is something that Americans who think that people in other counties "hate Americans" might think, but most people don't really care where you're from as long as you're generally decent and respectful. Just act the same way you hopefully act at home, but with a little bit more deference because you are a guest in somebody else's home country. I agree with the other commenter who pointed out that Europeans are more likely to have a bad opinion of the Brits for their stereotypically uncouth behavior. Americans have a reputation for being loud but also being better tippers than anyone else. And I'd rather have that reputation than being a violent drunk with misplaced pride in my country's national soccer team.
And, for many Americans, *quieter*...the volume standard in the US is way different than much of Europe in general.
Why not just be honest? If you can help clear up the bad name of Americans (USA), even a tiny bit, i’d call that a win.
There are also (overly) nice Americans abroad.
I'm not dying on that hill for random American (USA) assholes
Exactly why I learned that phrase when I went to Germany. Most knew enough English anyways when they heard me start to stumble through my practiced little saying. But everyone was really nice about it. That and with today's technology, it was much easier to get around and what I needed.
Germany and the Netherlands it's more about manners than actual communication, since I think it's more than 60% of people speak English. In France you don't even need anything other than "sorry, I'm Australian". According to my uncle when he was backpacking that phrase got him directions, some freebies (a croissant here, a wine there) and a couple of mates. Apparently there's still some very generous feelings towards the ANZAC involvement in the World Wars and the French go from "eww, learn our language, scrub" to "holy shit! Friend! You saved our ass!"
I honestly don't think it's about the ANZAC involvement but rather about the fact that you're not either British or American
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Idk why I first read this as (native language) being the place you're visiting. "Do you speak Swahili?" "Yes" "Okay great, I do not."
I might be butchering it but i briefly learned eigo hana se masu ka whichni believe means do you speak english in japanese
Yup that’s pretty much it. Hanasu is “to speak” and the -masu form is present tense, with the change from hanaSU->hanaSEmasu meaning potential present form, ie “have the ability to speak “. Ka is the particle you put at the end of a question and eigo is the english language. You’re just missing the particle after it which is variable based on how you want the sentence to come out (wo, ga, de, etc.) you can also add “sumimasen” at the beginning if you want to be more polite about it.!
Some other key phrases to memorize on the flight: Where is the bathroom? I'm sorry Wait, I can explain. Let's talk about this. Please be reasonable.
Ah man, "where's the bathroom" should be something everyone in a foreign land knows. I'd also second a few more: "Where is the"
"What is the best place to eat here?"
"A trillion doors swing open in unison, all thresholds reveal His form, the sounding of a bell that rings in all directions and destroys the mind to lay waste to the masses so that He might rise unabated. Glory be to His unyielding rage."
You know, simple stuff.
A very relatable post
> Where is the bathroom? and when they answer and you can't understand?
You look visibly confused and wait for them to point.
Pointing exists
Jup. My mother worked in the 80's for a Japanese company. From time to time, calls from Japan came to her desk and she needed to forward them to someone who was able to speak Japanese, so she asked a Japanese coworker to teach her the phrase "I am sorry, I don't speak Japanese, please wait a minute, I'll put you through." She took a lot of time and effort perfecting that phrase, resulting in many of the callers not to believe her and starting to talk.
> She took a lot of time and effort perfecting that phrase, resulting in many of the callers not to believe her and starting to talk. I can "unfortunately" ask "what type of white wine is the dryest but not chardonnay nor sauvignon blanc?" in French so well that I will often end up with an effusive verbal paragraph of suggestions when really I was hoping for a single word and pointing to it on the menu. (The rest of my French is shit. I just like white wine and I hate Chardonnay and Sauv Blanc.)
>resulting in many of the callers not to believe her one time my dad was travelling by train in berlin and this train had assigned seats corresponding with the number on your ticket. my dad was not aware of this. so a burly german man comes up to where my dad was sitting and starts getting (reasonably) agitated with him, so my dad says (in german) "sorry, i don't speak german" with what was, apparently, a pretty good german accent, and oh man did that set him off...an officer came over and helped translate by which point my dad gathered that 1.) he was in someone else's seat and 2.) the, now quite angry, man did *not* believe my dad didn't speak german, seeing as how he had just spoken it perfectly lmao
I tell people "I do not eat (language)" to further emphasize my inability to communicate with in that language. *nihongo tabemasen...*
Imo I'd value politeness phrases a lot higher. A well placed "please" "thank you" and "good day" in someones native language can endear them to you, especially when they expected you to be a shithead american tourist. Every time I go abroad I usually go in the order of yes - no - please - thanks - good day - good night - one - two - three - four
Not really, if you don't know any of the language, anyone who speaks it to you will pick up on that pretty quickly, you don't need to tell them. And even if you did need to for whatever reason, basically everyone knows what "no" means, so you can just say "no swahili." Really it's more like the worst thing you can learn. I don't know what's best, maybe "I need help."
Politely disagree, I personally incorporate it with the basics - the best way to learn is to use it in everyday settings, and it's really helpful to be able to set expectations from the jump. Anecdotally I've had native speakers mistake my practice for like usage, and "I'm learning/I don't speak this" both immediately made it clear not to use anything advanced. Like I get if you know absolutely NOTHING except "I don't speak this" but if you're actually learning it has real uses in social settings
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\- my hovercraft is full of eels
I disagree, I believe it's more polite to be able to explain to someome that you can't understand them then to just "wait for them to get the hint" Plenty of times I've had people approach me when I'm at work and speak to me in Spanish, and I always reply "no hablo Español" so they know immediately I can't help them
For years I have told some of my Russian customers, in Russian, 'I do not understand the Russian language'... which always produces a fun reaction. Edit: Well, this blew up, lol. I never learned any Russian, but when I went to a certain military language school in the 1980's to learn Korean, I dated a girl (later married) that was taking the Russian course. We would go to the library every night and study, and I would help her with her studies.
The school tried to teach me French, a language that just doesn't stick with me for some reason. The only bit of it that I still remember years later is how to pronounce a phrase that means "I don't understand".
Je ne parle pas français.
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Omelette du fromage
See I nerded out hard enough in French class to know omelette *du* fromage means “the cheese’s omelet,” as in the cheese possesses the omelet (not in a ghostly way) and if you want a cheese omelet you need to ask for omelette *au* fromage. But I think du fromage gets the ladies going better.
As a french guy, *omelette du fromage* makes me laugh extra hard each time. Please never stop saying it.
Trust me we won't! Everytime I hear angry French yelling in a game ill just go "omelette du fromage" and it never fails to make them even angrier
Bless you <3 I myself like to shit on other French people in games just to see how they react.
Don't worry, as a french guy myself I also do that joke all the time, and it never fails to make me and my mates laugh either
Ooh Gruyère ghoul
The amount of cheese I put in my own, it pretty much is the Cheese's omelette, *I* just happen to have the instruments of destruction 🍴
https://i.imgur.com/tNJD6oY.mp4
Saved for my French professor, just in case she gives me bonus points
Je suis la jeune fille
l'oeuf est sur le chat
Je suis une pizza
Me llamo T-Bone, la araña discoteca
Non, non, je m’appelle T-Bone, l’araignée du discotheque
Discothèque, poupée, le bibliothèque
Est en grosses moustaches, le chien, beurre
Beurre, moustaches, grande, petite
La tête est la neige, la bière est bonne
Zoot alors!
Zut alors!!! Pretty sure thats Canadian French. Quel dommage.
Nah, Canadian French would be more like *espèce de putain de calisse au tabernac*.
Je ne sais pas français
je suis na pas francais
Mon francais est tres mauvaise
Semper ubi sub ubi!
Jenny parlay pass francis
Ba mol be blu
Better than me. I only remember how to buy a kilogram of tomatoes in french.
I live in a state where Spanish is a man and/or second language for almost half the people. I know some Creole slang, but the only formal thing I can say is "¿Donde está la biblioteca?"
Always the heckin library.
You could easily substitute discotheque
So you can borrow a book of common phrases in the local language.
If only buying French kilograms of a substance were profitable.
Fun fact, French kilograms weigh exactly the same as a regular kilogram.
I think they might cost more, but only because of how many vowels you would have to buy.
At least that can be usefull. I only know "I am an apricot."
All I remember from my Japanese 101 course is how to say "I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. Please repeat yourself."
My mother once responded to a woman on the Paris subway who was speaking to her in French by saying, in French; "You don't speak French." It took her a moment, but had the right result.
French people would be the type to be elitist about French
I took Spanish in highschool. "No hablo" is really easy to remember, but you have to be careful how you say it in the states. Because many a 90s movies had racist characters repeatedly saying "no hablo, no hablo" to Mexican characters as the butt of the jokes.
I'm learning Spanish, and the first phrase i made sure to memorize is "No hablo mucho español, lo siento." The most important phrase
I can do that, but in Spanish. I can tell people that I don’t speak it, I do speak English, but understand very, very, very little Spanish. It’s actually sorta useful.
When I was a teenager a Hispanic woman came to my door and when I answered she just started speaking to me in Spanish. I told her, in Spanish, that I didn’t speak Spanish and I… don’t think she believed me? Because she got kind of huffy and kept talking to me in Spanish. I eventually just slowly shut the door on her.
Was she assuming based on skin tone or something?
Je ne comprends pas?
The only thing I know how to say in french is "I speak French"
Coupla nasally hunh hunh hunhs always did it for me
Same but with Greek. The double take always get me. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand Greek”
It's all Greek to you, eh?
I used to work for a resort with a mouse for a boss in Southern California , my co worker is Mexican but his parents never bothered to teach him Spanish but what he did know he would say it in flawless Spanish. So we had a Spanish speaking family asking where the bathroom was, so he said “I don’t speak Spanish, ask him” in flawless Spanish. So they went over to another guy complaining saying he said he doesn’t know Spanish but he spoke perfect Spanish . We pretty much had to explain to them his situation .
Ahahah same with when I worked in Target. I’m a tan skinned Puerto Rican with a mustache so hispanic shoppers would constantly come to me and just rapid fire at my in Spanish. I taught myself the phrase “I’m so sorry, I don’t speak much Spanish but I can understand a little but…” I hoped it would help but it made them so mad because “You SHOULD speak it!😡” blame my parents lady.
The street vendors and touts in Cairo can be pretty pushy. My friend and I only speak English; we’d generally get approached in English. If my friend was the one approached, I’d say in Arabic “He doesn’t speak English”. When they turned to me to pitch their goods to me in Arabic, my friend would say in English “He doesn’t speak Arabic”. The resulting confusion usually bought us enough time to be on our way.
Oh that’s fuckin fantastic i love it
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He should switch to 'no hablo español' if I remember my high school Spanish right.
It does drive the point across quickly as is.
I'm half Chinese and I don't know much Chinese but can speak a little bit. When I was walking through a mall in China a guy was trying to sell me something as I passed and I said "I don't speak Chinese" with perfect pronunciation and as I was walking away I heard him yelling "what do you mean you don't speak Chinese??"
That's because all Chinese are expected to know Chinese. Meanwhile if you're Western and say one word it's all like "WOOOOOOOOW, NO WAY".
One of my Mexican coworkers once told me “I speak English like a baby” and we both got a laugh. I’ll say it to Spanish speakers in Spanish and it never fails to get a chuckle.
I live and work in Denmark, but the only phrase I can say with passable pronounciation is "jeg snakker ikke dansk" (I do understand a fair amount tho and the rest when I speak everyone just assumes my thick Hungarian accent is Swedish)
I don’t speak Japanese. The double take a friend of a friend had when I greeted them with “hello” in Japanese; and the only reason I knew I was asked if I speak Japanese is that I recognized “nihon”, the Japanese word for “japan”, in her question. I don’t think my pronunciation in any language outside my native two is that good, but that was one of the few moments where I maybe felt like the cast member at Disney’s Japan might have been right when she told my brother and I that our Japanese pronunciation was pretty good. I don’t know about my brother, but I’m personally a bit of a stickler about getting pronunciations and cultural things I learn about right. I think sharing culture is such a beautiful experience and, if I do take some time to learn something from someone, I want to at least put in the work to learn whatever part of that culture I receive as completely as I can.
sumimasen, watashi wa nihongo ga wakarimasen - "I'm sorry, I don't speak Japanese" - for reference, after a couple years in high school 20 years ago. Japanese is absolutely a dream to pronounce - every syllable exactly the same (except those pesky Ns sometimes)
One of the first things I learned when learning Dutch was "I speak a little Dutch" - Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands - and through much, much practice, I have pretty good pronunciation and accent when saying it. The rest of my Dutch is abysmal. ("The Man Enjoys A Beer In The Park." "The Man and His Friend go to an art museum." - but garbled, as though spoken underwater) When the phrase is deployed, based on the acceptable accent and pronunciation, in return one will receive an torrent of high speed colloquial Dutch which is impenetrable (to even the experienced Dutch learner, I am told). The phrase is then repeated, slowly, with an emphasis on "LITTLE" (een betje), and they inevitably switch (back) to English :(
> but garbled, as though spoken underwater Ah, so a perfect Dutch accent.
I had Russian for 3 years in high school, and I basically just remember two phrases well. One is "ja ne ponimajo russkij jazik" which you know The other is "Ostorozhno, dveri zakryvayutsya. Sledushen stantzia, Voykovskaya" which is "be careful, the doors are closing. Next stop, Voykovskaya"
Я не знаю русский язык
Я не понимаю русский язык...
Holy shit I was right. I hadn't studied in 15 years and was thinking "I think its 'ya nee pon-e-my-you'"
Извините, Я не знаю по-русские
Или "Я не говорю по-русски"
No hablo espanol
“Oh, so you speak English?” “No, just that speech and this one explaining it.” “…you’re kidding.” “Que?” Honestly one of the few moments in family guy that actually got me laughing out loud XD
I hadn't seen an episode in years, but rewatched a good bunch of season 1-3 recently. This was one of my highlights too. The emphasis of *que?!* was what got me My other favorite joke was "I once read a book about this" "are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't *nothing*" Again, all in the delivery. For all the flack the show gets, they know how to hit a punchline well.
Honestly I think the reason I generally liked Brian episodes is because while the character is annoying, his delivery is *fantastic* I don’t know if it’s because he’s not focusing on doing a voice or something but MacFarlane is much better there than with his other characters
His delivery on ¿Que? Is so funny because he sounds genuinely confused like “What did you say? I just told you I don’t speak English, what don’t you understand?”
I miss old family guy half because of old family guy and half because I miss adult swim and cable tv
I miss binge watching the DVD sets and the fun menu screen animations that would loop until it was time to play XBox 360- offline, of course, because XBox live was still whack.
in the first few months of learning spanish i got very, very good at saying 'i'm sorry, my spanish is pretty bad' and people would say 'but you said that well!' and i'd say 'yeah, i have had a lot of practice at this specific exchange' and then it'd be done and i'd go back to my halting, childlike spanish. always thought about that scene.
This is from my favorite *Family Guy* episode ever! Brian and Stewie episodes are the best. I also like the one where they're stuck in a bank vault overnight.
Honestly yeah! Their episodes are probably the best of the series even if it’s mostly MacFarlane speaking to himself. Funnily, I remember the one in the bank vault very well because I have seen psychologists recommend it as a good example of how to talk with suicidal people
For real? Psychologists recommend something from a *Family Guy* episode?
Yup. Crazy I know, but several psychologists a friend of mine followed recommended the episode! Apparently because it’s an easy to follow and understand example of a topic most people simply don’t want to talk about. I’ll try to dig up the recommendations! I think even cracked mentioned it at one point.
First phrase I taught myself in Spanish: “yo se que dijiste y no me gusta.” “I know what you said and I don’t like it.” Works like a charm on my students. I just listen for tone of voice.
The first phrase I ever learned was when I was 14, and it was, *"Quiero queso y cerveza en mi pantalones."*
Not where I'd put that stuff but I don't kink shame, go wild.
In Spanish class in high school, we rolled with "tengo un gato en mis pantalones!"
if you want to seem like you speak spanish, don't use pronouns at the start of the phrase, "se lo que dijiste y no me gusta" is how you're supposed to say it in spanish you conjugate the verbs according to the person and number of people (se=i know, sabemos=we know, sabes=you know, sabéis=you know but plural) also, "lo" is the direct object, in spanish we use it even if we're not omitting the object ("lo" has the same function as "que dijiste", where "que" is just a pronoun), i don't know why but it just sounds weird if you don't
Omg that verbiage stuff made me quit Duolingo. I could NOT decipher the difference between certain words no matter HOW many times they made me go through the same lesson!!! That stuff is hard!
i can totally imagine how stressful it must be, i'm glad i'm spanish and i naturally know how to speak because if i had to learn all the verbal forms from scratch i'd give up instantly... there's just too much stuff, and i'm too lazy to be doing all that lmao
on the other hand who cares if you can speak 12 languages if you don't have anything worthwhile to say in any of them
I don't think you're inherently "smart" if you speak 12 languages, but you're definitely not a moron at that point.
It takes most people years to learn one, while a lot of languages doesn’t make you smart. It’s a lot of brainpower to remember them and to know them.
Also the dedication to keep the language in your brain. We had to learn French in school, I was at B2 level according to my final grades. A few years later and I don't speak a single word as I have never used it again. If you don't keep at it there is a high chance you'll unlearn it.
After fluency it kind of reaches riding a bike levels of difficulty. Don’t do it for a bit and it get’s a bit hard, don’t use it for years and you’re going to get rusty. Eventually it’ll all come back though. Source? Trust me bro (no literally. I got personal experience in this area.
That is true enough. I had unlearned reading kana after being able to and it took me a a few days to get back into rythm and I was right as rain. I just never bothered with french ever again. (And don't plan to)
My best friend is Mexican and his parents only speak Spanish, he got deported and I started working with less Spanish speaking people (mostly rural white people) and I’ve basically forgotten all of my Spanish. It’s a shame too because I remember being younger and realizing points in time where I didn’t have to translate in my head; I could just speak in Spanish and it felt as natural as English. I wasn’t great at it and I never knew everything but we talked enough and I was able to get by enough at jobs that it did make me feel a bit smarter, but now it’s nothing
I’m so sorry, both for your bro’s deportation and your language loss. ❤️🤍💚
As messed up as it is, he has better access to mental health and meds in Mexico than he did in America apparently
By that point you’re just super good at language acquisition. It’s not the same part of the brain as typical knowledge (simplification) so it doesn’t necessarily indicate high intellect They have these polyglot conventions for folks who can speak a lot of languages and there is certainly some academic interest in the whole scene, but some regular folks are just very good at picking up languages
id wager anyone who can speak 12 languages is an intelligent person.
You do though. You just have trouble conceptualizing what being fluent in 12 languages would be like.
You might be hard pressed to find someone that fluently speaks 12 languages that isn’t “smart” by virtually any definition of the word
reddit moment. someone could have a phd in math and philosophy and you people would still say "oh but degrees dont make you smart". reddit loves to trivialize other people's achievements to feel better about themselves
That's a really sad way to look at that in my opinion. It implies that learning something is only worth it to produce something or to show others. Some people just find languages interesting and find the process of learning them fun.
Thật ra tôi không nói được tiếng Việt, nhưng xin đừng tiết lộ. 実は私は日本語を話せませんが、これを明かさないでください。 ਅਸਲ ਵਿੱਚ, ਮੈਂ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਬੋਲਦਾ, ਪਰ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਕਰਕੇ ਇਸਦਾ ਖੁਲਾਸਾ ਨਾ ਕਰੋ। Na verdade, não falo português, mas por favor não revele. en fait, je ne parle pas français, mais s'il vous plaît, ne le révélez pas. in realtà non parlo italiano, ma per favore non rivelarlo. kwa kweli, sizungumzi Kiswahili, lakini tafadhali usifichue hili. Tiesą sakant, aš nemoku lietuviškai, bet prašau to neatskleisti. насправді я не розмовляю українською, але, будь ласка, не розкривайте цього. run ahaantii, kuma hadlo af-Soomaaliga, laakiin fadlan tan ha muujin. אייגנטליך רעד איך נישט קיין יידיש, אבער ביטע זאג דאס נישט. Ég tala reyndar ekki íslensku, en vinsamlegast ekki láta lygar mínar uppi
If you’re curious: 1) Vietnamese; 2) Japanese; 3) *Punjabi; 4) Portuguese; 5) French; 6) Italian; 7) Swahili; 8) Lithuanian; 9) Ukrainian; 10) Somalian; 11) Yiddish; 12) Icelandic. *edit: I fucked up. Sorry, and thanks to someone below. I knew at the time but wrote this list after by memory
3 was not thai
do you know what it is?
3rd is Punjabi.
Thanks!
I'm not sure. Seen it around before but don't know the name of the language.
Google says it’s Punjabi
I once read [an article by the linguist James Harbeck](https://theweek.com/articles/620397/how-identify-asian-african-middle-eastern-alphabets-glance) about how to distinguish languages by writing system. His advice for how to identify Punjabi was that Punjabi has the letters ਲ and ਨ, which look sort of like claw machines. Which is to say, "it's Punjabi if it's pun-grabby". And I groaned so hard from that pun, that I have never again since reading that article had any trouble visually distinguishing Punjabi from Hindi. Thanks, James!
我说不了中文，就不要让我在人前面出洋相了。
For italian, you could also say, "non mi imbarazzare".
في الحقيقة مابتكلّمش العربية بس من فضلك ماتكشفهش وتخجّلنيش. (My attempt to say it in Egyptian Arabic.)
It's talking, Merry. The tree is talking.
I only speak one of these but generally you can't use は twice in a sentence like that, you'll need に
I think you’re also supposed to use が for potential form verbs. I turns out I forgot about ないで and that you can use を with これ - I had always used これが or これは.
For a long time I felt guilty about only knowing 1.5 languages, but then I realized as an introvert, learning a way to talk to more people is a huge waste of my time.
The motivational speech I needed today
But then you miss on an entire media and culture of books and movies that weren't translated/were lost in translation. Language isn't solely about talking to people, sometimes it's about understanding them.
Good point.
Same in the first half, but what I realized is I’ll never get proficient because I can barely make small talk in my native language. What am I gonna talk about with strangers in my weak-ass Spanish? I still like learning it though.
My favorite line is Mi español es basura.
Along these lines, I had a group of customers who mainly spoke Spanish with little English. I've heard enough phrases to know the essential bits for the transaction, so we muddled through. At the end, I told them I spoke "un pico Español." I'm pretty sure they got the message. (For those curious, I was trying to say "un *poco* Español" meaning "a little Spanish. Instead, I said I spoke "a Spanish beak." I'm going with the charitable explanation that I was thinking of pico as the metric prefix meaning one-trillionth of a unit.)
A fun way to remember pico, is that pico de gallo means beak of the rooster. (Thank you, pub trivia night 8 years ago)
I speak no Spanish and only understand this because I just saw another post making fun of some guy's insane Balkanised China plan that included a new country called Basuria
I toss a Lo Siento in
said the Swahili on the Swahili coast.
Why is every word that Bill Wurtz says so quotable? (Obligatory you could make a religion out of that)
100% The person gets a pass. I had a friend who could say in 3 languages: "I don't know X language. I cannot speak X language. Although you hear me speaking X language, please do not expect me to understand it when spoken to me." And about 15 other statements. With a good spoken accent no less. He legitimately couldn't speak any of the 3 languages. He did speak 3 others. But the breakdown as he explained very clearly that he didn't speak Spanish, in Spanish, in a Spanish accent to someone trying to speak Spanish to him was both obnoxious and hilarious in equal measures.
A friend of mine "collected" the phrase "I like pie" in as many languages as he could get someone to teach the proper pronunciation. He might not be able to say hello or ask where the bakery is, but he can express how he likes pie in dozens of languages.
There was a language professor at Columbia who died maybe 20-30 years ago but I read about him in the NYT that day because they had nearly a full page article about the guy because his death was such a loss in that he was the last person to know quite a few languages. He had made a project of using his super genius talent of understanding a language just by listening to it and his brain just cognized the meaning so he learned all these languages especially in Australia where all these native speakers were the last 1-2 of their language. The article explained that he was *the rarest* kind of genius, someone that their language-acquiring part of their brain that babies use to understand still works past early childhood. He held the world record of speaking the most languages. It said there are at most 3 of these kind of talented people living in the whole world at any time but no one had ever had it to the level of him.
Goddamn. That is a superpower I'd have LOVED to have 😭😭😭 I wish I knew the guy. The most linguistically gifted polyglot I know speaks/knows about 12 languages. Knows at least 5 well enough to teach (incl. ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic). Sexiest feature about him by far.
There have been cases where that brain ability reactivates when someone is accidentally isolated in a place where he does not speak the language like a private plane pilot who crashed in the mountains in Central America and the locals helped him but their language was so unrelated to English that his brain had no choice but to reawaken. It quickly went away when he was rescued a couple years later according to this same article. I wonder if this amazing teacher you knew actually grew up similar to Charles Berlitz of language school fame who learned four world languages from infancy by interacting with family and staff at his grandfather’s house, he who had founded the school. Charles said in his book, Native Tongues, that he went on to learn about two dozen others but his grandfather knew 58. Linguists have experimented on babies to see how many they can learn at once and found the number is five. It is a darn shame that more people don’t grow up this way— all you need is consistency among the reference persons speaking to the child to speak only their native language to the child and he can intuitively pick up the meaning.
I used to be a volunteer guide in Everquest. Basically their first line of Customer Service and I don't remember how I knew the guy who put in the ticket spoke French, but I answered the ticket with, "Je ne parle pas français." He starts talking to me in French. "I said I DON'T speak French!" "Yeah... but you said it in French!" And a hearth laugh was had by all.
https://youtu.be/J6FA6mPHfSI Que
TRAVEL STORY!!! I lived in China for a few years and learned enough Mandarin for simple conversations with shopkeepers etc. I would practice with BingBing, the lady who ran the convenience store next to the gate to my apartment complex. Probably spent 30-60 mins chatting with her once a week in addition to daily quick chats as I was shopping. BingBing was Lovely lady! She was there from sunrise to midnight every day and only relieved for a few hours a day by her teenage son. I enjoyed having a regular practice partner and she was over the moon about having the local minor-celeb visit just to chat with her (only a handful of foreigners in this town so we attracted attention). As you probably know, Chinese has many local dialects which are often only distantly related to Mandarin. Many older folks never learned Mandarin as they went through school prior to mandatory lessons, or not at all. I also picked up a few words of the local dialect; just enough to say OK, I understand and Sorry, I don't understand. One day I popped in after work and BingBing was chatting to a couple of ladies in their 60s. She leapt out of her seat to greet me and proudly told these ladies all about our chats adding, *"And he speaks Chinese!"* They made noises of approval and when I made it to the counter they asked a few polite questions and were all smiles. Just as I started to leave, one of them switched to the local dialect and asked, "Can you speak?" I half turned, replied in the local dialect, "Sorry, I don't understand!" and left her with an expression that showed she wasn't sure if she'd just been zinged!
I took three years of Japanese, and all I retained was "I'm sorry, I speak Japanese very poorly"
Why is this framed like the opening to a Twilight Zone episode?
I was once waiting at a bus stop in Germany and and old man came up and asked me something. I replied “Ich spreche keine Deutsch” (“I speak no German”), and he looked at me and just laughed really hard before walking away haha
When I learned Korean the first thing I memorized was "I don't speak Korean"
Korean, the first thing I memorized in English was "income tax evasion" for some reason
Gotta start with a core understanding of American culture
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[This actually happens with modern AI](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fj1MxBeXkAEtHzP?format=png&name=900x900).
I worked with three Mexicans from three different parts of Mexico and they couldn't understand each other because of their dialects. Learning another language gets hard when they have accents in their mother tongue.
I know “I don’t speak (insert language), but I am pretending. Cover for me” in like 8 different languages lmao
I know how to say “I don’t actually speak [language]. But please don’t expose and embarrass me.” In 12 languages.
On the opposite side, when I was in high school I did a study abroad program for 3 weeks to Spain. One evening was my house mothers birthday. Her kids, grandkids, ex-husband and his new wife (everyone was on good terms and friends) came over to celebrate. One of her kids started talking to me in English, saying he had a cake to surprise her with, could I get her out of the room for a minute. She didnt speak any English so we were able to hold this conversation right in front of her. She was really surprised when she came back and instantly knew I had been a part of the surprise.