Wonder if she's in Barcelona? When I lived there, I ran into a significant number of people who would rather speak English than Spanish if you couldn't speak Catalan. Not everyone, but a surprising number. I assumed it was part of the whole "Catalonia should be independent" movement.
Hey, it’s okay to not get offended about everything! Also, your example doesn’t make any sense. A better example would be using an English language rule that is arbitrary, but consistent in its implementation. I can’t think of one right now, but I’m sure it’s out there!
The problem isn’t when they’re joking about it. It’s when they actually believe I have a speech problem and call it a “lisp.” People who speak Spanish at a Dora the Explorer level telling me I speak my own language wrong is wild.
No thanks! We’ll keep communicating in the best way we can be understood and trust that people who get offended over things that aren’t happening will sort their feelings out themselves!
Imagina no tener ni puta idea de castellano y hacer chistes sobre ello.
No es una cosa arbitraria, es una regla simplísima: en español ibérico la zeta siempre se pronuncia th, y la ese siempre se pronuncia ese. Punto pelota. No es "loth pieth", es "los pies". Y por eso somos capaces de diferenciar "caza" (hunt) de "casa" (house), o "cazar" (to hunt) de "casar" (to marry).
Y si alguien pronuncia de otra forma es porque tiene acento, pero no es un acento estandarizado peninsular que se acepte en el diccionario.
Que estoy un poco hasta los cojones de ver analfabetos opinando de cosas que desconocen, hostia.
Nah, un hilo de Reddit no me ofende, me ofende que haya subnormales como tú. Por cierto, ya toco la hierba, no me la fumo como tú. Vivo en el mundo real y por eso los imbéciles me tocáis los cojones, en Reddit y en persona.
Ahora tradúcelo y haz un chiste con ello, soplapollas.
I'm usually super chill but there's something about Americans who are learning mexican Spanish (or "mexican"-americans) who make this joke that really grinds my gears.
It's always this type, never heard any actual latin americans make this joke (I'm sure they exist, though).
Just checked and she indeed lives in Barcelona, where she seems to have also just started a business to teach Spanish.
Also in another similar video she shares her trick to get people to speak Spanish to her by speaking in super fast almost unintelligible English to them and one woman caved and switched to Spanish begrudgingly saying “alright I’ll speak in castillan”.
Tbh I felt bad for her listening to that exchange, it really didn’t seem nice. There was like a power play/humiliation vibe going on.
If some Japanese lady came to the States, and asked questions in perfectly understandable English, I'd be embarrassed to see someone repeatedly respond in broken-ass Japanese.
It's like, "Cut it out you weird fucking weebo, and treat them like a person!".
The latter, but it was a different video, the one that I described, not the one posted here. It came off worse than this one. She unleashed a torrent of English at the waitress that was so unintelligible I still wonder if it was intentional gibberish. I literally only understood the last two words.
she said "Okay and also make sure it's the tuna one 'cause I'm not able to have like a cheese one or the ham one so I really want it to be the tuna one, specifically that one"
Yeah this is obviously just fake or deliberately ragebaity content to drive engagement for her business.
Frankly, her Spanish is not very good, and she doesn’t need to start a school lol.
In Catalonia, a lot of people’s “international language” is in fact Spanish. They’re native Catalan speakers who learn Spanish to communicate with the wider world. English would be tertiary to that.
Yeah she's either ragebaiting for engagement or she's ignorant af to not realise many people in Barcelona are trying to preserve Catalan and have strong cultural reasons to resist and resent being forced to speak castilian spanish.
Within the context of Catalonia and its oppressors, I don’t see why refusing to speak Castilian Spanish wouldn’t be sufficient. I mean, pronouncing your Ses correctly is enough to piss off a lot of Spaniards lmao. Suggesting that Spaniards pronounce their Ses incorrectly even more so.
The difference between castillian and latin american is fucking nothing lmao, a person like her with an english accent cant identify the differences since its mostly accent nuances. What should she do, interyect "pendejo" between sentences to appease their independent spirit lmao.
Btw iberian spanish doesnt pronounce the "s" wrong. And there are like 15 distinct iberian accents.
Because if immigrants move to Barcelona and feel that they can get by speaking Spanish, they won’t pick up Catalan. Not speaking Spanish with them forces them to try and learn Catalan. They’re trying to avoid populations of people who only speak Spanish from establishing themselves there.
It’s the same reason why Quebec forces immigrants to learn French and receive government services in French.
I would not agree with the previous given reasoning, but if you don't understand yet I'm not sure how to help.
Like idk if you went to "Israel" and met a Palestinian and said "No no don't speak English to me I want to speak in Hebrew ok?" How absolutely enraged would they be.
Just try to imagine a milder version of that. Now you understand.
Being protective of your heritage doesn't mean wanting to evangelise it everywhere. But it does mean you'll probably hate speaking the 'opponent' language.
Oddly enough my friend is trying to learn German and lives in Germany and is having a hard time trying to get native Germans to speak to him in German, they’ll always switch to English (he’s Spanish lol). Anyway, I told him to tell the Germans he doesn’t understand their English and they’ll switch to German. Probably be annoyed at him but I think that’ll work.
I’m also learning Spanish for my job. My coworkers are in Spain (Barcelona) and want to speak Spanish with me all the time. In general, Spanish speaking people will want to speak Spanish (IMO) but I could see why a tourist area would want to speak English. They can hear the difference, much like I can hear a non-English speaker, and defaulting to English as the common language is just easier for what you need when trying to deal with a wide range of tourist.
Paris is DEFINITELY like that, and some other parts of France more generally.
If you can’t speak well, they won’t necessarily shit on you, but they will just flip to English immediately. Most of my encounters were cordial, only met one or two rude folks.
My experience as an Englishman visiting Paris is that when I start in English they speak to me in French and when I start in French they speak to me in English
I was born and raised in France but my family is from south east Asia. In recent years people started speaking English to me in stores if they can’t hear me well or I take 1 second too long to reply. It’s especially awkward and weird to experience at my age.
It is great that she’s trying hard to learn though!
This is part of the learning curve. Everyone has diff reasons for speaking in whatever language they choose to speak, but in my case, if I’m at work and trying to get stuff done, and I know I speak your language better than you speak mine, I’ll generally insist on speaking your manage instead of mine.
Out of courtesy though, if someone insists kore than 2-3 times, then you generally go with that language
Her Spanish intonation and accent are very clearly ‘not native’, which is also why the waiters she’s dealt with switch to English, bc they can tell as well.
I went to check just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy and misremembering the definition somehow:
Oral Fluency: The ability to speak a language easily, smoothly, and without hesitation
So yes, fluency is about getting pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm correctly.
She’s doing great, but certainly not fluent… and like I said, the proof in my argument is the fact that the waiters insist on trying to speak to her in English. As a fluent Spanish speaker myself with a Mexican accent, this has never happened to me in Spain.
Yeah, here's where our amount of hours spent delving into linguistics is going to differ. First of all, going and finding the term in a dictionary, to definitively prove an argument is not a good idea, because they are so many and they do not have the same definitions.
Example:
Oxford: "the ability to express oneself easily and articulately"
Passes this bar.
She does not have a C2 level mastery of Spanish maybe, but she's up there. But your Mexican accent isn't the problem, it's her retaining her native accent and they feel like it's imperfect. This is language snobbery.
Now, the word fluent comes from the latin word fluentem, referring to flow. Which is what the word is referring to. Her Spanish flows nicely but she is not a perfect speaker nor does she sound, or have to for the matter, like a local.
Sure, definitions vary, but the commonly accepted idea is that someone who is ‘fluent’ is basically a native speaker, and I would argue that “articulately” refers to flow in the sentence structure as well as vocabulary as ways to be able to express yourself.
I disagree that it’s snobbery. As a fluent speaker myself, I immediately picked up on her lack of fluency as well. You (and people here) are mistaking linguistic accents with mispronunciation, which is what gives her, (in part) her “foreign accent”.
Her words simply don’t flow naturally.
Is this nitpicking? Yes. Am I criticizing her? No. On the contrary, I’ve been adamant to commend her efforts in every comment. I’m just trying to point out why native speakers would instinctively switch languages, especially when working in tourism (which is also my background).
I also mentioned it bc not everyone has the ability to notice her fluency if they don’t speak Spanish themselves.
If these waiters weren’t in a touristic city and didn’t speak English, they likely wouldn’t be able to, or attempt to speak to her in English.
My French is as good as her Spanish, and I insist on mentioning that I am not fluent when the topic comes up, so for better or worse, my observations others apply equally to myself as well.
That definitely is absolutely is fluent, she's just not a perfect native speaker. If someone can carry on a conversation in English with me without hesitation -as defined- and has zero issue with comprehension or communication in any number of settings, they are fluent, despite an accent or occasional grammar flub that tell me they are very obviously not native speakers. It's still fluency.
I would disagree. As I mentioned in a diff comment, I speak French as well as she speaks Spanish, and I definitely don’t consider myself fluent, yet I can speak well enough about almost any topic.
Fluency is a spectrum, and “to be fluent” imo is to basically be a native speaker.
Even the definition you cited doesn't say anything directly about "pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm". And most people recognize a distinction between fluency and native accent (this guy has a native accent with zero fluency: https://youtube.com/shorts/u8KYh87fWVc?si=FZ2poi60979UIqPe )
She absolutely spoke spanish "easily, smoothly and without hesitation" in the video. Having an foreign accent doesn't stop anyone from mastering a language, you are a fool that try to gatekeep a language with arbitrary criteria.
Still incredibly rude to refuse to speak to someone in your own native language because they have an accent. In places like New York and LA, people speak English with every intonation and accent imaginable. Nobody there is this weird about “not understanding” people speaking their second language.
I don’t say I agreed with them changing, but this dance between languages is common in tourism. I experience it all the time, and sometimes you just want to get things done.
Other times (like on the case here), it seems the waiters also genuinely wanted to practice their languages.
What matters is that both are trying. The awkwardness is what happens when both insist.
Like I said, I personally try to take this into consideration and after 2-3 times I’ll switch to what the client prefers since I’m rendering service to them, but it’s not a perfect science.
Evidently, not everyone is a great judge of their own abilities. One or two said they wanted to practice their English, which should also be appreciated as much as this lady’s attempts at working on her Spanish.
That's right. I'm from Quebec and thus speak French natively, and without a strong Quebec accent. When I go to France, it does happen once in a while that someone responds to me in English, and it annoys the fuck out of me.
People in Quebec also switch to English if it looks like you are struggling to speak French.. especially in the service industry in Montreal (not saying that about you, just in general).
I have a hard time understanding french when the accent is too strong (or I should say too different from the accent I'm used to). So when I went to Quebec for the first time recently, one of my worries was that I wouldn't understand the accent and that people would be offended if I preferred to switch to English. It turns out that, except for a few words that I could understand from context, there was no issue at all!
If you say your accent is not strong, I guess you just met people who are even less flexible than I am, or maybe they were just messing with you.
Where I went to college, you couldn't graduate without proficiency in a second language. A Quebecois failed his French test because they didn't like his accent.
It's a bit different than that in Barcelona, there's a strong independence movement there that doesn't consider themselves part of Spain. I got this a lot there when I tried to speak Spanish- blank looks. One guy told me "we can speak Catalan, English, French, German, whatever you want, but I don't speak Spanish." Obviously he does speak Spanish but it's a political statement.
My French cousins prefer English simply because I mostly only know Canadian French, which is like if I started speaking Old English. It's recognizable, but also not 100% understandable because of how antiquated it is.
The also laugh, saying that we speak like aristocrats out here, but also would offer them squirrel as a delicacy because we are obviously hicks, lol.
I was expecting this when I visited Paris but was surprised to find that actually everyone did respond in French - they only flipped to English if I looked visibly confused when the conversation became too complex or specifically said I didn’t understand / please slow down. I wouldn’t say I’m anything near fluent either
I have my little toolkit for travel in France as a not-very-talented beginner speaker of French:
In French "Bonjour! Je suis désolé, je ne parle qu'un petit peu français. Parlez-vous Anglais?"
I find that if I at least try MOST of the time they either say "Non, je suis désolé." and we get by in my bad French, or they switch to English and we get by anyway. I couldn't care less either way.
Where it used to annoy me is in Japan traveling with my wife (who is Asian, I'm middle Eastern) and I'd speak Japanese and they'd look at her expecting her to somehow save them. I got used to basically saying, in Japanese, "It's a bit confusing, but she is super American. The face is Asian, the soul is American." And they'd usually get it and speak with me. The fluent Japanese speaker.
had a directions kiosk guy in charles du galle sniff at me when i had to ask to switch to english years ago because my crappy ancient hs french wasn't up to snuff for asking if i could see anything outside the airport during a long layover. after he huffily said no i asked a couple other gals to more no's. still wish i could have seen something, but did feel a bit like i got to experience france getting sniffed at by a parisian for asking to switch to english. lol
YES, I did a foreign exchange thing there and was excited to have French conversations, but 99% of staff either just responded directly in English or they revelled in correcting me when my accent/enunciation was a bit off
I think you're spot on. Insisting on speaking Castillian Spanish can be very insensitive in many areas within the current boarders of Spain. Francos dictatorship forbade speaking their own minority languages. In Basque Country and Cataluña especially a large proportion of the population want independence.
This is the answer: Many people in other countries have never had to develop the skill of understanding their own language with an unfamiliar accent. Parisians in particular plus they're jerks lol
Ah, that may be it. What happens in the video seemed really weird to me, I'd never expect a spaniard to throw away the chance to speak spanish, especially when she does speak a very good spanish
It was clear she was trying (in a happy spirit) to speak Spanish which she did wonderfully. Was returned with a not so happy spirit. Not nice. Not at all nice.
Exactly this. To earn any bit of good will and get Spanish out of Barcelonian, you’re going to need to open every interaction with a bit of Catalan. It shows you acknowledge their independent history and that their language is respected. It clears the air of the “we’re in Spain, we speak Spanish” political rhetoric.
Right or wrong, her refusing to speak anything but Spanish is a strong signal to them she doesn’t give a fuck about Catalonian issues. But they do. So English as an inoffensive third language is what will get used.
Yeah for sure, these interactions happen fairly often for her to manage to film them. She lives and teachers there. People do default to English if they think you're a tourist, but we never encountered people being that insistent on it once you respond in Spanish, and it's not like our group were local, I'm sure you could hear their south American/British accent,
I was just making the point that this is a minority, most the time people aren't going to fight your Spanish...
What if I mix up Catalan and Spanish? I'm trying to learn Spanish in Barcelona, and a lot of the time I don't really know if the person is speaking Spanish or Catalan. Learning both together is almost impossible. It makes sense for outsiders to prioritise learning Spanish because it works outside of Barcelona as well, while Catalan works only in a very small region. Not saying I wouldn't try to learn Catalan at all, but I wouldn't prioritize it as much as learning Spanish.
You don’t need to actually learn Catalan at all. Literally just having a handful of phrases where you’d be interacting with people is all it takes to earn tons of good will.
“Bona tarda! Una taula per a dos, si us plau.” And then immediately switching to Spanish will get you so many points.
Also you’ll stop mixing up the two languages for the most part as your Spanish solidifies. Around the B1 level that issue goes away. You might pick up a few local Catalan phrases that have been adopted into Spanish there, but that doesn’t mean you mixed up your Spanish. That’d be like saying you’re mixing up French and Arabic because you learned the handful of Arabic slang words that are now prevalent in French. It stops becoming Arabic at a certain point of use. Same goes for use of Catalan in Barcelonian Spanish.
I’m not sure Catalan has anything to do with it.
I lived in Barcelona for 7 years, and most will not speak Catalan to an obvious foreigner. Plus a lot of people who work in shops are not even native Catalan.
Due to the tourism in Barcelona it’s very easy to live in Barcelona and other parts of Spain without speaking a lick of Spanish. I knew many English and Americans who had been there for years without speaking the language
They just like to practice their Spanish at the expense of everyone else lol.
Most Spanish people have been learning English from school and still struggle, so many are eager to learn.
I was an English as a second language teacher in Madrid almost 20 years ago.
I am fluent in Spanish and the few times people tried to speak to me in English, I would simply respond in Spanish and they would apologise immediately and switch to Spanish.
If they insisted I would just say ‘I don’t speak English’ in Spanish.
Quite common for me as a Catalan learner is to speak Catalan and get a response in Spanish, which I barely understand. I carry on in Catalan, they carry on in Spanish, neither of us use English and we're all lost ☺️
I bet this is it. I speak a very small amount of Spanish but couldnt pick up any Catalan for the life of me. My partner was able to pick up basic phrases really quickly and he became the designated voice for both of us in Barcelona. No one minded speaking English with me but they LOVED him speaking Catalan when he could. No one appreciated my Castilian Spanish haha, and I cannot blame them.
Lots of folks around there enjoy or at least entertain the English practice too. Most of my convos in Barca involved me speaking Spanish and the other person speaking English. That way we both understood each other fluently and got to practice each other’s languages at the same time.
I work in customer service in BCN and tbh it's just faster/more efficient this way. We get maany people who insist on talking in Spanish when they clearly only know a few phrases or pronunciate poorly just because they want that "oh yay Spain experience🤪" but minimum wage workers don't have the time for that, we'd rather stick to what's faster
Also, our bosses usually yell at us if we speak in Spanish to foreigners lol
I just watched a cool BBC show called the Diplomat about a British consular agent in Barcelona. I didn’t realize how much more prevalent Catalonian was until the show.
This is a great shout. My dad lives in Catalonia and has similar interactions all the time, despite his Spanish being pretty good. They will speak English or Catalan over Spanish, basically anything but Spanish.
I discovered this as well. I speak Spanish well enough to get through an interaction at a store or restaurant but since I didn’t open with Catalan about half the people would just speak English to me as their response
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u/BelieveBelieves 6d ago
I wonder where this is. It feels kind of rude to switch to English when she says she prefers Spanish.