fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2508 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2508 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Sherlock]

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[Dragon Age 2, Skyrim]

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[Revolution]

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[The Avengers]

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[Cardcaptor Sakura]

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[Monster High]

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[Oz]

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(Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

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[Aimée Castle]

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[Shrek, Game of Thrones]

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[Oz]

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[SimCity Societies]

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[xxxHolic]

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[Michael Keaton]

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[By Any Means]

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[Downton Abbey/The Forsyte Saga]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 022 secrets from Secret Submission Post #358.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I just spent the last 30 minutes embarrassing the shit out of myself on Google Help Hangouts with an Arabic conversation partner.

Best 30 minutes of embarrassment ever spent, though. It was free, and he helped me remember a lot of my Arabic lessons. And then he recommended that I go check out some Arabic lit to brush up.

I'm going to go try and not throw up from all of the adrenaline I just dumped into my system.

That's my trouble with learning languages even though I find them fascinating. I have trouble talking to people in English. The anxiety of talking to someone in another language and knowing that I'm butchering their native language might kill me.

Haha, yeah I totally get where you're coming from. I just sort of threw caution and dignity to the winds, though, because I kind of figured it had been way too long since I spoke Arabic with anyone. I studied Arabic in college, but I haven't had the chance since then, sadly.

He was a very chill guy, and was very supportive of my intermediate stumbling. Even though I was kind of paralyzed from not knowing stuff at times, he was like, "It's okay, don't worry too much, if I don't understand you, I'll ask you to repeat. Just talk."

I have the same problem with just about any foreign language 1-on-1 interaction. I've tried to get past it just by sheer force of will. It's a moderately successful technique.

I re-learned the word for "to visit", I learned the word for "type" and how to properly pronounce the word "area". well, in Arabic, of course. :D

I speak Spanish but pretend I don't because I freeze when there's a native speaker present. I used to pretend I couldn't speak Spanish at work, even going so far as to mispronounce Spanish words like palateria. Then there was an incident at work with one of our shy baggers and a most likely mentally disturbed man who was screaming at him in Spanish and unthinkingly I intervened to the shock of my co-workers. Secret is out. :/ *vomits*

It is the sole source of anxiety at my job which is completely irrational.

Oh man I'm sort of the opposite. If I ever find a native speaker, I tend to engage them in the language. I had like two people in one of my grad classes (one of the girls was from Saudi Arabia, and the guy was from... I want to say Yemen?), and like I think I spoke Arabic a couple of times with them, when I saw them.

They were super pleased and surprised that someone made the effort! Which made me feel loads better about my grammatical stumbling. I think they were just so divorced from their maternal language that it was nice to have someone, anyway, try to give it a shot.

Haha, there was one woman in one of my classes who spoke French, and I think we spent like 15 minutes in class talking about our final project IN FRENCH. What even, haha.

Do you speak Spanish as a 2nd language, or learned through school? Still, it was pretty badass of you to intervene with the disturbed man, it takes a lot of courage to diffuse that kind of situation, especially in another language.

I think some of my anxiety comes from the fact that even as an English speaker I am not extremely conversationally outgoing, I absolutely hate being misunderstood or choosing my words poorly. I've been taking jobs in customer service as a way to overcome that and it's working for the most part. I am really great at talking about anything with anyone (one of the benefits of an intensely curious but short attention span I guess) if I get out of my head a little.

I grew up in Texas and sort of just picked it up without any intent? If I'm around a foreign language for a couple of weeks I start to vaguely understand speakers. I did take two semesters of Spanish in college for easy credit though.

I do know what you mean about native speakers of foreign languages being very appreciative of even the most fumbling attempts. I had a lovely experience with an elderly German lady who was so excited to meet someone outside her family she could talk to even haltingly last month. :) I'm just so conscious about cultural implications and context for everything I say in English the thought I could be unknowingly implying an attitude or association intimidates me so much.

eta: also I love having people assume I don't speak their language and listen to them gossip about the people around them. Sometimes when I do not actually understand what they're saying I will still tell them to have a good day or some other generic phrase I do know in their language and smile knowingly just to see the look of horror on their face. :)

Edited 2013-11-15 01:23 (UTC)

I'm with you on being not terribly outgoing in conversation, and I think the only reason I managed to get past that was the fact that I'm curious about freaking everything, so I have to ask people to expand. Plus being in grad school forces me to engage about the subject that I'm studying.

That's pretty awesome, being able to pick up languages through like osmosis. :D I had a Mexican roommate for my last two years of college, and she sometimes spoke Spanish to her friends. I now have an Ecuadorean roommate, and while they're different dialects, I can sort of pick up the gist of her conversations with her family. (Which haha yeah creepy a little, but it's her fault if she decides to talk on the phone with her folks while I'm in the car with her. It'snot my fault if I accidentally understand shit.)

Awwww sweet old German lady that is like the cutest thing ever. But you really shouldn't worry too much about accidentally saying something wrong or off-- native speakers mostly think it's hilarious if you say something that implies something else. Making mistakes can be one of the most gratifying things about language, because it injects humor into the situation, and you actually learn better from mistakes than you do from constantly getting things right.

I remember during one of my Arabic classes, my Lebanese professor was getting worked up that we were getting worked up. She started dong this hand gesture that in New York (in areas with a heavy Italian population, anyway), meant aggravation. The pinched together, upright fingers, shaking up and down thing.

Me and one of my classmates from NYC were like, "Are you going to hit us? Because you look pissed, with that hand thing." And she burst out laughing, and explained that in Arabic countries, mothers do that gesture for their children, which was supposed to mean, "Calm down, take it easy." So we had completely different cultural connotations for that gesture, but it ended up alright in the end, and we all learned something.

Also eavesdropping in a foreign language is the shit. You can learn so much.

[ SECRET POST #2508 ]

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