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Whenever I am abroad with the goal of learning a language, I simply pretend to not speak English. I feel a little bad about doing this, since it‘s akin to „lyin

Whenever I am abroad with the goal of learning a language, I simply pretend to not speak English. I feel a little bad about doing this, since it‘s akin to „lying“ and using your conversation partner, but it has gotten me extremely far with several languages, so I'm really sorry but will continue doing so.

KMag 6y ago
When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I asked some colleagues about learning Cantonese. They told me that people in Hong Kong tend to be very hard-working, and you have one or two sentences to convince them that speaking with you in Cantonese is just as efficient use of their time as speaking to you in English. I have a friend who was born here, looks local, but spent her formative years in Canada. She has been back in Hong Kong for more than 15 years now, but still isn't happy with her Cantonese conversational skills because she speaks with a bit of a Canadian accent and people usually force her to speak English after hearing her speak a couple sentences of Cantonese. It's fair enough; my friend isn't paying these people to be speaking partners, and is trying to extract a bit of a knowledge tax from them. On the other hand, when I run into people whose English isn't particularly good, they are very willing to stumble through a very rough mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese with me when it's the most efficient way for us to communicate. In these cases, it's not uncommon for people to continue to speak Mandarin at my wife, after I've told them in Mandarin "She's Thai overseas Chinese; she can only speak Thai and English". My wife has learned to break eye contact to discourage them from continuing to talk at her, and to avoid giving the impression she secretly understands Mandarin. I don't think the people even realize they're speaking at my wife and getting responses from me; some people just seem to find it more awkward to speak Mandarin with a white person than to speak Mandarin at a Chinese-looking person who's clearly not paying attention.
saint_angels 6y ago
did you ever slip and reveal your ability to speak English? If so, how did people react?
scpedicini 6y ago
Heh, I can speak rudimentary Italian, so I used to do the same thing when I was studying Chinese. Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak English: 40% Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak Italian : 0%
HKH2 6y ago
You are not responsible for how other people interpret appearances. If you consider acting or putting up a front as akin to lying then we're probably all liars.

KMag 6y ago

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I asked some colleagues about learning Cantonese. They told me that people in Hong Kong tend to be very hard-working, and you have one or two sentences to convince them that speaking with you in Cantonese is just as efficient use of their time as speaking to you in English. I have a friend who was born here, looks local, but spent her formative years in Canada. She has been back in Hong Kong for more than 15 years now, but still isn't happy with her Cantonese conversational skills because she speaks with a bit of a Canadian accent and people usually force her to speak English after hearing her speak a couple sentences of Cantonese. It's fair enough; my friend isn't paying these people to be speaking partners, and is trying to extract a bit of a knowledge tax from them. On the other hand, when I run into people whose English isn't particularly good, they are very willing to stumble through a very rough mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese with me when it's the most efficient way for us to communicate. In these cases, it's not uncommon for people to continue to speak Mandarin at my wife, after I've told them in Mandarin "She's Thai overseas Chinese; she can only speak Thai and English". My wife has learned to break eye contact to discourage them from continuing to talk at her, and to avoid giving the impression she secretly understands Mandarin. I don't think the people even realize they're speaking at my wife and getting responses from me; some people just seem to find it more awkward to speak Mandarin with a white person than to speak Mandarin at a Chinese-looking person who's clearly not paying attention.

saint_angels 6y ago

did you ever slip and reveal your ability to speak English? If so, how did people react?

scpedicini 6y ago

Heh, I can speak rudimentary Italian, so I used to do the same thing when I was studying Chinese. Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak English: 40% Percentage of people I knew in Taiwan who could speak Italian : 0%

HKH2 6y ago

You are not responsible for how other people interpret appearances. If you consider acting or putting up a front as akin to lying then we're probably all liars.