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Request to speakers of languages other than English, French and German (lemy.lol)

submitted 1 day ago by shads@lemy.lol to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

112 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi thanks for looking at my query. I recently as a joke changed some writing on the board of a friends EAL (English as an Additional Language) classroom from English to German. She liked the idea, but using Google Translate resulted in an overly formal phrasing that made it seem more a demand than a suggestion or polite request.

So my ask, if you speak (or I guess write) another language I would love to request you take a moment to translate "Please stack chairs at the end of the day" into whichever language you can help me with, it should be a polite request though.

I'm really not sure what the composition of her class is but she is a fan of languages as a whole so even if it's not a language that is represented in her class I am sure it will be a bit of fun and a talking point to figure it out.

If you have the time and the skills to help I really appreciate it, otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to read this post. Have a fantastic day.

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[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fair conclusion, but don't be so hard on yourself. Honestly as a native speaker these things don't come across as "rules" for me even though of course they have rules. It's just the natural and obvious way of using the language. And that's something very hard to get right if you weren't raised with that language. In other words, I've heard a gazillion people say so many examples of phrases in Spanish since before I have memory, that hearing or seeing something outside of the expected pattern stands out immediately, but I can't always explain why.

It's unreasonable to expect ever having the same level of fluency with a language you weren't raised with. I've been speaking English half my life and I still screw up sometimes.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thank you, I should disclose that I am a Gen X Australian, we do self deprecation at a super advanced level. I absolutely get that language becomes so engrained that things just don't sound/read as correct for reasons you would understand if you took the time to think about them, but you don't really have to expend any effort to know it.

I promise I'm not being too hard on myself just accepting there's things I don't know and haven't earnt a shortcut to bypass learning to understand.

[–] isgleas@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Also, if you are adhressing the request to a group, it could be better to go with "Por favor apilen las sillas al finalizar el día", plural

[–] shads@lemy.lol 1 points 1 day ago

That's a great point, thank you.