foreign speakers myth DEBUNKED!

Guest   Sat Apr 19, 2008 2:44 am GMT
Why do native speakers get all excited when a foreigner speaks their language as though it is a miracle that they were able to break into their amazing sophisticated language, when the actual reason is that not many foreigners go to their country, and NOT that their language is any harder than any other. This is common in Asian countries and even in Eastern Europe.

The truth is out now, so I hope it will stop.
J.C.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 4:57 am GMT
Guest:
Good topic. That's how I feel in Japan and got fed up with people asking me WHY I speak Japanese...Well, Koreans are VERY GOOD at learning Japanese and do it PRETTY fast!!
I just tell them the language isn't as complicated as they think and I WORKED hard to learn it. period!!
When I went to China and spoke in Chinese a dude told me he doesn't understand ENGLISH and I just replied "I am not speaking in English" in Chinese. Then he finally realized I was speaking in Chinese. hehe

Cheers!!
p.s Let's see if I can get to a decent level of Russian so I'll mess with some Russian minds!!!
Guest   Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:52 am GMT
Yeah, that's so ridiculous. Koreans are expected to speak Japanese well but any one else is not, JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE WHITE!
J.C.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:50 am GMT
Guest:
In Asia language acquisition is said to be based on race(At least in Japan, Korea or China) rather than on skills, therefore no matter how hard we try, they'll always find a way to find our faults when we speak and set us apart as "gaijin"!!!!!
I guess that's why I like to study asian languages!!hehehe
Wanna see some asian dudes really pissed off and wondering how I learned their language!!! :)
Xie   Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:13 am GMT
>>>Then he finally realized I was speaking in Chinese. hehe

I have a word of caution, though. Possibly unlike those guys who appear on CCTV's Wuzhoutongle speaking Mandarin fairly fluently, all foreigners I've met or seen on the screen often display accents to varying degrees. I'd really like them speaking with a perfect accent. It isn't that difficult - while many people sharing my background often complain how hard it is to learn Mandarin even as a Chinese raised in the same country, I just listen and everything clicks in.

I must be biased as a person who isn't used to foreign accents, but I think you'd emphasize with ESL learners (like me). In the case of a tonal language, it could really affect my comprehension. If I haven't talked about this clearly earlier... I'd like to comment here on the very shadowing video some of you might have watched. Before I could read the very simple Chinese text (roughly at an intermediate level), actually I couldn't understand what Prof. A. said/shadowed, except a few fragmented words. Mandarin is my third language, but at present my second best and I can talk to native speakers at full speed.

This is an accent for a learner who hasn't learnt the language for 10 years, so it could still be said to be marvelous, but don't really end up sounding like this after 1/2 years of intensive study. I've been haunted by the intonation and vowels of English, and everyday I'm "living in sin" with my moderate accent - no, I think things would be much better with a native accent of any sort, so that I could speak faster with greater variety (esp. since I have to write and speak English all the time in my studies).
Xie   Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:26 am GMT
Actually, perhaps owing to my personality - I'm not terribly extrovert and I even used to be rather introvert - I think a language is more difficult if it is more difficult to speak. In this sense, I think Mandarin, Japanese and a bunch of Romance languages are terribly easy to speak. How important is speaking here?

If I want to listen better, I can listen to the same stuff a million times; if I want to read, I'd find audiobooks, videos, songs and so on. If I COULD write... well, nobody cares as long as I can write reasonably understandable, and I can't write very well in my native language anyway. Then, like kids of classes who force themselves/get deceived to force-produce (esp. oral) output... very often speaking poses the most intricate problems.

But then, to put it exaggeratedly... the Prof. has certainly sent me something like a word from heaven. I'd say for many languages, esp. modern and more "difficult" ones, I'd need the most time on speaking drills. I don't think natives would care much about your other skills. Normally I receive input more than output, even for my native. For example, grammar is just something to read, and you're done with it very soon with suitable methods. Whether it is grammar or vocab, the ultimate most difficult part of knowledge to maintain is still speaking because it reveals your "foremost linguistic" ability to most people. I'd rank the difficulty of all as: speaking > writing > listening > reading.
Xie   Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:40 am GMT
Oh, sorry, I'm again thinking along very chaotic lines... the main thing is: while I can read grammar along the words and lines of any book, which is for input, the foremost ling. ability people can see would be how you speak - both ling., pragmatic and even cultural proficiency. But even if I don't care about what others think, esp. when I'm still a beginner, I find that speaking to myself (like when doing drills) boosts morale most and I'm creating both input and output as a learner simultaneously. When you are lucky enough to have real interacions with natives, it's a very important occasion for you to check if your input has been helpful and your output is of high quality. By that I mean you are trying eagerly to get your messages through and cheking ... say, your grammar knowledge as well.

The reason that the Prof. finds Assimil to be miraculous, besides its own simplest but "best" format that has been practically designed (without useless stuff), might actually also be about fusing input and output through speaking like what I'm saying. I don't know how Assimil works for him very well, but I know it works for ME through mastering morphology, syntax (i.e. grammar) and vocab like second nature. Like how he explained, I'd say I'm memorizing as well as NOT memorizing. Through shadowing it's inevitable that I'd memorize something, but not everything, and I'd internalize the grammar and vocab through repetitions. This is how I learnt very basic German and how I boosted my Mandarin only thourgh listening and a bit of repeitions.
J.C.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 2:48 pm GMT
"I have a word of caution, though. Possibly unlike those guys who appear on CCTV's Wuzhoutongle speaking Mandarin fairly fluently, all foreigners I've met or seen on the screen often display accents to varying degrees. I'd really like them speaking with a perfect accent."
Xie-Thanks for your view on this matter. Although my ultimate goal is to reach a PERFECT accent, what I experienced was a nasty experience based on a biased Chinese person when I was just asking how to get to
the Palace museum 「我怎么走到故宫博物馆 」.I would be in trouble if I had tried to talk about confucionism, though...
The funny thing is that he told me IN CHINESE that he didn't speak English...我不会说中文 wouldn't help me at all...After that I had to tell him I wasn't speaking in English and asked him to show me how to get to my destination, which he finally did.
After 10 years living in Asia and having met many Koreans and Chinese let alone living among the Japanese I've realized they have certain assumptions as for who CAN and CAN'T learn their language. I've also heard from a Mongolian guy that the Mongolian language is only for Mongolians.
As a result of acquiring my Osaka accent I've often heard is that "my face and my accent don't match" :) Specially because I'm black!!!hehehe
Bottom line, the problem in Japan, China or Korea (I visited there and still had people talking to me in English when I was talking in Korean)is the ASSUMPTION that foreigners don't speak their language.
Assumption is a word I can't separate from because even though a Brazilian I can't play soccer, don't like samba/carnival (I'm from RIO) and NEVER listen to Bossa...
Sorry from deviating from the subject but apart from the linguistic aspect,many people assume things about us based on nationality,looks, height (I'm 6.2 but can't play basketball), you name it.

Cheers!!
K. T.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 3:35 pm GMT
Koreans have several advantages in learning Japanese over Europeans and Americans because both Japanese and Korean have vocabulary from Chinese. Now, I wouldn't say that Korean-Americans who grow up monolingually have an advantage.

People do base a lot on looks. In Japan I would hear them guessing my nationality (wrong, btw) in Japanese at times.

Don't like Samba, don't listen to Bossa?
Burajirujin ja nai...(Just kidding. You probably know how they say this about Japanese to Japanese who don't like Nattou).

"Consider the source" was the advice my mother gave us as children, so when I hear silly stereotypes, I think "Ah, this person hasn't travelled much."
K. T.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 4:06 pm GMT
"while many people sharing my background often complain how hard it is to learn Mandarin even as a Chinese raised in the same country, I just listen and everything clicks in."

Xie, maybe we should consider that some of us who post here aren't typical learners in terms of interest in languages. I would go so far as to say that some of us may be able to distinguish sounds more easily than others. It may be innate, or it may be through hard work or both.

I'm happy that Chinese people and Mandarin speakers understand me when I say a sentence or two in Chinese. I think, "Hey! I was understood." I don't worry if my Chinese is beautiful at this point. Maybe I set the bar too low, but some students of Mandarin claim that they have terrible tones or they can't be understood.

Prof. Arguelles-he is definitely an interesting guy, but he seems more like a scholarly polyglot than a Barry Farber or someone like Steve Kaufmann. I'm not sure how many languages Prof. Arguelles actually speaks even though I've seen his list. If our ideal is knowing the structure and sounds of several languages, then I think he is a good resource, but I notice that (like anyone) he is more interested in some languages than others. I've been watching to see if he studied Hebrew. I noticed that he was interested in Arabic and languages that have some influence from Arabic. I haven't seen any languages of the Americas like Lakota and Apache from NA or any languages from SA. I don't mean that this is a "sin", only that I am interested in some languages that don't appear to interest him. That said, I enjoy his weekly videos even I don't choose to study the same languages. I can always learn from other people.
J.C.   Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:07 pm GMT
"Don't like Samba, don't listen to Bossa?
Burajirujin ja nai...(Just kidding. You probably know how they say this about Japanese to Japanese who don't like Nattou). "
K.T.It's ok dude, that doesn't offend me at all!!! :)
But when the Japanese say that I ask them if they know Judo or Aikido. When they say no (most of the times) I tell them 「ほな日本人ちゃうねん」(Then you're not Japanese in Osaka dialect). When they hear this they realize they're generalizing things about Brazilians.

In order to back up more what I said about assumptions, I will post an abstract of a friend who got this Ph.d from the same university where I got my master's in Japan. He speaks PERFECT Japanese but never appeared on TV and I guess he never will because what he has to say won't please the Japanese. He says he'll only appear on TV if people let him talk about his research or about what he likes.
Here it goes:
"Communication with Foreigners in Japan: A Sociolinguistic Discussion

Abstract:
This presentation deals with the communicative behaviour of Japanese people when talking to foreigners. Based on the results of an empirical survey I conducted with Japanese nationals and foreign residents, I will discuss how psychological factors such as attitudes, stereotypes and former experience affect the communication between these two groups.

The results show that communication with foreigners in Japan is widely associated with the use of English. However, the respondents reported communicating primarily in English only with foreigners from Western countries, while with Asian foreigners Japanese is the primarily used language. Stereotypes that tend to associate a "foreigner" with a person from the West and "foreign language" with English can be regarded as a significant factor in this contradiction. Another one is that native speakers' experiences imply that the ability to communicate in Japanese is lower in the case of Western foreigners in comparison to Asian foreigners. In relation to this result I will discuss attitudes amongst Japanese native speakers concerning the "difficulty" of the Japanese language itself. Further results of the survey suggest that non-linguistic factors such as outward appearance and origin of the foreigner may have a greater impact on the linguistic performance of the native speaker than the actual language ability of the foreigner and therefore may lead to inappropriate communicative behaviour.

I summarize by pointing out the necessity of a more objective and realistic education and awareness about "foreigners in Japan"; especially in order to abolish stereotypes on "communication with foreigners"", which are based on a one-sided orientation to the West and therefore not applicable to the majority of foreigners in Japan."

What do you guys think about this?

Cheers!!
zatsu   Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:16 pm GMT
Well, I'm sorry if I'm stepping a bit out of topic here, but I don't think foreigners are well accepted anywhere with maybe the exception of American countries and big cities (places which are already a melting pot of many cultures and nationalities).
It takes speaking the language fluently and also behaving like a native to be part of the society, but that may actually never happen even if you end up marrying a native and live there for years.
It's possibly even harder in countries like Japan or in Asia or Africa, very homogeneous societies where anyone already stands out just by looking slightly different.

About Japanese people expecting other Asian to speak the language, well, I would say that after a while a Spaniard would be expected to speak French in France, or a Portuguese Italian in Italy and vice-versa unlike other people from non-romance countries.
Usually native speakers get all excited when a foreigner speaks their language because it's like "wow, you were interested enough to actually learn it reasonably well!!", not like the language is impossible to grasp. Of course it's also exciting because a foreigner usually speaks more "formally" and it looks nice. When they start learning the dialect and using slang the magic is dispelled though.
zatsu   Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:20 pm GMT
@J.C.
Do you think the "gaijin" concept in Japan has more to do with American people than to other foreigners?
I get that impression sometimes.


@J.C. & K.T
I can't seem to find the other thread anymore!
Sorry for not replying... >.<
Guest   Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:50 pm GMT
I'm with zatsu. Relatively homogeneous societies and/or relatively small languages produce the excitement effect.
The original Guest even concluded that himself: "when the actual reason is that not many foreigners go to their country".
I see no need for in-deep sociolinguistic studies or for resentment.
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:58 am GMT
Hey, J.C.

What in general surprises the Japanese more, a black or a white speaking Japanese?