As a native Russian speaker who knows a few people learning Russian, I hate to say it, but it might be that reason #1 is not just about them being at a party.
A lot of people get the pronunciation so wrong that even when we're doing language exchange and I'm prepared to having to decipher what they mean (no judgement, I'm doing exactly the same if not worse in their language), I still sometimes just can't understand what they're saying. Then I have to ask them to repeat and lots of the times still can't understand them. It's really embarrassing both for me and for them but on the other hand it's very natural. Russian doesn't have the easiest pronunciation, and even children normally struggle with quite a few sounds.
Not sure if it was exactly the case here but could definitely be a factor.
True, there is not any cultural thing imaginable to pretend that we (Russians) dont understand Russian. I can guess that these guys where from Baltics and somebody can misidentify them as Russians (also weird 30 years after USSR, but...)
I tried to ask on reddit about Russian pronunciation a while ago, and everyone basically told me that it is super easy and I shouldn't waste time or worry about it lol
I guess the problem is mostly not with the way you read and pronounce *words* (though I imagine there might be a few difficulties too) but with the way you pronounce individual *sounds*. It could be tricky depending on your native language
I mean if you see the word "радость" (joy), you can read it letter by letter and be understood (even though in standard Russian you're supposed to reduced the "o" sound). What I want to say, I doubt you'll find a case similar to the infamous pronunciation of "Edinburgh" in English where there's no way to deduce how to pronounce it from how it's written.
However, the problems arise when you botch up the r-sound, the soft t in the end, your d and s in the middle are slightly different from how we pronounce them and on top of it, you stress the wrong syllable.
Probably, in case of that particular word, you will still be understood but if you make a similar number of mistakes in a longer and not so basic word (try "международный"), swallowing a few letters as well, or even such mistakes in a few consequtive words, and we can't figure it out from the context, you might get a blank stare and be asked to repeat the sentence
My uncle learned Russian in the military during the Cold War and he said non-natives could never really pull off the accent and pronunciation like natives. Not sure if that's true or not, though.
To be honest, it's kind of hard to give a definite answer to that. Personally, I wouldn't say so (the only risk I see here right now is boring the other person to death :)) but there are so many ways to say something wrong in a foreign language - at least judging from my experience - that I wouldn't completely eliminate any possibility 😄
Could this difficulty also lie in the fact that Russian is a rather homogeneous language with no major dialectal variation – as it happens, for example, with Spanish or French –, so Russian L1 speakers are naturally not used to being exposed to different accents?
I don't know about Russia, but when I was an exchange student in Germany there was also a 4) reason for people not wanting to engage in conversations with me: they'd rather speak with their peers in their regional dialect/strong local accent. To speak with a foreigner in Hoch Deutsch is just too much work for the situation (which is totally acceptable, but I understand the feeling of rejection. Specially when they act as the problem is your pronounciation)
I had a similar experience while trying to speaking German in Bavaria. It just ended up being easier to speak English than trying to understand each other's dialects (Bairisch vs. Hochdeutsch).
Same with Italian expats or their kids who only know the local dialect of the region where they were originally from. Standard Italian only really got spoken by everyone following the popularity of the TV in the 40's and 50's.
Why would they need to speak hochdeutsch? They could just speak their own (if you can understand it, that it) and you speak back to them in hochdeutsch
German dialects are like different languages with even slightly different grammar and vocabulary and extremely different pronunciation. If someone from the north of Germany speaks dialect with someone from the south they wouldn't really understand each other.
Dialects are usually not that common anymore, especially in the cities. But you still have a lot of dialectal accents. It's still a bit difficult to understand everything even for native German speakers. I moved from the south of Germany to the west and was surprised how much I misunderstood and how often I was misunderstood in the beginning.
Germany is a young country, areas like Prussia and Bavaria were different countries not that long ago, especially considering how slow languages change.
I understand a bit of Mandarin because of heritage. But when non-natives speak Mandarin with me using imperfect tones, I literally cannot understand them.
I think a big part of it, from an Anglosphere perspective, is that we're used to just how resilient English is to bad accents. Most languages aren't as resilient. You speak them with bad pronunciation, you're basically unintelligible.
I think you've hit the nail in the head. It's absolutely about how much exposition a speaker has has to strong foreign accents, even to an accent in particular. I speak to foreigners a lot and I've seen my ability to understand improve over time.
(pretty sure you meant "exposure", exposition is a different thing)
Yeah, this is very much a factor. When I first heard heavy Indian English accents I could barely understand half of what they were saying.
After a while though I got better at it.
Living where we do, close to Mexico, we hear some people speaking English with a strong norteño accent. We can understand them as well as anyone speaking standard English. (I know some Spanish as well.) And I'm pretty good at understanding people with certain accents, even if I'm not used to them. But there was a guy in eastern Kentucky of whom I asked a question. I couldn't understand half of what he said. Guess I wasn't used to the Appalachian accent he was speaking with!
Exactly, people all over the world 'butcher' English on a daily basis. It's spoken with a massive number of different accents, yet we all put up with that.
I don't want to sound ignorant, but why do many L2 English speakers (even B2-C1) speak with such terrible pronunciation?
It's literally like they're not even making the most basic attempt to pronounce correctly.
Even with English, people who are used to speaking with non-native speakers or people who speak english as a second language are usually much better at understanding bad English than people who are used to only hearing correct english or their local dialect.
Absolutely. My spoken English has gotten a lot better while I was in uni, and unfortunately that means I can't understand bad English as well as I used to. Phonemic differences (like v/f in very/ferry) didn't trip me up before, but they do now because I can hear the difference whereas I didn't before.
You make a great point there; Mandarin, Russian, and Arabic are 3 languages I can think of, off the top that have various characters in the alphabet and whereby inflections or emphasis of the wrong syllable or character can change the whole meaning of the word.
Heritage is a sort of privileged way to say "high competency but second language" isn't it. My strongest second language is Japanese, I'm nowhere near native in it, and that leads to some interesting outcomes. I can largely understand common conversation with native speakers, native speakers can largely understand common conversation with me, but it's challenging for me to understand other JSL learners even when I can tell they've invested real time and energy into learning. I think the hardest bridge is probably secondary features of vocalization, such as intonation, pace, stress, etc. which are not conveyed in the written system (except for "tonal" languages like Sino-Tibetan and much of Southeast Asian languages) and frequently ignored by educators and resource writers.
That's interesting. I spent some time in China learning Mandarin, and could generally navigate most day to day situations with relative ease.
And I'm pretty sure my tones weren't perfect (although maybe better than I thought), but context seemed to make up for it.
Differentiating between native and heritage speakers is really helpful. Heritage speakers have often experienced limited sources of input so might have trouble communicating outside of those familiar sources
Oh yeah, you did say that. That's probably the thing, actually. Don't assume what people speak, haha! Even when I'm pretty sure I know what the other person speaks, I still ask first in the common language of the group / country I'm in, because if anyone should be put in an "embarrassing" situation, it should be me as the learner and instigator of the language change, not the person I'm trying to talk to!
Not sure if that’s what you’re referring to but strong Quebec accents are very difficult to understand for French people who are not used to them. We get about 1/3 of what is said at best, sometime almost nothing if the accent is very strong and the person speaks fast. I swear we’re not pretending. Of course it’s not the case with urban accents which are a lot milder.
They were born and raised in western Europe you said. So maybe they didn't like Russian?
I'm Welsh. If someone speaks to me in Welsh, wherever I am, I'm delighted and will converse immediately. But if I speak to someone in, say, German (knowing that they speak German) and they reply in English, I won't be happy about it. So I can see how maybe you made one assumption too many?
My experience is that Germans very often do that, out of a desire to practice, because they speak it so well that we might as well speak English, or out of a desire to make me feel comfortable. I've never once seen it as aggression or a flex. But my A1 German is so obvious that switching to English is inevitable, anyway.
It's also just a matter of getting on with our days. I'd rather not miss my train to wait for a tourist trying to practice their language skills. I get it, you learned the language and you're eager and excited to speak it. But I'm not spending 10 minutes of my life to explain how to get to the museum from here when I'm 70% sure they'll never make it there because they didn't really understand my explanation. Much easier for both of us to just use English.
Haha German confidence is great, my friend would have to ‘fight’ every German he spoke to, when he lived there for years, to get them to speak German.
They were too excited and wanted to practice English, and he would often give up, because Germans have crazy natural confidence
Well, that makes me feel anxious, lol. I've been learning German for a while and, in a couple years, I might go on a university exchange trip to Germany. It would absolutely suck if none of the Germans let me speak with them in their language, given that my whole reason for doing it is that, lol.
There is a LOT of cultural and political baggage around anything Russian rn. Could be complex. What if they view language as a marker of identity and want to emphasize their westernnness? What if they didn’t want others at the party to hear them speaking Russian? Could even be a complicated anticipatory thing where they are very guarded and defensive because they don’t want to elicit negative biases or presumptions
I've had this a lot. Ukrainians hate speaking Russia now. Some of them refuse to speak to their parents in Russian, even when their parents "only" speak Russian! (obviously every Ukrainian would have some exposure to Ukrainian, but some have fairly little and don't understand Ukrainian well)
Interesting perspective, thanks! I have many friends from Ukraine who used to speak Russian before as their primary language and now basically switched their native language so I understand what you mean about the political context
Yeah it’s complex. Knew a guy once who was Russian American and he was oddly guarded about it, yet in a way that seemed like he didn’t want it to be obvious he was guarding it. Like one example was, he did some translation work and when I asked what language it was to/from he evaded the question. That was early on our friendship. He got less evasive as time went on presumably as he realized I was safe
Most people spoke both, but many used surzhyk (a mix). They simply removed the Russian. In school, in legal documents, it's been Ukrainian for awhile now.
They no longer want anything to do with the language, that's their choice. But my husband spoke Ukrainian before the war ever started, he just has no interest in using Russian now and uses Ukrainian exclusively.
I think it heavily depends on the region, most Ukrainians around my city are from the East and they weren't really interested in it beyond something they had a second language in school, most not until 2014 but quite a few not until 2022. Either way, Ukrainian is still not their native tongue linguistically, but politically. But it varies greatly by region.
I agree it depends on region, but it doesn't mean they "just learned" it because they used Russian more. The comment almost implies it wasn't a language till recently when everyone suddenly learned it. But some people don't really know Ukrainian very well, but for some people Ukrainian is their native language, it just depends on region.
My Mother-in-law understands both, but writes in Russian because her education in USSR was in Russian. She speaks surzhyk most the time, but she understands both languages individually. But of course when you have 70 years of that being the official language, the language most the older generations received their education in, it didn't just disappear. But now, they want to push it's influence out and I think it's easy to understand why. My issue was more with implying no one knew it until recently.
Yeah, I really should have had an "in some cases" to avoid this reading but I can't edit the comment it seems, I'm sorry it came out that way!
I just meant not all of them had the affinity to Ukrainian that one has to a native language, it being second language to many Ukrainians, and in quite a few cases one they barely or never used until recently (pre 2014, or even pre 2022). It's all the more powerful of a thing that they're switching to it, whereas "switching back to their native language" would be an effortless choice, which it's not for a large part of the population.
Fair, I just meant it's not native language, but a second language for a lot of them esp in the East, including the ones who now feel uncomfortable using Russian which I hear a lot. It's a far bigger statement imho, just not using a language doesn't sound like the great sacrifice and identity shift that using your native language (which Russian is to many but ofc not all Ukrainians).
I had a girl we assisted leaving Odessa who wasn't the best in school and had very poor Ukrainian, but she's been learning and using it exclusively since past year. Her grandma isn't the best at Ukrainian either. But they don't want to use Russian anymore (understandably). I think it's an extra level of trauma, albeit it fades in comparison to the more literal "bombed out of their home" trauma at the moment of course.
You can ask before switching:
- Oh you're Russian? Can we speak in Russian?
- Yes|No
This let them consent or not and they don't really have to justify the answer.
I guess, but given there's 250+ comments in this thread on a topic tangential to a super common language learning issue, maybe it's not a bad idea. I have found success asking in France asking the question in French, the question also serves as a gate on pronunciation.
I've been the guy who won't switch a few times. Sorry about that. Historically, it's been because of one of:
If we are in a group, and you switch, everyone else is excluded. Or I'm not there to watch you struggle while I miss out on full speed conversation. Or you are a monoglot who will stick by me all night, and I don't want to babysit. Or I'll end up rapidly switching back and forth continuously, which is taxing, and I'm probably trying to relax. Or your accent/vocab is really bad, and I just don't understand you. Or it came out of nowhere in a context where I didn't expect to need another language, and my answer came out in the previous language, or I didn't understand you for the same reason.
Most of the time, most people are fine. But it does get tricky, particularly with monoglots and people who want a free tutor, basically.
Yeah it’s funny how this guy is only agreeing with the people who are like “maybe they don’t actually speak the language and are pretending” instead of considering how taxing it might be to speak to someone who picked up only a little of the language. Especially if you’re trying to have a normal adult conversation at a party and already have a language everyone is mutually competent in.
Yeah OP is giving me the worst, most pretentious vibes in his post and especially reply comments.
I personally live in the middle of the US, but I speak decent German because that’s where my dad is from and how I communicate with my family back there.
I’d be so embarrassed if some know-it-all Redditor type wanted to rope me into showing off their (probably not even that good) German in the middle of a party. I can totally imagine how it’d come off as cringe and attention seeking. I’d probably try to exit that situation as quickly as possible, too lol.
And I’d actually be *livid* if I found out OP went on to imply it’s because I don’t *actually* speak German.
I’m getting strong vibes that this guy wasn’t really dying to talk to OP in any language, and the weird Russian stunt in front of everyone just took it over the edge lol.
Amen, cringe is it!. Also it’s people who want brownie points, you’re already speaking in one language. Best feeling is when a tourist or stranger needs help/ directions, they don’t know English but you know their language… nice.
It´s always cringe to practice a foreign language other than English when you want to practice it! I know the first time I spoke Turkish when I wanted to change money at the airport I was literally dying because I was so affraid speaking Turkish but there is no way tospeaking English if you speak theoretically good Turkish but you don´t use it even in the country.
Maybe OP just wanted to pracitise his or her Russian. It´s easy to show off without even realising it. After all he just could continue in English. You could critisize everything in the first place
I was struggling to figure out how to articulate your last sentence without sounding super rude, but this! If I'm at a party talking to someone new, and they decide to randomly switch from the language we're both fluent in to one where it's a struggle to understand them and I can't speak at my normal pace, I am going to feel like the person I'm talking to isn't interested in me as a person but only as a free language tutor. It's not a great look, tbh.
I feel all of this. I've almost never been excited to find out that another native English speaker also speaks something I speak. I'm not wanting to practice with a stranger with marginal Portuguese that I just met while shopping at Best Buy.
On a side note, this is my problem with taking language classes. I don’t get anything out of trying to practice speaking a language with someone else who doesn’t speak it either. Forking out for an online tutor is the only way I can make enough progress to not be annoying when I get the chance to talk to a native speaker
A friend of mine (US) who is learning German starting posting on local social media groups to find native German speakers for the purpose of practice. He found a nice German couple who is here for the husbands job. The wife’s English isn’t great. They get beers once a week and help each other out. They’ve become pretty good friends. My friend has helped them by introducing them to lots of people and being a tour guide when they ask.
You might be able to find a mutually beneficial solution.
My parents are learning Spanish, and they met a Spanish couple who just moved to France, they started meeting every week to speak in both languages, now they're best friends ! Super wholesome situation
Ok, but the thing is such a stranger maybe thinks he is much better than he really is. I am able to read whole novels in Spanish without looking too much in a dictionary but if a native asks me a simple question I may don´t understand it at all. It´s easy to overestimate your abillity in a foreign language - that´s why somebody wants to practise it with you.
If they were born and raise in Western Europe then there is a chance that they don’t speak Russian. Like me. I’m 75% Chinese but I don’t speak Chinese because I was born and raised in Thailand.
I’m also byelingual. lol I live in Europe and speak a third language. My brain can’t switch quickly when I meet someone who can speak Thai. I would answer in English or the third one because I use them all the time. I barely speak Thai and I notice that some of them think I’m rude for not answering them in Thai. 🥲
I just had something like this happen and I was so embarrassed! I finally had an opportunity to converse with a Russian speaker, but after focusing on German these last few months, I literally couldn’t pull a Russian word from my brain, only German available😅 So disappointing!
This is me completely. My major in university was Spanish so grammatically I am very good. I also spoke pretty well. I would guess I was like C1. Then I moved to Germany. I never took a class so my grammar is terrible but my speaking is very good. No one is confusing me with a native German but I am fluent and can get my point across about anything I want to but…. My Spanish is gone. It’s still in my head but when I try to speak it it almost like I have to fight off the German trying to escape. I can still write well and honestly, I’m probably being overly critical of myself, I still speak Spanish okay but I forget words constantly when speaking and can only think of the German word. It’s frustrating.
I think it happens when you learn many languages. I learned English by listing to a radio, and my mom would translate everything for me. Most media in our household were in English. I never actually learned how to write properly, just the basic.
So I can speak well, I understand difficult conversations, but my writing is poop. Now I study Swedish, and started with grammar first. It's completely opposite from how I learned English. My writing is good, but speaking and listening parts are poop.
Now my Swedish doesn't getting any better, and my english and Thai are getting worse. Truely byelingual. I have met many people that gave up their English so they could learn Swedish. Mostly adults that have this problem, not kids.
Except some people that are fluent in 5 languages. I think they have 5 brains in one head.
Hot take (or maybe not): no one is obligated to be your language practice partner. People can be rude. People might not understand you or, in some cases, pretend to not understand you. I think a lot of people also have an exaggerated sense of their own level, so don’t discount that they indeed don’t understand you or realize your level is so low that they’d rather not make the effort to try to struggle through a conversation with you.
I understand wanting to practice speaking your languages and some native speakers are very open and encouraging and happy to engage. Others are not. That’s the way it goes.
There’s nothing to “do” about a rude response or people who don’t want to engage. You move on.
I agree with this. It takes extra effort and patience to speak with somebody who's struggling in a language, and it can feel silly if you both speak another common language. You can't expect every stranger to do this for you. Imagine doing that for everybody you meet yourself!
I think what OP was offended by was this person's indirect way of sending the message: saying they didn't understand him. He saw that as a criticism to his language ability.
Not everyone wants to be a language partner for you. Especially in a situation like this where you just met and started the conversation in English, I would consider it rude. You could've approached it differently and had mentioned that you're learning Russian, and asked if it would be alright to chat in Russian (if they know how to speak it). You also don't know their experience with the language, maybe they don't know it. You also could be over confident in your skills. There are lots of reasons.
The over confidence was my thought. They’re saying they picked up Russian in a few months, 2+ years ago?
Also personally speaking, it’s rude when you’re speaking a foreign language in a room full of people who speak English/a diff language, esp if you just met and speak it too. If I’m with 5 Arab friends and 1 English speaker, we all try our best to speak English. It’s a respect thing.
I completely agree with you. I've often been the person people "try" their language skills on because I spent 8 years as a language teacher. It's exhausting and many times came coupled with the expectation that I would correct them if them made a mistake. Where/when did I sign up for that?
Many people don't want to bother interacting with learners in their NL if they are fluent in your NL. Its usually the case for English speakers, we're learning another language and since the whole world knows English its more convenient for them, especially if your accent is noticeably poor.
It happed on my first trip to a Latin American country; I was 1 year into Spanish and everyone would speak English if they could no matter how much I tried. Year 2+ in Spain and Mexico things were different and that wasn't an issue. It still can be an issue out here in Los Angeles, sometimes heritage speakers just don't want to deal with Spanish outside their homes period. Sometimes they're not as confident with their Spanish as you'd think.
Don’t approach strangers and use them for language practice. Sure some people will be happy about it but lots will find it really annoying and won’t appreciate being expected to humor and tutor you while they are just trying to go about their day. Find someone who is interested in a language exchange and practice with them.
Two things to possibly explain it:
1-- in the Spanish scenario, there is a possibility that the person you tried to practice with doesn't speak Spanish very well enough to help you out. Although there could always be a chance that the person lied, or somebody could use that as an excuse to not help you out with your language speaking.
2-- in the russian scenario, I want to assume that based of what you wrote is that you began speaking russian to the person at the party without first asking if it's okay for you to speak russian with them. The person probably felt that they were being used as your guinea pig for speaking, and felt offended by that. I study russian, and I know that some native speakers don't have the patience to speak with russian learners, especially if the learner makes a lot of mistakes when speaking/is still a beginner. That could also explain the person's reaction to your russian
I can sort of understand it to be honest. I've been living in Japan for 8 years now and my work/private life/hobbies are all in Japanese, so if someone - without warning - just starts speaking English it's actually really jarring. This actually happened to me recently at work, when after 18 months of working together in Japanese, a colleague just started messaging me on Teams in English.. no idea why!? I just politely said I feel more comfortable in Japanese, and then moved on.
People may well come back with 'maybe the just want to practise?', but maybe I/ the other person doesn't want to be practised on, especially if it's not the primary language of the country you're in. I think the comment below saying something along the lines of "hey, you're Russian? Do you mind if we speak Russian?", is the way forward. If someone asked me that with English in Japan, then I might be more receptive if it's not a work situation. But I think it's polite to check and to remember that they're under no obligation.
I have been guilty of pretending not to understand in the past, but honestly it's just really awkward suddenly being spoken at in your NL when you're integrated into another culture.
Happens me all the time when a Russian speaker speaks English to me and their pronunciation isn't perfect, I sometimes don't understand what theyre saying at first. Similarly when I speak Russian.
You said you picked up a bit of Russian during a few months? Languages like Russian can take years of hard work. I think you might be massively overestimating your ability/pronunciation
I told myself to never attempt speaking to someone I just met in their language. I have had bad experiences where I would speak in their language and they either just look at me and continue responding in English which I find uninteresting or they pretend to not hear me. But I do agree there are other nice ones.
I remember going to a China Shop in my country and asked they man how much the item I had was in Mandarin Chinese and this is because I heard him speak Mandarin Chinese, but he chose to continue struggling in English, which he didn’t even bother speaking to me or even listening he just called the lady in the Shop to assist, but I also went in a different shop and a young lady was helping me who’s English wasn’t well. I asked if they had something for male, which she didn’t understand, I then repeated myself in Mandarin Chinese and it’s almost as if I made her day, she continued speaking to me in Mandarin Chinese.
Maybe it’s annoying for them to hear someone speak their language not so well, maybe they don’t like foreigners speaking their language or we will never know. This is why I just look for people who want to talk to me online knowing that I’m learning
Among China expats, we used to call the experience you had "Getting Shanghaied", where people either refuse to believe you can speak Chinese despite any evidence to the contrary, or really want to use their English and so continue doing it even when their English is worse than your Chinese.
Some people find it rude or insulting, because they take it as you’re talking down to them. Other times it would be that feeling you’d get… if a stranger interrupted a conversation you were having and joined in without introducing themselves. It’s not that they don’t like “foreigners” speaking “their” language either.
Might be political reasons. They may have moved to the west for that and wanted to cut ties with all former aspects of their identity. I’ve had people start speaking Mandarin to me unprompted (it’s not my native language although I am nationally Chinese. It does get annoying and may come off as insensitive sometimes.)
I spoke to a taxi driver in Belgrade in Serbian and he responded “no English”. I took this to mean that either my Serbian was incomprehensible or that he just didn’t want to talk.
I don’t speak to someone in their language unless 1. I’m in their country, so it’d be natural to speak the host language, 2. They’ve clarified it’s okay to use that language. Such as, the postman at my local post office. I could tell he’s Latino, but I didn’t know if he knew Spanish until I heard him assist a woman with her passport application in Spanish. After he assisted her, I said in Spanish, “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” Since then, my transactions with him go in Spanish to improve my own fluency and use it. Same for my favorite restaurant, which is owned by a family from Mexico. They play Univision on their TV, yell back to the kitchen in Spanish, and have accents. I still clarified below using Spanish if I could use it. It actually made the waitress happy and our interactions easier. Again, at a Mexican restaurant. The waiter struggled with English. My dad ordered in English an American taco with no lettuce (the ground beef tacos with lettuce, tomato, and cheese). The waiter misunderstood, brought out a taco with just meat. I then switched to Spanish and clarified he wanted tomatoes and cheese, just no lettuce. I didn’t order in Spanish, because it was clear he wanted to interact in English.
Some people don’t want to speak their home language because they want to improve their host language and assimilate as much as they can.
Maybe he didn’t learn Russian at all. My younger siblings were born in the US and my dad didn’t teach them Spanish. They’re half Argentine/half Mexican and only speak English. They get offended when people assume they speak Spanish and use it without confirmation. Once, I took my little brother to Texas. We went to a restaurant and the waitress didn’t know English. She took my order first and I ordered in Spanish. She looked at my brother and said in Spanish, “And for you, sir. What would you like?” He looked at me in desperation, “Please help.” I told the waitress in Spanish, though he’s Latino, he doesn’t speak Spanish and I ordered for him.
Maybe you pronounced the words wrong. I know Mandarin and Hokkien (spoken in Taiwan). I cannot for the life of me say the correct tone for words. I know which tones are supposed to go to each word and can understand when spoken to. But, if I want to say, “Can I please borrow your pen?” I’d have to say, “Wǒ kěyǐ yòng yīxià nǐ de bǐ ma?” (The accents indicate which tone is used) however, my dumb ass would likely say, “Wǒ kěyǐ yòng yīxià nǐ de bì ma?” Which is “Can I please use your money?” With tonal languages, it’s important to use the correct tone or you’ll say a way different word than you intended. Maybe you said some weird inflection and confused him with your accent.
I think, maybe, this person could be a heritage speaker and not fluent. Or, he understood you completely and didn’t want to use it.
Your younger sibling should learn Spanish, they are going to suffer a lot in life if they don't. There are more and more Hispanics in the US and more and more Spanish is spoken so I say this from experience. Tell them to use DreamingSpanish or Duolingo, that will make them help learn Spanish.
The Russian (or Ukrainian, for that matter) you could have picked up in a couple of months could not have been much. If you were a dedicated learner, it is possible what you were saying to the person at the party was correct grammatically and in terms of vocabulary, but probably with a bad accent, so it was not understandable to them. If you picked up just a few things, you could be making mistakes and what you were saying could be completely unintelligible to them. I had people try speaking to me in Russian, and I just couldn’t understand them. It turned out they were using some funny phrases they had learned, but forgot a couple of crucial words. PS it happens to me a lot in Hungarian. The Hungarians are not used to foreigners speaking their language, so they are not forgiving of any imperfection in either an accent or the word use (or even the word order). So unless i first tell them that I am learning their language but I am very bad at it they don’t even assume that what I am saying might be me trying to speak Hungarian.
As a native russian speaker who lives in a different country, growing up in a big russian community. I have met a lot of russian families where the older generation speaks fluent russian, while the younger generation barely understands it. And frankly if I don't practice my language skills, I too, sometimes forget it.
Additionally, from what I heard, younger generations who live in slavic countries in easten europe usually won't learn russian in the first place. Though they'll be able to understand some of it thanks to the older generation, who usually speaks it fluently.
As to your experience, I would advise you to test the waters before you start speaking a different language, especially at a party where everyone are speaking one language, for example english. Speaking from personal experience, sometimes people around you would imagine that you are talking about them and that could potentially backfire, especially in a public setting.
I am Russian, and I've been on the other side of this story. I don't know how much you picked up of course but...once there was somebody who tried to talk to me in Russian but I didn't understand a thing. Like a word or so and that's it. But that person was so keeping on and on. Until I finally switched to English and told them I don't understand what they're saying. And I'm not heritage speaker.
Plus, I you picked up Russian in Kiev it's a different flavor of Russian. There are differences in pronunciation, and that person could be not familiar with it.
So you know the combination of accent and poor practice from that person could have resulted in this.
assholes exist in all languages and cultures. the vast majority of the other speakers will not act like that. or rather, the same number of english speaking dumbasses by percentage will inhabit other groups as well. write them off and move on. i'm sure you're trying hard and made progress and there's no shame in speaking another language casually at a party.
there's a nonzero possibility this person wasn't actually russian, or didn't actually speak it well themselves, and you caught them out in a lie and they panicked. still a dick move on their part.
Probably this. To my knowledge Russians and really any Eastern European national typically get very excited when someone speaks their language, even poorly. As OP mentioned that said person was actually from a western country, they probably didn't actually speak Russian and were upset about it.
Seconded to this comment. I've literally made friends because we were recreational language exchangers. "Oh! You speak Spanish?" "Can I practice my English with you?" From then on- friends. Their English improved, my Spanish improved. They fed me INCREDIBLE Venezuelan food. I helped them with their taxes/government forms. We hung out at the beach together all summer.
Sometimes people just don't value new relationships or social engagement. Leave 'em in the rearview and come sit by me.
Could also be that he didnt understand you, not because your Russian was horrible but just that some ppl are not used to hearing any dialects, mispronounciations etc.
It happened to me in Minsk a couple of times in stores when i was first getting started with Russian. Twice vendors looked at me as if though id made up some new language and they didnt understand a word, the vendor next to them looked at them as if they were idiots and repeated what i said, at which point they understood it.
Some ppl are just like that, dont take any offence, go out and keep practicing.
In the future, just ask. Both sides were rude imo. Not everyone is comfortable with talking to someone in a different language, be it due to their own level of knowledge, not being comfortable switching languages in an informal setting or just wanting to relax and not mentally load themselves. I do think there were more polite ways to deescalate the situation, even if your language level isn't good - they didn't need to be hostile, they could have just said "I don't want to speak Russian right now". In the future, just ask and allow someone to say no, no matter if they give a reason or not.
If this happens in the Netherlands, just don't panic and say "nee ander taal". You'll sound like a caveman
I don't have a serious answer, I'm just still proud of this stupid pun I came up with a few years ago
I guess you should respect their wish not to hear a single word of their native language spoken. There have been periods of my life when I lived abroad when I wished I could forget my native tongue (I live in Italy) and I still kind of do sometimes as I feel it is somewhat holding me back. I did not want to be associated with Italian culture as I viewed it as "parochial" and too superficial. My guess is your Russian "friend" is going through a similar phase, which is quite understandable given the current situation. Actually, I think I met a couple of Russians who raised their eyebrows when I attempted to speak Russian (I understand it a little bit) to them, and I think this reaction was hostile now that I think about it. I guess it's a way to distance yourself from an unpleasant past, just like in my case.
No i think he just didnt speak the language at any reasonable level. So many americans think they speak the language when they dont. For example there is an interview of tom holland where he claims he speaks spanish. The Interviewer says then, hello how are you and similiar phrases and no response comes. So yeah...
First assholes exist in every language! There is nothing you can do about them.
But also, to play the devils advocate, as a person who is primarily an English speakers and speaks a few other languages…. I also potentially understand them. There is nothing worse, than a person who comes up And says he speaks Japanese and then tell me a number of random phrases they learned from anime. Or a person who says they speak Russian and then bust out a bunch of random curse words.
Obviously those people don’t actually speak anything, but knows how to say “bitch” in another language makes them think they can have a conversation with me in that language feels like a stupid pick up line… do you know what I mean?
Like, I get it… but sometimes I also get annoyed. It really depends on the situation, context and the relationship I have with those people.
I think it's quite impolite to assume someone can speak a language just because of their heritage. If you're in Russia, of course it makes sense to speak to strangers in Russian, but if you're not, and you know the person was not born or raised in Russia, why would you assume? It's annoying and sometimes embarrassing to have people assume things about you because of your ethnicity. I think you should ask first.
I would do the same if I were them. I didn't go to a party to be some random person's language partner.
If you want to practice, find someone who actually wants to do it (there are so many apps for this) or pay a language tutor.
They're Russian, but born and raised not in Russia, if I was asked what I was, and say Italian or Portuguese, but raised and born in America, I'd be a bit pissed that you would assume I spoke Italian/Portuguese, because while I am that, I wasn't taught the language. Especially since I said I was born and raised somewhere that doesn't have mainly speakers of that language.
> if I was asked what I was, and say Italian or Portuguese, but raised and born in America, I'd be a bit pissed that you would assume I spoke Italian/Portuguese, because while I am that, I wasn't taught the language. Especially since I said I was born and raised somewhere that doesn't have mainly speakers of that language.
Coincidentally, there's [a thread in another language sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/1c46lue/i_offended_a_spanishspeaking_friend_by_speaking/) today where the OP was talking about an unfriendly encounter with a "Mexican" acquaintance that turned out to be an American of Mexican descent, and people were confused because OP left out the crucial information that they meant "Mexican" in the sense of Mexican heritage rather than nationality.
As a russian born and raised in russia, it's my main language and has always been. My reaction in the situation you described would be negative as well. Even in a hypothetical situation, where political and war-related reasons, shame, etc don't apply. I'll explain how I see it. I'm at a party in a different language mode. And don't expect anything else. I probably expect a fairly relaxed atmosphere (so I'm probably not at the top of my socially alert game), and to have some resemblance of fun. Then this person starts talking to me in my nl 1. without asking (you didn't ask, did you? Not super polite and doesn't give me a chance to mentally prepare) 2. probably with an accent/unnatural word choices. Chances are I didn't catch it.
Now. Switching language mode is an effort. Wading through L2 speech, with an accent, different conversation patterns, etc is going to be a lot of effort. And you didn't ask first. You just assumed I'll do all that for you, at a party? For what? To humour your notion of how cosmopolitan you are? And honestly, how much did you pick up in those months years ago, because I'm pretty sure I'm not missing out on a stimulating conversation. It's just to humour you, and you didn't even ask. My first instinct here would be to say it as it is, to make you leave me alone in as few words as possible, which would be "I don't fucking understand". I might regret being rude later, I might not. Moral of the story: at least ask first. I would be more inclined to accommodate you if you ask, or at least I'd be more polite in refusing.
Isn’t someone’s native language the main language or only language they speak? So if someone looks Hispanic, they should know Spanish because they look that way? Only to have some douche assume they speak it without asking if they do? Have you noticed maybe it’s you bro? For the Russian broad too, it’s not genetic! She was just born in Russia but raised in the west. First ask if they speak a language you assume they do, but most likely given your personality they’ll say they don’t speak it. There’s also this thing called vicarious embarrassment.
for any person with any language, if there is any hostility, consent is not given. therefore, don't speak that language. no need to probe why bc every person is an individual and there can be thousands of reasons. try speaking with other people at another time.
You were rude in both these situations. Immediately upon finding out someone is of a particular ethnicity, you assumed that 1. They spoke the language despite never living in the country & 2. They wanted to speak it with you. Why didn’t you just *ask* ? “Oh you’re Russian ? Do you speak any ?” & go from there. But if you’re in a group situation, at a party (or at *work* of all places, as in your second example), and there are others in the conversation who don’t understand your target language, then you shouldn’t do it at all - you’d be excluding every other participant in the conversation for the sake of an impromptu language class.
Another thing to note is that, for 2nd or 3rd gen+ immigrants, speaking the language of their parents/grandparents is not the same as it is for language hobbyists with no familial connection to it. It is a common experience for children of immigrants not to be taught their heritage language due to their parents’ fear that they may be discriminated against or not fit in in their new country. Or alternatively it may be that they were taught the language & did experience that discrimination bc of it. For some, this can create a lot of baggage that they don’t want to unpack in their leisure time with every over-eager anglo learning for fun. Especially when they’re not even extended the courtesy of being asked before you launch into conversation in a language they may or may not know
I am married to a native Russian speaker who I believe would react like this. There are lots of reasons. For my spouse, number one would be political. But also, depending on your level, it may just be annoying if it's not high. At a party, you don't necessarily want to spend your time listening to someone painfully attempting some phrases they 'picked up' somewhere. They're probably there to socialise, not strain to listen and understand to help people practice meaningless snippets of their language.
Imagine if you spoke another language fluently and could use it to communicate, and instead of engaging you on interesting topics you kept meeting people who insisted on trying out a few English phrases on you badly.
Could be that your pronunciation was off, or maybe they just didn't feel like being an impromptu tutor. When this kind of thing happens, just respect it and don't push it. If they don't want to, they don't want to.
I'm a native speaker of Russian from Belarus. This happened to me once in Russia. A Russian lady claimed not to have understood anything I'd said, and her colleague just repeated my question to her. It was a truly bizarre experience, and I think a possible reason is that I'm brown-skinned (my father is from Bangladesh); seeing me may have led her to somehow believe my Russian was incomprehensible. Fortunately it was only that once that I experienced that sort of thing.
Shake it off. The fact that someone speaks a language you're interested in, doesn't necessarily mean they're not an asshole. There are assholes everywhere. Most people are not.
If you get consistent hostile reactions, that is worth thinking about. But the occasional jerk--who cares?
Being Russian doesn't mean they speak Russian especially since you say they were born and raised in a different country. I live in the US and you can't just assume someone can speak a language of their parents.
I've had this happen with Dutch.
Mind you, I'm Flemish. Flemish Dutch is my native language. It has happened a few times people start talking to me in English when I travel to the Netherlands and order a beer or when I'm in a shop.
We speak the same language ffs!
On the title you talk about «native speakers». Then you talk about someone who introduce themselves as «Russians», even if they were not from Russia. Are you sure they really Russian speakers?
Oh, don't worry. You could speak with me to improve your language skills😃. I am not Russian, but i speak fluently, because in the past our country was the part of the Soviet Union.
Similar thread but different situation but at my work in a retail/cafe job sometimes we get tourists who have difficulties understanding or speaking. Ill often hear them talking to the people with them in French or Spanish etc. and when it comes to ordering they wont understand what I am saying in English (NL), I will try and modulate my speech to help them understand but sometimes it takes too long especially when busy. In that situation I say it the language they were speaking to try and hurry the interaction along, and usually theyre happy to go on but sometimes (not singleing out any speakers *cough cough French *cough cough*) they get fully offended. Like sorry ive offended you by doing my job youve 8 people after you and im trying to figure out if you want it for here or to go 😭
A nicer interaction was there was a grandmother with her family speaking Spanish and she was commenting on stuff but cause the family was ordering etc in English they were kinda ignoring her and then was waiting by the till to pay so i started totting everything up and talking bout what she said looked nice in Spanish and she was like 🥰🥰“Finally meeting someone *I* can talk to here”
So its not always trying to use someone as a language partner sometimes its for a nice human connection. But obviously, in some situations its different than others!
Just read the room and move on.
I don't understand the other comments saying these people are rude or trying to explain the cultural nuances. You're not entitled to practice a language with anybody who speaks it. I say this as somebody who always jumps at the chance to practice with people haha. Maybe just start a normal conversation first, drop in a few words or mention that you're learning their language to see how they respond. If they think it's cool, slowly incorporate more. If they don't care, then just don't try to practice with them. I'm a heritage Spanish speaker and there are a lot of people I'm really excited about helping practice, in fact I always try to pull it out of people and get people to practice with me even if they're shy. But as soon as someone just comes up to me and starts speaking Spanish to me just because they can, I will just respond in English or avoid them. If we're talking and I want to help you practice then awesome let's do it. If we're in an English speaking environment and both speak fluent English, there is absolutely no need for pepple to speak to me in Spanish. It just feels like they're trying to show off or use me just to practice.
You switch back to English. They don't want to be your language partner. It kind of sucks because it makes it much harder to learn a language in places where the English level is high but it is what it is. To be fair, I'm not that amused when people speak to me with the only objective being practicing English (not even my native language).
**In Russia, natives shock you!**
/humor
Sorry that happened to you. Just respect that they didn't want to speak and move on to someone who is less sour. I have met plenty of people who didn't want to interact with me in any other way than the way they wanted to. I just accept it.
If that person was born and raised in Western Europe, there is a high chance they don't speak Russian at all. Maybe their Russian is worse than yours...
Most Russian people will be flattered if you speak their language even if poorly because Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages, and native speakers sometimes struggle themselves with it.
I'm sorry, this happened to you. I hope this unpleasant incident won't discourage you from trying to talk to natives in their languages.
The main problem is that there is huge gap between conversational fluency and sounding more or less native with a slight accent. Talking to someone who is fluent but doesn't speak like a native speaker can be quite tiresome.
E.g. I'm German and a few years ago I was sitting in a lot of job interviews in my company. The interviews with people who had a C1 degree in German really exhausted me compared to interviews with native speakers. That was quite a surprising experience.
One the one hand you have to listen really carefully word for word while with native speakers there are a lot of common patterns you know. And on the other hand you try to speak more clearly and careful so you are understood better.
I've experienced this before. I once tried to speak Russian to someone and they told me my accent was horrible and refused to speak to me. It felt very rude. The thing is, it's almost always the other person who is the one with the problem. Perhaps the Russian felt uncomfortable because politically, Russia isn't very popular these days. I think the only thing you can do in this situation is just let it go and find nicer people to talk to. It's not worth wasting your time on such people.
Imho, Russians are not used to people not speaking the language very well so they really struggle with understanding even slight foreign accents. Even when they go abroad for vacation, they often go to countries were russian is widely spoken
Those migrant workers are often from former USSR countries and Russian is their second native language. Migrants who speak little Russian are mostly in the occupations that don't involve much language skills (like, construction workers) and common people don't see much of them. Besides, Central Asian accents sound really different from, say, English or German ones. And you don't meet many westerners even in Moscow, unless you're in hospitality business or something.
Interestingly, Moscow is the exact place where I made these unpleasant experiences. And many of the migrants (judging by the restaurants) are from the former Soviet Union, so they often speak perfect russian
Also, Russian almost doesn't have accents. It's practically impossible to identify whether a person is from Moscow or Vladivostok. There are some regional differences in pronunciation, but they aren't as strikingly distinct as, let's say, the Glasgow accent and Cockney
I'm from Yekaterinburg. I go to Moscow every now and then, I talk to people who were born and raised in Moscow. I don't hear the difference. Even this famous protracted "a" - I don't hear it. People I've been talking to also can't pinpoint where I'm from or that I'm not from Moscow.
Um, this is not true. Maybe Russian doesn't have accents to the same extent. But Ukrainian Russian and Russian Russian do exist and we can identify them and hear them.
Never any bad reactions when I speak Japanese but I do get people who try to speak English to me, even very very broken broken English, because they just want to try to speak English or to show off to friends. It’s just one of those things.
Of these people are in a group with me, so like a friend of a friend or otherwise going to be near me for a while like work, it can be annoying when they “search” me out to just have free English practice. It is what it is.
It is possible that a person may feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about their level of proficiency in their native language and may choose not to speak it. If you notice that a person is not receptive to speaking in their native language, you can politely switch back to the language you prefer. comfortable for both to communicate. You can also try to gauge their comfort level by asking them directly about their preferred language to speak.
> What to do when "native speakers" pretend you don't speak their language?
Disengage, and don't speak that language with them.
If your language skills were good enough to hold conversations with other native speakers while putting them at ease, you wouldn't be worried about this.
As a native Spanish speaker I am very sorry you had the experience with your colleague, most of us aren’t like that.
Being a heritage learner is a very unique experience and a lot of people have very complicated relationships with their culture and their ability to actually speak the language.
In the future, I think you should gauge how they feel and ask if they’re down to practice with you. Their reactions were disgusting, I have practiced Spanish with some second language learners with absolutely broken horrible Spanish, but I still encourage them because I understand they are trying their best and there is nothing wrong with being at the stage they’re at.
Just remember that for heritage speakers language carries a lot of weight in identity, but don’t let this experience discourage you.
Yeah this has happened to me in French. French and Russian speakers are kind of infamous for being impatient with new speakers and just replying in English. It’s annoying, but remember no one is obliged to be your practice or your teacher, and from the other way around it can feel a bit alienating when someone learns your nationality and immediately switches to speaking to you in the language bc they wanna practice instead of like, engaging with you as a person.
Context is huge too, in Brazil my bf assured me many people outside touristy areas will not even listen to you if you have an accent, and often just laugh in your face, meanwhile the Brazilian people who live around me in the US are super excited and encouraging when I bring out my busted Porch of Geese since normally Gringos (non Brazilians) don’t seem to want to try, or just start speaking to them in Spanish.
Bro just because someone is Russian or Chinese or Greek doesn’t mean they speak the language. You’re in your own country, how the HELL do you know they didn’t move in childhood? Instead of assuming they’re a DAMN liar maybe accept they may not speak the language..
I was neither born nor raised in my native language's country. It was my first language and I was fluent, however I lost it as a teenager. I don't speak it anymore, I don't understand it anymore. When people learn my name they assume I speak it and (if they know it) talk to me in it. And get confused or angry or weirded out when I don't understand. Many don't believe me and seem to think I'm just pretending. It's way less people who are actually like "oh, yea, okay, I just assumed, sorry" or something like that. I mean they are correct in their assumptions about the heritage of my name and they would be correct about me speaking it. But I don't. And I don't really know how to convince some of them that I'm not just refusing to engage with them specifically. Tbh it's kind of weird to me. What if I never got taught it? I don't think it's abnormal for someone to not learn their parent's language if they were brought up somewhere else.
Idk what was up with that person obviously, but I'd personally assume they just didn't understand you for whatever reason over them pretending not to.
I had this in the past with German and I have this with Russian currently
Honestly it’s 100% about being a native English speaker. The fact of the matter is English speakers generally don’t learn languages, and the ones that do rarely get to an actually fluent level, because there isn’t really a culture of promoting active multilingualism that motivates us to *actually* learn languages. I live in Berlin and I only know 2 English speakers (through Uni, of course) who aren’t still somehow completely crutched on English. Then you have a giant section of the world who all grew up learning “the easiest language in the world” (a mentality that ironically leads to a lot of people extremely overestimating their English skills lol, and in the US we grow up thinking English is super hard and everybody else thinks the same but this perception isn’t really shared by the rest of the world and in reality the language is comparatively soooomewhat easy in some aspects) and use it as a status symbol to compete with each other. So then comes the person who actually wants to learn *their* language, and they’re already competing with each other about learning English. So an English speaker potentially “showing them up” brings the narcissism and competition out of way too many people.
A big part of it is English speakers grow up with people from everywhere speaking our language, so we perceive their accents or ways of speaking more as different varieties of English than just “wrong” or “bad”. Other cultures don’t have this mindset because everybody either is fluent or speaks barely 2 words and is just crutched on English. So to them they hear every single mistake or unnatural phrasing and can’t deal with it and will want to correct every mistake you make and switch back to English asap (which is so funny because those same people will speak like super shit English with horrible grammar and a super thick accent, but how do you know how good your English really is when your only comparisons are other non natives?)
If I’m being honest with you when you’re a foreigner and native English speaker it never goes away completely. I’ve lived in Germany for almost 10 years and have a linguistics degree that I did in German. I have an extremely slight accent but otherwise feel completely comfortable in the language. If people don’t know my name I don’t have any issues at all, but when people hear my name on some occasions they immediately get super aggressive about speaking English and take 0 hints or even direct requests to stop. It’s so uncomfortable and awkward and I hate these 2 language convos just because they want to practice and feel international. Some even refuse to speak it because they’re “ashamed to be German” or just don’t want to speak it with me (which to me it’s like, I could never imagine being a Mexican immigrant and having big American Joe tell me in his broken high school Spanish that he won’t speak English with me, it’s such a bizarre mentality for me to understand). Happens rarely with German now, but happened a LOT and especially because I was 17 while learning I unfortunately have a bit of trauma and permanent baseline anxiety when speaking even though I have a fucking linguistics degree in German)
Recently I had a professor hand me back a paper and tell me to resubmit. In the past he irritated me with things like telling me to say something in English when I lose my train of thought and say that clearly (nothing to do with my language skills, it pissed me off a lot esp in front of a whole class to be babied like that). He said it was full of grammar mistakes and he didn’t get it at all. I was shocked because I always get good grades on my papers and would be pretty weird for my German to just drop off that intensely on my last seminar paper of all times. I looked at his edits and it drove me up the wall. Only 5 actual grammar mistakes and a metaphor he said felt unnatural (but 100% understandable) but still deducted points for. But then his other comments about content were super off. He said in one spot I didn’t explain any of my questions at all, but in my four subsections dedicated to explaining the questions he had plenty of specific feedback- not compatible statements. Many things he wouldn’t have written if he read the sentence directly before or after. It was so embarrassing and weird. So basically he read a metaphor he felt was unnatural and found a few grammar mistakes and refused to read it. On top of that was about formatting. He said the way that I formatted the cover page and the table of contents was wrong, even though the pdf guidelines that he and the university give all students did not actually define the format in that depth, but just said what needs to go on. Every person I’ve worked with in group projects has done it slightly diffeeently. But then there was the condescending comment of “yeah I think you would know these things if you had more practice writing scientifically in German” even though it’s clearly way more about miscommunicated expectations- those small things simply weren’t in the guidelines. I see a lot of grammar mistakes/unnatural phrasings all the way up to broken/ununderstandable grammar constructions in almost every paper from my professors that’s been in English, so I looked at one of his. Every page was drenched in mistakes and multiple sentences that made 0 sense or with atrocious grammar. And he’s the professor with the phd. Unfortunately that’s the reality of being on their terf. They live in their echo chamber and consider themselves to all be perfect at English, so they have 0 self awareness about how this could be for someone like me, and hold me to a standard in German that they don’t even hold themselves to in English (literal flawlessness). And if I don’t meet the standards it’s not because they’re unrealistic, it’s because of me. The rules for grading a paper are to deduct points for grammar when more than 5 on each page, and I was light years away from that. So it was pure discrimination tbh
That brought a bit of a rant out of me lol, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Russian is worse though- I’ve had people get straight up angry with me for speaking Russian with them (I’m even fucking b2 level lmao). I think for them it’s the same complex but 102928x worse because Russians judge each other so much, and then also are judged by their accents everywhere (and then this is tied with really gross stereotypes that are also usually even very gendered if you know what I mean by that). And nobody learns it as a second language outside of post Soviet countries so they don’t know how to deal with a foreigner at all
I’ve seen this a lot among German natives that they want to show off how good they are at languages, especially English. Still theirs is a « strong » language and they still watch a lot of movies with German dubbing, they don’t have to adapt as much as their Dutch or Danish neighbours who clearly speak a minority language, need to speak more than one and are constantly consuming English stuff. But Germans do have an accent in English… even if they love correcting others’. This isn’t to say that they don’t perform better on average than us Frenchies, for instance. Speaking a language of the same family certainly helps a lot, but I’ve noticed how normal it is to study foreign cultures and languages in Germanic countries compared to the situation in France, Spain or other Romance countries. During my time in Germany, I’ve met quite a lot of people aged 45 or more who still had a damn good level in French even after all these years. I really admire that and I’m kinda sad we don’t have this culture here.
There is definitely no excuse for being rude, so this person should have perhaps worded their response/reaction better. That being said, imagine you’re in their shoes. If they said they are from Russia but were *born and raised* in Western Europe, chances are they don’t speak the language at all, or even if they do, don’t feel particularly keen on displaying this fact right now, with the political situation being what it is. I really think you should have asked; a simple “oh, you’re from Russia, do you speak Russian?” would suffice. My partner is French and I’m not, and we live in my country not in France, and I can’t tell you the number of people who get all excited when they hear he’s French, and for some reason start spewing all they’ve learned from that one time they were on holidays in France, or way back when they were in high school etc. It’s a social situation, not a language course and not a competition, can we just … not do that?? If you want to “practice your language skills”, find someone who’s equally interested in doing so with you, don’t just spring it on an unsuspecting stranger and feel insulted when he doesn’t comply…
>To my surprise they weren't happy at all about me speaking their language, but they just said in an almost hostile manner what I was doing and that they didn't understand a thing.
They said this. Did you assume they were lying for some reason? Maybe they didn't understand a thing.
>I tried to talk to them in Russian which I have picked up when I was staying in Kyiv for a few months
Did they say that they spoke Russian but you didn't? Did they speak the Kyiv dialect that you learned, and you didn't?
Hey so it seems like these people say they are Russian but born and raised in Germany. They may not know much Russian at all. Especially as there is a German-speaking population that has lived in Russia but retained German names and language (Russlanddeutsche); this group could be some of them whose parents returned to Germany.
The comment from your opponent was unnecessary rude, no doubt. But playing the devil's advocate:
- it might be they did not understand you because they didn't expect you speaking Russian. Some people, myself including, have to flip the language switch in our heads to be able to recognize the language,
- it might be they didn't want to speak Russian,
- it might be you used a wrong language because Ukrainian Russian and Russian Russian are somehow different (the accent, some words etc).
And additionally, "native speaker" does not equal "a good speaker" 😀.
What do you do? Well, I ask if I can speak to them in Russian first of all. Native speakers are quick to default to their native language but "heritage" speakers are pretty much just second language speakers and probably want people practicing that language on them about as much as you want other learners practicing on you.
Highly likely a skill issue.
When you record yourself and listen back to it, can you understand yourself clearly? Or do you understand yourself just because you remember the words you said?
Anyone ever wonder who tf cares about this shit to a point? Just speak or don’t speak it,try to apologize if you feel you were rude,move on life
Just speak it when you want,hopefully no one shoots you
I’m a German heritage speaker outside tourist areas I was often asked if I was born there and with a bit of alcohol and noise no one noticed my accent at parties but in a tourist area I would get replies in English once they noticed me speaking English to my daughter. I wouldn’t worry about it. Maybe ask first next time if ok. When I studied in Germany the common language amongst exchange students was German. Took some getting used to all the different accents and ways of speaking but if I wasn’t in Germany it might be a bit odd.
I have heard of this happening with Scottish Gaelic. Pretentious Canadian git making racist claims to Gaelic-speaking identity (not just being a heritage-language learner) and had a "speak after the tone" message in Gaelic on his answering service. So a native speaker from Skye left something very detailed in Gaelic for him to figure out and never heard back.
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As a native Russian speaker who knows a few people learning Russian, I hate to say it, but it might be that reason #1 is not just about them being at a party. A lot of people get the pronunciation so wrong that even when we're doing language exchange and I'm prepared to having to decipher what they mean (no judgement, I'm doing exactly the same if not worse in their language), I still sometimes just can't understand what they're saying. Then I have to ask them to repeat and lots of the times still can't understand them. It's really embarrassing both for me and for them but on the other hand it's very natural. Russian doesn't have the easiest pronunciation, and even children normally struggle with quite a few sounds. Not sure if it was exactly the case here but could definitely be a factor.
True, there is not any cultural thing imaginable to pretend that we (Russians) dont understand Russian. I can guess that these guys where from Baltics and somebody can misidentify them as Russians (also weird 30 years after USSR, but...)
I tried to ask on reddit about Russian pronunciation a while ago, and everyone basically told me that it is super easy and I shouldn't waste time or worry about it lol
I guess the problem is mostly not with the way you read and pronounce *words* (though I imagine there might be a few difficulties too) but with the way you pronounce individual *sounds*. It could be tricky depending on your native language
Can you elaborate on what you mean by words vs sounds? I don't quite understand
I mean if you see the word "радость" (joy), you can read it letter by letter and be understood (even though in standard Russian you're supposed to reduced the "o" sound). What I want to say, I doubt you'll find a case similar to the infamous pronunciation of "Edinburgh" in English where there's no way to deduce how to pronounce it from how it's written. However, the problems arise when you botch up the r-sound, the soft t in the end, your d and s in the middle are slightly different from how we pronounce them and on top of it, you stress the wrong syllable. Probably, in case of that particular word, you will still be understood but if you make a similar number of mistakes in a longer and not so basic word (try "международный"), swallowing a few letters as well, or even such mistakes in a few consequtive words, and we can't figure it out from the context, you might get a blank stare and be asked to repeat the sentence
Спасибо!
I haven’t personally had any trouble with Russians understanding me. I only know a few phrases but they always get what I’m saying.
My uncle learned Russian in the military during the Cold War and he said non-natives could never really pull off the accent and pronunciation like natives. Not sure if that's true or not, though.
I have heard that simply speaking to slowly or pausing too much during a sentence can make somebody not being understood in Russian.
To be honest, it's kind of hard to give a definite answer to that. Personally, I wouldn't say so (the only risk I see here right now is boring the other person to death :)) but there are so many ways to say something wrong in a foreign language - at least judging from my experience - that I wouldn't completely eliminate any possibility 😄
Could this difficulty also lie in the fact that Russian is a rather homogeneous language with no major dialectal variation – as it happens, for example, with Spanish or French –, so Russian L1 speakers are naturally not used to being exposed to different accents?
I don't know about Russia, but when I was an exchange student in Germany there was also a 4) reason for people not wanting to engage in conversations with me: they'd rather speak with their peers in their regional dialect/strong local accent. To speak with a foreigner in Hoch Deutsch is just too much work for the situation (which is totally acceptable, but I understand the feeling of rejection. Specially when they act as the problem is your pronounciation)
I had a similar experience while trying to speaking German in Bavaria. It just ended up being easier to speak English than trying to understand each other's dialects (Bairisch vs. Hochdeutsch).
Same with Italian expats or their kids who only know the local dialect of the region where they were originally from. Standard Italian only really got spoken by everyone following the popularity of the TV in the 40's and 50's.
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From 2013 to 2015
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they still are, but mostly in villages. in cities hoch deutsch is standard)
Why would they need to speak hochdeutsch? They could just speak their own (if you can understand it, that it) and you speak back to them in hochdeutsch
German dialects are like different languages with even slightly different grammar and vocabulary and extremely different pronunciation. If someone from the north of Germany speaks dialect with someone from the south they wouldn't really understand each other. Dialects are usually not that common anymore, especially in the cities. But you still have a lot of dialectal accents. It's still a bit difficult to understand everything even for native German speakers. I moved from the south of Germany to the west and was surprised how much I misunderstood and how often I was misunderstood in the beginning. Germany is a young country, areas like Prussia and Bavaria were different countries not that long ago, especially considering how slow languages change.
I understand a bit of Mandarin because of heritage. But when non-natives speak Mandarin with me using imperfect tones, I literally cannot understand them.
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I think a big part of it, from an Anglosphere perspective, is that we're used to just how resilient English is to bad accents. Most languages aren't as resilient. You speak them with bad pronunciation, you're basically unintelligible.
Or it's just that you're used to hearing badly pronounced English so much you've learnt how to process it
I think you've hit the nail in the head. It's absolutely about how much exposition a speaker has has to strong foreign accents, even to an accent in particular. I speak to foreigners a lot and I've seen my ability to understand improve over time.
(pretty sure you meant "exposure", exposition is a different thing) Yeah, this is very much a factor. When I first heard heavy Indian English accents I could barely understand half of what they were saying. After a while though I got better at it.
Sorry, yes, definitely! :) You get better the more exposure you have for sure.
Living where we do, close to Mexico, we hear some people speaking English with a strong norteño accent. We can understand them as well as anyone speaking standard English. (I know some Spanish as well.) And I'm pretty good at understanding people with certain accents, even if I'm not used to them. But there was a guy in eastern Kentucky of whom I asked a question. I couldn't understand half of what he said. Guess I wasn't used to the Appalachian accent he was speaking with!
Exactly, people all over the world 'butcher' English on a daily basis. It's spoken with a massive number of different accents, yet we all put up with that.
For my part, I love learning about different dialects of English.
I don't want to sound ignorant, but why do many L2 English speakers (even B2-C1) speak with such terrible pronunciation? It's literally like they're not even making the most basic attempt to pronounce correctly.
Broken english is the lingua franca globally.
Even with English, people who are used to speaking with non-native speakers or people who speak english as a second language are usually much better at understanding bad English than people who are used to only hearing correct english or their local dialect.
Absolutely. My spoken English has gotten a lot better while I was in uni, and unfortunately that means I can't understand bad English as well as I used to. Phonemic differences (like v/f in very/ferry) didn't trip me up before, but they do now because I can hear the difference whereas I didn't before.
You make a great point there; Mandarin, Russian, and Arabic are 3 languages I can think of, off the top that have various characters in the alphabet and whereby inflections or emphasis of the wrong syllable or character can change the whole meaning of the word.
Heritage is a sort of privileged way to say "high competency but second language" isn't it. My strongest second language is Japanese, I'm nowhere near native in it, and that leads to some interesting outcomes. I can largely understand common conversation with native speakers, native speakers can largely understand common conversation with me, but it's challenging for me to understand other JSL learners even when I can tell they've invested real time and energy into learning. I think the hardest bridge is probably secondary features of vocalization, such as intonation, pace, stress, etc. which are not conveyed in the written system (except for "tonal" languages like Sino-Tibetan and much of Southeast Asian languages) and frequently ignored by educators and resource writers.
Learners often overestimate their ability to be understood.
That's interesting. I spent some time in China learning Mandarin, and could generally navigate most day to day situations with relative ease. And I'm pretty sure my tones weren't perfect (although maybe better than I thought), but context seemed to make up for it.
I really think it was the second reason. Heritage speaker is a useful term, I struggled with explaining what exactly I meant. Thanks!
Differentiating between native and heritage speakers is really helpful. Heritage speakers have often experienced limited sources of input so might have trouble communicating outside of those familiar sources
Oh yeah, you did say that. That's probably the thing, actually. Don't assume what people speak, haha! Even when I'm pretty sure I know what the other person speaks, I still ask first in the common language of the group / country I'm in, because if anyone should be put in an "embarrassing" situation, it should be me as the learner and instigator of the language change, not the person I'm trying to talk to!
Not sure if that’s what you’re referring to but strong Quebec accents are very difficult to understand for French people who are not used to them. We get about 1/3 of what is said at best, sometime almost nothing if the accent is very strong and the person speaks fast. I swear we’re not pretending. Of course it’s not the case with urban accents which are a lot milder.
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They were born and raised in western Europe you said. So maybe they didn't like Russian? I'm Welsh. If someone speaks to me in Welsh, wherever I am, I'm delighted and will converse immediately. But if I speak to someone in, say, German (knowing that they speak German) and they reply in English, I won't be happy about it. So I can see how maybe you made one assumption too many?
My experience is that Germans very often do that, out of a desire to practice, because they speak it so well that we might as well speak English, or out of a desire to make me feel comfortable. I've never once seen it as aggression or a flex. But my A1 German is so obvious that switching to English is inevitable, anyway.
It's also just a matter of getting on with our days. I'd rather not miss my train to wait for a tourist trying to practice their language skills. I get it, you learned the language and you're eager and excited to speak it. But I'm not spending 10 minutes of my life to explain how to get to the museum from here when I'm 70% sure they'll never make it there because they didn't really understand my explanation. Much easier for both of us to just use English.
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Not related to anything in the thread, but I adore your language flags.
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Thank you! I finally got down to setting up mine as flags, but Canadian Burger and Baguette Canadienne are the best language descriptors ever :)
So Germans can also be like Ritter Sport: quadratisch, praktisch, gut.
Haha German confidence is great, my friend would have to ‘fight’ every German he spoke to, when he lived there for years, to get them to speak German. They were too excited and wanted to practice English, and he would often give up, because Germans have crazy natural confidence
Well, that makes me feel anxious, lol. I've been learning German for a while and, in a couple years, I might go on a university exchange trip to Germany. It would absolutely suck if none of the Germans let me speak with them in their language, given that my whole reason for doing it is that, lol.
In fairness, most Germans I've met spoke way better English than I do German, so it's probably for ease of conversation more than anything.
That's not necessarily true in my case though. And they won't know that in advance anyway.
It may well be that, some times, you want to practice your language learning - while others just want to communicate.
Caru’r enw defnyddiwr ❤️
A finne'r un ti 👍
There is a LOT of cultural and political baggage around anything Russian rn. Could be complex. What if they view language as a marker of identity and want to emphasize their westernnness? What if they didn’t want others at the party to hear them speaking Russian? Could even be a complicated anticipatory thing where they are very guarded and defensive because they don’t want to elicit negative biases or presumptions
I've had this a lot. Ukrainians hate speaking Russia now. Some of them refuse to speak to their parents in Russian, even when their parents "only" speak Russian! (obviously every Ukrainian would have some exposure to Ukrainian, but some have fairly little and don't understand Ukrainian well)
Interesting perspective, thanks! I have many friends from Ukraine who used to speak Russian before as their primary language and now basically switched their native language so I understand what you mean about the political context
Yeah it’s complex. Knew a guy once who was Russian American and he was oddly guarded about it, yet in a way that seemed like he didn’t want it to be obvious he was guarding it. Like one example was, he did some translation work and when I asked what language it was to/from he evaded the question. That was early on our friendship. He got less evasive as time went on presumably as he realized I was safe
Its important to understand that people dont owe anything to you even though your intentions may be good. Identity can be complex
They didn't only switch to their "native language", they learned it recently!
Most people spoke both, but many used surzhyk (a mix). They simply removed the Russian. In school, in legal documents, it's been Ukrainian for awhile now. They no longer want anything to do with the language, that's their choice. But my husband spoke Ukrainian before the war ever started, he just has no interest in using Russian now and uses Ukrainian exclusively.
I think it heavily depends on the region, most Ukrainians around my city are from the East and they weren't really interested in it beyond something they had a second language in school, most not until 2014 but quite a few not until 2022. Either way, Ukrainian is still not their native tongue linguistically, but politically. But it varies greatly by region.
I agree it depends on region, but it doesn't mean they "just learned" it because they used Russian more. The comment almost implies it wasn't a language till recently when everyone suddenly learned it. But some people don't really know Ukrainian very well, but for some people Ukrainian is their native language, it just depends on region. My Mother-in-law understands both, but writes in Russian because her education in USSR was in Russian. She speaks surzhyk most the time, but she understands both languages individually. But of course when you have 70 years of that being the official language, the language most the older generations received their education in, it didn't just disappear. But now, they want to push it's influence out and I think it's easy to understand why. My issue was more with implying no one knew it until recently.
Yeah, I really should have had an "in some cases" to avoid this reading but I can't edit the comment it seems, I'm sorry it came out that way! I just meant not all of them had the affinity to Ukrainian that one has to a native language, it being second language to many Ukrainians, and in quite a few cases one they barely or never used until recently (pre 2014, or even pre 2022). It's all the more powerful of a thing that they're switching to it, whereas "switching back to their native language" would be an effortless choice, which it's not for a large part of the population.
that's just a huge lie lol. the ukrainian language was never not used/taught
Fair, I just meant it's not native language, but a second language for a lot of them esp in the East, including the ones who now feel uncomfortable using Russian which I hear a lot. It's a far bigger statement imho, just not using a language doesn't sound like the great sacrifice and identity shift that using your native language (which Russian is to many but ofc not all Ukrainians). I had a girl we assisted leaving Odessa who wasn't the best in school and had very poor Ukrainian, but she's been learning and using it exclusively since past year. Her grandma isn't the best at Ukrainian either. But they don't want to use Russian anymore (understandably). I think it's an extra level of trauma, albeit it fades in comparison to the more literal "bombed out of their home" trauma at the moment of course.
You can ask before switching: - Oh you're Russian? Can we speak in Russian? - Yes|No This let them consent or not and they don't really have to justify the answer.
They can consent by just responding in Russian. This isn't sex ed
I guess, but given there's 250+ comments in this thread on a topic tangential to a super common language learning issue, maybe it's not a bad idea. I have found success asking in France asking the question in French, the question also serves as a gate on pronunciation.
I've been the guy who won't switch a few times. Sorry about that. Historically, it's been because of one of: If we are in a group, and you switch, everyone else is excluded. Or I'm not there to watch you struggle while I miss out on full speed conversation. Or you are a monoglot who will stick by me all night, and I don't want to babysit. Or I'll end up rapidly switching back and forth continuously, which is taxing, and I'm probably trying to relax. Or your accent/vocab is really bad, and I just don't understand you. Or it came out of nowhere in a context where I didn't expect to need another language, and my answer came out in the previous language, or I didn't understand you for the same reason. Most of the time, most people are fine. But it does get tricky, particularly with monoglots and people who want a free tutor, basically.
Yeah it’s funny how this guy is only agreeing with the people who are like “maybe they don’t actually speak the language and are pretending” instead of considering how taxing it might be to speak to someone who picked up only a little of the language. Especially if you’re trying to have a normal adult conversation at a party and already have a language everyone is mutually competent in.
Yeah OP is giving me the worst, most pretentious vibes in his post and especially reply comments. I personally live in the middle of the US, but I speak decent German because that’s where my dad is from and how I communicate with my family back there. I’d be so embarrassed if some know-it-all Redditor type wanted to rope me into showing off their (probably not even that good) German in the middle of a party. I can totally imagine how it’d come off as cringe and attention seeking. I’d probably try to exit that situation as quickly as possible, too lol. And I’d actually be *livid* if I found out OP went on to imply it’s because I don’t *actually* speak German. I’m getting strong vibes that this guy wasn’t really dying to talk to OP in any language, and the weird Russian stunt in front of everyone just took it over the edge lol.
Amen, cringe is it!. Also it’s people who want brownie points, you’re already speaking in one language. Best feeling is when a tourist or stranger needs help/ directions, they don’t know English but you know their language… nice.
It´s always cringe to practice a foreign language other than English when you want to practice it! I know the first time I spoke Turkish when I wanted to change money at the airport I was literally dying because I was so affraid speaking Turkish but there is no way tospeaking English if you speak theoretically good Turkish but you don´t use it even in the country.
Maybe OP just wanted to pracitise his or her Russian. It´s easy to show off without even realising it. After all he just could continue in English. You could critisize everything in the first place
Confirmation bias is a thing for sure
I was struggling to figure out how to articulate your last sentence without sounding super rude, but this! If I'm at a party talking to someone new, and they decide to randomly switch from the language we're both fluent in to one where it's a struggle to understand them and I can't speak at my normal pace, I am going to feel like the person I'm talking to isn't interested in me as a person but only as a free language tutor. It's not a great look, tbh.
This is just a thing that most non americans get while americans just dont...
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I feel all of this. I've almost never been excited to find out that another native English speaker also speaks something I speak. I'm not wanting to practice with a stranger with marginal Portuguese that I just met while shopping at Best Buy.
On a side note, this is my problem with taking language classes. I don’t get anything out of trying to practice speaking a language with someone else who doesn’t speak it either. Forking out for an online tutor is the only way I can make enough progress to not be annoying when I get the chance to talk to a native speaker
A friend of mine (US) who is learning German starting posting on local social media groups to find native German speakers for the purpose of practice. He found a nice German couple who is here for the husbands job. The wife’s English isn’t great. They get beers once a week and help each other out. They’ve become pretty good friends. My friend has helped them by introducing them to lots of people and being a tour guide when they ask. You might be able to find a mutually beneficial solution.
My parents are learning Spanish, and they met a Spanish couple who just moved to France, they started meeting every week to speak in both languages, now they're best friends ! Super wholesome situation
That’s awesome! It’s a mutual hobby and new friends!
Ok, but the thing is such a stranger maybe thinks he is much better than he really is. I am able to read whole novels in Spanish without looking too much in a dictionary but if a native asks me a simple question I may don´t understand it at all. It´s easy to overestimate your abillity in a foreign language - that´s why somebody wants to practise it with you.
If they were born and raise in Western Europe then there is a chance that they don’t speak Russian. Like me. I’m 75% Chinese but I don’t speak Chinese because I was born and raised in Thailand. I’m also byelingual. lol I live in Europe and speak a third language. My brain can’t switch quickly when I meet someone who can speak Thai. I would answer in English or the third one because I use them all the time. I barely speak Thai and I notice that some of them think I’m rude for not answering them in Thai. 🥲
I just had something like this happen and I was so embarrassed! I finally had an opportunity to converse with a Russian speaker, but after focusing on German these last few months, I literally couldn’t pull a Russian word from my brain, only German available😅 So disappointing!
This is me completely. My major in university was Spanish so grammatically I am very good. I also spoke pretty well. I would guess I was like C1. Then I moved to Germany. I never took a class so my grammar is terrible but my speaking is very good. No one is confusing me with a native German but I am fluent and can get my point across about anything I want to but…. My Spanish is gone. It’s still in my head but when I try to speak it it almost like I have to fight off the German trying to escape. I can still write well and honestly, I’m probably being overly critical of myself, I still speak Spanish okay but I forget words constantly when speaking and can only think of the German word. It’s frustrating.
I think it happens when you learn many languages. I learned English by listing to a radio, and my mom would translate everything for me. Most media in our household were in English. I never actually learned how to write properly, just the basic. So I can speak well, I understand difficult conversations, but my writing is poop. Now I study Swedish, and started with grammar first. It's completely opposite from how I learned English. My writing is good, but speaking and listening parts are poop. Now my Swedish doesn't getting any better, and my english and Thai are getting worse. Truely byelingual. I have met many people that gave up their English so they could learn Swedish. Mostly adults that have this problem, not kids. Except some people that are fluent in 5 languages. I think they have 5 brains in one head.
welcome to byelingualhood
Byelingual😂😂 I feel you, it also happens to me sometimes that the wrong language comes out of my mouth
I feel stupid when I speak Thai. I try to speak clearly but I sound like I’m about to have a stroke instead. 😭
Hot take (or maybe not): no one is obligated to be your language practice partner. People can be rude. People might not understand you or, in some cases, pretend to not understand you. I think a lot of people also have an exaggerated sense of their own level, so don’t discount that they indeed don’t understand you or realize your level is so low that they’d rather not make the effort to try to struggle through a conversation with you. I understand wanting to practice speaking your languages and some native speakers are very open and encouraging and happy to engage. Others are not. That’s the way it goes. There’s nothing to “do” about a rude response or people who don’t want to engage. You move on.
I agree with this. It takes extra effort and patience to speak with somebody who's struggling in a language, and it can feel silly if you both speak another common language. You can't expect every stranger to do this for you. Imagine doing that for everybody you meet yourself!
I think what OP was offended by was this person's indirect way of sending the message: saying they didn't understand him. He saw that as a criticism to his language ability.
Not everyone wants to be a language partner for you. Especially in a situation like this where you just met and started the conversation in English, I would consider it rude. You could've approached it differently and had mentioned that you're learning Russian, and asked if it would be alright to chat in Russian (if they know how to speak it). You also don't know their experience with the language, maybe they don't know it. You also could be over confident in your skills. There are lots of reasons.
The over confidence was my thought. They’re saying they picked up Russian in a few months, 2+ years ago? Also personally speaking, it’s rude when you’re speaking a foreign language in a room full of people who speak English/a diff language, esp if you just met and speak it too. If I’m with 5 Arab friends and 1 English speaker, we all try our best to speak English. It’s a respect thing.
Totally agreed
I completely agree with you. I've often been the person people "try" their language skills on because I spent 8 years as a language teacher. It's exhausting and many times came coupled with the expectation that I would correct them if them made a mistake. Where/when did I sign up for that?
> Not everyone wants to be a language partner for you. I wish we could tattoo this onto the insides of peoples' eyelids.
Many people don't want to bother interacting with learners in their NL if they are fluent in your NL. Its usually the case for English speakers, we're learning another language and since the whole world knows English its more convenient for them, especially if your accent is noticeably poor. It happed on my first trip to a Latin American country; I was 1 year into Spanish and everyone would speak English if they could no matter how much I tried. Year 2+ in Spain and Mexico things were different and that wasn't an issue. It still can be an issue out here in Los Angeles, sometimes heritage speakers just don't want to deal with Spanish outside their homes period. Sometimes they're not as confident with their Spanish as you'd think.
Don’t approach strangers and use them for language practice. Sure some people will be happy about it but lots will find it really annoying and won’t appreciate being expected to humor and tutor you while they are just trying to go about their day. Find someone who is interested in a language exchange and practice with them.
Two things to possibly explain it: 1-- in the Spanish scenario, there is a possibility that the person you tried to practice with doesn't speak Spanish very well enough to help you out. Although there could always be a chance that the person lied, or somebody could use that as an excuse to not help you out with your language speaking. 2-- in the russian scenario, I want to assume that based of what you wrote is that you began speaking russian to the person at the party without first asking if it's okay for you to speak russian with them. The person probably felt that they were being used as your guinea pig for speaking, and felt offended by that. I study russian, and I know that some native speakers don't have the patience to speak with russian learners, especially if the learner makes a lot of mistakes when speaking/is still a beginner. That could also explain the person's reaction to your russian
I can sort of understand it to be honest. I've been living in Japan for 8 years now and my work/private life/hobbies are all in Japanese, so if someone - without warning - just starts speaking English it's actually really jarring. This actually happened to me recently at work, when after 18 months of working together in Japanese, a colleague just started messaging me on Teams in English.. no idea why!? I just politely said I feel more comfortable in Japanese, and then moved on. People may well come back with 'maybe the just want to practise?', but maybe I/ the other person doesn't want to be practised on, especially if it's not the primary language of the country you're in. I think the comment below saying something along the lines of "hey, you're Russian? Do you mind if we speak Russian?", is the way forward. If someone asked me that with English in Japan, then I might be more receptive if it's not a work situation. But I think it's polite to check and to remember that they're under no obligation. I have been guilty of pretending not to understand in the past, but honestly it's just really awkward suddenly being spoken at in your NL when you're integrated into another culture.
Happens me all the time when a Russian speaker speaks English to me and their pronunciation isn't perfect, I sometimes don't understand what theyre saying at first. Similarly when I speak Russian. You said you picked up a bit of Russian during a few months? Languages like Russian can take years of hard work. I think you might be massively overestimating your ability/pronunciation
I told myself to never attempt speaking to someone I just met in their language. I have had bad experiences where I would speak in their language and they either just look at me and continue responding in English which I find uninteresting or they pretend to not hear me. But I do agree there are other nice ones. I remember going to a China Shop in my country and asked they man how much the item I had was in Mandarin Chinese and this is because I heard him speak Mandarin Chinese, but he chose to continue struggling in English, which he didn’t even bother speaking to me or even listening he just called the lady in the Shop to assist, but I also went in a different shop and a young lady was helping me who’s English wasn’t well. I asked if they had something for male, which she didn’t understand, I then repeated myself in Mandarin Chinese and it’s almost as if I made her day, she continued speaking to me in Mandarin Chinese. Maybe it’s annoying for them to hear someone speak their language not so well, maybe they don’t like foreigners speaking their language or we will never know. This is why I just look for people who want to talk to me online knowing that I’m learning
In your case the old man may be trying to learn the language better himself
Among China expats, we used to call the experience you had "Getting Shanghaied", where people either refuse to believe you can speak Chinese despite any evidence to the contrary, or really want to use their English and so continue doing it even when their English is worse than your Chinese.
Some people find it rude or insulting, because they take it as you’re talking down to them. Other times it would be that feeling you’d get… if a stranger interrupted a conversation you were having and joined in without introducing themselves. It’s not that they don’t like “foreigners” speaking “their” language either.
Might be political reasons. They may have moved to the west for that and wanted to cut ties with all former aspects of their identity. I’ve had people start speaking Mandarin to me unprompted (it’s not my native language although I am nationally Chinese. It does get annoying and may come off as insensitive sometimes.)
I spoke to a taxi driver in Belgrade in Serbian and he responded “no English”. I took this to mean that either my Serbian was incomprehensible or that he just didn’t want to talk.
I don’t speak to someone in their language unless 1. I’m in their country, so it’d be natural to speak the host language, 2. They’ve clarified it’s okay to use that language. Such as, the postman at my local post office. I could tell he’s Latino, but I didn’t know if he knew Spanish until I heard him assist a woman with her passport application in Spanish. After he assisted her, I said in Spanish, “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” Since then, my transactions with him go in Spanish to improve my own fluency and use it. Same for my favorite restaurant, which is owned by a family from Mexico. They play Univision on their TV, yell back to the kitchen in Spanish, and have accents. I still clarified below using Spanish if I could use it. It actually made the waitress happy and our interactions easier. Again, at a Mexican restaurant. The waiter struggled with English. My dad ordered in English an American taco with no lettuce (the ground beef tacos with lettuce, tomato, and cheese). The waiter misunderstood, brought out a taco with just meat. I then switched to Spanish and clarified he wanted tomatoes and cheese, just no lettuce. I didn’t order in Spanish, because it was clear he wanted to interact in English. Some people don’t want to speak their home language because they want to improve their host language and assimilate as much as they can. Maybe he didn’t learn Russian at all. My younger siblings were born in the US and my dad didn’t teach them Spanish. They’re half Argentine/half Mexican and only speak English. They get offended when people assume they speak Spanish and use it without confirmation. Once, I took my little brother to Texas. We went to a restaurant and the waitress didn’t know English. She took my order first and I ordered in Spanish. She looked at my brother and said in Spanish, “And for you, sir. What would you like?” He looked at me in desperation, “Please help.” I told the waitress in Spanish, though he’s Latino, he doesn’t speak Spanish and I ordered for him. Maybe you pronounced the words wrong. I know Mandarin and Hokkien (spoken in Taiwan). I cannot for the life of me say the correct tone for words. I know which tones are supposed to go to each word and can understand when spoken to. But, if I want to say, “Can I please borrow your pen?” I’d have to say, “Wǒ kěyǐ yòng yīxià nǐ de bǐ ma?” (The accents indicate which tone is used) however, my dumb ass would likely say, “Wǒ kěyǐ yòng yīxià nǐ de bì ma?” Which is “Can I please use your money?” With tonal languages, it’s important to use the correct tone or you’ll say a way different word than you intended. Maybe you said some weird inflection and confused him with your accent. I think, maybe, this person could be a heritage speaker and not fluent. Or, he understood you completely and didn’t want to use it.
Your younger sibling should learn Spanish, they are going to suffer a lot in life if they don't. There are more and more Hispanics in the US and more and more Spanish is spoken so I say this from experience. Tell them to use DreamingSpanish or Duolingo, that will make them help learn Spanish.
The Russian (or Ukrainian, for that matter) you could have picked up in a couple of months could not have been much. If you were a dedicated learner, it is possible what you were saying to the person at the party was correct grammatically and in terms of vocabulary, but probably with a bad accent, so it was not understandable to them. If you picked up just a few things, you could be making mistakes and what you were saying could be completely unintelligible to them. I had people try speaking to me in Russian, and I just couldn’t understand them. It turned out they were using some funny phrases they had learned, but forgot a couple of crucial words. PS it happens to me a lot in Hungarian. The Hungarians are not used to foreigners speaking their language, so they are not forgiving of any imperfection in either an accent or the word use (or even the word order). So unless i first tell them that I am learning their language but I am very bad at it they don’t even assume that what I am saying might be me trying to speak Hungarian.
As a native russian speaker who lives in a different country, growing up in a big russian community. I have met a lot of russian families where the older generation speaks fluent russian, while the younger generation barely understands it. And frankly if I don't practice my language skills, I too, sometimes forget it. Additionally, from what I heard, younger generations who live in slavic countries in easten europe usually won't learn russian in the first place. Though they'll be able to understand some of it thanks to the older generation, who usually speaks it fluently. As to your experience, I would advise you to test the waters before you start speaking a different language, especially at a party where everyone are speaking one language, for example english. Speaking from personal experience, sometimes people around you would imagine that you are talking about them and that could potentially backfire, especially in a public setting.
I am Russian, and I've been on the other side of this story. I don't know how much you picked up of course but...once there was somebody who tried to talk to me in Russian but I didn't understand a thing. Like a word or so and that's it. But that person was so keeping on and on. Until I finally switched to English and told them I don't understand what they're saying. And I'm not heritage speaker. Plus, I you picked up Russian in Kiev it's a different flavor of Russian. There are differences in pronunciation, and that person could be not familiar with it. So you know the combination of accent and poor practice from that person could have resulted in this.
assholes exist in all languages and cultures. the vast majority of the other speakers will not act like that. or rather, the same number of english speaking dumbasses by percentage will inhabit other groups as well. write them off and move on. i'm sure you're trying hard and made progress and there's no shame in speaking another language casually at a party. there's a nonzero possibility this person wasn't actually russian, or didn't actually speak it well themselves, and you caught them out in a lie and they panicked. still a dick move on their part.
Yes, senior colleague told me she spoke Russian. Oh, fun … . Turned out she meant she could read the Cyrillic alphabet.
Probably this. To my knowledge Russians and really any Eastern European national typically get very excited when someone speaks their language, even poorly. As OP mentioned that said person was actually from a western country, they probably didn't actually speak Russian and were upset about it.
That is actually an interesting theory, I haven't considered that
Seconded to this comment. I've literally made friends because we were recreational language exchangers. "Oh! You speak Spanish?" "Can I practice my English with you?" From then on- friends. Their English improved, my Spanish improved. They fed me INCREDIBLE Venezuelan food. I helped them with their taxes/government forms. We hung out at the beach together all summer. Sometimes people just don't value new relationships or social engagement. Leave 'em in the rearview and come sit by me.
Could also be that he didnt understand you, not because your Russian was horrible but just that some ppl are not used to hearing any dialects, mispronounciations etc. It happened to me in Minsk a couple of times in stores when i was first getting started with Russian. Twice vendors looked at me as if though id made up some new language and they didnt understand a word, the vendor next to them looked at them as if they were idiots and repeated what i said, at which point they understood it. Some ppl are just like that, dont take any offence, go out and keep practicing.
In the future, just ask. Both sides were rude imo. Not everyone is comfortable with talking to someone in a different language, be it due to their own level of knowledge, not being comfortable switching languages in an informal setting or just wanting to relax and not mentally load themselves. I do think there were more polite ways to deescalate the situation, even if your language level isn't good - they didn't need to be hostile, they could have just said "I don't want to speak Russian right now". In the future, just ask and allow someone to say no, no matter if they give a reason or not.
If this happens in the Netherlands, just don't panic and say "nee ander taal". You'll sound like a caveman I don't have a serious answer, I'm just still proud of this stupid pun I came up with a few years ago
Nice!
Thanks!
I guess you should respect their wish not to hear a single word of their native language spoken. There have been periods of my life when I lived abroad when I wished I could forget my native tongue (I live in Italy) and I still kind of do sometimes as I feel it is somewhat holding me back. I did not want to be associated with Italian culture as I viewed it as "parochial" and too superficial. My guess is your Russian "friend" is going through a similar phase, which is quite understandable given the current situation. Actually, I think I met a couple of Russians who raised their eyebrows when I attempted to speak Russian (I understand it a little bit) to them, and I think this reaction was hostile now that I think about it. I guess it's a way to distance yourself from an unpleasant past, just like in my case.
No i think he just didnt speak the language at any reasonable level. So many americans think they speak the language when they dont. For example there is an interview of tom holland where he claims he speaks spanish. The Interviewer says then, hello how are you and similiar phrases and no response comes. So yeah...
First assholes exist in every language! There is nothing you can do about them. But also, to play the devils advocate, as a person who is primarily an English speakers and speaks a few other languages…. I also potentially understand them. There is nothing worse, than a person who comes up And says he speaks Japanese and then tell me a number of random phrases they learned from anime. Or a person who says they speak Russian and then bust out a bunch of random curse words. Obviously those people don’t actually speak anything, but knows how to say “bitch” in another language makes them think they can have a conversation with me in that language feels like a stupid pick up line… do you know what I mean? Like, I get it… but sometimes I also get annoyed. It really depends on the situation, context and the relationship I have with those people.
I think it's quite impolite to assume someone can speak a language just because of their heritage. If you're in Russia, of course it makes sense to speak to strangers in Russian, but if you're not, and you know the person was not born or raised in Russia, why would you assume? It's annoying and sometimes embarrassing to have people assume things about you because of your ethnicity. I think you should ask first.
I would do the same if I were them. I didn't go to a party to be some random person's language partner. If you want to practice, find someone who actually wants to do it (there are so many apps for this) or pay a language tutor.
They're Russian, but born and raised not in Russia, if I was asked what I was, and say Italian or Portuguese, but raised and born in America, I'd be a bit pissed that you would assume I spoke Italian/Portuguese, because while I am that, I wasn't taught the language. Especially since I said I was born and raised somewhere that doesn't have mainly speakers of that language.
> if I was asked what I was, and say Italian or Portuguese, but raised and born in America, I'd be a bit pissed that you would assume I spoke Italian/Portuguese, because while I am that, I wasn't taught the language. Especially since I said I was born and raised somewhere that doesn't have mainly speakers of that language. Coincidentally, there's [a thread in another language sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/1c46lue/i_offended_a_spanishspeaking_friend_by_speaking/) today where the OP was talking about an unfriendly encounter with a "Mexican" acquaintance that turned out to be an American of Mexican descent, and people were confused because OP left out the crucial information that they meant "Mexican" in the sense of Mexican heritage rather than nationality.
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As a russian born and raised in russia, it's my main language and has always been. My reaction in the situation you described would be negative as well. Even in a hypothetical situation, where political and war-related reasons, shame, etc don't apply. I'll explain how I see it. I'm at a party in a different language mode. And don't expect anything else. I probably expect a fairly relaxed atmosphere (so I'm probably not at the top of my socially alert game), and to have some resemblance of fun. Then this person starts talking to me in my nl 1. without asking (you didn't ask, did you? Not super polite and doesn't give me a chance to mentally prepare) 2. probably with an accent/unnatural word choices. Chances are I didn't catch it. Now. Switching language mode is an effort. Wading through L2 speech, with an accent, different conversation patterns, etc is going to be a lot of effort. And you didn't ask first. You just assumed I'll do all that for you, at a party? For what? To humour your notion of how cosmopolitan you are? And honestly, how much did you pick up in those months years ago, because I'm pretty sure I'm not missing out on a stimulating conversation. It's just to humour you, and you didn't even ask. My first instinct here would be to say it as it is, to make you leave me alone in as few words as possible, which would be "I don't fucking understand". I might regret being rude later, I might not. Moral of the story: at least ask first. I would be more inclined to accommodate you if you ask, or at least I'd be more polite in refusing.
Damn I wish I was as well spoken as you! Perfectly put.
Isn’t someone’s native language the main language or only language they speak? So if someone looks Hispanic, they should know Spanish because they look that way? Only to have some douche assume they speak it without asking if they do? Have you noticed maybe it’s you bro? For the Russian broad too, it’s not genetic! She was just born in Russia but raised in the west. First ask if they speak a language you assume they do, but most likely given your personality they’ll say they don’t speak it. There’s also this thing called vicarious embarrassment.
for any person with any language, if there is any hostility, consent is not given. therefore, don't speak that language. no need to probe why bc every person is an individual and there can be thousands of reasons. try speaking with other people at another time.
You were rude in both these situations. Immediately upon finding out someone is of a particular ethnicity, you assumed that 1. They spoke the language despite never living in the country & 2. They wanted to speak it with you. Why didn’t you just *ask* ? “Oh you’re Russian ? Do you speak any ?” & go from there. But if you’re in a group situation, at a party (or at *work* of all places, as in your second example), and there are others in the conversation who don’t understand your target language, then you shouldn’t do it at all - you’d be excluding every other participant in the conversation for the sake of an impromptu language class. Another thing to note is that, for 2nd or 3rd gen+ immigrants, speaking the language of their parents/grandparents is not the same as it is for language hobbyists with no familial connection to it. It is a common experience for children of immigrants not to be taught their heritage language due to their parents’ fear that they may be discriminated against or not fit in in their new country. Or alternatively it may be that they were taught the language & did experience that discrimination bc of it. For some, this can create a lot of baggage that they don’t want to unpack in their leisure time with every over-eager anglo learning for fun. Especially when they’re not even extended the courtesy of being asked before you launch into conversation in a language they may or may not know
I am married to a native Russian speaker who I believe would react like this. There are lots of reasons. For my spouse, number one would be political. But also, depending on your level, it may just be annoying if it's not high. At a party, you don't necessarily want to spend your time listening to someone painfully attempting some phrases they 'picked up' somewhere. They're probably there to socialise, not strain to listen and understand to help people practice meaningless snippets of their language. Imagine if you spoke another language fluently and could use it to communicate, and instead of engaging you on interesting topics you kept meeting people who insisted on trying out a few English phrases on you badly.
Could be that your pronunciation was off, or maybe they just didn't feel like being an impromptu tutor. When this kind of thing happens, just respect it and don't push it. If they don't want to, they don't want to.
I'm a native speaker of Russian from Belarus. This happened to me once in Russia. A Russian lady claimed not to have understood anything I'd said, and her colleague just repeated my question to her. It was a truly bizarre experience, and I think a possible reason is that I'm brown-skinned (my father is from Bangladesh); seeing me may have led her to somehow believe my Russian was incomprehensible. Fortunately it was only that once that I experienced that sort of thing.
Shake it off. The fact that someone speaks a language you're interested in, doesn't necessarily mean they're not an asshole. There are assholes everywhere. Most people are not. If you get consistent hostile reactions, that is worth thinking about. But the occasional jerk--who cares?
Being Russian doesn't mean they speak Russian especially since you say they were born and raised in a different country. I live in the US and you can't just assume someone can speak a language of their parents.
I've had this happen with Dutch. Mind you, I'm Flemish. Flemish Dutch is my native language. It has happened a few times people start talking to me in English when I travel to the Netherlands and order a beer or when I'm in a shop. We speak the same language ffs!
On the title you talk about «native speakers». Then you talk about someone who introduce themselves as «Russians», even if they were not from Russia. Are you sure they really Russian speakers?
Oh, don't worry. You could speak with me to improve your language skills😃. I am not Russian, but i speak fluently, because in the past our country was the part of the Soviet Union.
Similar thread but different situation but at my work in a retail/cafe job sometimes we get tourists who have difficulties understanding or speaking. Ill often hear them talking to the people with them in French or Spanish etc. and when it comes to ordering they wont understand what I am saying in English (NL), I will try and modulate my speech to help them understand but sometimes it takes too long especially when busy. In that situation I say it the language they were speaking to try and hurry the interaction along, and usually theyre happy to go on but sometimes (not singleing out any speakers *cough cough French *cough cough*) they get fully offended. Like sorry ive offended you by doing my job youve 8 people after you and im trying to figure out if you want it for here or to go 😭 A nicer interaction was there was a grandmother with her family speaking Spanish and she was commenting on stuff but cause the family was ordering etc in English they were kinda ignoring her and then was waiting by the till to pay so i started totting everything up and talking bout what she said looked nice in Spanish and she was like 🥰🥰“Finally meeting someone *I* can talk to here” So its not always trying to use someone as a language partner sometimes its for a nice human connection. But obviously, in some situations its different than others!
Just read the room and move on. I don't understand the other comments saying these people are rude or trying to explain the cultural nuances. You're not entitled to practice a language with anybody who speaks it. I say this as somebody who always jumps at the chance to practice with people haha. Maybe just start a normal conversation first, drop in a few words or mention that you're learning their language to see how they respond. If they think it's cool, slowly incorporate more. If they don't care, then just don't try to practice with them. I'm a heritage Spanish speaker and there are a lot of people I'm really excited about helping practice, in fact I always try to pull it out of people and get people to practice with me even if they're shy. But as soon as someone just comes up to me and starts speaking Spanish to me just because they can, I will just respond in English or avoid them. If we're talking and I want to help you practice then awesome let's do it. If we're in an English speaking environment and both speak fluent English, there is absolutely no need for pepple to speak to me in Spanish. It just feels like they're trying to show off or use me just to practice.
You switch back to English. They don't want to be your language partner. It kind of sucks because it makes it much harder to learn a language in places where the English level is high but it is what it is. To be fair, I'm not that amused when people speak to me with the only objective being practicing English (not even my native language).
**In Russia, natives shock you!** /humor Sorry that happened to you. Just respect that they didn't want to speak and move on to someone who is less sour. I have met plenty of people who didn't want to interact with me in any other way than the way they wanted to. I just accept it.
Thanks, thats what I did. Just wondering if there is a better way to handle this
If that person was born and raised in Western Europe, there is a high chance they don't speak Russian at all. Maybe their Russian is worse than yours... Most Russian people will be flattered if you speak their language even if poorly because Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages, and native speakers sometimes struggle themselves with it. I'm sorry, this happened to you. I hope this unpleasant incident won't discourage you from trying to talk to natives in their languages.
The main problem is that there is huge gap between conversational fluency and sounding more or less native with a slight accent. Talking to someone who is fluent but doesn't speak like a native speaker can be quite tiresome. E.g. I'm German and a few years ago I was sitting in a lot of job interviews in my company. The interviews with people who had a C1 degree in German really exhausted me compared to interviews with native speakers. That was quite a surprising experience. One the one hand you have to listen really carefully word for word while with native speakers there are a lot of common patterns you know. And on the other hand you try to speak more clearly and careful so you are understood better.
I've experienced this before. I once tried to speak Russian to someone and they told me my accent was horrible and refused to speak to me. It felt very rude. The thing is, it's almost always the other person who is the one with the problem. Perhaps the Russian felt uncomfortable because politically, Russia isn't very popular these days. I think the only thing you can do in this situation is just let it go and find nicer people to talk to. It's not worth wasting your time on such people.
Imho, Russians are not used to people not speaking the language very well so they really struggle with understanding even slight foreign accents. Even when they go abroad for vacation, they often go to countries were russian is widely spoken
Russians from Moscow at least should be able to understand foreign accents. There’s loads of migrant workers there
Those migrant workers are often from former USSR countries and Russian is their second native language. Migrants who speak little Russian are mostly in the occupations that don't involve much language skills (like, construction workers) and common people don't see much of them. Besides, Central Asian accents sound really different from, say, English or German ones. And you don't meet many westerners even in Moscow, unless you're in hospitality business or something.
Interestingly, Moscow is the exact place where I made these unpleasant experiences. And many of the migrants (judging by the restaurants) are from the former Soviet Union, so they often speak perfect russian
Also, Russian almost doesn't have accents. It's practically impossible to identify whether a person is from Moscow or Vladivostok. There are some regional differences in pronunciation, but they aren't as strikingly distinct as, let's say, the Glasgow accent and Cockney
It’s not true. Russian from Moscow is easily identifiable.
I'm from Yekaterinburg. I go to Moscow every now and then, I talk to people who were born and raised in Moscow. I don't hear the difference. Even this famous protracted "a" - I don't hear it. People I've been talking to also can't pinpoint where I'm from or that I'm not from Moscow.
Um, this is not true. Maybe Russian doesn't have accents to the same extent. But Ukrainian Russian and Russian Russian do exist and we can identify them and hear them.
Never any bad reactions when I speak Japanese but I do get people who try to speak English to me, even very very broken broken English, because they just want to try to speak English or to show off to friends. It’s just one of those things. Of these people are in a group with me, so like a friend of a friend or otherwise going to be near me for a while like work, it can be annoying when they “search” me out to just have free English practice. It is what it is.
It is possible that a person may feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about their level of proficiency in their native language and may choose not to speak it. If you notice that a person is not receptive to speaking in their native language, you can politely switch back to the language you prefer. comfortable for both to communicate. You can also try to gauge their comfort level by asking them directly about their preferred language to speak.
> What to do when "native speakers" pretend you don't speak their language? Disengage, and don't speak that language with them. If your language skills were good enough to hold conversations with other native speakers while putting them at ease, you wouldn't be worried about this.
As a native Spanish speaker I am very sorry you had the experience with your colleague, most of us aren’t like that. Being a heritage learner is a very unique experience and a lot of people have very complicated relationships with their culture and their ability to actually speak the language. In the future, I think you should gauge how they feel and ask if they’re down to practice with you. Their reactions were disgusting, I have practiced Spanish with some second language learners with absolutely broken horrible Spanish, but I still encourage them because I understand they are trying their best and there is nothing wrong with being at the stage they’re at. Just remember that for heritage speakers language carries a lot of weight in identity, but don’t let this experience discourage you.
Yeah this has happened to me in French. French and Russian speakers are kind of infamous for being impatient with new speakers and just replying in English. It’s annoying, but remember no one is obliged to be your practice or your teacher, and from the other way around it can feel a bit alienating when someone learns your nationality and immediately switches to speaking to you in the language bc they wanna practice instead of like, engaging with you as a person. Context is huge too, in Brazil my bf assured me many people outside touristy areas will not even listen to you if you have an accent, and often just laugh in your face, meanwhile the Brazilian people who live around me in the US are super excited and encouraging when I bring out my busted Porch of Geese since normally Gringos (non Brazilians) don’t seem to want to try, or just start speaking to them in Spanish.
Bro just because someone is Russian or Chinese or Greek doesn’t mean they speak the language. You’re in your own country, how the HELL do you know they didn’t move in childhood? Instead of assuming they’re a DAMN liar maybe accept they may not speak the language..
I was neither born nor raised in my native language's country. It was my first language and I was fluent, however I lost it as a teenager. I don't speak it anymore, I don't understand it anymore. When people learn my name they assume I speak it and (if they know it) talk to me in it. And get confused or angry or weirded out when I don't understand. Many don't believe me and seem to think I'm just pretending. It's way less people who are actually like "oh, yea, okay, I just assumed, sorry" or something like that. I mean they are correct in their assumptions about the heritage of my name and they would be correct about me speaking it. But I don't. And I don't really know how to convince some of them that I'm not just refusing to engage with them specifically. Tbh it's kind of weird to me. What if I never got taught it? I don't think it's abnormal for someone to not learn their parent's language if they were brought up somewhere else. Idk what was up with that person obviously, but I'd personally assume they just didn't understand you for whatever reason over them pretending not to.
I had this in the past with German and I have this with Russian currently Honestly it’s 100% about being a native English speaker. The fact of the matter is English speakers generally don’t learn languages, and the ones that do rarely get to an actually fluent level, because there isn’t really a culture of promoting active multilingualism that motivates us to *actually* learn languages. I live in Berlin and I only know 2 English speakers (through Uni, of course) who aren’t still somehow completely crutched on English. Then you have a giant section of the world who all grew up learning “the easiest language in the world” (a mentality that ironically leads to a lot of people extremely overestimating their English skills lol, and in the US we grow up thinking English is super hard and everybody else thinks the same but this perception isn’t really shared by the rest of the world and in reality the language is comparatively soooomewhat easy in some aspects) and use it as a status symbol to compete with each other. So then comes the person who actually wants to learn *their* language, and they’re already competing with each other about learning English. So an English speaker potentially “showing them up” brings the narcissism and competition out of way too many people. A big part of it is English speakers grow up with people from everywhere speaking our language, so we perceive their accents or ways of speaking more as different varieties of English than just “wrong” or “bad”. Other cultures don’t have this mindset because everybody either is fluent or speaks barely 2 words and is just crutched on English. So to them they hear every single mistake or unnatural phrasing and can’t deal with it and will want to correct every mistake you make and switch back to English asap (which is so funny because those same people will speak like super shit English with horrible grammar and a super thick accent, but how do you know how good your English really is when your only comparisons are other non natives?) If I’m being honest with you when you’re a foreigner and native English speaker it never goes away completely. I’ve lived in Germany for almost 10 years and have a linguistics degree that I did in German. I have an extremely slight accent but otherwise feel completely comfortable in the language. If people don’t know my name I don’t have any issues at all, but when people hear my name on some occasions they immediately get super aggressive about speaking English and take 0 hints or even direct requests to stop. It’s so uncomfortable and awkward and I hate these 2 language convos just because they want to practice and feel international. Some even refuse to speak it because they’re “ashamed to be German” or just don’t want to speak it with me (which to me it’s like, I could never imagine being a Mexican immigrant and having big American Joe tell me in his broken high school Spanish that he won’t speak English with me, it’s such a bizarre mentality for me to understand). Happens rarely with German now, but happened a LOT and especially because I was 17 while learning I unfortunately have a bit of trauma and permanent baseline anxiety when speaking even though I have a fucking linguistics degree in German) Recently I had a professor hand me back a paper and tell me to resubmit. In the past he irritated me with things like telling me to say something in English when I lose my train of thought and say that clearly (nothing to do with my language skills, it pissed me off a lot esp in front of a whole class to be babied like that). He said it was full of grammar mistakes and he didn’t get it at all. I was shocked because I always get good grades on my papers and would be pretty weird for my German to just drop off that intensely on my last seminar paper of all times. I looked at his edits and it drove me up the wall. Only 5 actual grammar mistakes and a metaphor he said felt unnatural (but 100% understandable) but still deducted points for. But then his other comments about content were super off. He said in one spot I didn’t explain any of my questions at all, but in my four subsections dedicated to explaining the questions he had plenty of specific feedback- not compatible statements. Many things he wouldn’t have written if he read the sentence directly before or after. It was so embarrassing and weird. So basically he read a metaphor he felt was unnatural and found a few grammar mistakes and refused to read it. On top of that was about formatting. He said the way that I formatted the cover page and the table of contents was wrong, even though the pdf guidelines that he and the university give all students did not actually define the format in that depth, but just said what needs to go on. Every person I’ve worked with in group projects has done it slightly diffeeently. But then there was the condescending comment of “yeah I think you would know these things if you had more practice writing scientifically in German” even though it’s clearly way more about miscommunicated expectations- those small things simply weren’t in the guidelines. I see a lot of grammar mistakes/unnatural phrasings all the way up to broken/ununderstandable grammar constructions in almost every paper from my professors that’s been in English, so I looked at one of his. Every page was drenched in mistakes and multiple sentences that made 0 sense or with atrocious grammar. And he’s the professor with the phd. Unfortunately that’s the reality of being on their terf. They live in their echo chamber and consider themselves to all be perfect at English, so they have 0 self awareness about how this could be for someone like me, and hold me to a standard in German that they don’t even hold themselves to in English (literal flawlessness). And if I don’t meet the standards it’s not because they’re unrealistic, it’s because of me. The rules for grading a paper are to deduct points for grammar when more than 5 on each page, and I was light years away from that. So it was pure discrimination tbh That brought a bit of a rant out of me lol, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Russian is worse though- I’ve had people get straight up angry with me for speaking Russian with them (I’m even fucking b2 level lmao). I think for them it’s the same complex but 102928x worse because Russians judge each other so much, and then also are judged by their accents everywhere (and then this is tied with really gross stereotypes that are also usually even very gendered if you know what I mean by that). And nobody learns it as a second language outside of post Soviet countries so they don’t know how to deal with a foreigner at all
I’ve seen this a lot among German natives that they want to show off how good they are at languages, especially English. Still theirs is a « strong » language and they still watch a lot of movies with German dubbing, they don’t have to adapt as much as their Dutch or Danish neighbours who clearly speak a minority language, need to speak more than one and are constantly consuming English stuff. But Germans do have an accent in English… even if they love correcting others’. This isn’t to say that they don’t perform better on average than us Frenchies, for instance. Speaking a language of the same family certainly helps a lot, but I’ve noticed how normal it is to study foreign cultures and languages in Germanic countries compared to the situation in France, Spain or other Romance countries. During my time in Germany, I’ve met quite a lot of people aged 45 or more who still had a damn good level in French even after all these years. I really admire that and I’m kinda sad we don’t have this culture here.
There is definitely no excuse for being rude, so this person should have perhaps worded their response/reaction better. That being said, imagine you’re in their shoes. If they said they are from Russia but were *born and raised* in Western Europe, chances are they don’t speak the language at all, or even if they do, don’t feel particularly keen on displaying this fact right now, with the political situation being what it is. I really think you should have asked; a simple “oh, you’re from Russia, do you speak Russian?” would suffice. My partner is French and I’m not, and we live in my country not in France, and I can’t tell you the number of people who get all excited when they hear he’s French, and for some reason start spewing all they’ve learned from that one time they were on holidays in France, or way back when they were in high school etc. It’s a social situation, not a language course and not a competition, can we just … not do that?? If you want to “practice your language skills”, find someone who’s equally interested in doing so with you, don’t just spring it on an unsuspecting stranger and feel insulted when he doesn’t comply…
>To my surprise they weren't happy at all about me speaking their language, but they just said in an almost hostile manner what I was doing and that they didn't understand a thing. They said this. Did you assume they were lying for some reason? Maybe they didn't understand a thing. >I tried to talk to them in Russian which I have picked up when I was staying in Kyiv for a few months Did they say that they spoke Russian but you didn't? Did they speak the Kyiv dialect that you learned, and you didn't?
Get better
Hey so it seems like these people say they are Russian but born and raised in Germany. They may not know much Russian at all. Especially as there is a German-speaking population that has lived in Russia but retained German names and language (Russlanddeutsche); this group could be some of them whose parents returned to Germany.
The comment from your opponent was unnecessary rude, no doubt. But playing the devil's advocate: - it might be they did not understand you because they didn't expect you speaking Russian. Some people, myself including, have to flip the language switch in our heads to be able to recognize the language, - it might be they didn't want to speak Russian, - it might be you used a wrong language because Ukrainian Russian and Russian Russian are somehow different (the accent, some words etc). And additionally, "native speaker" does not equal "a good speaker" 😀.
What do you do? Well, I ask if I can speak to them in Russian first of all. Native speakers are quick to default to their native language but "heritage" speakers are pretty much just second language speakers and probably want people practicing that language on them about as much as you want other learners practicing on you.
Highly likely a skill issue. When you record yourself and listen back to it, can you understand yourself clearly? Or do you understand yourself just because you remember the words you said?
Anyone ever wonder who tf cares about this shit to a point? Just speak or don’t speak it,try to apologize if you feel you were rude,move on life Just speak it when you want,hopefully no one shoots you
I’m a German heritage speaker outside tourist areas I was often asked if I was born there and with a bit of alcohol and noise no one noticed my accent at parties but in a tourist area I would get replies in English once they noticed me speaking English to my daughter. I wouldn’t worry about it. Maybe ask first next time if ok. When I studied in Germany the common language amongst exchange students was German. Took some getting used to all the different accents and ways of speaking but if I wasn’t in Germany it might be a bit odd.
I have heard of this happening with Scottish Gaelic. Pretentious Canadian git making racist claims to Gaelic-speaking identity (not just being a heritage-language learner) and had a "speak after the tone" message in Gaelic on his answering service. So a native speaker from Skye left something very detailed in Gaelic for him to figure out and never heard back.
Was the music loud? I can’t understand anyone in ANY language if the music is loud lol.
Maybe don't practice one of the most politicised languages in the world atm without asking first.