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tumblr post by seokoilua: it's so wild to me that some people just speak english all the time… like they can't switch it off to speak in a #real language when they need to
Taím ag obair ar mé féin a fheabhsú 😔
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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i fucking hate when some entrepreneurs who left Ukraine come by and obviously can speak Ukrainian but still insist on speaking English-only even though there is no real reason for it. And even when you just start talking Ukrainian they will still speak English for some reason and never switch and pretend nothing is wrong. Now that's an inferiority complex.
it's so wild to me that people just speak with their mouths all the time... like they can't switch it off to sign in a real language when they need to
Listen, I'm trying, men min dansk er stadig meget dårlig
We are talking about real languages, not swedish with a potato.
Jeg er sikker på dit dansk bliver bedre og bedre :)
and you try to learn Danish, one of the hardest languages in the world. I mean, same, jeg lærer dansk, but ayoo we need to chill and just pick up spanish or something
Ret flot, du huskede nutids -r på et ord med r-lyd, det er der mange indfødte, der ikke forstår... Pero, hablamos Español oder Deutsch... Bara inte prada det dritt sproket Svenska... I have no idea how close to Swedish I got there, maybe I mixed in a bit of colonial Norwegian, who cares? Real people speak real languages, not drunkenly Danish with mashed potatoes dripping down their shirts. (There, that should be enough to piss off those frikadelle reinventing posers across the sund)
lol, maybe. But, I was in Copenhagen recently and fell in love with the place. Just kinda sparked an interest, you know?
Hey same, talk about an uphill battle!
patetisk
præcist
Although I don’t think English is that great of a language overall, imo it’s very very powerful.
What it lacks in logical consistency it makes up for with lots and lots of words (and idioms) that mean similar things but are slightly different for different use cases.
It has a very powerful toolbox for describing things in a very direct, specific manner.
Really? My impression is that most of the time English is more imprecise with the meaning of words than my native language, and tends to overload them a lot
About the only language with more flexibility is Mandarin Chinese.
Its pretty much the defining feature of English. It has so many shared words, rules and logic and can borrow so effortlessly. That realistically speaking so long as you understand the language you can do some wild stuff.
The concept of "English doesn't have a word to express x, y, z." Is basically nonsense. English can absorb and adapt anything to it self.
It's both why it's such a mess and frequently clowned on as a language as well as its greatest strength.
English is just the borg of language.
I do recognize and appreciate the flexibility of English, but isn't that opposite to the "precision"? (I'm sure there's a more appropriate linguistic term but that's not my geek area)
As you said, all the borrowing allows it to express almost anything, but very often in ad-hoc, incoherent ways.
Btw, I didn't mean that English doesn't have a word to express X, just that several, very specific words in Italian often get translated to the same, broader-meaning English word (that can then become more specific with extra adjectives/qualifiers/whatever)
very specific words in Italian often get translated to the same, broader-meaning English word
That sounds like a translation issue.
Language shapes the way people interpret the world. If you think in Italian then this precision is defined by that language and may or may not exists.
Ooh, that sounds like a fun game. What are the words you're talking about? I bet I could find a more precise word (or sometimes compound words or phrases) that expresses that concept very exactly.
I second this game idea. It sounds fun, and like it could be helpful for other non-native English speakers who want to learn more vocabulary.
Also, what a lot of non-native speakers might not understand is that sometimes, especially with English, the correct translation is to leave a word untranslated.
You know, since all words are English words, as long as you get the grammar correct 🤣
(joking but it's kind of true though)
You're right. English can be real tricky. I've known Spanish speakers to say "scape" instead of "escape," because similar words in Spanish that have English counterparts usually drop the e-. For example, escuela -> school; estudiar -> to study; hell, even Español -> Spanish. There are loads of examples of this pattern, but a handful of words (like "escape" and "escalate") defy it. It's gotta be so confusing.
Yeah, I'm not sure where we got the e- prefix from, but once upon a time it seems to have been used to modify the meaning of words. Obviously it's no longer in use, just a relic of lost grammatical rules.
And now we have a new e- prefix, such as email and e-bikes. I wonder if future linguists will think that "escape" refers to a digital lawn 🤔
The thing is that English can be precise, and often is in the written language, but people simply don't speak like that. Indirect expressions and implied meaning are utilised more often than lengthy, often Latin or Greek based, terms in the spoken language of native speakers.
I use "big words" and "flowery words" sometimes when I speak. I'm not trying to be weird, just that sometimes those are the best words to fit the moment. I've had coworkers remark on my vocabulary, even making up a "word of the day" based on something I said, haha.
So yeah, most people don't speak like that, but thankfully some of us are nerds. The words I use on Lemmy are the same words I speak (albeit formatted more coherently than the ungrammatical weirdness that sometimes escape my mouth.)
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I saw a video of a Spanish author, fluent in English, who said in an interview that he preferred writing in English for more or less these reasons.
Found it: https://youtu.be/NJYoqCDKoT4
Oh, that was cool. Spanish is my second language (after English) and sometimes I'm not sure if I'm having trouble finding the right words because I just don't know the terms, or if it's because the terms don't exist at all in the language.
Tangentially, it's true what they say about one's personality being different when they speak in a different language. I wish I could be as quick-witted and punny in Spanish as I can be in English, but between the words I don't know and the processing time it sometimes takes to communicate ideas, it's a challenge.
Some people never pressed Alt+Shift to change to another language keyboard layout...
Every French-speaking qwerty user should learn about https://qwerty-fr.org/. qwerty layout, all French special characters, even the ones that the standard azerty layout does not have, and no dead keys.
Other Latin alphabets might have something similar idk. If you write in Cyrillic, glhf I guess.
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I mean I'm trying, but 한국말 is difficult (for me and apparently most other English as a first language speakers). And I'm the the sharpest tool in the shed to start with.
¿Que?
Er sagt, dass manche Leute die ganze Zeit nur englisch sprechen, als könnten sie nicht anders
SPRICH DEUTSCH DU - aaah ok. Weitermachen.
ona li ken ala ken kama sona?
Domo arigato.
De nada
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Jeśli język ma mniej niż 7 przypadków to nie jest prawdziwy /j
Folk lærer å bruke andre språk av nødvendighet eller interesse. Hvis du allerede kan snakke med utlendinger pga de allerede snakker morsmålet ditt til en ganske høy standard, er det mye mindre insentiv til å bytte til et språk som skaper enorme kommunikasjonsvansker bare for å få øve på språket. Og det er egentlig det vanskeligste ting med å studere et annet språk om man har engelsk som morsmål. Ihvertfall da jeg begynte å lære norsk, var det ekstremt vanskelig å få folk til å bruke norsk i det hele tatt. Ingen var tolmodig nokk å lytte mens jeg prøvde å forklare noe med barnehage norsk. Spesielt når de kunne bare bytte til engelsk og snakke helt flytende om nesten alt.
Det jeg synes er verre er når folk fra et annet land kan ikke engelsk. Hvis man ikke har nødt til eller interesse i å lære engelsk, er det fordi man ikke har lyst til å snakke med utlendinger eller reise til andre land, eller gjøre noe som helst som trenger kommunikasjon med andre kulturer. Og jo, jeg forstår at det finnes steder i verden som ikke har tilgang til undervisning i engelsk eller internett, men jeg snakker om steder som Spania og Tyskland. Selve litt utenfor Berlin var det ingen som ville prøve å snakke engelsk, bortsett fra et par hasjentusiaster ved en busstopp i Zeuthen.
Når jeg reiser til Storbritannia er folk veldig imponert av at jeg kan norsk, men utenfor Norge er jeg funksjonelt enspråklig. Fordi jeg kan ikke bruke norsk å kommunisere med folk fra for eksempel Latvia. Da må jeg bytte til engelsk. Selve om Norsk, Dansk, og Svensk er gjensidig forståelige, er det mange som fortsatt foretrekker å bruke engelsk i blandede grupper. Dvs, når vi snakker et annet språk er det kun med folk som bruker det som morsmål. Jeg kan ikke øve tysk ved å snakke med folk fra Frankrike eller Portugal, men en fra Tyskland kan øve på engelsk ved å snakke med mange folk fra mange forskjellige land.
For å trekke en konklusjon, folk fra engelsktalende land lærer fremmede språk hvis de flytter til et annet land, men i absolutt alle andre situasjoner er det mye mer effektivt å bruke engelsk selve om en snakker med utlendinger.
Beklager min dårlig norsk.
Det gode med norsk er at du faktisk næsten lærer tre sprog, I hvert fald på skrift. Dansk er nemt at læse hvis man kan norsk, og med lidt øvelse kan man også lære at forstå de kedelige typer ovre østpå.
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三年前ぐらいから日本語を勉強している人です。あなたのメッセージを翻訳した。
英語はどこにでもある存在。故に、英語とコンタクトすることを世界中のどこでも逃さない。
が、他の言語を練習することが難しいとは言えない。
電子書籍を読む、動画や映画を観る、音楽を聴く、それにインターネットでネイティブに会うこともできます。
よって、目標の国を旅行しなくても、言語を覚えることができると思う。例え英語だけを話せても。
後、あなたはおそらく英語を覚えることが楽しいや簡単や有用だと思うだろうが、それは甘いだと思う。
人は時間がなかったりモチベがなかったり、私の思う日本人の場合、日本語との違いは大きすぎて、継続的に触れても覚えることがとても難しいのです。
上に、この頃大体の人々は強制的な英語授業を受ける。それでも授業を受けなかった人々もある。最初の一歩をしないと何も始まらないかもしれない。
英語を覚えなくても、自動的に文化交流をしたくないと考えるのが甘い。
悪い日本語でスマン。
I have no idea why I wrote this tbh
Personalmente, creo que el español y japonés tienen mucho en común, y hablarlo se me hace facil; escribirlo es otra cosa. Gracias por compartir eso.
La cosa extraña para mi es que he estudiado como escribir/leer los hiragana y katakana. Pero, no hablo el japones. No tengo ni idea de que dijo OP, pero puedo leer y hablar partes de su comentario. (Lo siento, uso un teclado de los ee.uu y no es facil poner los acentos en las letras.)
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"sekoilu" means "mucking around, messing about" in Finnish. The last a is grammatically correct, but the first "o" turns it into a pun on SEO I guess. Somehow it all adds extra meaning. Like, Finnish being a #real language. 😈
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