When my family goes traveling I am the designated “learn enough local language to get by“ person.
I know a little bit of Polish but I speak it with a perfect BBC Polish accent. Worked a long time at it. I noticed that on buses or in restaurants if I told people I didn’t understand Polish they completely ignored me and didn’t simplify their language. I think because I can speak my few words like a native they just filtered out what I was saying.
The same was not true in Paris. I am not convinced I have a great French accent, however.
French people can be quite special with the accent and pronunciation, though. For some reason, it's the language where I've had to work the most on the accent and pronunciation to get understood. You can speak weird english and people still understand what you say, but weird french will get you nowhere.
> You can speak weird english and people still understand what you say
Not necessarily. I'm Irish, and English is my first language. Landing in Atlanta airport a few years ago I asked some airport staff for directions to the bus, and they looked at me blankly. It was only when I said "bus" in a fake American accent that they understood
> You can speak weird english and people still understand what you say
I suppose OP meant "weird non-native English".
Native accents, in my experience, are a different matter. Certain non-American accents (Irish, Scottish come to mind) are just very hard to understand for untrained American ears that have never been exposed to them before.
I've never had that problem, though I've only visited Paris for more than a month or so at at time. I found the Parisians play along politely with my no-doubt embarrassing efforts.
I have the same in Berlin. My German is terrible, and I have real problems understanding it. But I have learned to say "Enscheldigung, mein Deutsch ist schlect" (excuse me, my German is terrible) so well that I find a lot of Germans assume I'm being modest and carry on speaking fluent German to me.
Germans understand you to mean that your German is terrible, but since if you wanted them to slow down and speak clearly you would have said so, they think nothing more of it than that your German is terrible and you are surprisingly self aware for an American (or whatever you are).
too true. I'm always caught out by how direct everyone is here :) It's refreshing in a way, though it does come across as incredibly rude too.
I'm always thinking "why do you think I said that to you now?", because if someone said to me "sorry, my English is really bad" I'd respond with something like "Oh OK, I'll slow down then, or is there another language we share?".
I was brought up in England, and there it can be very rude to ask for what you want directly (usually depending on class, as most things do in English culture). So it feels very wrong to just come right out with it ;) but I'm learning.
That's a pure misunderstanding; saying your German is terrible doesn't mean you want to speak English or you want someone to say something in simpler words, it just means your German is terrible.
Actually, it does imply that you want the counterparty to speak more slowly or otherwise accommodate you. Otherwise there's no reason to point it out at all.
Yup. I would indeed take it to mean "apologies that i am butchering this language and/or its grammar". Same thing in The Netherlands: if you're excusing your command of the language, that's polite. If you want to request something, you'd ask. Eg, "nicht zo schnell, bitte".
My wife (Polish) frequently gets the cold treatment in busy places when asking for help but my ridiculously rubbish attempts at polish[1] end up with 5 star service and smiles. Smiles in ex-communist small shops are not a thing afaict, except when a foreigner tries to speak Polish.
Me speaking English gets the cold shoulder too. We’ve tried this out in different situations where we don’t make it known we’re together just so we can compare and contrast the treatment.
[1] trying to buy a medium size bottle of water with “nie duze, nie male woda nie gazowana po prosze”
Poles are just very neurotic about it. I didn’t realize this until I started to learn another language (Russian) so I could put the experience of learning Polish in some kind of context.
Well they had to keep their language alive in secret for a century or so. And AFAIK even teenagers use relatively few slangy terms, the exact opposite of how American youths speak.
I know a little bit of Polish but I speak it with a perfect BBC Polish accent. Worked a long time at it. I noticed that on buses or in restaurants if I told people I didn’t understand Polish they completely ignored me and didn’t simplify their language. I think because I can speak my few words like a native they just filtered out what I was saying.
The same was not true in Paris. I am not convinced I have a great French accent, however.