nur_ein_tier ([info]nur_ein_tier) wrote in [info]foreignlanguage,
@ 2005-06-17 06:53:00
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Current mood:awake
Current music:rammstein - das alte Leid

things people have said to me in language classes during the past year or so.
I've been collecting strange quotes from my fellow students. hopefully you can get a laugh.

  • "That's very bad English." - a student commenting on a sentence that happened to be in French
  • "You mean, if I went to France right now, they'd know I wasn't a native speaker?" - a student who had been studying French for only a few weeks
  • "...but doesn't WW2 make you not want to study German?"
  • "Why do you study French? France isn't that popular in the US these days, they didn't support us in the war on Iraq."
  • "Why would you want to learn more languages? Everything's been translated these days."
  • "Can't you just use one of those internet translators?"
  • "I'm fluent in [name of a language]... but I can't read books/watch movies/speak at all in [name of same language]."
  • "Why is [some word] masculine/feminine/neuter in [some language]?" it's okay to ask once, I suppose, but if you've been studying a language with word gender for several years, it's annoying. When someone who's taken several years of German classes says "Why it is 'der Rock' when women usually wear them?' I just don't find that witty at all.
  • "Can you translate [some translated paragraph] back into [the original language] for me?" asked of me regarding an English quote translated from German, and not literally translated in the least.
  • "But why would you want to watch the film/read the book in the original language anyway?"
  • "Oh, I didn't think of doing that." - someone responding to the idea that she should, perhaps, after looking for the French equivalent of an English word, look up the French word to make sure it's really what she means to say.

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    [info]handrejka
    2005-06-17 10:40 am UTC (link)
    I used to be a teacher and heard all of these. The WW2 one used to irritate me the most.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 11:46 am UTC (link)
    I'm majoring in German, and I hear that one so much that I actually want to punch people sometimes. It amazes me how often I hear it, in fact. But rather than resort to violence, I try to tell them as politely as possible that they're idiots.

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    [info]subdevil48786
    2005-06-17 03:06 pm UTC (link)
    I don't hear it al all, but it does irk me cause I absolutely love German and the german people!

    -Granted the only thing I can say in german is basic hellos, "you are my (insert random posession, person here)" and goodbye.

    But that's besides the point- german's great.

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    [info]bekkle
    2005-06-17 10:53 am UTC (link)
    hahahaha

    i'm in high school right now, and before school got out i was in a third-year as well as a first-year language course

    "I thought you said you were taking French?"
    "I thought you said you were in German!"

    what really irks me, though, is a student who won't even attempt the basic pronunciation. not even the accent-- the way the letters in the word are supposed to sound.

    after three years of (albeit high school) French study, i don't know how to react to people pronouncing "mange" like "mangé". MANZHAY. MANZHAY. "Oo.. ooh. maa....--" and then they'll skip the word. AUGHGHGHGHG

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 11:43 am UTC (link)
    haha. yeah, people got confused about my courses this year, i was in German, French and Spanish.

    pronouncing "mange" like "mangé".
    I understand the sentiment. argh. Maybe they're allergic to paying attention. and after years of being corrected, people still make the same mistakes, which i just can't understand.

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    [info]grace_09
    2005-06-17 09:12 pm UTC (link)
    I hate, hate, hate when people don't even attempt the basic pronuciation...I really can't stand it!!
    In my class, lots of people tend to ignore the umlaut in German...so schon and schön sound the same..grrr!!

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-19 03:29 am UTC (link)
    likewise in my classes. they get the "ä" right some of the time (only when it's long), but totally ignore the umlauts on "ö" and "ü."

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    [info]pottergirl26
    2005-06-17 11:10 pm UTC (link)
    You are so right! As someone who was born bilingual, I have an immense respect for languages and I get pissed off when people don't even attempt proper pronunciation! It's one thing for to never master an accent but it's entirely another if they begin to mutilate words.

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    [info]bluehenboy
    2005-06-17 12:05 pm UTC (link)
    ""...but doesn't WW2 make you not want to study German?"
    i HAAAATE when people say that. AAAHHH

    ""Why is [some word] masculine/feminine/neuter in [some language]?""
    When people ask that, a part of me dies inside. I seriously want to get violent when I hear stupid questions like that after all of these rules have been explained soooo many times!!!

    thank you for posting this, at least I know i'm not the only one who must suffer from these people. hahaha

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 12:09 pm UTC (link)
    i HAAAATE when people say that. AAAHHH
    words cannot express how annoyed that makes me. =0)

    When people ask that, a part of me dies inside.
    likewise.

    thank you for posting this, at least I know i'm not the only one who must suffer from these people.
    =0) they're everywhere! argh!!!

    "suffer" is definitely the right word, yes.

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    [info]jknight7
    2005-06-19 07:44 pm UTC (link)
    What I get is, "Oh, he takes German. He must like dictatorships or something." I hate when stereotypes impede on general language and linguistics.

    "Why do learn more languages? Everything's been translated these days."
    This one ticks me off a lot. I mean, as a philosophy buff, I much rather read Kant and Sartre in their original texts than read the English interpretation, er, "translation" of what they had to say.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-20 03:01 am UTC (link)
    i usually toss their stupidity right back at them. "these exchange students have learned to speak american english pretty well, they must support slavery."

    amen to that. sartre may be the main reason i learned french.

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    [info]melissaleal
    2005-06-17 12:52 pm UTC (link)
    I am Brazilian, and take Spanish adn French. I've even had teachers ask me WHY I wanted to speak 4 different languages, when I know the only one that matters - English!!!!

    I thought I was the only one to get annoyed by ignorant people. Thank you for that.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 01:28 pm UTC (link)
    haha. anytime. yes, I often get frustrated by people too.

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    [info]elyse_navidad
    2005-06-17 12:55 pm UTC (link)
    Haha these are wonderfull.

    It drives me insane for I go to a "Language Middle/High School" and kids who have been taking Spanish with me for 5 years STILL insist on pronouncing "Me Llamo" like "Mi lamo".

    Oh yeah and I am terribly annoyed that for the past 5 years people have been asking me "Aren't you a German major? Your last name is German."

    "For the last time people no I am not! Not everyone in this school with a Spanish last name is a Spanish major!"

    "Well aren't you German? I mean your last name... come on..."

    "No people! I am not German, I am Russian and for the last time, I study Spanish and Japanese... not German!"


    Nothing against German it's just after having that conversation for the gajillionith time I am a bit sick of it.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 01:33 pm UTC (link)
    "Aren't you a German major? Your last name is German."
    that would be annoying! my last name looks French but isn't, and people think that's why I'm minoring in French, which I find rediculous. I am a German major, and my grandparents came from Germany, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to study German (probably in part because they speak English).

    ...like 'me lamo'
    [*famepalm*] ouch. sometimes I wish I could just get into people's thoughts and make them realize how rediculous they sound when they refuse to learn the basic rules of a language they claim to want to learn.

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    [info]goulo
    2005-06-17 01:58 pm UTC (link)
    I love your list of quotes, but should gently inform you that there is no "e" in "ridiculous". :)

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 07:06 pm UTC (link)
    =0P pardon my typos.

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    [info]kleiner_stern
    2005-06-17 02:37 pm UTC (link)
    My Spanish teacher had problems with my first name "Nadine" - he insisted on pronouncing the "e" at the end and then I said: "No, the 'e' is silent. It's a French name." - And then he asked: "Oh, so you are French?" - "No, but my name is." (I'm German, by the way)

    It was rather funny, though. And apart from that, he was a very nice guy - just rather helpless as his German was really bad and we all had just started learning Spanish, so communication was limited.

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    [info]elyse_navidad
    2005-06-17 04:06 pm UTC (link)
    Heh oh my. I've had so many teachers that were teaching us the language as they were leaning English. And old Hebrew teacher, Chinese teacher, Japanese teacher... its fun you could say.

    I've had that problem with my name. Elyse. Either people will say "Ay lee say" or "Elsie".

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    [info]arclight
    2005-06-17 01:09 pm UTC (link)
    I vividly remember my first French class in high school. The other students made it a source of beratement outside of class if you tried to use a good French accent in class - so by trying to go a good job, one would get heavily teased later. It was soooo frustrating. Fortunately, though, I went to a really good school, and the later years of the language were really good classes. 'Tis a shame I was such a lazy teenager at the time. :-P

    As far as everything you mentioned, I've said it before, but "hell yeah" and "amen" to all of that and then some. And people wonder why I would want to move somewhere where ignorance is not a preferred trait.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 01:34 pm UTC (link)
    The other students made it a source of beratement outside of class if you tried to use a good French accent in class
    that is extremely sad and rediculous.

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    [info]shimokawa
    2005-06-17 01:45 pm UTC (link)
    Something that describes your post perfectly, that I heard from one of my friends in our French class last month..

    "Just because I can speak it, doesn't mean I understand it."

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 01:49 pm UTC (link)
    lol.

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    [info]caesareanseptum
    2005-06-17 02:59 pm UTC (link)
    You're right about the whole masculine/feminine question being tripe after a while, but you've got to give endless props to at least one exception - private female body parts in hebrew are all male.
    Say what you want, but that's priceless.

    :oP

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    [info]elyse_navidad
    2005-06-17 04:07 pm UTC (link)
    Haha wow. I didn't know that.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-19 03:30 am UTC (link)
    lol.

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    [info]typesbad
    2005-06-17 03:03 pm UTC (link)
    in my French III class this year, people were asking me what avoir and être meant. and whenever you attempted to pronounce the words correctly the kids would cackle. I remember every time we peer-edited in class people would always ask me to 'dumb it down' because they didn't understand the words that I used. I rarely ever used a dictionary to make the paragraphs or stories, they are just words we've gone over at some point in class, and... argh. ARGH. lol. drives me completely batty. I know my high school was small/underfunded, but it was ridiculous how little they paid attention, and it ended up holding the good students in class back, because they couldn't just move up to the next level since there was no room.

    bleh! not to mention every time I tell someone I'm going to take Russian they ask if I'm a communist. a few years ago I was called a terrorist frequently because I liked other languages. I really live in a bizarre town. lol.

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    [info]pickled_cyanide
    2005-06-17 03:49 pm UTC (link)
    oy, that's horrible!

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    [info]subdevil48786
    2005-06-17 03:10 pm UTC (link)
    I was born in England, my parents are English, I've lived in Wales most of my life and can speak Welsh in an English speaking area where the WELSH people there couldn't care less.

    It's weird. My best friends sounds SO welsh when he speaks English but so English when he speaks Welsh. I don't get it. It's like they don't even try... I told him to put on more of a welsh accent when he tries to prenounce it and he sounds perfect!
    He's not very good at welsh so I (the English person) teach him.

    I love being me. It's one thing I can hold against everybody should I ever get knocked for being English.

    -this doesn't really matter... It came from nowhere. Ignore me. ^^;

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    [info]subdevil48786
    2005-06-17 03:59 pm UTC (link)
    On another note... it REALLY did bug me when people in my welsh classes insisted that the F still sounded like F and not V, like it's supposed to.
    And the LL and DD thing. They don't really sound like L and D. They sound like... erm... *cat hissing* and DTH

    And Ch does not sound like Ch as in choo choo. It sounds like a cross between gagging and the French R. You'd think after learning for 11 years they'd finally get the hang of this.

    And here's me, I learned fluently in 6 weeks when I was a small child. (Though not quite as small as they were, supposedly, when they started)

    -some people just have no respect even for their own culture.

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    [info]gloriouscheese
    2005-06-17 06:01 pm UTC (link)
    Those are hilarious. The whole gender thing really irks me as well. I remember in High school everyone thought "Das Maedchen" was hilarious.

    And as for taking German and French at the same time... I took 7 years of German before beginning French, and I had a horrendous time with French pronunciation. Going from pronouncing every letter in the word (German) and then pronouncing almost nothing (French) is very difficult. :)

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-18 01:16 am UTC (link)
    Going from pronouncing every letter in the word (German) and then pronouncing almost nothing (French) is very difficult. :)
    my problem was going from French class (which i had 11am last semester) to Spanish (which i had at 12), so many words look so similar, yet are pronounced so differently.

    das Maedchen
    lol. yes, you'll have that i suppose. =0) though it took a while to remember to use "es" as the pronoun for "Mädchen," since i kept thinking it's referring to a girl. i got over it though.

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    [info]bloody_ibiza
    2005-06-17 06:57 pm UTC (link)
    "Can you translate [some translated paragraph] back into [the original language] for me?" asked of me regarding an English quote translated from German, and not literally translated in the least.

    Maybe I don't understand what you meant at all...But I don't think it's weird to ask someone to translate something back to the original language. Actually, we used to do it all the time in the translation course that I took.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-17 07:17 pm UTC (link)
    My point is, since it wasn't translated literally, I would've come up with something different when I put it back into German. In any translation courses I've taken, we've only translated one way. one example in question:

    Eng. trans (which my friend showed me): "When I hear "culture" I release the safety catch on my Browning!"
    Original in German: "Wenn ich das Wort Kultur höre, dann greife ich zur Pistole."

    and while the first part was easy enough, the second part actually says nothing about releasing safety catches or Brownings. thus, it would be impossible to figure out the exact wording without knowing the original quote.

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    [info]hirtzenocker
    2005-06-17 07:52 pm UTC (link)
    I've gotten all of those too. Ouch.

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    [info]pottergirl26
    2005-06-17 11:19 pm UTC (link)
    I'm fluent in [name of a language]... but I can't read books/watch movies/speak at all in [name of same language]

    But why would you want to watch the film/read the book in the original language anyway?"


    Have you ever come across a person that thinks they know a language because they studied it a few months and can conjugate things? It's SOOO irritating. At least I'm glad that some of the Chinese kids at my school not lie and admit they are only semi-bilingual.

    And you seem to lose so much when translating. I live in a Spanglish world. For the fun of it, I put SAP whenever I can and look at the English captioning or English subtitles on a Dvd I'm playing in Spanish to criticize how something is translated. It makes you proud to really know what they're saying originally.

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-18 01:19 am UTC (link)
    Have you ever come across a person that thinks they know a language because they studied it a few months and can conjugate things? It's SOOO irritating.
    constantly. arrggh.

    ..look at the English captioning or English subtitles on a Dvd I'm playing in Spanish to criticize how something is translated.
    oh yes, i do that with DVDs in German all the time. it never fails to amaze me how much people usually miss by reading the subtitles.

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    [info]kaikias
    2005-06-18 12:56 am UTC (link)
    *twitch* Oh, the stupid, it BURNS.

    And yeah, I've gotten my share of the people who don't bother trying to pronounce things remotely right. They're often the same ones who end up reading out completely different words than are actually on the paper. *twitch*

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-18 01:25 am UTC (link)
    yes, some of my classmates have scarred me for life, i think.

    as for completely different words, that happens in my German classes all the time, because no one pronounces the umlauts and seem to be unable to tell the difference between words with "ie" and words with "ei." it causes me agony.

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    [info]belleceramique
    2005-06-19 01:31 am UTC (link)
    When it comes to languages, I find the naked ignorance of many people to be extremely disturbing. Especially when they're in a foreign country, where the official language is NOT English, and they continue to insist on speaking only English (as if yelling at a storeclerk in English when she doesn't understand a word is supposed to qualify as communication). And I can't stand warmongers. That quote about not learning French b/c France "didn't support our country" really got under my skin. For every culturally sensitive American, there seem to be at least two ignorant jerks in gas-guzzling SUVs. I thumb my nose in their general direction!

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-19 03:21 am UTC (link)
    oh, the French thing (which i hear nearly as often as the german thing) makes me want to punch people for their ignorance. i'm not in support of the war myself, but that still doesn't have anything to do with my wanting to learn french or not. grr.

    i thumb my nose at them with you. =0)

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    [info]carnificinafera
    2005-06-19 01:53 am UTC (link)
    The mispronunciation thing drives me up a wall. In all my high school Spanish classes people just pronounced things like they were English. Even in the fifth year class people used straight English pronunciation! Hopefully my university language courses won't make me as sad.

    As for the gender thing, I actually disagree. I mean, maybe the context makes a difference, but I find it very interesting to analyze where the genders of certain nouns came from. For instance, even when they have a masculine-looking form, all of the Latin words for species of trees are feminine, owing to something about the tree-spirits. Or Spanish's "el radio" vs. "la radio" (radio wave and speaker/receiver combo, respecitvely).

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    [info]nur_ein_tier
    2005-06-19 03:27 am UTC (link)
    i hope your uni courses will be better too. i know mine were. actually i took 4 years of spanish in high school and most of the students pronounced things pretty decently after the first year or so.

    as for gender: i see where you're coming from, but i don't think most of these people had any interest in etymology. they just don't get the picture at all. they seem to be confusing the object with the noun referring to it. a table itself is not masculine, but the German word "Tisch" is masculine, i mean. i just get the feeling that people who have had 5 years of German shouldn't be so amazed that "das Mädchen" is neuter, though it refers to a girl. and so on.

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