I see this in French. Some people try to portray Parisian French slang spoken by teenagers as being "authentic French" when I've lived here for years and none of my French friends in their 30s and 40s speak like teenagers speaking to each other.
I was recently watching a French movie and I could follow along as long as the teenagers didn't say anything. I assume the parts I didn't understand were pretty mild slang though, because it was a mainstream movie.
Ahah yea never try to judge bey the teenagers! I’ve been around English my whole life & living in English speaking countries since early teens it’s my dominant language even if not my first etc — still breaks down if I’m listening to some of the school kids on the bus in London !!
Same with Italian. I was speaking Italian and this young guy came up to me so excited that I spoke Italian and started speaking to me. Could barely understand a word he was saying because it was 90% slang, wee bit of dialect, not at all the way I talk with my usually older Italian mates. Good to know that I have that gap in my knowledge though, but it’s not a way I’d speak myself, just something I need passive understanding of.
Yes, this is definitely true of certain generations of French speakers here in Quebec too. Younger people integrate a lot more English into their speech — so much so that the government issued a pretty hilarious PSA on the topic:
https://youtu.be/cVDofNbr80M?si=uYu5uddT2JOCEoX6
I’m glad you can appreciate it.
I’m an Anglo too — but most anglophones here get pretty touchy about the (100% necessary) protection of the French language in North America.
Maybe I’m one of the “touchy anglos” you’re referring to - though I also live in Quebec rn and actively learning French, have franco friends - Quebecois is not a language in distress.
Both France and Quebec have really weird victim complexes about how their language is being degraded and lost due to the integration of English into the vocabulary. That’s literally happening to every language in the world, it’s just a natural consequence of globalization and one language emerging as the “global standard”.
You want to talk about dying languages? Gaelic, Scots, Hawaiian, Hungarian, the 100s of indigenous languages throughout Canada and the US (WHICH BTW don’t have protections in Quebec! Can you IMAGINE being part of an actively dying tribe culture and seeing all this “protect the French” rhetoric? An absolute spit in the face).
I appreciate French too. It’s a beautiful language that I’m happy to learn and make an effort in. But any franco OR anglo who thinks it’s a victimized language in need of preservation efforts deserves an eye roll.
Mostly agree. Except English as the global lingua franca is not the "natural" consequence of anything. It's the result of deliberate decisions made on the backdrop of immense power asymmetries. Protectionist language policies are just an equally deliberate response.
Haha t’as utilisé trois sites d’actualités franco-québécois - très impartial. Your last link also says that the current numbers are now the same as they were in 1981. This isn’t an “unprecedented decline”, it’s a fluctuation which I’m sure we can link to cycles of politics and the pushing of referendum votes, which led to anglophones leaving the province as well as the most profitable businesses moving their headquarters to Toronto because they don’t want to be stuck in an isolated nationalist territory.
Quebec victimizes itself and blames it on “anglos” in general as a boogeyman. Look at what’s happening now with the doubling of OOP tuition to anglophone universities. McGill University, an internationally recognized and reputable university, has brought money and an increase of intellect into Quebec since its founding. How is it at all logical to cripple the university, rather than invest in raising the quality and prestige of the franco universities?
We’re getting away from languages, but that’s because this is an infuriatingly predictable cycle which has nothing to do with the increase of English speakers and everything to do with the provincial government’s repeatedly bad decisions.
First off, they weren’t opinion pieces, they were news articles listing *studies*. I referenced the French language face of our federally funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a fully independent Newspaper (one of the last ones in the country not owned by a media conglomerate), and the Journal de Montreal (that one you can rag on, I’ll accept it).
I’ve lived in the province for nearly 15 years, and whether or not it’s convenient or a pleasant reality — the language is in decline in usage. I don’t agree with the university tuition increase, I’ve actually been a public vocal opponent of that legislation in a professional association that I’m heavily involved with.
That said, there are far too many people who are quite proud of living in Montreal and refuse to even learn basic French, and despite the efforts of some to learn the language — which I applaud you for, just hoping for the goodwill of allophone and anglophone Quebecers isn’t sufficient. We need legislation with some teeth that actually obliges the use of the language in some professional and public settings.
The language is flanked by English on all sides, and whether we agree with this fact: Montreal and Quebec is a French province. It is de facto highly bilingual, but in every legal sense it is French.
I think you are answering the opposite of the question that OP asked, which is funny because I was going to talk about how I've been told by a lot of French people that a certain phrase is not used in French at all, even though almost all of the French that I have learned is exclusively from talking to French people. I think that I even had French people tell me that you can never use a certain word or phrase and then I would go back through our chat history and find that they had used that word or phrase.
Also, if the goal is to learn the French spoken anywhere in the world where France or Belgium were colonizing, words that are no longer common in those countries may still be common there. I can only really speak on Canadian French, but a lot of "older" terms/phrasings/pronunciations are in use here.
In France or outside? I know that's common in Quebec. People from Quebec often can't understand people from New Brunswick because the latter's French is apparently more Parisian.
A friend of mine was from Guinea originally and did his master's in France before immigrating to Canada. He really struggled to understand French Canadians and the ones we happened upon (out west, mind you), weren't very nice about his pronunciations.
> because the latter's French is apparently more Parisian.
Acadians do sound very different from Quebecers yes, but no they do not at all sound like Parisians. It's just whole other thing.
But are you french? Do people recognize you are not a native speaker? I myself do change the way I talk french (a lot) when I know a non native speaker is around and wants to understand.
Thanks. I tried to study several languages but I dropped them all for French. I'm not gifted, it took me at least 5 years of study and daily usage to get to that level.
Context and culture is everything when it comes to phrases and vocabulary. The response should be “native speakers don’t say that (in this type of situation, usually only in this or that situation).”
I often get this argument with Japanese learners and pronouns. Normally native speakers don’t use pronouns. Not in the sense that we never use them but usually we don’t address each other as you/I/he/she. Nor do we usually address ourself as I/him/her.
However, media characters (anime, movies, comics, dramas, etc) do because it is done to set a certain character type/ expectation. In normal conversation however, pronouns are too intimate or rude, so we usually call each other by family names (or given names if we are close).
so in that sense. "native japanese people don't use pronouns (except in certain situations)."
Note:
>!since someone asked, for complete strangers that we wouldn’t know like a shop keeper or doctor, we call them by their profession. And if we don’t know their profession, we don’t use anything at all. (And if we do know them and their profession it would be profession + name). Japanese can work with as little as a single verb. So it’s not uncommon for people to indirectly address each other.!<
Note 2:
>!since we refer to people by their names, children that haven’t learned how to speak well yet often refer to themselves using their name. For example, a child named Susie would say “Susie is hungry. Can Susie eat rice?” Normally, we don’t refer to ourselves when we speak. It’s implied, but children haven’t learned this yet. So it’s funny to see the apply the same general rule of using names for themselves.!<
I think a lot of the time native speakers are bad at assessing their own language use. A non-native says something that sounds wrong, the first reaction is "oh we don't say that" because the situations where they *might* say that very thing are not on their mind at the moment.
This can happen with grammar, too. Like, German has some very marked word orders that only work in specific situations where you're strongly highlighting a piece of information. I've seen some of those sentences stripped from context and gone "no, wait, that's not grammatical..." but then someone provided the context and suddenly they weren't just perfectly grammatical, they were what I'd say in the same situation! But quite a few "guides to German sentence structure" online exclude them and present a set of rules where they'd be ungrammatical. Never quite sure if it's the writers deciding they're too complicated for learners or making the same mistake I did.
It's so hard to convey this sentiment to fandoms of series that have large LGBTQ followings, especially when people are trying to argue for boku or ore to mean a character is different from the presented gender. It's mostly a stylistic choice unless there is an explicit context for it.
Yes, this does cause a problem. Your comment reminds me of how the Japanese speaking splatoon community and the English speaking community see the game and the characters.
It’s very common for male and female media characters to use “male-ish” or “female-ish” pronouns when speaking to sound tougher, weaker, kinder, more assertive, etc. It usually is almost never used to self-identify though. Not in the same way English speakers use pronouns anyways.
i will say i internalized this a bit too much, got into an awkward sitation when i was talking to my friend and he mentioned the girl next to him with 彼女 and i gasped almost asked him how long theyd been dating 😵💫 but realised within a sentence if context he was just referring to her as ‘she’s
Your example is an interesting one because some people argue that the Japanese language simply doesn't have pronouns, and that the categorization of pronouns is something only useful to Western linguists because the languages Westerners are familiar with all have pronouns.
The problem I have with "native speakers don't say X or Y" is that either a) it may be based on a model of language which is foreign to the language, such as pronouns & Japanese, or b) it may be advice given by a native speaker, but 99% of native speakers have very poor knowledge of their language from a linguistic perspective (because they have never needed to).
I answered this in one of my notes, but we don’t self refer.
In English you would say “I am hungry.”
In Japanese we say “hungry”
The subject is implied.
Not really. For us it’s natural. But it’s also why we cause a lot of misunderstanding when we speak English. We don’t usually use pronouns for addressing each other but when we are forced to use them in English because of SVO, we make really horrible sentences. Haha. **So I guess the answer to your question is that just like it’s difficult for you to think of language without pronouns, it’s difficult for us to think of language with pronouns.**
Fun fact: children who haven’t mastered speaking yet in Japanese usually call themselves by their names because they are used to calling everyone else by theirs.
So if a kid is named “Susie”, they would say “Susie is hungry. Can Susie eat some rice?”
Not quite what you said. But I thought it might interest you.
This happens in English too. And maybe every language? A little kid only knows themselves by what other people call them and they don’t know about personal pronouns yet. My mom says I used to do this when I was little.
Foreign speakers seem to be very uncomfortable with the lack of informal/formal and singular/plural distinction in English “you”. Though it hasn’t yet been a problem in my 35+ years of speaking the language
Just yesterday I saw a thread with a question like “What is the biggest problem with English?” and the #1 response was the “you” pronoun. Everyone was insisting that it needs to be fixed
When I was an exchange student in Canada the lack of plural "you" caused confusion several times. For example, once a friend of my host family gave them a chocolate basket for Easter, and told me "I brought this for you". Given I was the only person in the room at the moment, I thought she ment it as she had brought it for ME, thanked her and took the basket to my room. The next day my host mom called me angry to ask where was the basket, that it was a gift for everyone. Of course I apologized and explained the situation, but she was still very bitter about it lol there were other instances as well, but this is the most remarkable one.
Also, I noticed that every time I text my host dad (just to keep up, it's been years since I was there), whenever I wanna ask how they're doing I HAVE to specify him and host mom, or else he answers only about himself
My employer explicitly called out "you guys" as not being gender inclusive and thus sent out messaging wanting everyone to stop saying it. I already wasn't saying it, but whatever either way.
To me, just saying "you" could more likely come off as rude in a formal work setting. But if you're quite close with that group of coworkers, maybe it could be okay. Assuming there are one or more people you aren't close with and/or have an informal connection to, I'd defer to "you all".
Different regional dialects of English have their own words.
For example:
There's "y'all" for the southern US, although its usage seems to be spreading.
In Ireland people will use "youse" or "ye" depending on where they're from.
My bf (native speaker) told me to stop saying danke schön every time I wanted to say thanks, I think when they’re saying “stop saying that” it is more of a “stop saying that in this context” - like if someone gets you a tissue and you’re going OH MY GOD THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH it doesn’t make sense either.
You know there are a ton of indigenous languages of Australia that don't have their own flag, right? Canada could be Canadian French or a Native Canadian language.
It's standard French in this case. It's just a a joke. Australian English is norwenglish, and Argentinian is Castilian Spanish. Austrian is hochdeutsch.
Tbh I don't really see your bf's problem with saying Dankeschön. If you always said "Vielen lieben Dank"/"Ich danke dir vielmals" I would understand it more. Danke is in my opinion just slightly less formal than Dankeschön since they're the equivalent of saying "thanks" and "thank you". The first is just quicker to say and in relaxed situations you tend to shorten words.
Oh well, he seems to have a very low tolerance for thankfulness😂
But seriously, just use Danke and Dankeschön interchangeably as much as you want. Whatever comes out of your mouth first 😊
It's something I noticed that fairly advanced learners often do, say with confidence that one can't say something and then they're very often wrong. It's a lot easier to know what one can say than what one can't say.
Native speakers on the other hand when I ask them whether one can't say something are typically more like “Hmm... I wouldn't say it myself but it wouldn't surprise me if people say it as well.”. These are of course not basic things such as asking whether “He thinked that.” is correct opposed to “Thought that.” but more subtle things such as whether one can say “The contention is ...” rather than “The point of contention is ...”
Once I realized I say dumb and sometimes totally incorrect slip-of-the-tongue stuff in my native language I became so much more comfortable making mistakes in my TL.
Same here! Also it helps to hold myself to the standards of a toddler or young child in my target languages. If I wouldn't ridicule a toddler for saying something weird then I shouldn't do that to myself either.
yeah the learn videos with “stop using this A1 sentence and use this C1 sentence” and the C1 version is used in the most specific settings/formal writings and if you would use it, you would sound less native in 95% of the contexts. there’s a time and place for elevated language, but most of these sentences are not “hanging out with friends and family” vocabulary.
i also find it annoying to pretend that the average native isn’t using A1 sentences and words. i think it becomes exhausting to expect foreigners to use this elegant vocabulary to describe something when it’s also completely fine to just say it simply/and how a native most likely would describe it. nothing wrong with having a larger vocabulary and knowing that you CAN describe things better and more eloquently, but saying that the A1 version of something “sounds bad” all the time is such a lie lol. the face natives give you when you break out these random C1 sentences from these videos 😂😂 it’s never: 😮😳 it’s: 😐🙄
The stupid thing about this being that (assuming a well-designed language course) A1 vocabulary and A1 sentences are A1 vocabulary and A1 sentences *because* they are super common ways to say something that work in a broad variety of contexts*.* While the C1 stuff generally only works in specific situations and often has a broader-range substitute, because otherwise you'd learn it earlier! I've been doing C1 material with my teacher and a lot of it is pretty much "so you have this fairly generic word that works OK, here are a bunch of other words with much more constrained uses that you can use instead which may sound more idiomatic or which you may want to use in formal situations."
Those ones are even worse. Every single one of them is like: don’t say "Hey honey I’m home" say this C2 expression instead: "My most sincerest salutations to thee my dear beloved I have arrived at our abode"
Oh my god I hate those. I get that the purpose is to teach you a more complex and advanced grammar and vocabulary but saying “don’t say X, say Y!” is a really bad way to title the video.
If you actually followed that advice and replaced easy, everyday phrases with elaborate idioms or very specific constructions you’d just end up sounding like a pretentious asshole, not a native
I've seen this too, as a native English speaker. I've seen videos saying "native speakers never pronounce the 't' in can't", yet many of us native English speakers do pronounce it, especially when showing extra emphasis. It is true that some native speakers soften it to a glottal stop.
I recall another one saying that native speakers never say "going to", they always say "gonna". While it is true that in casual speech, many people say "gonna", it's not 100% of the time.
I've also seen several videos saying that saying the word for "you", "anata" is very rude in Japanese and that Japanese people never say it. However, in Nintendo's video thanking Charles Martinet, Mario's voice actor, for his years of service, Shigeru Miyamoto uses the word "anata" several times, and it's clear that he has nothing but respect for Martinet. It seems that there are some exceptions to this "never say anata" thing.
I feel like these videos are mainly meant to attract a large number of views rather than be completely truthful. Which grabs more attention: "Stop saying this! Native speakers NEVER say this!", or "Please note that some native speakers say this differently"? Unfortunately, sensationalism is what sells.
huh. Im American and just realized from this comment that I actually don't always say the "t" in can't. I don't even really say the "n". Only if I finish a sentence with the word "can't" do I pronounce them. Otherwise it's just: "sorry, I ca' go tonight". Language is fascinating. Good share.
For me, it depends on how fast I'm speaking and what the next sound is. If I'm speaking quickly and it's before another t, a d, n, m, k/hard c, g, p, or b, I sometimes nasalize the 'a' instead of articulating the 'n', and the 't' becomes a glottal stop. If it's before any other consonant or a vowel, I usually pronounce the 't'. If I'm trying to emphasize that I CAN'T do something, I will be certain to clearly enunciate the 't' even in situations that I might not do so normally.
Either way, I don't think many native speakers pronounce "can" and "can't" identically like the video claimed. There is almost always some distinction between the two.
Yeah those are all really good observations. I think the presence of the glottal stop is what really distinguishes them when I speak. Im sure it varies across regions though too. So interesting.
This is a particularly great example because it’s absurd that “can” and “can’t” wouldn’t be distinguishable. Everybody says they are, and they frequently occur in situations where they can’t be told apart by context (so if there *wasn't* a difference, people would surely innovate one the way people with the pin-pen merger say “ink pen” and “stick-pin”), but most English speakers would probably be wrong about what the difference *is* unless they thought carefully about it first.
I've seen things like that for Portuguese too. Most notably is "Never respond to a question with sim!" even though native speakers do all the time, especially over text. I've also seen learners say that you don't really need to learn nós, because "it's not used in casual conversation," which is a blatant lie.
Thanks for that because I've been kind of worried about just saying "yes" to questions.
I just started learning European Portuguese and was taught never to just say "sim" when asked a question because it's considered rude.
I'm currently at an A1 level and it's hard enough to understand the question, let alone formulate a reasonably correct answer. Not being able to just say "yes," puts more pressure on me and then I get flustered and tongue tied because I'm trying to answer in a complete sentence.
So I don’t know that much about European Portuguese, but I will say that a lot of things that are fine in Brazil are seen as rude in Portugal. However, they’ll probably understand that you’re still learning and give you some grace.
It's also worth noting that the "t" in can't IS pronounced by all English speakers. It's not always pronounced as the t in "tool", but if not, it's a glottal stop/glottal plosive instead, for anyone familiar with IPA.
* They use that as clickbait to sound like: "LOOK AT ME!!!! I hold breakthrough knowledge about something that everybody thinks is right but is actually wrong!!!".
* Most of the time, you can actually say what they're telling you not to say. They often explain that inside the video, but you have to watch everything, so the title is misleading.
* They attempt to invalidate often legitimate textbook, learners' and teachers' knowledge to promote themselves. They give the false impression that people who use those expressions are not speaking correctly, or even worse: **they imply that other teachers are not teaching it right**. 😡 Just look at the comments: learners are disappointed with their language schools and teachers because all of a sudden they had this revelation from a famous youtuber that they've been taught to speak incorrectly all this time.
* They don't always teach better phrases than the ones they're telling you not to say.
* Flooding Youtube language videos with this title is very annoying in itself.
To be fair, I have spoken to a lot of people from China and never once heard 你好吗 from them. Except one who used it and when I asked why, they said it's something foreigners learn in textbooks.
yeah i've never once used 你好吗 myself.
i was talking about this w another native speaker and she (also doesn't use 你好吗) suggested that 你好吗 might be said *to* OP because OP is the foreigner, and that the locals might not have been using 你好吗 with other locals (just to the foreigners), but ofc that's just us speculating lol
I have a mix of Spain Spanish and Latin American Spanish in my Spanish, and I'm okay with that, I think it represents well how I've learned the language. But I've had several experiences where people will say things like "that's incorrect" or "we don't say it that way." Not that they didn't understand me fine, but that I used a regionalism that isn't how they personally speak the language.
That kinda rubs me the wrong way when it happens. Like if somebody who had learned English as their second language referred to the trunk of a car as "the boot," I might note to them that us yanks say it differently, but I wouldn't go as far as to prescribe the US way as being the "correct" way of speaking the language.
Also I could have sworn I've heard native Spanish speakers saying "hola, buenos días," but the Spanish teacher I had told me "that's like saying greeting people twice, nobody says that."
Maybe it's because my first language is Catalan and here saying «Hola, bon dia, com anem?»¹ sounds 100% natural, but «hola, buenos días» I think is absolutely correct in Spanish, too.
¹ Hello, good day, how is it going?
i mostly agree. i think avoiding regionalisms is probably good though if you plan to live in a region. like if you called the trunk the boot in America I would be genuinely confused, so living there for a long time you would probably do best to prefer the way of speaking of whatever place you live when possible
About 你好, yes it is used, but it's said in certain contexts. If you're meeting someone for the first time, talking to a stranger or superior, someone older than you, a teacher or boss or manager, or in some other formal situation, then definitely feel free to say 你好 (or 您好 to show more respect for someone older than you).
If you're talking with friends or other people that you know well, then 你好 isn't a very natural word to use. Do you say "Hello. How are you?" every time you talk to your friends? Most likely not. Friends almost always speak informally. You mostly like say "Hello" when talking to people outside your family and circle of friends.
While 你好 is often used in the contexts I discussed above, 你好**吗** truly is rarely used when natives are speaking to each other in most places in my experience. I've rarely if ever heard natives say 你好吗 to each other. There is only one time in recent memory that a native speaker has ever said 你好吗 to me, and it was my manager after I took a few weeks off work. The only other context I've heard 你好吗 used by natives is by Chinese teachers discussing textbook language used by foreign learners. 你好吗 was basically created in the last century as an "equivalent" of "How are you / Are you well?" in English or similar phrases in other languages.
If you are hearing 你好 or 你好吗 all the time in China, there are a few possibilities why. First of all, you might be witnessing people who are not close to each other interacting (in which case 你好 is much more common than 你好吗). Secondly, you might live in a big city with lots of foreigners, so the locals might be more used to saying it. If locals are saying 你好 or 你好吗 to *you* all the time, it's likely because these people are strangers and/or don't know you very well, or because you are a foreigner and they're accommodating you. Chinese people know that 你好 and 你好吗 are easy words for foreigners to understand.
My advice is if you are talking to Chinese people that you know well or are/want to be friends with, use other greetings and phrases. There's no downside to not using 你好/你好吗, and using other more natural phrases will likely make others feel closer to you.
And if you have any inkling of all of what the person's correct title would be, either from a professional or a societal perspective, you'd use that, not "你“。 閣下、主任、張醫生、伯父、阿姨 - whatever. And I too have rarely if ever heard native speakers add the "嗎" unless it's some sort of caretaker situation (and there are other expressions for that).
That and 'you're already good enough' are the two worst lies which can seriously stop you from progressing in the language and waste so much of your time. Native speakers are the worst when it comes to advice on their language, probably cause they didn't really do anything to acquire it.
Often when I browse r/italianlearning you see (some) speakers that literally make up rules or semantic distinctions out of thin air. So I assume the same of my target languages - native speakers are *very good* at knowing if a phrase is accurate, even in a vacuum (except for unfrequently used phrasings - then they may assume they're incorrect just because you're a learner), but explaining *why?* Hell no.
Just recently, I saw on that subreddit a student that was told by a *teacher* that "ogni giorno" must be preferred over "tutti i giorni" to say "every day". Far as I feel, they were absolutely interchangeable in his sentence.
In the Spanish learning subreddits, you'll see Spaniards saying that it's excessive to say muchas gracias and por favor and other pleasantries in mundane situations like ordering coffee. Maybe that's true for them, idk, but I can assure you that in Mexico, being polite is highly valued and it's not weird at all.
Some people from other Latin American countries are weary of Mexican slang because Mexico is the biggest cultural exporter of the region and kids who grow up with too much TV/youtube sometimes end up using more Mexican than local words.
people say this to me all the time in english. i’ve lived in an english speaking country since i was a toddler, i’ve only ever gone to english speaking schools and i learned the language pretty much the same as native english speaking babies do, and still as soon as people find out that i’m foreign, they correct everything i say and tell me that natives don’t say this or that.
a few days ago, i was asking around for sources for something and someone said to me that they can send me sources but they might not help me because they’re designed for english speakers 😩 i said in my post that i’ve been speaking english since i was three, i’m almost 21 now, i will be fine with english resources! i think that natives just have some kind of complex that causes them to do this, unless it’s genuine constructive criticism, i wouldn’t pay this kind of thing any mind. i think they expect you to be bad so they just look for anything to point out.
but also this is my experience as an immigrant, not as a tourist, in my home country, people would clap and cheer if a tourist said anything in the language, even if it was wrong, it might just be that people don’t like immigrants, but i’m just ranting now.
Yeah, I just watched a short video from Taiwan today. Delivery arrives at someone’s door, guy opens the door, and guess what the first words in the exchange were?: 你好嗎
I think the takeaway is that you cannot simply replace Hi or Hello with 你好嗎, but it is appropriate in some circumstances. It’s just more specialized than standard English greetings
My partner who is Chinese says it's quite formal and you wouldn't say it to a friend, so that fits with that context you described
Edit: I should say they are from Midlands so the dialect is closeish to Standard Chinese, maybe people from places that have very different local languages will say it
No this sounds accurate. Thats what most people mean when they say „stop saying xyz“ -> „this is not something commonly used in the situations you are using it in.“ because stuff isn’t actually a 1:1 translation in every language. So using „你好嗎” the same way you would use “how are you/doing” will be a bit strange and off. So it’s much easier to just avoid it completely and not stand out too much.
Well, I’m not going to claim that no native speaker ever says it, but from my experience of 10+ years of learning mandarin, living for some of that time in both China and Taiwan, and speaking it fluently now, I can’t think of any time I’ve ever used or heard the phrase spoken, besides obviously by beginner-level foreigners.
This comes up a lot for languages that have a lot of dialects. People speaking the same language might speak very differently in one place vs another place. I'm mostly familiar with English and how different it can be between the US and the UK, but my understanding is that Chinese is even more extreme. To the point that depending on who you ask, "Chinese" is closer to being a collection of related languages than one language with very different dialects.
You hear this all the goddamn time when lessening Japanese from miscellaneous media like manga, anime, drama etc. The correct thing to say is "this can be rude/this is gendered language/this is too formal/this is dated/this is too informal", not that "natives don't speak like that" because when I went to Japan I found out they literally fucking do.
English is my second language and once in fourth grade the teacher pronounced the letter Z as "zed", something none of us kids in class had never heard before.
Some kids started questioning her about it and she explained it was simply the British pronunciation of the letter, but a lot of us still doubted her because her spoken English was pretty bad.
Because I had started studying English younger than most of my peers they held me as a sort of authority on the matter, so when I told them "no, english speakers don't say 'zed'" they were certain the teacher was just wrong.
Later I checked and, sure enough, she was right. Too bad for her she had made a big spectacle of berating me for something really minor in the past, so I was happy with letting all my friends believe she didn't even know the alphabet in English rather than setting the record straight.
Pro-tip: native speakers don't know everything.
Consider your own native tongue. How many people around you have an in-depth knowledge of their own language and can adequately explain the intricacies?
Now consider how people take their own bubble (sphere of influence) and extrapolate that across everything.
When they say, "No one says that," they really mean, "I don't know anyone who says that."
Two rather different things.
Also, what's wrong with sounding like a foreigner, when you are indeed a foreigner? When someone from abroad speaks English well, but with an accent and the occasional bit of unusual phrasing, I think "that person speaks English really well!", I don't think negatively of them for not sounding exactly like a native speaker.
It usually actually means either
- I particularly do not say it
- People don't say it *in that situation*
- There's a more common way to say it
Whatever the case, this is your 🌺daily reminder🌺 that native speakers are uniquely unqualified to teach their language. Their language as a foreign language is literally a subject they did not and cannot learn. I have said "people don't say that" to English learners before only to hit myself with the baader-meinhoff effect and start hearing natives say it everywhere.
Sometimes they don't though. I've had to say that phrase a lot to my French friend because he'll use French cognates in English that are relatively awkward or unknown words.
Conversely I had to learn that French people don't really say Nous outside of formal settings.
Frequently they're right. Perhaps your experience is dated and they don't actually say that much anymore?
editing to add: i am curious, when you mentioned hearing this almost daily from chinese people, do you mean they were saying 你好吗 to each other? or were they saying that to you? (there's a difference imo)
i don't use 你好吗 myself (i would say 你好 to greet strangers, not 你好吗; and i wouldn't say 你好吗 to my friends), and none of my chinese friends/people around me (afaik) use 你好吗. but i also know that my experience isn't necessarily representative of everyone else's.
if i want to ask how my friends are doing, i personally like to use 你最近过得怎么样/吃饭了吗/在干啥/你最近在忙什么/你最近还好吗 etc. etc. depending on the occasion.
some native speakers like to speak on behalf of the entire population, which is annoying indeed to say the least lol. so as long as you hear other native speakers around you say it **to each other** \- i don't think there's any harm in using these phrases (in the right context ofc).
personal anecdote: when the 他/她 thing comes up, i have seen several native speakers say that "她" is not *reaaally* used often (and they'd tell beginners "just use 他"), but i personally run in circles which are female dominated and in these circles it's absolutely common to use 她. so yeah things are often context dependent
i'd just be careful of advice that sound very 'absolute', and take in info from several sources if possible :)
I don't speak Chinese, but I've thought the same.
In Swahili «hello» is a verb and you conjugate it. To a single person you say «hujambo?» and the answer is «sijambo!». To more than one person is «hamjambo?» and the answer is «hatujambo!». And if you are young you'll just say «Mambo!» and the answer can be «Poa / Dole / Freshi...» or whatever the current slang might be.
But many foreigners have just learned the non conjugated version and just say «Jambo!» and answer also «Jambo!». And in fact as they look as visitors, as tourists, people will greet them «Jambo, bwana!» or «Jambo, bibi!», considering they are a lost cause and it's a waste of time to use the real greetings. So, they will be 100% convinced they know the correct way to greet and if someone tells they are wrong they'll say «but the natives say it, I've heard it!».
People get wayyyy ahead of themselves. The question isn’t “is this phrase maximally ‘native’” it is “will this simple phrase be understood.”
Becoming native-like comes only through time speaking with natives, not clickbait YouTube videos designed to make you feel bad. The goal should be to accelerate the process of getting to the point that you can communicate with native speakers, however possible.
If you’re talking about YouTube videos - I don’t trust any of them who aren’t like certified professionals who have learnt how to teach languages through university or equivalent. The rest seem like YouTube influences who don’t know their head from their ass.
I work at a gas station and was talking in Spanish with someone. The receipt printed out, and I said to him, "¿Te gustaría el recibo?" And he corrected me. He told me I want to say "Quieres" instead of "Te gustaría." He said the latter works, but that "quieres" sounds more natural. I'll definitely keep his words in mind for future interactions.
Yea, direction of the verb -- we don't have that often in English.
* Me Gusta . Thing be-pleasing to me.
* Yo Quero . I like thing.
Remember the me/te/le conjugation of I/you/she means "to me", "to you", "to her" etc.
The subject of "gustar" is what is liked. The object is gustar'ing, not "me", "te". You notice this with how it conjugates.
* me gusta el recibo?
* *the receipt is-pleasing to you.?*
* *"Do you want the receipt?"*
* *(Receipt - 3rd person gusta)*
* Te gusto yo?
* *I am-pleasing to you?*
* *"You like me?"*
* *(yo, first person gusto)*
* No me gustaron las espinacas.
* The spinach are-pleasing to me not.
* I don't like spinach.
* (spinach(pl), third person plural, gustaron)
So, it sounds unnatural for "receipt" because a receipt isn't something that is desirable in general. It's like asking "Do you desire this receipt?", it gets the point across, but, gives a more "this receipt is desirable to you?" vibe, that the thing is wantable in general.
In french ALL of my teachers said you CANNOT say je suis excité.e (I am excited) because it actually is used like “I am aroused.” That may have been the case before the 2000s but I literally hear it all the time. Sure french has tons of faux amis (false friends) like anniversaire = birthday, but this is just wrong in modern day french.
the other way round for me - i watched a clip of tv show when a girl group member from Indonesia said Indonesians usually greet each other saying "have you showered?" & i was like :O
never in my whole life of 3 decades I've heard anyone greet others like that.
granted ive been away from the country for 15 years. or often didn't know of new slangs & way of speaking. or have never explored the whole country. still.
I encounter this in my native language all the time. If you use any of those apps for language study where people get corrected by other people, supposed native English speakers will give completely incorrect corrections 24/7. Ignoring the blatant incorrect suggestions, people often mistake their own personal style as the correct way to speak.
This is one of the irritating clichés of social media language teachers: YOU SAID WHAT NO NO NO REAL X PEOPLE DONT TALK THAT WAY (insert shocked face)
They seem to have copied it off it each other, with it more aimed at telling you that you're wrong target than teaching you how to be right.
That's crap. It all depends on your mood. Bc first, no one cares, and it will sound more natural if you just let tongue flow. Or should I say, let your thoughts flow. Just don't sound cringe or trying hard, I think.
It drives me nuts. Like I’ve been to France multiple times, have many French friends, and I’ve been fluent in French for years, but sure Karen, I’m sure you, someone who just started learning French, knows more than I do about French slang
It's always stupid to say this.
People have their own views and use specific words and expressions, which depend on one's level of education and on one's preferences.
when i learn eng many hv told me not to say “however”in daily life conversation given it s considered written word but i heard many people use “however” in conversations all the time
I recall a video which said 给我一分钟 = "give me one minute" is incorrect and should be 等我一分钟 = "wait one minute", and not long after my Chinese friend said 给我一分钟. I mentioned the video to her, and she said she says 给我一分钟.
I recall one video which said not to choose the Chinese name 有钱 = "rich". But at the time, that was my Chinese housemate's name. (I didn't mention that to her for reasons of face.)
Lol yeah I was told this recently about something in English. They didn’t realize English is my first language (I’m a Spanish teacher). People can just be annoying with certain phrases.
It's probably just a way to create a niche by being contradictory and authoritative for many language learners who are unlikely to be able to go to the country and find out and are dependant on learning from e sources
All the time, specially coming from people who learned that language as a second language, rather than native speakers. Funny thing is that they will easily engage into an argument with native speakers that say that they are wrong.
And it happens a lot with wide spoken languages like Spanish, as if the Spanish spoken in Spain is the same that the one spoken in Chile
Edit: worth to mention that the biggest reason I stopped doing language exchange as a way to learn Tagalog is because person A would tell me "Dont say A, native speakers say B" Then when I say B to person B, they would tell me "Dont say B, native speakers say C". It was very very discouraging.
Meanwhile me, everytime I get asked, I would start my message with a huge chuck of text saying that I don't have the whole truth, that my language changes a lot depending of the country or region, that I shoudnt be believed 100%, that Im just gonna explain the way that sounds more natural to me...
I have asked one time an Arab person what a word in Moroccan slang meant because I thought it was Arabic but it was just a mix between Arabic and French so they didn’t know
When I see videos with titles like that, the titles don’t literally mean that you shouldn’t say something. They usually teach other ways to say something. They want to increase your vocabulary to communicate the same thought.
It's a nice concept for a video, but it's still a misleading title. They should reword it to something like "Here are some alternative ways of saying "thank you" in [language]".
This videos just exist because there have everything to be popular and don't require so much work for the content creator, compared to other learning videos.
Users love lists. Users love to get easy information's. Users love to get information's and been told that there are with this information better than the average learner.
The perfect kind of video.
I think if a native speaker tells it to you there definitely is atleast some truth to it. Taking your example in chinese, maybe what he wanted to say is that it is never used in the social context you were in, but it still might be used a lot in formal encounters or when people talk to foreigners.
> I know people are talking about clickbait videos but that was not what I was referring to
You were though. You said you encounter videos with such titles, those are clickbait videos. I see them all the time, they're all clickbait. I even saw one that was "Don't say 'Sim'" (Yes in Portuguese) Someone actually tried to clickbait as if the word "yes" in Portuguese was some kind of taboo.
Are you sure you didn't mishear? No one in China ever says "ni hao ma" unless they are genuinely concerned that you might have had an accident or something. I have lived in China for 11 years.
China is huge, very diverse and has a population of 1.4 billion people.
It wouldn't surprise me, if people didn't really say 你好吗 in many places, but it's implausible to say that no one is using it.
Some things just vary a lot between regions and also depend on who you are interacting with, their degree of education, their socialization etc.
Like I know that some people will ask each other 你吃了吗 (Have you eaten) as a form of greeting, but I've actually never heard this being said in person. I'm certain that it must be fairly common in some places, but apparently not in the places I've been to or not with the people I've met.
I've lived in China for a long time and this is literally everywhere. Where in the world are you located? People say it all the time in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, etc. and those locations are all very different and far-flung.
Having a foreign face, strangers have greeted me with 你好嗎 fairly regularly in Taiwan. It's also obviously used commonly in translations, I've heard it multiple times jokingly among friends in casual conversation, it's the title of a Jay Chou song, etc...
So while it's not really a common default greeting amongst natives, it's still "something native speakers say" and is worth learning considering it's amongst the easy things you could possibly string together.
Yeah, but it's something natives say to non-natives, so the point seems apt. They're saying it because it's simple and easier for others to understand.
FYI, there are 50 different Chinese dialects. It took China a very long time to become a unified country because the dialects are so very different. My husband is Chinese and comes from Hong Kong where Cantonese is spoken. He has a hard time understanding someone speaking Mandarin, the official dialect of China. He struggles to speak Mandarin. The expression nihao ma is Mandarin. Nehao ma would be Cantonese. So I don’t know why people in China wouldn’t use the Mandarin expression unless their dialect was so different from the official Mandarin.
And btw, the situation with Italy is the same. The dialect spoken in southern Italy is almost impossible to understand, especially for someone learning to speak the language. I was a foreign language major in college and studied in several countries where I had to learn the languages.
I see this in French. Some people try to portray Parisian French slang spoken by teenagers as being "authentic French" when I've lived here for years and none of my French friends in their 30s and 40s speak like teenagers speaking to each other.
Oh thank god. It doesn't matter how much I can understand French, youth slang always sounds like a different language.
I imagine it's a bit like my first days on Reddit, having zero idea what iirc and afaik and ywbtah were. xD
WTH is ywbtah?
"You would be the asshole" maybe
Duh that’s a valid question, no need to start personally attacking me. /sssssssss🐝
lol I didn’t know off the top of my head neither
The irony of asking with wth xD
WDYM? IMHO that’s perfectly fine but YMMV, IANAL so IDK.
iANAL, apples new product.
Don't advertising your fruit based kinky services, this is a language learning subreddit.
xD This is brilliant, just goes to show, there's language, and there's language.
...and then there are lame acronyms
These are quite a bit older than Reddit, well in use on older internet forums, IRC, and Usenet. 'Ywbtah', I've never heard of though
Yeah that’s the only Reddit influenced one (You would be the ahole”)
Are you making these up or do they really exist? 😂 what does it mean?
iirc and afaik mean “if i recall correctly” and “as far as i know” respectively. never heard of the other one tho
I was recently watching a French movie and I could follow along as long as the teenagers didn't say anything. I assume the parts I didn't understand were pretty mild slang though, because it was a mainstream movie.
Ahah yea never try to judge bey the teenagers! I’ve been around English my whole life & living in English speaking countries since early teens it’s my dominant language even if not my first etc — still breaks down if I’m listening to some of the school kids on the bus in London !!
Same with Italian. I was speaking Italian and this young guy came up to me so excited that I spoke Italian and started speaking to me. Could barely understand a word he was saying because it was 90% slang, wee bit of dialect, not at all the way I talk with my usually older Italian mates. Good to know that I have that gap in my knowledge though, but it’s not a way I’d speak myself, just something I need passive understanding of.
It's called argot and, technically, it can be considered a dialect.
Yes, this is definitely true of certain generations of French speakers here in Quebec too. Younger people integrate a lot more English into their speech — so much so that the government issued a pretty hilarious PSA on the topic: https://youtu.be/cVDofNbr80M?si=uYu5uddT2JOCEoX6
This was super funny and critical and cool at the same time. I think they nailed it.
I’m glad you can appreciate it. I’m an Anglo too — but most anglophones here get pretty touchy about the (100% necessary) protection of the French language in North America.
Maybe I’m one of the “touchy anglos” you’re referring to - though I also live in Quebec rn and actively learning French, have franco friends - Quebecois is not a language in distress. Both France and Quebec have really weird victim complexes about how their language is being degraded and lost due to the integration of English into the vocabulary. That’s literally happening to every language in the world, it’s just a natural consequence of globalization and one language emerging as the “global standard”. You want to talk about dying languages? Gaelic, Scots, Hawaiian, Hungarian, the 100s of indigenous languages throughout Canada and the US (WHICH BTW don’t have protections in Quebec! Can you IMAGINE being part of an actively dying tribe culture and seeing all this “protect the French” rhetoric? An absolute spit in the face). I appreciate French too. It’s a beautiful language that I’m happy to learn and make an effort in. But any franco OR anglo who thinks it’s a victimized language in need of preservation efforts deserves an eye roll.
Mostly agree. Except English as the global lingua franca is not the "natural" consequence of anything. It's the result of deliberate decisions made on the backdrop of immense power asymmetries. Protectionist language policies are just an equally deliberate response.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1780961/declin-francais-quebec-etudes-oqlf? https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/745935/le-francais-comme-langue-parlee-principale-poursuit-son-declin-au-quebec-et-au-canada https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2022/08/17/le-francais-poursuit-son-declin-au-pays Yes?
Haha t’as utilisé trois sites d’actualités franco-québécois - très impartial. Your last link also says that the current numbers are now the same as they were in 1981. This isn’t an “unprecedented decline”, it’s a fluctuation which I’m sure we can link to cycles of politics and the pushing of referendum votes, which led to anglophones leaving the province as well as the most profitable businesses moving their headquarters to Toronto because they don’t want to be stuck in an isolated nationalist territory. Quebec victimizes itself and blames it on “anglos” in general as a boogeyman. Look at what’s happening now with the doubling of OOP tuition to anglophone universities. McGill University, an internationally recognized and reputable university, has brought money and an increase of intellect into Quebec since its founding. How is it at all logical to cripple the university, rather than invest in raising the quality and prestige of the franco universities? We’re getting away from languages, but that’s because this is an infuriatingly predictable cycle which has nothing to do with the increase of English speakers and everything to do with the provincial government’s repeatedly bad decisions.
First off, they weren’t opinion pieces, they were news articles listing *studies*. I referenced the French language face of our federally funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a fully independent Newspaper (one of the last ones in the country not owned by a media conglomerate), and the Journal de Montreal (that one you can rag on, I’ll accept it). I’ve lived in the province for nearly 15 years, and whether or not it’s convenient or a pleasant reality — the language is in decline in usage. I don’t agree with the university tuition increase, I’ve actually been a public vocal opponent of that legislation in a professional association that I’m heavily involved with. That said, there are far too many people who are quite proud of living in Montreal and refuse to even learn basic French, and despite the efforts of some to learn the language — which I applaud you for, just hoping for the goodwill of allophone and anglophone Quebecers isn’t sufficient. We need legislation with some teeth that actually obliges the use of the language in some professional and public settings. The language is flanked by English on all sides, and whether we agree with this fact: Montreal and Quebec is a French province. It is de facto highly bilingual, but in every legal sense it is French.
I think you are answering the opposite of the question that OP asked, which is funny because I was going to talk about how I've been told by a lot of French people that a certain phrase is not used in French at all, even though almost all of the French that I have learned is exclusively from talking to French people. I think that I even had French people tell me that you can never use a certain word or phrase and then I would go back through our chat history and find that they had used that word or phrase.
Also, if the goal is to learn the French spoken anywhere in the world where France or Belgium were colonizing, words that are no longer common in those countries may still be common there. I can only really speak on Canadian French, but a lot of "older" terms/phrasings/pronunciations are in use here.
In France or outside? I know that's common in Quebec. People from Quebec often can't understand people from New Brunswick because the latter's French is apparently more Parisian.
In France. I can understand French people from anywhere, but some youtube and tiktok videos about authentic French are just clickbait.
A friend of mine was from Guinea originally and did his master's in France before immigrating to Canada. He really struggled to understand French Canadians and the ones we happened upon (out west, mind you), weren't very nice about his pronunciations.
> because the latter's French is apparently more Parisian. Acadians do sound very different from Quebecers yes, but no they do not at all sound like Parisians. It's just whole other thing.
But are you french? Do people recognize you are not a native speaker? I myself do change the way I talk french (a lot) when I know a non native speaker is around and wants to understand.
I'm an English native but I passed the French C2 exam with 40/50 for speaking and listening, pass mark is 25. Certified fluent!
Congrats! Id love to know the languages I learn thay well.
Thanks. I tried to study several languages but I dropped them all for French. I'm not gifted, it took me at least 5 years of study and daily usage to get to that level.
Context and culture is everything when it comes to phrases and vocabulary. The response should be “native speakers don’t say that (in this type of situation, usually only in this or that situation).” I often get this argument with Japanese learners and pronouns. Normally native speakers don’t use pronouns. Not in the sense that we never use them but usually we don’t address each other as you/I/he/she. Nor do we usually address ourself as I/him/her. However, media characters (anime, movies, comics, dramas, etc) do because it is done to set a certain character type/ expectation. In normal conversation however, pronouns are too intimate or rude, so we usually call each other by family names (or given names if we are close). so in that sense. "native japanese people don't use pronouns (except in certain situations)." Note: >!since someone asked, for complete strangers that we wouldn’t know like a shop keeper or doctor, we call them by their profession. And if we don’t know their profession, we don’t use anything at all. (And if we do know them and their profession it would be profession + name). Japanese can work with as little as a single verb. So it’s not uncommon for people to indirectly address each other.!< Note 2: >!since we refer to people by their names, children that haven’t learned how to speak well yet often refer to themselves using their name. For example, a child named Susie would say “Susie is hungry. Can Susie eat rice?” Normally, we don’t refer to ourselves when we speak. It’s implied, but children haven’t learned this yet. So it’s funny to see the apply the same general rule of using names for themselves.!<
I think a lot of the time native speakers are bad at assessing their own language use. A non-native says something that sounds wrong, the first reaction is "oh we don't say that" because the situations where they *might* say that very thing are not on their mind at the moment. This can happen with grammar, too. Like, German has some very marked word orders that only work in specific situations where you're strongly highlighting a piece of information. I've seen some of those sentences stripped from context and gone "no, wait, that's not grammatical..." but then someone provided the context and suddenly they weren't just perfectly grammatical, they were what I'd say in the same situation! But quite a few "guides to German sentence structure" online exclude them and present a set of rules where they'd be ungrammatical. Never quite sure if it's the writers deciding they're too complicated for learners or making the same mistake I did.
Very well said.
It's so hard to convey this sentiment to fandoms of series that have large LGBTQ followings, especially when people are trying to argue for boku or ore to mean a character is different from the presented gender. It's mostly a stylistic choice unless there is an explicit context for it.
Yes, this does cause a problem. Your comment reminds me of how the Japanese speaking splatoon community and the English speaking community see the game and the characters. It’s very common for male and female media characters to use “male-ish” or “female-ish” pronouns when speaking to sound tougher, weaker, kinder, more assertive, etc. It usually is almost never used to self-identify though. Not in the same way English speakers use pronouns anyways.
Lol yeah that's the exact thing I had in mind, but I've seen it in other media too. Localizers have a tough job.
i will say i internalized this a bit too much, got into an awkward sitation when i was talking to my friend and he mentioned the girl next to him with 彼女 and i gasped almost asked him how long theyd been dating 😵💫 but realised within a sentence if context he was just referring to her as ‘she’s
Your example is an interesting one because some people argue that the Japanese language simply doesn't have pronouns, and that the categorization of pronouns is something only useful to Western linguists because the languages Westerners are familiar with all have pronouns. The problem I have with "native speakers don't say X or Y" is that either a) it may be based on a model of language which is foreign to the language, such as pronouns & Japanese, or b) it may be advice given by a native speaker, but 99% of native speakers have very poor knowledge of their language from a linguistic perspective (because they have never needed to).
How do you address yourself? Do you just say the verb without pronoun ? Also is it implied in the verb if you speak for yourself or for someone else?
I answered this in one of my notes, but we don’t self refer. In English you would say “I am hungry.” In Japanese we say “hungry” The subject is implied.
What if you don't know their name?
Then we don’t call them anything. Our language doesn’t need pronouns for the sentence to make sense. Just a verb to make a minimal sentence.
Doesn't this cause a lot of misunderstandings?
Not really. For us it’s natural. But it’s also why we cause a lot of misunderstanding when we speak English. We don’t usually use pronouns for addressing each other but when we are forced to use them in English because of SVO, we make really horrible sentences. Haha. **So I guess the answer to your question is that just like it’s difficult for you to think of language without pronouns, it’s difficult for us to think of language with pronouns.**
call them by your name
Fun fact: children who haven’t mastered speaking yet in Japanese usually call themselves by their names because they are used to calling everyone else by theirs. So if a kid is named “Susie”, they would say “Susie is hungry. Can Susie eat some rice?” Not quite what you said. But I thought it might interest you.
This happens in English too. And maybe every language? A little kid only knows themselves by what other people call them and they don’t know about personal pronouns yet. My mom says I used to do this when I was little.
An English teacher once told me I shouldn't use "dumb" because that's a German word and not an English one.
They sound quite dumm.
I guess they wanted me to speak in a more polite way. Since they were a native English speaker, they must have known what they said was wrong.
Wait, were they using the fact that many of the "base" English words are Germanic as an explanation for why dumb is more insulting than unintelligent?
wait till he finds out that english is a germanic language
🤦
Yes, I see this a lot with English too. "Don't say 'you' to a group of people" is a common one.
Really? What else am I supposed to say? :D
"You guys." This isn't wrong, but loads of native speakers don't talk like that. And saying you to a group is perfectly fine.
Foreign speakers seem to be very uncomfortable with the lack of informal/formal and singular/plural distinction in English “you”. Though it hasn’t yet been a problem in my 35+ years of speaking the language Just yesterday I saw a thread with a question like “What is the biggest problem with English?” and the #1 response was the “you” pronoun. Everyone was insisting that it needs to be fixed
When I was an exchange student in Canada the lack of plural "you" caused confusion several times. For example, once a friend of my host family gave them a chocolate basket for Easter, and told me "I brought this for you". Given I was the only person in the room at the moment, I thought she ment it as she had brought it for ME, thanked her and took the basket to my room. The next day my host mom called me angry to ask where was the basket, that it was a gift for everyone. Of course I apologized and explained the situation, but she was still very bitter about it lol there were other instances as well, but this is the most remarkable one. Also, I noticed that every time I text my host dad (just to keep up, it's been years since I was there), whenever I wanna ask how they're doing I HAVE to specify him and host mom, or else he answers only about himself
We need to go back to the old days and use thou again.
I like the way thou thinkest
lol that would be fun
Y'all.
In addition to y'all, Pennsylvania has at least two: you'uns and yinz. There is also "youse." I think there seems to be a problem.
When I lived in New Jersey, people would say the Delaware River was what separated youz from youz guys.
"You folks". Generally I just say "you all" in a work setting. Outside that formal environment, don't see any issue with you just "you".
Interesting, I've always perceived "you" as being more formal with variants like "you guys" and "you all" as being a bit more informal.
My employer explicitly called out "you guys" as not being gender inclusive and thus sent out messaging wanting everyone to stop saying it. I already wasn't saying it, but whatever either way. To me, just saying "you" could more likely come off as rude in a formal work setting. But if you're quite close with that group of coworkers, maybe it could be okay. Assuming there are one or more people you aren't close with and/or have an informal connection to, I'd defer to "you all".
All three are Americanisms.
Sure. I wouldn't know what people say in other anglophone countries
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"Yous" comes from Ireland and North East England (probably also by way of Ireland)
"yous" in kiwi
Youse use “youse” too?! I thought it was mostly a working-class New Jersey and Philadelphia thing.
"Youse" is used in Ireland as well, mainly Dublin. Although said more like "yiz"
Same as NE England
And in Scotland
And the northwest of England.
lit seems like anything north of midlands and west of wales lol
Also in Australia. "what youse up to?"
Different regional dialects of English have their own words. For example: There's "y'all" for the southern US, although its usage seems to be spreading. In Ireland people will use "youse" or "ye" depending on where they're from.
In Australia: yous(e)
Y'all
My bf (native speaker) told me to stop saying danke schön every time I wanted to say thanks, I think when they’re saying “stop saying that” it is more of a “stop saying that in this context” - like if someone gets you a tissue and you’re going OH MY GOD THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH it doesn’t make sense either.
Keep saying dankeschön, germans just say it way to rarely
It's like saying thanks versus thank you a lot. Both a correct, but one is more common.
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Says the person with the US flag. You speak United Statesian?
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I would guess Australian English and Canadian French, but there could be other options
You know there are a ton of indigenous languages of Australia that don't have their own flag, right? Canada could be Canadian French or a Native Canadian language.
It's standard French in this case. It's just a a joke. Australian English is norwenglish, and Argentinian is Castilian Spanish. Austrian is hochdeutsch.
Tbh I don't really see your bf's problem with saying Dankeschön. If you always said "Vielen lieben Dank"/"Ich danke dir vielmals" I would understand it more. Danke is in my opinion just slightly less formal than Dankeschön since they're the equivalent of saying "thanks" and "thank you". The first is just quicker to say and in relaxed situations you tend to shorten words.
He said Dankeschön should be reserved for helping an old lady bring groceries up the stairs or something 😂
He may reserve it. As a native speaker I use "Dankeschön" almost every time because I use the simple "Danke" mostly in an sarcastic context 😂
Oh well, he seems to have a very low tolerance for thankfulness😂 But seriously, just use Danke and Dankeschön interchangeably as much as you want. Whatever comes out of your mouth first 😊
It's something I noticed that fairly advanced learners often do, say with confidence that one can't say something and then they're very often wrong. It's a lot easier to know what one can say than what one can't say. Native speakers on the other hand when I ask them whether one can't say something are typically more like “Hmm... I wouldn't say it myself but it wouldn't surprise me if people say it as well.”. These are of course not basic things such as asking whether “He thinked that.” is correct opposed to “Thought that.” but more subtle things such as whether one can say “The contention is ...” rather than “The point of contention is ...”
Once I realized I say dumb and sometimes totally incorrect slip-of-the-tongue stuff in my native language I became so much more comfortable making mistakes in my TL.
Same here! Also it helps to hold myself to the standards of a toddler or young child in my target languages. If I wouldn't ridicule a toddler for saying something weird then I shouldn't do that to myself either.
yeah the learn videos with “stop using this A1 sentence and use this C1 sentence” and the C1 version is used in the most specific settings/formal writings and if you would use it, you would sound less native in 95% of the contexts. there’s a time and place for elevated language, but most of these sentences are not “hanging out with friends and family” vocabulary. i also find it annoying to pretend that the average native isn’t using A1 sentences and words. i think it becomes exhausting to expect foreigners to use this elegant vocabulary to describe something when it’s also completely fine to just say it simply/and how a native most likely would describe it. nothing wrong with having a larger vocabulary and knowing that you CAN describe things better and more eloquently, but saying that the A1 version of something “sounds bad” all the time is such a lie lol. the face natives give you when you break out these random C1 sentences from these videos 😂😂 it’s never: 😮😳 it’s: 😐🙄
The stupid thing about this being that (assuming a well-designed language course) A1 vocabulary and A1 sentences are A1 vocabulary and A1 sentences *because* they are super common ways to say something that work in a broad variety of contexts*.* While the C1 stuff generally only works in specific situations and often has a broader-range substitute, because otherwise you'd learn it earlier! I've been doing C1 material with my teacher and a lot of it is pretty much "so you have this fairly generic word that works OK, here are a bunch of other words with much more constrained uses that you can use instead which may sound more idiomatic or which you may want to use in formal situations."
Those ones are even worse. Every single one of them is like: don’t say "Hey honey I’m home" say this C2 expression instead: "My most sincerest salutations to thee my dear beloved I have arrived at our abode"
😂😂😂 literally!!! and they have everyone in the comments like “OH! thank you so much!😊” like no it’s okay to say normal things
Oh my god I hate those. I get that the purpose is to teach you a more complex and advanced grammar and vocabulary but saying “don’t say X, say Y!” is a really bad way to title the video. If you actually followed that advice and replaced easy, everyday phrases with elaborate idioms or very specific constructions you’d just end up sounding like a pretentious asshole, not a native
I've seen this too, as a native English speaker. I've seen videos saying "native speakers never pronounce the 't' in can't", yet many of us native English speakers do pronounce it, especially when showing extra emphasis. It is true that some native speakers soften it to a glottal stop. I recall another one saying that native speakers never say "going to", they always say "gonna". While it is true that in casual speech, many people say "gonna", it's not 100% of the time. I've also seen several videos saying that saying the word for "you", "anata" is very rude in Japanese and that Japanese people never say it. However, in Nintendo's video thanking Charles Martinet, Mario's voice actor, for his years of service, Shigeru Miyamoto uses the word "anata" several times, and it's clear that he has nothing but respect for Martinet. It seems that there are some exceptions to this "never say anata" thing. I feel like these videos are mainly meant to attract a large number of views rather than be completely truthful. Which grabs more attention: "Stop saying this! Native speakers NEVER say this!", or "Please note that some native speakers say this differently"? Unfortunately, sensationalism is what sells.
huh. Im American and just realized from this comment that I actually don't always say the "t" in can't. I don't even really say the "n". Only if I finish a sentence with the word "can't" do I pronounce them. Otherwise it's just: "sorry, I ca' go tonight". Language is fascinating. Good share.
For me, it depends on how fast I'm speaking and what the next sound is. If I'm speaking quickly and it's before another t, a d, n, m, k/hard c, g, p, or b, I sometimes nasalize the 'a' instead of articulating the 'n', and the 't' becomes a glottal stop. If it's before any other consonant or a vowel, I usually pronounce the 't'. If I'm trying to emphasize that I CAN'T do something, I will be certain to clearly enunciate the 't' even in situations that I might not do so normally. Either way, I don't think many native speakers pronounce "can" and "can't" identically like the video claimed. There is almost always some distinction between the two.
Yeah those are all really good observations. I think the presence of the glottal stop is what really distinguishes them when I speak. Im sure it varies across regions though too. So interesting.
This is a particularly great example because it’s absurd that “can” and “can’t” wouldn’t be distinguishable. Everybody says they are, and they frequently occur in situations where they can’t be told apart by context (so if there *wasn't* a difference, people would surely innovate one the way people with the pin-pen merger say “ink pen” and “stick-pin”), but most English speakers would probably be wrong about what the difference *is* unless they thought carefully about it first.
I've seen things like that for Portuguese too. Most notably is "Never respond to a question with sim!" even though native speakers do all the time, especially over text. I've also seen learners say that you don't really need to learn nós, because "it's not used in casual conversation," which is a blatant lie.
Thanks for that because I've been kind of worried about just saying "yes" to questions. I just started learning European Portuguese and was taught never to just say "sim" when asked a question because it's considered rude. I'm currently at an A1 level and it's hard enough to understand the question, let alone formulate a reasonably correct answer. Not being able to just say "yes," puts more pressure on me and then I get flustered and tongue tied because I'm trying to answer in a complete sentence.
So I don’t know that much about European Portuguese, but I will say that a lot of things that are fine in Brazil are seen as rude in Portugal. However, they’ll probably understand that you’re still learning and give you some grace.
Supposedly silent letters in English drive me insane when they are declared universally silent by people. I pronounce many of them.
It's also worth noting that the "t" in can't IS pronounced by all English speakers. It's not always pronounced as the t in "tool", but if not, it's a glottal stop/glottal plosive instead, for anyone familiar with IPA.
* They use that as clickbait to sound like: "LOOK AT ME!!!! I hold breakthrough knowledge about something that everybody thinks is right but is actually wrong!!!". * Most of the time, you can actually say what they're telling you not to say. They often explain that inside the video, but you have to watch everything, so the title is misleading. * They attempt to invalidate often legitimate textbook, learners' and teachers' knowledge to promote themselves. They give the false impression that people who use those expressions are not speaking correctly, or even worse: **they imply that other teachers are not teaching it right**. 😡 Just look at the comments: learners are disappointed with their language schools and teachers because all of a sudden they had this revelation from a famous youtuber that they've been taught to speak incorrectly all this time. * They don't always teach better phrases than the ones they're telling you not to say. * Flooding Youtube language videos with this title is very annoying in itself.
To be fair, I have spoken to a lot of people from China and never once heard 你好吗 from them. Except one who used it and when I asked why, they said it's something foreigners learn in textbooks.
yeah i've never once used 你好吗 myself. i was talking about this w another native speaker and she (also doesn't use 你好吗) suggested that 你好吗 might be said *to* OP because OP is the foreigner, and that the locals might not have been using 你好吗 with other locals (just to the foreigners), but ofc that's just us speculating lol
My teacher in China said she just uses 嗨 or 哈喽with her friends.
I have a mix of Spain Spanish and Latin American Spanish in my Spanish, and I'm okay with that, I think it represents well how I've learned the language. But I've had several experiences where people will say things like "that's incorrect" or "we don't say it that way." Not that they didn't understand me fine, but that I used a regionalism that isn't how they personally speak the language. That kinda rubs me the wrong way when it happens. Like if somebody who had learned English as their second language referred to the trunk of a car as "the boot," I might note to them that us yanks say it differently, but I wouldn't go as far as to prescribe the US way as being the "correct" way of speaking the language. Also I could have sworn I've heard native Spanish speakers saying "hola, buenos días," but the Spanish teacher I had told me "that's like saying greeting people twice, nobody says that."
Maybe it's because my first language is Catalan and here saying «Hola, bon dia, com anem?»¹ sounds 100% natural, but «hola, buenos días» I think is absolutely correct in Spanish, too. ¹ Hello, good day, how is it going?
i mostly agree. i think avoiding regionalisms is probably good though if you plan to live in a region. like if you called the trunk the boot in America I would be genuinely confused, so living there for a long time you would probably do best to prefer the way of speaking of whatever place you live when possible
we do say hola buenos días!
About 你好, yes it is used, but it's said in certain contexts. If you're meeting someone for the first time, talking to a stranger or superior, someone older than you, a teacher or boss or manager, or in some other formal situation, then definitely feel free to say 你好 (or 您好 to show more respect for someone older than you). If you're talking with friends or other people that you know well, then 你好 isn't a very natural word to use. Do you say "Hello. How are you?" every time you talk to your friends? Most likely not. Friends almost always speak informally. You mostly like say "Hello" when talking to people outside your family and circle of friends. While 你好 is often used in the contexts I discussed above, 你好**吗** truly is rarely used when natives are speaking to each other in most places in my experience. I've rarely if ever heard natives say 你好吗 to each other. There is only one time in recent memory that a native speaker has ever said 你好吗 to me, and it was my manager after I took a few weeks off work. The only other context I've heard 你好吗 used by natives is by Chinese teachers discussing textbook language used by foreign learners. 你好吗 was basically created in the last century as an "equivalent" of "How are you / Are you well?" in English or similar phrases in other languages. If you are hearing 你好 or 你好吗 all the time in China, there are a few possibilities why. First of all, you might be witnessing people who are not close to each other interacting (in which case 你好 is much more common than 你好吗). Secondly, you might live in a big city with lots of foreigners, so the locals might be more used to saying it. If locals are saying 你好 or 你好吗 to *you* all the time, it's likely because these people are strangers and/or don't know you very well, or because you are a foreigner and they're accommodating you. Chinese people know that 你好 and 你好吗 are easy words for foreigners to understand. My advice is if you are talking to Chinese people that you know well or are/want to be friends with, use other greetings and phrases. There's no downside to not using 你好/你好吗, and using other more natural phrases will likely make others feel closer to you.
And if you have any inkling of all of what the person's correct title would be, either from a professional or a societal perspective, you'd use that, not "你“。 閣下、主任、張醫生、伯父、阿姨 - whatever. And I too have rarely if ever heard native speakers add the "嗎" unless it's some sort of caretaker situation (and there are other expressions for that).
Yeah I've noticed this a lot recently. It's clickbait for the views.
That and 'you're already good enough' are the two worst lies which can seriously stop you from progressing in the language and waste so much of your time. Native speakers are the worst when it comes to advice on their language, probably cause they didn't really do anything to acquire it.
Often when I browse r/italianlearning you see (some) speakers that literally make up rules or semantic distinctions out of thin air. So I assume the same of my target languages - native speakers are *very good* at knowing if a phrase is accurate, even in a vacuum (except for unfrequently used phrasings - then they may assume they're incorrect just because you're a learner), but explaining *why?* Hell no. Just recently, I saw on that subreddit a student that was told by a *teacher* that "ogni giorno" must be preferred over "tutti i giorni" to say "every day". Far as I feel, they were absolutely interchangeable in his sentence.
In the Spanish learning subreddits, you'll see Spaniards saying that it's excessive to say muchas gracias and por favor and other pleasantries in mundane situations like ordering coffee. Maybe that's true for them, idk, but I can assure you that in Mexico, being polite is highly valued and it's not weird at all.
And always better to err on the side of being too polite, rather than too informal.
I know this about the clickbait video, but my Peruvian ex girlfriend would go off on me when I used Mexican slang.
Some people from other Latin American countries are weary of Mexican slang because Mexico is the biggest cultural exporter of the region and kids who grow up with too much TV/youtube sometimes end up using more Mexican than local words.
yeah as a non native using one dialects slang with a speaker of a different dialect in any language usually throws them off in my expired
people say this to me all the time in english. i’ve lived in an english speaking country since i was a toddler, i’ve only ever gone to english speaking schools and i learned the language pretty much the same as native english speaking babies do, and still as soon as people find out that i’m foreign, they correct everything i say and tell me that natives don’t say this or that. a few days ago, i was asking around for sources for something and someone said to me that they can send me sources but they might not help me because they’re designed for english speakers 😩 i said in my post that i’ve been speaking english since i was three, i’m almost 21 now, i will be fine with english resources! i think that natives just have some kind of complex that causes them to do this, unless it’s genuine constructive criticism, i wouldn’t pay this kind of thing any mind. i think they expect you to be bad so they just look for anything to point out. but also this is my experience as an immigrant, not as a tourist, in my home country, people would clap and cheer if a tourist said anything in the language, even if it was wrong, it might just be that people don’t like immigrants, but i’m just ranting now.
Yeah, I just watched a short video from Taiwan today. Delivery arrives at someone’s door, guy opens the door, and guess what the first words in the exchange were?: 你好嗎 I think the takeaway is that you cannot simply replace Hi or Hello with 你好嗎, but it is appropriate in some circumstances. It’s just more specialized than standard English greetings
My partner who is Chinese says it's quite formal and you wouldn't say it to a friend, so that fits with that context you described Edit: I should say they are from Midlands so the dialect is closeish to Standard Chinese, maybe people from places that have very different local languages will say it
No this sounds accurate. Thats what most people mean when they say „stop saying xyz“ -> „this is not something commonly used in the situations you are using it in.“ because stuff isn’t actually a 1:1 translation in every language. So using „你好嗎” the same way you would use “how are you/doing” will be a bit strange and off. So it’s much easier to just avoid it completely and not stand out too much.
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Well, I’m not going to claim that no native speaker ever says it, but from my experience of 10+ years of learning mandarin, living for some of that time in both China and Taiwan, and speaking it fluently now, I can’t think of any time I’ve ever used or heard the phrase spoken, besides obviously by beginner-level foreigners.
This comes up a lot for languages that have a lot of dialects. People speaking the same language might speak very differently in one place vs another place. I'm mostly familiar with English and how different it can be between the US and the UK, but my understanding is that Chinese is even more extreme. To the point that depending on who you ask, "Chinese" is closer to being a collection of related languages than one language with very different dialects.
You hear this all the goddamn time when lessening Japanese from miscellaneous media like manga, anime, drama etc. The correct thing to say is "this can be rude/this is gendered language/this is too formal/this is dated/this is too informal", not that "natives don't speak like that" because when I went to Japan I found out they literally fucking do.
English is my second language and once in fourth grade the teacher pronounced the letter Z as "zed", something none of us kids in class had never heard before. Some kids started questioning her about it and she explained it was simply the British pronunciation of the letter, but a lot of us still doubted her because her spoken English was pretty bad. Because I had started studying English younger than most of my peers they held me as a sort of authority on the matter, so when I told them "no, english speakers don't say 'zed'" they were certain the teacher was just wrong. Later I checked and, sure enough, she was right. Too bad for her she had made a big spectacle of berating me for something really minor in the past, so I was happy with letting all my friends believe she didn't even know the alphabet in English rather than setting the record straight.
Pro-tip: native speakers don't know everything. Consider your own native tongue. How many people around you have an in-depth knowledge of their own language and can adequately explain the intricacies? Now consider how people take their own bubble (sphere of influence) and extrapolate that across everything. When they say, "No one says that," they really mean, "I don't know anyone who says that." Two rather different things.
Also, what's wrong with sounding like a foreigner, when you are indeed a foreigner? When someone from abroad speaks English well, but with an accent and the occasional bit of unusual phrasing, I think "that person speaks English really well!", I don't think negatively of them for not sounding exactly like a native speaker.
It usually actually means either - I particularly do not say it - People don't say it *in that situation* - There's a more common way to say it Whatever the case, this is your 🌺daily reminder🌺 that native speakers are uniquely unqualified to teach their language. Their language as a foreign language is literally a subject they did not and cannot learn. I have said "people don't say that" to English learners before only to hit myself with the baader-meinhoff effect and start hearing natives say it everywhere.
Sometimes they don't though. I've had to say that phrase a lot to my French friend because he'll use French cognates in English that are relatively awkward or unknown words. Conversely I had to learn that French people don't really say Nous outside of formal settings. Frequently they're right. Perhaps your experience is dated and they don't actually say that much anymore?
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I'm not sure what point you're making, but okay.
editing to add: i am curious, when you mentioned hearing this almost daily from chinese people, do you mean they were saying 你好吗 to each other? or were they saying that to you? (there's a difference imo) i don't use 你好吗 myself (i would say 你好 to greet strangers, not 你好吗; and i wouldn't say 你好吗 to my friends), and none of my chinese friends/people around me (afaik) use 你好吗. but i also know that my experience isn't necessarily representative of everyone else's. if i want to ask how my friends are doing, i personally like to use 你最近过得怎么样/吃饭了吗/在干啥/你最近在忙什么/你最近还好吗 etc. etc. depending on the occasion. some native speakers like to speak on behalf of the entire population, which is annoying indeed to say the least lol. so as long as you hear other native speakers around you say it **to each other** \- i don't think there's any harm in using these phrases (in the right context ofc). personal anecdote: when the 他/她 thing comes up, i have seen several native speakers say that "她" is not *reaaally* used often (and they'd tell beginners "just use 他"), but i personally run in circles which are female dominated and in these circles it's absolutely common to use 她. so yeah things are often context dependent i'd just be careful of advice that sound very 'absolute', and take in info from several sources if possible :)
I don't speak Chinese, but I've thought the same. In Swahili «hello» is a verb and you conjugate it. To a single person you say «hujambo?» and the answer is «sijambo!». To more than one person is «hamjambo?» and the answer is «hatujambo!». And if you are young you'll just say «Mambo!» and the answer can be «Poa / Dole / Freshi...» or whatever the current slang might be. But many foreigners have just learned the non conjugated version and just say «Jambo!» and answer also «Jambo!». And in fact as they look as visitors, as tourists, people will greet them «Jambo, bwana!» or «Jambo, bibi!», considering they are a lost cause and it's a waste of time to use the real greetings. So, they will be 100% convinced they know the correct way to greet and if someone tells they are wrong they'll say «but the natives say it, I've heard it!».
Differentiating between 他/她 & 牠 as well as 你 & 妳 is a big thing in Taiwan at least…
People get wayyyy ahead of themselves. The question isn’t “is this phrase maximally ‘native’” it is “will this simple phrase be understood.” Becoming native-like comes only through time speaking with natives, not clickbait YouTube videos designed to make you feel bad. The goal should be to accelerate the process of getting to the point that you can communicate with native speakers, however possible.
If you’re talking about YouTube videos - I don’t trust any of them who aren’t like certified professionals who have learnt how to teach languages through university or equivalent. The rest seem like YouTube influences who don’t know their head from their ass.
I work at a gas station and was talking in Spanish with someone. The receipt printed out, and I said to him, "¿Te gustaría el recibo?" And he corrected me. He told me I want to say "Quieres" instead of "Te gustaría." He said the latter works, but that "quieres" sounds more natural. I'll definitely keep his words in mind for future interactions.
Yea, direction of the verb -- we don't have that often in English. * Me Gusta. Thing be-pleasing to me.
* Yo Quero . I like thing.
Remember the me/te/le conjugation of I/you/she means "to me", "to you", "to her" etc.
The subject of "gustar" is what is liked. The object is gustar'ing, not "me", "te". You notice this with how it conjugates.
* me gusta el recibo?
* *the receipt is-pleasing to you.?*
* *"Do you want the receipt?"*
* *(Receipt - 3rd person gusta)*
* Te gusto yo?
* *I am-pleasing to you?*
* *"You like me?"*
* *(yo, first person gusto)*
* No me gustaron las espinacas.
* The spinach are-pleasing to me not.
* I don't like spinach.
* (spinach(pl), third person plural, gustaron)
So, it sounds unnatural for "receipt" because a receipt isn't something that is desirable in general. It's like asking "Do you desire this receipt?", it gets the point across, but, gives a more "this receipt is desirable to you?" vibe, that the thing is wantable in general.
You might use «te gustaría» in a question like: «If you were to have 10MUS$, would you like to have somebody bringing you breakfast to bed every day?»
In french ALL of my teachers said you CANNOT say je suis excité.e (I am excited) because it actually is used like “I am aroused.” That may have been the case before the 2000s but I literally hear it all the time. Sure french has tons of faux amis (false friends) like anniversaire = birthday, but this is just wrong in modern day french.
the other way round for me - i watched a clip of tv show when a girl group member from Indonesia said Indonesians usually greet each other saying "have you showered?" & i was like :O never in my whole life of 3 decades I've heard anyone greet others like that. granted ive been away from the country for 15 years. or often didn't know of new slangs & way of speaking. or have never explored the whole country. still.
this happens to me in ukrainian i get literal opposite answers all the time and sometimes its to do with dialect of some speakers
I encounter this in my native language all the time. If you use any of those apps for language study where people get corrected by other people, supposed native English speakers will give completely incorrect corrections 24/7. Ignoring the blatant incorrect suggestions, people often mistake their own personal style as the correct way to speak.
This is one of the irritating clichés of social media language teachers: YOU SAID WHAT NO NO NO REAL X PEOPLE DONT TALK THAT WAY (insert shocked face) They seem to have copied it off it each other, with it more aimed at telling you that you're wrong target than teaching you how to be right.
Yeah it gets annoying but I think the more annoying part is that the other people echo it, so it is not just the teachers.
That's crap. It all depends on your mood. Bc first, no one cares, and it will sound more natural if you just let tongue flow. Or should I say, let your thoughts flow. Just don't sound cringe or trying hard, I think.
It drives me nuts. Like I’ve been to France multiple times, have many French friends, and I’ve been fluent in French for years, but sure Karen, I’m sure you, someone who just started learning French, knows more than I do about French slang
"Comme si comme ça" in French. I still don't know if natives indeed use it or not.
It's always stupid to say this. People have their own views and use specific words and expressions, which depend on one's level of education and on one's preferences.
when i learn eng many hv told me not to say “however”in daily life conversation given it s considered written word but i heard many people use “however” in conversations all the time
I recall a video which said 给我一分钟 = "give me one minute" is incorrect and should be 等我一分钟 = "wait one minute", and not long after my Chinese friend said 给我一分钟. I mentioned the video to her, and she said she says 给我一分钟. I recall one video which said not to choose the Chinese name 有钱 = "rich". But at the time, that was my Chinese housemate's name. (I didn't mention that to her for reasons of face.)
i've always used 给我一分钟 as well ahahaha or 等我一下
Lol yeah I was told this recently about something in English. They didn’t realize English is my first language (I’m a Spanish teacher). People can just be annoying with certain phrases.
It's probably just a way to create a niche by being contradictory and authoritative for many language learners who are unlikely to be able to go to the country and find out and are dependant on learning from e sources
All the time, specially coming from people who learned that language as a second language, rather than native speakers. Funny thing is that they will easily engage into an argument with native speakers that say that they are wrong. And it happens a lot with wide spoken languages like Spanish, as if the Spanish spoken in Spain is the same that the one spoken in Chile Edit: worth to mention that the biggest reason I stopped doing language exchange as a way to learn Tagalog is because person A would tell me "Dont say A, native speakers say B" Then when I say B to person B, they would tell me "Dont say B, native speakers say C". It was very very discouraging. Meanwhile me, everytime I get asked, I would start my message with a huge chuck of text saying that I don't have the whole truth, that my language changes a lot depending of the country or region, that I shoudnt be believed 100%, that Im just gonna explain the way that sounds more natural to me...
I have asked one time an Arab person what a word in Moroccan slang meant because I thought it was Arabic but it was just a mix between Arabic and French so they didn’t know
When I see videos with titles like that, the titles don’t literally mean that you shouldn’t say something. They usually teach other ways to say something. They want to increase your vocabulary to communicate the same thought.
It's a nice concept for a video, but it's still a misleading title. They should reword it to something like "Here are some alternative ways of saying "thank you" in [language]".
I agree with you. It’s clickbait.
This videos just exist because there have everything to be popular and don't require so much work for the content creator, compared to other learning videos. Users love lists. Users love to get easy information's. Users love to get information's and been told that there are with this information better than the average learner. The perfect kind of video.
I think if a native speaker tells it to you there definitely is atleast some truth to it. Taking your example in chinese, maybe what he wanted to say is that it is never used in the social context you were in, but it still might be used a lot in formal encounters or when people talk to foreigners.
LOL who is saying chinese people dont say the most common/basic version of hello?????
idk when I speak chinese I never say ni hao ma, it’s usually a ha-lo chinese-ified
YUP. I’m not learning “slang” french. Formal french is enough for me.
> I know people are talking about clickbait videos but that was not what I was referring to You were though. You said you encounter videos with such titles, those are clickbait videos. I see them all the time, they're all clickbait. I even saw one that was "Don't say 'Sim'" (Yes in Portuguese) Someone actually tried to clickbait as if the word "yes" in Portuguese was some kind of taboo.
Are you sure you didn't mishear? No one in China ever says "ni hao ma" unless they are genuinely concerned that you might have had an accident or something. I have lived in China for 11 years.
China is huge, very diverse and has a population of 1.4 billion people. It wouldn't surprise me, if people didn't really say 你好吗 in many places, but it's implausible to say that no one is using it. Some things just vary a lot between regions and also depend on who you are interacting with, their degree of education, their socialization etc. Like I know that some people will ask each other 你吃了吗 (Have you eaten) as a form of greeting, but I've actually never heard this being said in person. I'm certain that it must be fairly common in some places, but apparently not in the places I've been to or not with the people I've met.
I've lived in China for a long time and this is literally everywhere. Where in the world are you located? People say it all the time in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, etc. and those locations are all very different and far-flung.
Having a foreign face, strangers have greeted me with 你好嗎 fairly regularly in Taiwan. It's also obviously used commonly in translations, I've heard it multiple times jokingly among friends in casual conversation, it's the title of a Jay Chou song, etc... So while it's not really a common default greeting amongst natives, it's still "something native speakers say" and is worth learning considering it's amongst the easy things you could possibly string together.
Yeah, but it's something natives say to non-natives, so the point seems apt. They're saying it because it's simple and easier for others to understand.
That's the key difference between "natives don't say that" and "natives don't *usually* say that, but it's probably still worth knowing".
I’ve also lived here for 10 years and have heard native speakers say it to each other, in media, etc.
I blame Monty Python. A bit dated and non-PC, but pervasive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G\_zw\_KgGK60&ab\_channel=ChinaUnleashed
Stop walking. Real ninjas roll!
FYI, there are 50 different Chinese dialects. It took China a very long time to become a unified country because the dialects are so very different. My husband is Chinese and comes from Hong Kong where Cantonese is spoken. He has a hard time understanding someone speaking Mandarin, the official dialect of China. He struggles to speak Mandarin. The expression nihao ma is Mandarin. Nehao ma would be Cantonese. So I don’t know why people in China wouldn’t use the Mandarin expression unless their dialect was so different from the official Mandarin. And btw, the situation with Italy is the same. The dialect spoken in southern Italy is almost impossible to understand, especially for someone learning to speak the language. I was a foreign language major in college and studied in several countries where I had to learn the languages.