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smellmycheese posted:Most French can speak English. They just refuse to on principle
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Jun 6, 2021 09:36
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Rust Martialis posted:"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen." It wasn't a challenge to see who could be more obnoxious, but congratulations!
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Jun 6, 2021 09:56
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:It wasn't a challenge to see who could be more obnoxious Are you new here?
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Jun 6, 2021 10:00
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smellmycheese posted:Most French can speak English. They just refuse to on principle the rule of thumb in france is that they are annoyed by people speaking english, but even more annoyed by people speaking bad french
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Jun 6, 2021 10:00
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baw posted:the rule of thumb in france is that they are annoyed
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Jun 6, 2021 10:12
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Mon dieu, que fait cet homme avec son cul ? hon hon hon
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Jun 6, 2021 10:13
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As a general rule English is a strong second language for most Europeans so as long as you aren't a dick and at least make a schoolboy effort in the local tongue people will be happy to take pity and switch over once you run out of words.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:15
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Australians tend to speak English exclusive if only because no one has the slightest idea what we should learn as a second language. My various schools had Indonesian, French and German. Some might suggest Chinese. I think there's a lot of Greek and Italian speakers. As the old saying goes, Melbourne has the third highest population of Greeks in the world, including cities in Greece.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:48
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I always ask every Quebecois I meet whether it's true or not that French speakers from France think they speak 18th century peasant French just to gently caress with them. Not really, all of the Quebecois I've met have been mimes.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:54
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There's a joke: What do you call someone who speaks many languages? A multilinguist What do you call someone who speaks two languages? A bilinguist What do you call someone who speaks one language? An anglophone
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Jun 6, 2021 10:56
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Splicer posted:Also "this French guy didn't speak English so obviously he doesn't speak anything other than French" is the most hilariously anglophone thing I've ever heard. Maybe things changed on the last 10 years but when I backpacked through France around 2010 it was a struggle to find people who spoke decent english. We all spoke french to a certain degree so it wasn't like we couldn't communicate, but it was a pretty funny mish mash of words and gestures most of the time.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:59
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Son of Rodney posted:Maybe things changed on the last 10 years but when I backpacked through France around 2010 it was a struggle to find people who spoke decent english. We all spoke french to a certain degree so it wasn't like we couldn't communicate, but it was a pretty funny mish mash of words and gestures most of the time. Splicer has a new favorite as of 11:25 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 11:09
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Splicer posted:The point I'm making is that your post uses fluency in English as the sole metric for whether the speaker is multilingual. Just because they didn't speak fluent English doesn't mean they didn't speak German or Italian or Spanish or Russian or Polish or Chinese or whatever. Ah, fair point.
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Jun 6, 2021 11:13
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Australians tend to speak English exclusive if only because no one has the slightest idea what we should learn as a second language. My various schools had Indonesian, French and German. Some might suggest Chinese. I think there's a lot of Greek and Italian speakers. As the old saying goes, Melbourne has the third highest population of Greeks in the world, including cities in Greece. I've had a few schools in my youth (  ) which had multiple language classes in the core curriculum. One had Japanese and German, another had Indonesian, French and German, and another had just French and German as options (I think you had to take one of them iirc).
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Jun 6, 2021 11:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Melbourne has the third highest population of Greeks in the world, including cities in Greece. This is Chicago and Poles/the Polish language. 1.5 million Poles in Chicago, 1.8 million in Poland's capital city of Warsaw. I was going to make a joke about how Aussies are so casually racist they don't even consider the Aboriginal language worth learning but then I googled Aboriginal population statistics and it made me sad.
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Jun 6, 2021 11:47
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cumshitter posted:I was going to make a joke about how Aussies are so casually racist they don't even consider the Aboriginal language worth learning but then I googled Aboriginal population statistics and it made me sad. Australia is the only Commonwealth country that still doesn't have a treaty with their indigenous peoples, we're garbage 
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Jun 6, 2021 11:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Australians tend to speak English exclusive if only because no one has the slightest idea what we should learn as a second language. My various schools had Indonesian, French and German. Some might suggest Chinese. I think there's a lot of Greek and Italian speakers. As the old saying goes, Melbourne has the third highest population of Greeks in the world, including cities in Greece. (she did not take it, I am the goon of the relationship after all)
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Jun 6, 2021 12:00
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Australia is the only Commonwealth country that still doesn't have a treaty with their indigenous peoples, we're garbage Thinking about it I feel dumb for assuming the native peoples of Australia have one language, but also it's not like America has scrupulously honored its own treaties so everyone is awful.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:26
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cumshitter posted:I always ask every Quebecois I meet whether it's true or not that French speakers from France think they speak 18th century peasant French just to gently caress with them. Am reminded that supposedly the Southern accent, especially Appalachian, is actually closer to what old timey Shakespearean English sounded like than modern English speakers. (short version, everyone in England ended up patterning their accents after the nobility, especially with the rise of mass media) Hamlet apparently starts making more sense when you play him sounding like Gomer Pyle.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:33
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Parisians are assholes about English because they hate tourists, for a good reason, honestly. The way to avoid the cold shoulder is to practice a few opening lines and show that at least you made the effort of learning some of the local language. Usually I begin with the usual "bonjour, bonjour, oui, je voudrais... le... comment dit-on ce..." and at that moment the server switches to English because hein, at least you tried! You have shown yourself to be a decent person and merit some actual service. Yeah, it's a bother, but hey, you're the visitor so get used to it, I guess?
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Jun 6, 2021 12:34
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Australia had incredible language diversity.  The yellow area alone consisted of perhaps three hundred language, but we’ll never know the true number because most of them dead now.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:36
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:It wasn't a challenge to see who could be more obnoxious, but congratulations! Enciende tu monitor.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:44
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Am reminded that supposedly the Southern accent, especially Appalachian, is actually closer to what old timey Shakespearean English sounded like than modern English speakers. People keep saying this but AFAIK it's not true. Here's a guy doing a deep-dive on it
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Jun 6, 2021 12:46
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Yestermoment posted:Mon dieu, que fait cet homme avec son cul ? hon hon hon Calme-toi ma chérie.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:50
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smellmycheese posted:Most French can speak English. They just refuse to on principle tbh this is a good principle
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Jun 6, 2021 12:57
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Am reminded that supposedly the Southern accent, especially Appalachian, is actually closer to what old timey Shakespearean English sounded like than modern English speakers. (short version, everyone in England ended up patterning their accents after the nobility, especially with the rise of mass media) Hamlet apparently starts making more sense when you play him sounding like Gomer Pyle. Shakespeare was literally garbage written for drunks who bought standing room only tickets. There would be "Orange Girls" in the pits who were nominally there to sell oranges to drunks but were actually prostitues. A couple fun Shakespeare facts: -Servants would make money selling old clothes given to them by nobles to actor troupes as costumes, which is where troupes like Shakespeare's would get their fanciest costumes from. -Nobles could literally pay to have seats on the stage so people could see how fancy their newly tailored clothes were. This was extremely fancy, because your average viewer would only pay a few thruppance or hay'pennies or whatever to get a standing room ticket. -There is at least one historical account of an audience being so drunk and rowdy that they loved one joke so much that they threatened the actors to replay it about a dozen times before they were done laughing at it. Shakespearean plays are only fancy in retrospect. I learned a lot of this from a really fun college English professor who would tell us about how she taught Shakesepeare at a fancy Catholic school and she would constantly have to explain to them, "This was written by a Protestant who thought you were literal devils who worshiped the whore of Babylon."
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Jun 6, 2021 13:05
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Cumshitter is always right about everything
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Jun 6, 2021 13:23
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He remembers the original plays
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Jun 6, 2021 13:24
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Australia is the only Commonwealth country that still doesn't have a treaty with their indigenous peoples, we're garbage All this means is that Australia is the only Commonwealth country which hasn't broken a treaty with its indigenous peoples.
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Jun 6, 2021 13:25
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darkwasthenight posted:As a general rule English is a strong second language for most Europeans so as long as you aren't a dick and at least make a schoolboy effort in the local tongue people will be happy to take pity and switch over once you run out of words. If I ever find myself in France somehow, my plan was to apologize for not having any French and that I would not want to offend them by badly mangling their language.
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Jun 6, 2021 13:38
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Son of Rodney posted:I had trouble ordering a big mac at McDonald's, my monster of a sentence "one. big Mac menu. sil vous plait" just got a panicked "....Le big Mac??" Back.
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Jun 6, 2021 13:43
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cumshitter posted:-Nobles could literally pay to have seats on the stage so people could see how fancy their newly tailored clothes were. This was extremely fancy, because your average viewer would only pay a few thruppance or hay'pennies or whatever to get a standing room ticket. You can still do this in some theatres, but now instead of showing off your clothes its so you can tell everyone you meet how getting so close to Mark Rylance showed you how theatre was true art.
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Jun 6, 2021 13:49
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Why would you get le Big Mac™ when you could get le P’tit Fondu? https://twitter.com/McDonaldsFoix/status/1199616417550741506
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Jun 6, 2021 14:16
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Splicer posted:Also "this French guy didn't speak English so obviously he doesn't speak anything other than French" is the most hilariously anglophone thing I've ever heard. I once literally heard a Brit making fun of a Spanish acquaintance of his that spoke very bad English while he was visiting her in Spain (and she was, in fact, Russian) and she tried to help him get around because he only spoke English. That said, the Spanish themselves are, in my experience, among Europe's absolute worst when it comes to speaking anything other than Spanish. If you meet a Spanish person who is fluent in more than one language, there's an 85% chance that person is Catalan.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:17
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When I worked at disney world like a decade ago I had both italian and french roommates, and none of them could speak any english other than MAYBE introducing themselves. Oh and the one italian knew how to say "cocaine for fifty dollar". All set to work in america
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Jun 6, 2021 14:23
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Danes immediately switch to English as a courtesy vis-à-vis the choking hazard.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:43
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I was in a small town in Northern Italy, on lake Como, back in college and while trying to find the villa's pool ended up in a conversation with the only guy in the town who could speak any kind of English, and it wasn't very much. While we're walking to the pool he turns to me and slyly asks "you like to douche? *nods* You like to douche." Took me a minute before I remembered he also spoke French and probably couldn't remember the English word "shower."
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Jun 6, 2021 14:53
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Goblin Craft posted:If I ever find myself in France somehow, my plan was to apologize for not having any French and that I would not want to offend them by badly mangling their language. When I want to Japan a few years ago I picked up a few phrasebooks to try and at least make an effort. One of the best phrases was basically "I apologize for how I'm about to pronounce this next sentence, please forgive me"
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Jun 6, 2021 14:53
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Pope Hilarius II posted:
Or basque. They both pretty much concider castillian Spanish their second language.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:54
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Oh, did I post about my friend's ex?
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Jun 6, 2021 15:13
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