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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2016 9:52:19 GMT
Is it me or are Europeans for instance as good at English as we are, even picking up our language bad habbits  Years ago i used to have a bit of trouble communicating with Germans but these days its a breeze, even people that live in the small out of city places. For instance i buy from a Dutch seller a lot. I got a reply from him this morning that made me laugh: 'Yeh no probs mate'  It took me a good two or three years to learn German, seems i don't really need to use it these days.. |
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 4, 2016 11:25:09 GMT
I had a Swiss girlfriend once.
She spoke German, Swiss German, French and a smattering of Italian and Spanish.
Her use of our favourite expletives was a little too common and often well out of context
Kwvidds, for "quid" was a good one too.
Then there was the guy with the Swedish girlfriend.
He taught her that "F* off" was our very friendly way of saying
How do you do, nice to meet you
Some of the subtleties can escape them
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Post by Greg on Jan 4, 2016 20:52:27 GMT
A couple of years ago, I went to a Rodrigo y Gabriela gig. The music was great but between the music, Gabriela would speak and all her sentences were liberally coloured with the 'f' word. I concluded that she didn't have a clue about how to incorporate the word into her conversation in an appropriate way, if of course it could be considered appropriate in any way. Because of her language ineptitude, in reality, her use of the expletive was completely inoffensive.
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Post by Slinger on Jan 4, 2016 23:13:50 GMT
English is the standard international language for business, consequently it's taught at some degree in most (Central) European schools. I know that the Dutch used to teach English as a second language, and I assume still do, as will be obvious to anyone who has ever visited Holland.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 5, 2016 8:32:49 GMT
The Dutch are extraordinarily good English speakers.
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Post by dvh on Jan 5, 2016 9:41:37 GMT
The Dutch are extraordinarily good English speakers. Indeed. In fact, the Head of English at my university is Dutch! |
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Post by julesd68 on Jan 5, 2016 9:55:47 GMT
Is it me or are Europeans for instance as good at English as we are, even picking up our language bad habbits You’re absolutely correct... Lots of the immigrant parents at my son's school are adopting the lazy style of abbreviated language that they hear in Norf London... Eg instead of 'would you like to go to the shop now?' I'm always hearing 'you wanna go shop?' |
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Post by DaveC on Jan 5, 2016 10:31:28 GMT
At the Munich HiFi show in Germany, you will witness for example, Chinese people speaking to Italian people, in English (in Germany) !
Aren't we lucky?
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Post by MartinT on Jan 5, 2016 10:53:00 GMT
We are. I did once wish I could learn Japanese but never let on. They had a terrible habit (in NEC) of dropping into Japanese during meetings to discuss things 'not for our ears'. I always found that very rude.
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Post by Pinch on Jan 5, 2016 10:55:55 GMT
Living in the UK is easy to miss the fact that English is a language spoken primarily by non-native speakers - native English speakers are outnumbered roughly 3 to 1.
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