Hello everyone! Welcome back to… Speak Your Own Language Day!! I’ll copy the FAQ from my original post:
When: September 19th! Do I have to take part?: I mean, no. This is just for fun. But I hope that lots of us will, to spread the world all over the forum! But I don’t understand what people are saying!: Google Translate exists. You can also translate whole webpages from your browser. But I am a native English speaker!: Then you are can speak English, it’s not illegal… But are you learning a different language? Why not give that a go! Otherwise, let us native English speakers take a backseat for a change and enjoy what a wonderfully diverse place this is. After all, us native English speakers do speak our own language every day… And please don’t take the piss with Judoon or things of that nature, this event is supposed to genuinely be about celebrating our wonderful non-English community!
I am more busy on weekends than week days, but never mind. Anyway, my best option is Auslan which is a pain to make work, especially without sharing photos or videos of me. I will need to prepare my auslan disctionary in advance
Time for me to try to learn more Gaelic! That said, I’ve recently found out Scots is officially considered a language and not a dialect so technically I am bilingual?
Despite learning (with varying results) a language or two for the better part of six years, I’m still far too reserved to commit fully to this interesting event for fear of making some grievous error in grammar that ends up misconstrued entirely. And I thought the tones were bad enough!
Still, never say nothing; if I’m feeling up to living dangerously, I might bite and give it a go…
Please do feel free to try! There really is no way to learn a language other than to use it. In my experience, mistakes impair understanding far less than you fear. it’s just a normal part of learning!
And if in doubt, just remember that all those of us who learned English as a second language have stuttered our way through mistakes and insecurities, used online translators (or still do!) and asked questions to get to the level of communication we have now
Oh, of course; it’s a rather irrational fear, but the inherent ‘shame’ or fear of trying or struggling or what have you can prove frustrating, uncomfortable, or altogether embarrassing at times. That’s not stopped me yet, though, so I’ve no reason to doubt it will here. My reservations are probably more to do with being so rusty than with potential errors, terrifying though the latter still is.
At least with English there’s no shortage of speakers here willing and able to help. I’m not too sure how in-demand Mandarin or Korean are, haha
The good thing about potentially making errors in a language that isn’t widely spoken here is that no one knows you’re making a mistake, so just steam on ahead and take the opportunity to learn!
I’ll probably be using both Swedish and Finnish again, since I’m officially bilingual even though Swedish is my first language (and Finnish is literally my mother tongue, as my mother speaks only Finnish).
An example from my own learning process. This happened around 20 years ago when I had just started learning English in school. I still remember it to this day.
So we were reading a text or something, and when it was my turn to read a part out loud, it contained the word “busy”. Which, at the time, was an unfamiliar word that I had never heard pronounced before. So, not knowing exactly how to pronounce it, I pronounced it as a Finnish person would. This means that it sounded very similar to a certain synonym for “kitten” that starts with a “p”. The rest of the class started laughing and I had no idea what went wrong, but I was a bit ashamed. Safe to say though, I did learn how to properly pronounce “busy” and I made sure not to accidentally use foul language in class again
Funnily enough, there are still words that I never remember how to pronounce, even though I’ve heard them a million times. I always struggle with “facsimile,” for instance, or “homage” (should it be with or without the h?). Not to mention the absolute monster of a word that is “Worcestershire sauce.”
