4 ms·
It's nice to hear this from a professional. I am an English speaker who speaks a couple foreign languages. When I am alone in my car, I talk to myself in foreig
by gamegoblin 13y ago
It's nice to hear this from a professional. I am an English speaker who speaks a couple foreign languages. When I am alone in my car, I talk to myself in foreign languages or have mock conversations. I repeat them over and over again. Then in a real conversation, I mix and match large phrases from my vault of mock conversations rather than translate word for word.
- auctiontheory 13y agoWow. When the NSA gets around to listening to their smartphone-recorded tapes of you, they're going to be very, very worried. (Yes, "tape" is a colloquialism - I realize they probably use solid state media.)
- gamegoblin 13y agoActually, one of the most common things I repeat to myself is the first chapter of the Quran (it's only a paragraph) just because I think it sounds lovely when lyrically recited in arabic. So their tapes probably sound something like me talking to myself in French, answering myself in Spanish, and then bursting into a minute of Quranic recitation... Before going full force into computer programming, I was mainly interested in linguistics, and threw myself into learning languages and traveling. So I wouldn't be surprised if my digital communications set off various automated flags, since I chat with friends around the world (Europe, China, Latin America, some in the Arab world, notably Saudi Arabia) on a daily basis in ~4 languages. I hope they take me off their lists when they realize we are just making small talk or discussing English grammar or {{ their language }}'s grammar.