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Being Understood In A Foreign LanguageBeing Understood In A Foreign Language
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When I am in Eastern Europe for too long of a period, and I call back here to a pedantic Californian friend, he claims my English goes all to hell. We can barely carry on a conversation, he spends so much time making up pretend complaints about my speaking....
Perhaps my English isn't as precise as before the trip, but when I am there my main mission is to be understood, even if I have to misuse the language a little bit and speak it in the way that the people there understand it. Plus, they have interesting turns of phrases that I find interesting, or curious, and sometimes they end up flavoring my own speech. Monkey hear, monkey say....
Some of my favorite turns of speech common over there:
The other thing amazing to me was friends who seemed to know almost no English, yet shared with me their meticulously transcribed note books from their English language classes that they were currently taking. Meticulous notes on grammar, etc., they could probably teach me some things. But they were scared to death to try speaking the language.
Me, as soon as I learn a word, I'm busy trying to use (or misuse) it in everyday speech. Most of my friends are amazed that I've even done my best to learn how to read Cyrillic, and I can do pretty well over there because of lots of borrowed words. Knowing how to read and write their letters, (script handwriting in cyrillic is still a mystery to me), has helped me write down things for people who could not understand my anglicized pronounciation of the word. Because of many experiences like this, I think it is very important to learn spelling of foreign words, and be able to write them down. Seeing the foreign words also helps me discover sounds I didn't notice in the spoken word.
Sometimes I dream in Russian. I find myself trying to converse with someone who knows only a little English. And I sometimes spend later parts of the dream agonizing how I could have been more precise with Russian.
It's also interesting to me that it is very hard to read written things that appear in dreams.
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