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Do they all speak English?

dari Cfail0814, 8 September 2013

Pesan: 25

Bahasa: English

pdenisowski (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 17.11.24

noelekim:Not in East Asia, they don't. In two visits to Japan, most of the people I spoke to - Esperantists and non-Esperantists - had studied English to at least high school level, but none of them wanted to speak to me in English
My experience living in Japan was that there were a lot of younger people who would want to try their English out on you and were very forward (especially for a Japanese) about approaching you. In fact, the bars in Roppongi were packed with people who were probably there more for the chance to speak English to a gaijin than anything else.

On the other hand, many older Japanese would (politely) avoid Westerners in public, on the subway, etc. Several of my Japanese friends independently claimed that this was due to their fear of the highly-embarassing and awkward situation in which a foreigner starts to speak English to them and they have to admit (possibly in front of others) that their English is poor or non-existant ... safer just to avoid the situation entirely.

Granted this was many years ago, and I assume the number of Japanese (young and old) who are willing to speak English to strangers has probably greatly increased, but I clearly recall the tremendous relief on many Japanese faces when I started my conversations in Japanese instead of English.

Amike,
Paul

bartlett22183 (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 19.03.46

sudanglo:The Americans too are not known for their ability to speak English, however, fortunately, most citizens of the UK can make a good fist of understanding American.
What about Strines? ridulo.gif ridulo.gif ridulo.gif Also, I once tried to hold a conversation with an educated man from India. His knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary was very good, but his speech was almost incomprehensible. All the more reason for people to learn an auxiliary language with relatively simple pronunciation. (Unfortunately, there are those who say that Esperanto's pronunciation is not completely simple for non-Indo-Europeans.)

Zedwardson (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 19.16.54

pdenisowski - your troubles with the "Not really a american accent" is very humorus to me, as I grew up in the southern United States (North Carolina), and people comment that I do not have a southern accent. The perception and reality do not match. Of course, the best american accent by a non-american I have seen is the actor Hugh Laurie, who most will not know is a british speaker if they only seen him on his american TV show.

RiotNrrd (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 19.31.04

Zedwardson:Of course, the best american accent by a non-american I have seen is the actor Hugh Laurie...
He absolutely has it nailed.

Bob Hoskins in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" also did an excellent accent.

Also Jamie Bamber (who played Cpt. Lee 'Apollo' Adama on the 2004 Battlestar Galactica). Although I never really understood why he bothered changing his accent, since there were no "Americans" in the fleet; I'm pretty sure if he'd stuck with his native accent, it really wouldn't have made much difference.

Gatton (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 21.37.11

@RiotNrrd I'm guessing since Edward James Olmos' played his father and also had an American accent they kept them the same for consistency.

RiotNrrd (Tunjukkan profil) 9 September 2013 22.05.53

Gatton:@RiotNrrd I'm guessing since Edward James Olmos' played his father and also had an American accent they kept them the same for consistency.
Heh. That actually hadn't occurred to me. But... duh. Makes total sense.

pdenisowski (Tunjukkan profil) 10 September 2013 00.10.52

Zedwardson:pdenisowski - your troubles with the "Not really a american accent" is very humorus to me, as I grew up in the southern United States (North Carolina), and people comment that I do not have a southern accent.
Having grown up in South Carolina and having lived in North Carolina for over twenty years, I'm very fond of pointing out that North and South Carolina are very different states. Frankly, I often feel that North Carolina should be renamed "South New Jersey", especially since it seems that half the people living here are from the Northeast. It's getting harder and harder to find people who say "ya'll" in NC, although SC is still safe ... it's far too "southern" to be an attractive relocation area for Yankees. ridulo.gif

People say that (for an American) I have a very neutral accent, but I have no trouble at all "speaking southern" or understanding people from the South. In fact, I can even speak Gullah resonably well, but no one would ever mistake me for a native speaker ...

Amike,
Paul

kaŝperanto (Tunjukkan profil) 11 September 2013 20.32.55

I think you overlook the difference between "speak" and speak. Unless they are from a native English speaking land they are not going to be at a native level (unless perhaps they are linguists, which is more likely since they know Esperanto). Also, I would likely know "dominant language" if it were not English, because of the benefits of learning it. I would add, though, that I took Spanish in school from 1st grade until my junior year of high school, and I would not be comfortable conversing in Spanish. I just don't get enough opportunities to use it in northern Indiana. (German would probably have been better with the large Amish population up here)

It is somewhat troublesome when you realize everyone in the ##esperanto IRC channel can speak English natively, but it is still good practice IMHO. I can see the danger in perpetuating bad Esperanto "Englishisms", though.

I have conversed with many people who do not know much english. My favorite example was a thread on this forum about a Chinese chauffeur-in-training who did not like that his instructors wanted a bribe. He used something like "sokiĝita", from soko = ploughshare (the part of a plow that breaks the earth). He described how "ploughshared" he felt due to their insisting on a bribe. It must be a colloquialism, but I understood its intent (after looking up what soko was). It also made me look more closely at how I phrase things, and I now try to avoid the colloquial use of words that may not have that meaning to someone else.

erinja (Tunjukkan profil) 11 September 2013 20.38.12

kaŝperanto, I think it more likely that the Chinese person accidentally misspelled "ŝokita" (shocked) (or "ŝokigita," he maybe was intending to say) -- he was shocked that someone asked him for a bribe. If I were to encounter such a sentence, I would assume it was a misspelling of "ŝoki", and not the word "soko".

pdenisowski (Tunjukkan profil) 11 September 2013 21.39.18

kaŝperanto:I think you overlook the difference between "speak" and speak. Unless they are from a native English speaking land they are not going to be at a native level (unless perhaps they are linguists, which is more likely since they know Esperanto
As someone who was once in a PhD linguistics program, I can assure you that many linguists do NOT speak another language fluently. In fact, during my time working in a university foreign language department, I saw very few language professionals who could safely pass as a native speaker even in their specialty language(s).

That said, there are a GREAT number of people who will nevertheless claim native fluency in English. I worked as a translator for a number of years and the golden rule of translating is "always translate into your native language." However, since the volume of (foreign language) -> English translation jobs is much, much greater than vice-versa, I constantly found people claiming "native fluency" in English in order to bid on jobs. The result was that their English translations were full of awkward or unnatural language and outright grammatical mistakes, which would then have to be "proofread" (i.e. redone) by a native English speaker. I would estimate that at 80-90% of all (foreign language) -> English translation work is done by non-native speakers of English.

I've met a tremendous number of non-native speakers of English, but I can count on one hand the number of non-native speakers who could pass as natives, regardless of the length or nature of the conversation.

Amike,

Paul

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