Give credit where credit is due ...?

Question

Living in Spain I have to get all the day to day things done in Spanish while adapting to their system and culture.

At times when I am having discussions with some Spanish friends I find it frustrating that I can´t express myself as completely as I would be able to in English.

Have you ever thought about how a lot of SA people on this forum, and in daily life, who do not have the advantage of being mother tongue English speakers may struggle to express themselves?

Is credit not due to Zim$, Vango, Inno, Poepies, Tsepo etc.?
(Whose English are all good. Apologies for those I did not mention.)

What do you think?

Funny story:
I was standing in the queue of the supermarket the other day behind two English female shoppers who were busy paying for their groceries at the till.
The assistent said something to the one English lady which she did not understand, anyway after some abbreviated hand signals they managed to understand each other.
(I could have helped and translated, and I usually will help, but sometimes I enjoy the entertainment.)

When they finished packing their bags the one English lady said to the other while walking off.
"I´ve been coming here for 20 years and you´d think they´d be able to speak English by now!".

Answer 1

Turniton5!?
Wow!
I never thought I would say this but "THANK YOU".
That is very mature of you.
RESPECT!!

Answer 2

Those that say that the English will not learn another language are not joking.
There was a news item over the weekend that a certain area of Spain that has been overrun by the British are now standing for the local council because amongst other things their children are not taught in English.
To the person that says that the Spanish know English but won't speak it . I say how do you know?
I spend a lot of time in France and a lot of people do not speak English and if they can why should they,nobody will speak to them in French on this side of the channel.
I went to live in France in the late 60's early 70's when I was on submarines with the SA navy, at that time my French was good but now it is quite rusty. I still speak French when in France even when spoken to in English ( by the French).
I have always had great admiration for those that spoke other tongues especially those that made the effort to speak an African language (I speak now of the white population)
I always lived on the slopes of Table mountain and as a kid went to a private school in the Southern suburbs and hardly ever spoke Afrikaans. I have found that my little group of SA friends here in UK come out with Afrikaans, or speak in real Kaapie accents all the time we are together.

Answer 3

On a slightly different note - have you got any idea how quickly we go back to our old ways though? My mum's been visiting me for a week now, and obviously we are speaking Afrikaans the whole day. I tried twice already this week to speak Afrikaans to some of my friends. Luckily we had a good laugh about it, it did not happen (yet?) on any of my business calls.

I have a lot of respect for you and Vango doing everything in a language that is very different from what we are used to. At least we were taught some English in school.

And did you all see how good our Inno is getting on with her Afrikaans!?

Answer 4

Well yes neighbour, (I hope I may call you such, that you would not mind, as we are living in neighbouring countries.) I do appreciate that you have a problem there in Spain. I stayed there 4 a week last year. The Spanish are terrible, they know how to speak bur will not! The are very proud of their own language and I could not even understand a movie on TV. Thank god I took a Thick book with!
I have really rusted my English and since I joined Q&A I have noticed that my spelling are to say the best - PATHETICK- I hope
people will foregive us our mishaps and correct us kindly so we all benefit!

Answer 5

I think that is a resistance thing more
Allot of pure english people in south africa refuses to learn afrikaans or to even understand it
And due to this allot of afrikaans people refuses to learn english or to speak it
I know i was in this situation, i am afrikaans an one of my bf friends gf is english and she doesnt understand afrikaans although she was raised in south africa so when my bf asked me if i can talk english when we get there it felt like i was going to explode i mean why the hell should i when she doesnt even try
So i said no then he can go alone after a long fight he phoned to find out if she would have a problem with me speaking afrikaans
Eventually i went and i did speak english as well as afrikaans

Answer 6

Give credit where credit is due? OK...64 Americans were killed in August. I'll give President Bush ALL the "credit". 988 Iraqi civilians killed (at least). OK, I'll give our president all the "credit" for this, as well. And I'm sure that all the "terrorists" and al Qaida that we (and Blackwater) have killed were actually terrorists and al Qaida. I'll give the president all the credit for this too. It did take me more than 30 seconds to answer, tho. I think I speak for all Liberals when I say that we give our president ALL the "credit"! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

Answer 7

I think it better we all adapt to other cultures. Learn a lil bit of the language you run into.
At least,i can memorize my "je m'appelle" stuffs .One big problem with most native English speakers is that they don't people to be able to speak fluent English with similar accent to theirs whiles they call on translators to deal with other languages.

Americans are the biggest example.I remember when i came here first and visited a stationary store to purchase a CALCULATOR,the store assistant pretended like my pronunciation of Calculator had a different spelling.She continue to piss me off about the pronunciation only because I did not use AMERICAN accent.

Answer 8

Thank you!!! This is a cool question, I sometimes struggle with the ingelsman se language, but hey, at least almost everybody on this forum knows I am an Afrikaans boeremeisie! Therefore it sometimes makes me mad when someone say, hey check your grammar or geeze watch that spelling. I want to see those guys mocking us try writing and arguing in Afrikaans. But I must confess, being on YA helps me improve my English!

I take my hat off to you working in Spanish, I tried to learn it for a while and I must say it is a beautiful language, but here in South Africa it is useless!

Answer 9

Yes, yes, yes; I take my hat of to multilingual people. I just wish that we can find one accent that is sorta understood by all. Written English generally is fairly easy to understand here in SA, If you add the amkwerekwere to the mix (sespecially central africans), I sometimes do not know if we are speaking English AT ALL.

Answer 10

I love your story - how arrogant are English speakers generally - it never fails to amaze me that people do not assimilate themselves into the society they live in. Imagine living in a country with a different language for 20 years and not learn even the rudiments of it?

How totally arrogant is that - I am flabbergasted.

Answer 11

Yes. I totally agree. We English speakers (particularly the British) are a bunch of lazy sods when it comes to speaking other languages. The multi lingualism of Africans is to be admired.