How many languages do you speak fluently ?

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scragend

Senior Member
My experience of this in French is that I usually get responses of "thanks, but please stop. You're ruining our language".

I'm sure speakers of other languages do this too, but the French do often seem to claim not to understand French spoken badly. I once asked a friend of mine, who is French, "Do the French really not understand bad French or do they just pretend not to?" The other people we were with reacted with horror - "You can't ask that!" I said I'm not being anti-French, I'm honestly interested to know.

I mean, if a French person walked up to you on the street in the UK and said something like "Excuse, I am wanting train to go", you would understand that they meant they were looking for the station. But in a similar situation the other way round you would likely be met with a blank look and a Gallic shrug.

Her response was "I've never really thought about it". That was the end of that, but then a year or two later she messaged me out of the blue with a screenshot of a book she'd been reading which was saying exactly the same thing - "the French do not like to hear their language spoken badly". She said "It seems you were right"!
 

StuAff

Silencing his legs regularly
Location
Portsmouth
English. French I can get by OK, a little German (though I have a Teach Yourself course I've never actually gone through it), a few words of Czech and Polish, and one Cantonese obscenity.
 

Drago

Legendary Member
English, obviously.

Not perfect but fairly decent conversational German.

Fluent Shetlandic, which is somewhere between a language and a dialect.

Halting French and a few phrases of Greek (Mrs D mk1 was a Bubble).

Im fortunate to have picked up languages along the way through having lived or worked in different places, but do greatly regret not trying harder with languages at school.

And just to confuse matters I can switch between a Northern Isles, fairly neutral English, or public school English accents at will, the choice of the moment depending upon who I am wanting to annoy, confound or embarrass.
 
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Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
I'm sure speakers of other languages do this too, but the French do often seem to claim not to understand French spoken badly. I once asked a friend of mine, who is French, "Do the French really not understand bad French or do they just pretend not to?" The other people we were with reacted with horror - "You can't ask that!" I said I'm not being anti-French, I'm honestly interested to know.

The only time anything at all like that has happened to me was in a restaurant in the Paris suburbs. The waitress literally ran away. She came back with le Patron who was obviously made of sterner stuff and could withstand me murdering his language.

But outside of that one possible incident in Paris, nothing remotely like it has happened to me. People have been very patient.

I think it may be a myth. Like the one about Welsh people switching from English to Welsh when you enter a shop.
 

scragend

Senior Member
The only time anything at all like that has happened to me was in a restaurant in the Paris suburbs. The waitress literally ran away. She came back with le Patron who was obviously made of sterner stuff and could withstand me murdering his language.

But outside of that one possible incident in Paris, nothing remotely like it has happened to me. People have been very patient.

I think it may be a myth. Like the one about Welsh people switching from English to Welsh when you enter a shop.

I remember being in a police station in Paris after my friend had his pockets picked and his camera and wallet stolen on the Métro. We were taken into a back room to give a statement and the police officer started with "Je ne parle anglais pas du tout"*, with the last three words spoken very deliberately and with a hint of satisfaction. When I replied with "Pas de problème, je parle français" she looked crestfallen.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle (like most things).

I think what is true is that the French have more pride in their language than speakers of English, something which the book I referred to was saying. Take the Académie Française for example; English doesn't really have an equivalent. French is historically more of a top-down, prescriptive language whereas English is more bottom-up and driven by usage.

* I would have said grammatically it should be "je ne parle pas du tout anglais" but that's not what she said, and she was French so who am I to argue? Maybe it was just for the dramatic effect.
 
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alicat

Squire
Location
Staffs
Yorkshire with a little bit of English.
This and I also speak French and Spanish. I realised I had found my passion when we started studying French at secondary school.

I did Latin to A level (urgh!) and have dabbled in German, Italian and Portuguese.

Am I the only one to get paid for using my languages? My happy place is to sit in a virtual drafting meeting for the annual report of a large European company and be paid for learning French, doing a Sudoku while listening in for my name to be mentioned (camera off) and occasionally querying if the French that I am translating actually makes sense.

It's a mystery where my skill at languages came from since three of my four grandparents were born in Yorkshire.
 

Drago

Legendary Member
I'm sure speakers of other languages do this too, but the French do often seem to claim not to understand French spoken badly. I once asked a friend of mine, who is French, "Do the French really not understand bad French or do they just pretend not to?" The other people we were with reacted with horror - "You can't ask that!" I said I'm not being anti-French, I'm honestly interested to know.

I mean, if a French person walked up to you on the street in the UK and said something like "Excuse, I am wanting train to go", you would understand that they meant they were looking for the station. But in a similar situation the other way round you would likely be met with a blank look and a Gallic shrug.

Her response was "I've never really thought about it". That was the end of that, but then a year or two later she messaged me out of the blue with a screenshot of a book she'd been reading which was saying exactly the same thing - "the French do not like to hear their language spoken badly". She said "It seems you were right"!

I pretend to be a German speaking poor French and have no problems.
 

Gwylan

Veteran
Location
All at sea⛵
My mother was English. My father's mother tongue was Welsh, but his English was very received. A public school education.

30 years later, long after his death, it emerged that his grandfather was born in Liege. His family had been economic migrants that moved to Wales. They assimilated completely in 25 years. They were all Welsh first language speakers. Weird!

I was paid for my German and French. Somebody thought I contributed something.

I lived 20 years in a Flemish region, so learned Dutch and pretended I had a bad sore throat. That sort of describes my Flemish.

Sad that I gave up Welsh at 14.
 

scragend

Senior Member
^_^

I once helped some German and French people understand each other and they couldn't work out where I was from.

I lived 20 years in a Flemish region, so learned Dutch and pretended I had a bad sore throat. That sort of describes my Flemish.

Being from the north west my accent is very flat in the vowel, and seems to have a similar general sound to the accent in certain parts of West Flanders.

My dad and I were once in a restaurant in Mons (Wallonia), talking to each other as we normally would in our local dialect. The young waiter must have heard us and thought he would do us a favour by bringing us menus in our own language.

He came over and presented us with Dutch menus, saying "Vlaams?" He was mortified to find out we were English.

If it had been a few years later I'd just have taken them to save his blushes, but at the time I didn't speak any Dutch at all.
 
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