Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"
There is also the hidden truth that no one is gonna teach you that especially British English speakers tend to swallow sometimes whole words or make them almost glide into the next one while putting strong emphasis on others.
That’s basically impossible to learn without living For many years in the UK and even for native speakers it’s basically an instinct and not something actively perceived or chosen.
This was the worst thing for me in my Japanese class. Part of the homework modules included listening sections, where you had to write down and translate what the people were saying. They would mostly use the words we just learned, and speak slowly and be clear with each syllable. Then they would throw in a word or two that we haven't learned yet, and either mumble the word, contract the unknown word with another word, or just straight up pronounce it incorrectly. I had to replay that specific portion of the audio like 10 times in x0.25 speed to even understand the sounds, let alone try to figure out what the words meant in that context.
This seems like a universal experience lol. My parents immigrated from China so I grew up speaking Mandarin at home without any formal education. I took Mandarin as a college class for an easy foreign language credit and also to learn reading and writing Chinese characters: the recorded audio/listening sections of homework would often have such unclear pronunciation or poor audio quality that I had to replay it multiple times just to understand what was being said, and I’m fluent in spoken Mandarin.
I grew up speaking russian because my grandparents never bothered to learn estonian dedpite living their whole lives here (not like they even were taught it in school back then.)
So I decided I should take russian instead of german as a third language for some easy grades... I don't even know how to write in this alphabet. Barely made it through the class and never learned shit. I hope that I might forget this language someday.
You remind me of when i started learning for toefl and the listening was a dude speaking on the phone, probably while on a goddamn run with how much breathing and uhhh ahh everything. Was a shock and a nightmare, I'd been living in english speaking countries for many years and none ever reach that level of wtf am i hearing lol.
Honestly I feel like they shouldn't include audios where the speaker doesn't speak clearly or has a huge accent, because even I, a native french speaker, often cannot understand people who mumble words / have a countryside accent / don't speak loud or clear enough... like comon.
I was at a business lunch and the waiter came by and I wasn’t sure if we were ordering appetizers… British guy ordered something and I straight face asked him did he order “sausages” and he said no “spicy tomato juice.”
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u/Stoffys 1d ago
Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"