TromboneChat

French people talk French. They learn English and german in school, but they have a common rule.... never use it. 

Leif

Quote from: savio on Jun 10, 2016, 06:32PMFrench people talk French. They learn English and german in school, but they have a common rule.... never use it. 

Leif

I learned that first hand.  I was sent to work at a circuit board manufacturing shop my company owned outside of Paris.  The company had sent a guy who spoke no French to try to straighten out the operation.  I got a 2 week assignment to work with the silkscreen department, which was great for me since my wife has cousins who live in Paris and environs.  I had learned a little French in High School and practiced my awful French with the production workers.

We needed to get some stuff from an American company shipped to France.  Our American director was having no luck talking to the Purchasing Manager.  So I went in and tried in my broken French to explain what I needed.  The Purchasing Manager suddenly stood up and said "Don't worry, sonny boy, I'll have it by morning".  In perfect English!  What I discovered was that a feeble attempt to speak French in France is more appreciated than sign language or shouting.

 I travelled in Korea in 1974. At that time there were still many who had been forced to learn Japanese during the occupation. I was traveling with a small group of American and Japanese students. The older Koreans, if asked a question in Japanese would obviously understand but ice over. Asked a question by the same student, Japanese or American, in any semblance of Korean they would instantly become open hearted and welcoming to guests in their country. Student age Koreans were dying to be helpful and use their English skills.

Which is to say, language carries a lot of history which effects how people use it.

DRB

Seola Creek

See today's posts on the "Shire" thread.

Quote from: BGuttman on Jun 03, 2016, 03:57PMIf your main language is not English but you have some fluency you are welcome.  I have had some problems with people who write in their language and have Google Translate put it in English, then take our responses and try to have Google Translate translate the answers back into their language.  In most cases we won't understand the question and the requester won't understand the answers.

If you want to start a Forum in Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, or even Esperanto, that's great.  But make the people converse in the Forum language.

Try a game called Lost in Translation:

1. Translate a passage from one language to another using Google Translate
2. Translate it back to the original language.

They had a segment on Canadian radio where they did this with song lyrics, and they sung the output of the second step to the original tune. It was pretty funny.

On the old Jack Paar Tonight Show he used to have a funny variant of the old game of Telephone.

Paar's band leader was Jose Melis, who spoke great Spanish but somewhat fractured English.  Paar would invite a number of international stars who were multilingual (usually female) like Anna Maria Alberghetti, Zsa Zsa Gabor, etc.  Paar would tell a joke to one of the ladies, who would translate it into another language for the next, and into a third for the next, up to the last one who would translate it into Spanish for Melis.  Then Melis would have to translate what he heard back into English.  The result was often a riot.

On the old Jack Paar Tonight Show he used to have a funny variant of the old game of Telephone.

Paar's band leader was Jose Melis, who spoke great Spanish but somewhat fractured English.  Paar would invite a number of international stars who were multilingual (usually female) like Anna Maria Alberghetti, Zsa Zsa Gabor, etc.  Paar would tell a joke to one of the ladies, who would translate it into another language for the next, and into a third for the next, up to the last one who would translate it into Spanish for Melis.  Then Melis would have to translate what he heard back into English.  The result was often a riot.