Went to a pub in Reykjavik.
English Brother-in-law had finally decided to learn the language after like 15 years of living there. Had just about learned enough to order the drinks and have a basic conversation.
He orders slowly. The barman looks increasingly perplexed. He finishes and looks up, proud of his first real test of Icelandic.
“Sorry mate, I dunno what you’re saying” says the barman in a thick Australian accent.
Honestly, just try English. Most small European countries speak it better than we do.
I never understood the “ugh you’re trying to speak my language, I don’t feel like listening to you butcher it” that some countries get.
Like every time a coworker bitches about how they can’t understand a warehouse worker because of their heavy accent, the fuck do you expect them to do, not try to talk at all? (the real answer is usually “hurrrr go back tuh where dey came frum”) but you’re gonna sit there, butchering the language you use every single day by the way you speak and how you spell, while they’re in a country they likely did not grow up in, and are learning the language still. If they don’t converse, they have a harder time improving. If you truly cared about understanding them, you would talk to them more.
Anecdote time: one of the forklift drivers was fairly new when I started last year. She’s a social butterfly. Comes over to ask how we’re all doing, asks how my wife is, how coworkers kids are, how our weeks are going. She moved here from Puerto Rico, and barely has an accent anymore. It’s definitely there and you can place it, but 0 problem understanding every word.
A couple guys started just after I did, and they stand around the compactor all day where it’s too noisy to talk, and nobody voluntarily goes near. They still have very broken speech and heavy accents. They’ve been going out to clean things recently so I try to strike up conversations but they don’t seem too social when they’re working.
I have no way of knowing what these people do outside of work, but if inside is any indicator, being social and talking goes a long way to improving speech in any given language.
So maybe don’t go “that’s cute. Stop trying.” instead go “hey cool, but if you’re up for some constructive criticism…” and be helpful. Or shut the fuck up.
“Expat” is just British term used in Britain about British “people” living abroad, innit?
I’m ethnically Chinese/Vietnamese but raised in the UK/Canada and basically have only had a really crap grasp of Chinese. So I’ve been actively trying to learn. The number of fucking Chinese people that tell me to shut up or that I sound stupid is insane. These aren’t even random Chinese neither, it’s my fucking friends. Some of these people speak English with a shit accent. I’ve never made of theirs and I just lightly correct their word usage (like if they’re missing a word or something). How the hell am I supposed to get better?
Three years ago I said screw it and went with doing Duolingo with YouTube video support. I can now read and “write” (use pinyin) but speaking is poor because nobody wants to talk to me despite me having a lot of Chinese friends. Not gonna stop though. I’m starting to pay for tutors but this feels so silly because the point of me learning was to connect with my Chinese heritage. I should have picked up french instead.
Objectively speaking, Vietnamese is much easier to learn for an English speaker too since they also use the Latin alphabet.
Not sure how many Vietnamese speakers are in the UK though.
I wanted to share a quick story, but it’s intention is not to excuse bad behavior. I speak two languages very well. One of the languages is relatively uncommon and I have only ever heard it spoken by native speakers. Recently I was at an event and am American told me they learned this language. I’m like that’s cool as hell, let’s hear. What came out of their mouth shorted out my brain and my brain refused to answer them in anything other than English.
I have no rational explanation of what occurred inside of my head. My partner actually asked me why I didn’t respond back in the same language and I had no answer.
French is too generalised, in my experience.
Paris, they’ll pretend they don’t understand neither your English nor your 100 words of French.
Towns in the country, you meet indifferent professionalism and you kinda get by in English.
Rural areas, you encounter the greatest of enthusiasm for your knowledge of the local language, and just as well, because those 100 words are all you can rely on for the entire duration of your stay.
If you go to Normandy, they’ll practically give you a BJ just for showing up!
Any attempt by a foreigner to speak “cúpla focail” (a few words) of Irish to me has been incredibly well received. It’s usually Americans actually and their pronunciation is terrible, because Irish sounds nothing like it’s spelled when compared to the usual latin alphabet sounds, but fair fucks to them. I appreciate it very much.
I once tried to order some drinks in a noisy bar in France. I thought I was explaining it ok but was not being understood by the girl behind the bar. It got really awkward and was making me seriously question my French (I’m English). Eventually it turned out that she was Irish and had equal but opposite holes in her own French. We had a good laugh about it and spoke in English thereafter.
Had she been Scottish tho we probably would have still been better off speaking in French.
I backed into someone in a crowded bar in Sapporo and said excuse me in Japanese and heard the same thing behind me. We both turned around at the same time and saw we were both foreigners.