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As an English person living in Portugal, this article makes a lot of sense. The Portuguese (well those under about 45 years old anyway) speak excellent English
by somewhereoutth 5y ago
As an English person living in Portugal, this article makes a lot of sense.
The Portuguese (well those under about 45 years old anyway) speak excellent English, and seem as comfortable in it as a native speaker. They will quickly default to English when they want to communicate with me - understandable, but it does make practicing harder. The half and half conversations (like the Russians and Americans on the ISS) are common (and trippy).
Verb inflections are a nightmare, you can't simply cram a bunch of stem words together quite like you can in English. Peruse a verb conjugation reference to get a sense of the combinatorial explosion going on there. The most common verbs are the most irregular, and there are collisions everywhere.
Listening comprehension is the hardest part. I do wonder that as a native English speaker I'm used to ESL speakers, so naturally slow down and speak more clearly. Perhaps native Portuguese speakers are not so used to their language being used as a second language, so don't instinctively do that in quite the same way.
Hilariously even the most proficient Portuguese English speaker cannot understand a word I say when I turn and converse with a fellow Brit, or an American. I don't notice any difference, but I guess my perfectly enunciated Queen's English turns into incomprehensible gibberish.
- geocrasher 5y agoHilariously even the most proficient Portuguese English speaker cannot understand a word I say when I turn and converse with a fellow Brit, or an American. I don't notice any difference, but I guess my perfectly enunciated Queen's English turns into incomprehensible gibberish. As a native English speaker, it's easy to underestimate how nuanced and even culture specific our language is, even compared to other English speaking countries such as NZ or AUS. For example, I have learned that when I'm communicating with folks in India, who speak wonderful English, that I can't use common American colloquialisms such as "shooting yourself in the foot" or other similarly colorful language. It has no context for them, and the point is lost.
- presentation 5y agoI notice that when I speak to Japanese people (I live in Tokyo) that I subconsciously simplify and slow down my English, and even occasionally imitate their English errors; but when I speak with other native English speakers I naturally pull out loads of slang and speed up significantly. I also notice that my friends don’t always do that naturally, and so my Japanese friends confide that they didn’t understand much of what my friends were saying. I wonder if I’m more attuned to that since my own parents weren’t native, 100% fluent English speakers (I definitely dumbed things down for them, too).
- bluGill 5y agoI most noticed this when it didn't. I met a Swedish girl traveling in the US, and it turned out we were going the same way so I gave her a ride. She seemed perfectly fluent so I didn't think of simplifying my speech and used an unusual word which confused her.
- xcambar 5y agoThe english learnt/spoken by most non-native speakers is also often referred to as "globish" for this very reason: get rid of any local or cultural idioms so that it is globally understandable.
- rjsw 5y agoI remember when I first noticed that native French speakers had stopped replying to me in English when I spoke in French. I learned to speak clearly in my native English when working on some EU scientific programmes.