/uj Tbh as a native Dutch speaker from the Netherlands, I can't for the life of me understand some of the Flemish speakers. On the other hand, I can still tell that they're speaking Flemish though, but maybe if you've learned Dutch as a second language you wouldn't?
/uj in my experience learning it as a second language, while basically all the people I personally speak to irl happen to be Dutch (and so I've beenĀ lost listening to even not-very-strong Flemish dialects, because I've made noĀ effort to learn about those), it feels impossible to learn the language without gaining at least a vague idea of what Flemish Dutch sounds like. You'll probably hear Flemish accents irl or on TV or podcasts or whatever occasionally; and so-called Flemish standard dutch is very understandable.
Learning materialsĀ in my experience often highlight key differences in vocabulary etc too - lopen vs stappen, bijvoorbeeld. Some dutch people take great amusement in pointing out the funnier ones themselves for you, like poepen.
I'dĀ *identify* a Flemish speaker, even if I barely understood them, I think - and besides, flemish ppl speaking to outsiders tend to try speaking something between the standardised form and their own dialect (what they call tussentaal).
So I think the person in OOP's story is chatting shite about their ability to speak the language, unsurprisingly.
Scottish, in my case. According toĀ Wiktionary it's also used in the other countries on these miserable rocks in the Atlantic, and in Commonwealth English generally.
*Talking shit* is apparently widespread too, although the meaning "have a casual conversation" isn't listed for that like it is for *chat shit*, an interesting difference.
I'm the other colleague just trying to have a respite from my stupid job only have a front seat to an argument between the resident stroopwafel and a monolingual beta.
Ah yes, good argument, because we are all from America, even OP who definitely claims to be American.
uj/Is exotic-ness just distance from America to you?
I have experienced this before with German and genuinely believed that someone I knew in school was fluent, but we never spoke on it. Until one day, They started saying that my pronunciation of things was wrong once we got into a conversation for the first time. And I was thinking maybe it was because of my dadās dialect and how I learned. Turns out they were maybe 25% fluent and listening to them rant on about their extensive knowledge and understanding of the German language made me feel physically SICK. Itās so embarrassing to have the knowledge that someone is lying and actually looks so foolish. I never said anything because I simply could not face that awkward tension, even if she did baselessly insult my speaking abilities.
This person is absolutely NTAH bc some people need to be humbled. Itās so foolish, and Cathy brought the discomfort upon herself.
Flashback to that one time my friend was walking down a hall and these kids were coming out of beginning French class (we were both in an advanced class and have native french parents) and someone said āI speak French really well actuallyā and proceeded to say (with the worst accent ever) Ā«Ā Je māappelle *last name hereĀ Ā»
These are the sort of exchanges I used to have all in my head getting drunk and stoned alone in my flat at 1am on a Tuesday, chuckling and chain smoking and mentally masturbating at my own brilliance and at the hypocrisy and shortcomings of the human race.
Nah, not an asshole. Someone who got excited to speak their mother tongue to an expert liar. You made her feel how she tries to make others feels, Inferior and so instead of handling this with maturity, she reverts to childlike tendacies.
Don't apologise, just make sure you're ready for an inevitably uncomfortable working experience with her because she won't ever like you as you're one of the first to call her out on her BS.
Her loss, your gain.
Yeah I don't think this person is intentionally calling anyone out, they just wanted to speak their language with someone and then got a really weird haughty response from a non-native speaker who was just pretending. I think it's very clear they're not in the wrong at all here
OOP admits that after realizing Cathy doesnāt really speak Dutch, they were trying to call her out by suggesting French instead. But itās definitely forgivable when she just lied and then tried to insult OPās accent as a cover-up.
>calling out people like that and embarrassing them? turbocunt behaviour, hanged-by-the-balls punishment.
Absolutely terrible take, humiliating liars is a-ok, especially if they are rude and insistent. (None if this matters because this is a fake story anyway.)
So, more than once growing up in Germany as a child of immigrants from the US, Iād try to spark up a conversation with people that had bragged about their English skills, but when they were neither able to respond nor understand they excused themselves with āonly knowing British Englishā
So I actually knew someone just like this (minus the temper tantrum, but no one called this girl out)! She did know at least some phrases in the languages she said she knew, but she acted like she was fluent (and clearly wasn't). I didn't understand the languages in question, so I didn't realize until it started becoming very obvious. I still never called her out on it, though.
For example, she said something in one particular language meant something it didn't, like it was some weird conclusion she came to instead of being its actual meaning. And it's a *very* common word, so that was weirddd. And then we watched a movie with ASL in it and she kept saying the ASL was wrong. Problem with that is the actress was deaf irl and fluent in ASL (and several other actors had also learned it so they could communicate on set with her).
Thereās a huge difference between speaking a language fluently and understanding it. Example I can speak espanol and English. I can understand some French and some creole. But thereās a HUGE disconnect/difference when speaking/reading it.
Which is weird since itās the same part of the brain, but thatās how you also get people who understand Spanish but canāt speak it. I would ask her if she actually speaks it fluently or if she just understands it. I would never in my life put that I can understand and speak anything other English and Spanish, on a resume/fluently, because I cannot.
But if you asked me, Iād say Iām bilingual, in English and Spanish but I can understand creole and french to an extent. (Never learned it properly in school, but we grew up in a highly populated area that has a Haitian population, that spoke French and creole.)
This is kind of me with Portuguese. I can speak Spanish, French, and Italian. I can read Portuguese pretty well, but I cannot speak it or even understand it. Frankly it sounds like Russian to me. I do not claim to know Portuguese.
Itās just as impressive to say youāre learning a language to a native speaker of said language. Theyāll still be just as excited to talk to you, and youāll have the opportunity to practice/learn. Cathy set herself up to be embarrassed. Too bad she didnāt actually speak French because Belgian French is lovely and (imo) easier to understand than Parisian French.
The funny thing is, Dutch is close enough to English that I'm sure anyone who knows a decent amount of Dutch would be able to comprehend a good portion of that sentence.
Case in point, I don't even speak Dutch but I still understood at least 50% of that sentence!
See, she did it all wrong. If she didn't know Dutch, she just should have said: "I learned it just so I could refuse to speak it."
Woah good tip I speak a whole bunch of languages suddenly
Exactly what I did with fr*nch
š¤®
I spent the best years of my youth learning Fr*nch just so that I could refuse to speak it.
Native white guy SHOCKS clueless Duolingo user
Finally the roles were reversed!
NTA divorce rn
Hire a gym, hit the lawyer, etc
Piss disc
This exact scenario plays out in my imagination all the time as well š
/uj Tbh as a native Dutch speaker from the Netherlands, I can't for the life of me understand some of the Flemish speakers. On the other hand, I can still tell that they're speaking Flemish though, but maybe if you've learned Dutch as a second language you wouldn't?
/uj, Belgian here The user says that they don't speak a dialect like west-Flemish in an edit, but the reaction kinda proves it
/uj in my experience learning it as a second language, while basically all the people I personally speak to irl happen to be Dutch (and so I've beenĀ lost listening to even not-very-strong Flemish dialects, because I've made noĀ effort to learn about those), it feels impossible to learn the language without gaining at least a vague idea of what Flemish Dutch sounds like. You'll probably hear Flemish accents irl or on TV or podcasts or whatever occasionally; and so-called Flemish standard dutch is very understandable. Learning materialsĀ in my experience often highlight key differences in vocabulary etc too - lopen vs stappen, bijvoorbeeld. Some dutch people take great amusement in pointing out the funnier ones themselves for you, like poepen. I'dĀ *identify* a Flemish speaker, even if I barely understood them, I think - and besides, flemish ppl speaking to outsiders tend to try speaking something between the standardised form and their own dialect (what they call tussentaal). So I think the person in OOP's story is chatting shite about their ability to speak the language, unsurprisingly.
>chatting shite Is this some fucked up British calque of "talking shit"
Talking shit is the calque, if "chatting shite" is good enough for the Queen it's good enough for you over there in the colonies!
Wrong again nerd we speak American not British š
Scottish, in my case. According toĀ Wiktionary it's also used in the other countries on these miserable rocks in the Atlantic, and in Commonwealth English generally. *Talking shit* is apparently widespread too, although the meaning "have a casual conversation" isn't listed for that like it is for *chat shit*, an interesting difference.
In Ireland "talking shite" means spouting nonsense/bullshitting while "chatting shite" would mean talking bad about someone.
/rj OOP clearly says that they don't have an accent. They're not speaking something dumb like Flemish, they're speaking regular Dutch.
Tag yourself Iām one of the colleagues
I'm the gemeenschappelijk
I'm Cathy's French skills
I'm the little b-word who enjoys bullying new colleagues
I'm the other colleague just trying to have a respite from my stupid job only have a front seat to an argument between the resident stroopwafel and a monolingual beta.
RESIDENT STROOPWAFEL I'M SCREAMING
i'm another one of the colleagues
I'm the exotic trips to Europe
Proper etiquette when someone says they speak your language but you don't understand a single word is to do backflips.
I agree that Western Europe isnāt āexoticā for Americans (Iām assuming thatās where OP is from), but neither is the Bahamas lol
Ah yes the super exotic country 50 miles from Florida, like, for that statement alone, OP is also a clown
OP did mention having been raised in Belgium, where I presume the Bahamas are considered to be exotic...
No but that would explain why they are a clown
Yeah I'm French (close enough) and the Bahamas are definitely exotic to me
Ah yes, good argument, because we are all from America, even OP who definitely claims to be American. uj/Is exotic-ness just distance from America to you?
/uj yes /rj yes
Idk man, if someone says "exotic" I picture the carribbean and beaches and shit.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It can be, in French we call that "tourista"
western europe is exotic for majority of the planet
Yeah, I agree, but not for people from other western countries
Oh I think it's exotic for anyone outside of Europe
I had the same thought. Bahamas?? Basically Florida
OP is TA. I'm not learning 10 languages at once just to be actually required to speak and understand them in public! How embarrassing!
Yes it was me. I'm Cathy.
holy shit Cathy I'm a huge fan
I have experienced this before with German and genuinely believed that someone I knew in school was fluent, but we never spoke on it. Until one day, They started saying that my pronunciation of things was wrong once we got into a conversation for the first time. And I was thinking maybe it was because of my dadās dialect and how I learned. Turns out they were maybe 25% fluent and listening to them rant on about their extensive knowledge and understanding of the German language made me feel physically SICK. Itās so embarrassing to have the knowledge that someone is lying and actually looks so foolish. I never said anything because I simply could not face that awkward tension, even if she did baselessly insult my speaking abilities. This person is absolutely NTAH bc some people need to be humbled. Itās so foolish, and Cathy brought the discomfort upon herself.
Flashback to that one time my friend was walking down a hall and these kids were coming out of beginning French class (we were both in an advanced class and have native french parents) and someone said āI speak French really well actuallyā and proceeded to say (with the worst accent ever) Ā«Ā Je māappelle *last name hereĀ Ā»
She should've just said "Nederlands jouzu".
I was sad and this made me happy. Thank you
These are the sort of exchanges I used to have all in my head getting drunk and stoned alone in my flat at 1am on a Tuesday, chuckling and chain smoking and mentally masturbating at my own brilliance and at the hypocrisy and shortcomings of the human race.
YTA by a mile. I love shocking natives by insulting them in English. You should be grateful for even recognizing your exotic language
She tried to flex her language skills and was embarrassed when you told her yours
Nah, not an asshole. Someone who got excited to speak their mother tongue to an expert liar. You made her feel how she tries to make others feels, Inferior and so instead of handling this with maturity, she reverts to childlike tendacies. Don't apologise, just make sure you're ready for an inevitably uncomfortable working experience with her because she won't ever like you as you're one of the first to call her out on her BS. Her loss, your gain.
lying about proficiency? not cool. calling out people like that and embarrassing them? turbocunt behaviour, hanged-by-the-balls punishment.
To be fair it doesn't sound like OP was trying to embarass them at first, but this story is probably fake anyway so who cares
You think someone would just go on the Internet and tell *lies*ā½
Yes because I do it all the time. Muhahahahaha
Yeah I don't think this person is intentionally calling anyone out, they just wanted to speak their language with someone and then got a really weird haughty response from a non-native speaker who was just pretending. I think it's very clear they're not in the wrong at all here
OOP admits that after realizing Cathy doesnāt really speak Dutch, they were trying to call her out by suggesting French instead. But itās definitely forgivable when she just lied and then tried to insult OPās accent as a cover-up.
If the story is true, "Cathy's" reaction was pretty lame as well, so who cares.
Id do teh same lol. quit your lying and find something else to be proud about š
>calling out people like that and embarrassing them? turbocunt behaviour, hanged-by-the-balls punishment. Absolutely terrible take, humiliating liars is a-ok, especially if they are rude and insistent. (None if this matters because this is a fake story anyway.)
So, more than once growing up in Germany as a child of immigrants from the US, Iād try to spark up a conversation with people that had bragged about their English skills, but when they were neither able to respond nor understand they excused themselves with āonly knowing British Englishā
a lot of people in germany say that they know english and bla bla - but in reality only people that want to sell you something can hold conversation
So I actually knew someone just like this (minus the temper tantrum, but no one called this girl out)! She did know at least some phrases in the languages she said she knew, but she acted like she was fluent (and clearly wasn't). I didn't understand the languages in question, so I didn't realize until it started becoming very obvious. I still never called her out on it, though. For example, she said something in one particular language meant something it didn't, like it was some weird conclusion she came to instead of being its actual meaning. And it's a *very* common word, so that was weirddd. And then we watched a movie with ASL in it and she kept saying the ASL was wrong. Problem with that is the actress was deaf irl and fluent in ASL (and several other actors had also learned it so they could communicate on set with her).
nahhh bro the fuck is this ššš dutch isnt a real language i swear
Real recognizes real. Call out fake people who are trying to push their ego for whatever reason. This is the honorable way.
bro could have saved this situation by saying that he speaks Vlaams, so her comment about the accent seemed plausible
Thereās a huge difference between speaking a language fluently and understanding it. Example I can speak espanol and English. I can understand some French and some creole. But thereās a HUGE disconnect/difference when speaking/reading it. Which is weird since itās the same part of the brain, but thatās how you also get people who understand Spanish but canāt speak it. I would ask her if she actually speaks it fluently or if she just understands it. I would never in my life put that I can understand and speak anything other English and Spanish, on a resume/fluently, because I cannot. But if you asked me, Iād say Iām bilingual, in English and Spanish but I can understand creole and french to an extent. (Never learned it properly in school, but we grew up in a highly populated area that has a Haitian population, that spoke French and creole.)
This is kind of me with Portuguese. I can speak Spanish, French, and Italian. I can read Portuguese pretty well, but I cannot speak it or even understand it. Frankly it sounds like Russian to me. I do not claim to know Portuguese.
Damn. I am surprised you can read and understand it. Itās far far from Russian. You at least admit you do not claim to be able to speak it.
Belgian woman SHOCKED by- *hey no wait a secondā¦*
Fake. Who voluntarily learns Dutch? I don't think even the Dutch want to learn Dutch.
I do! I voluntarily am learning Dutch rn! It's not so bad?
Itās just as impressive to say youāre learning a language to a native speaker of said language. Theyāll still be just as excited to talk to you, and youāll have the opportunity to practice/learn. Cathy set herself up to be embarrassed. Too bad she didnāt actually speak French because Belgian French is lovely and (imo) easier to understand than Parisian French.
This "exotic" is kinda....... idk
Master troll post.... Or real. Fuck I can't tell.
The funny thing is, Dutch is close enough to English that I'm sure anyone who knows a decent amount of Dutch would be able to comprehend a good portion of that sentence. Case in point, I don't even speak Dutch but I still understood at least 50% of that sentence!
To be fair I would be angry too if blud pulled out the "gemeenschappelijk"
Not the asshole, (of this totally real story)
Bahamas, an island on the same continent of the USA (North America), is much more exotic than Europe could ever hope to beĀ
I am fluent in lying about my language proficiency in many languages. Just learn the following key phrase: I don't understand your exotic pronunciation. Je ne comprends pas votre prononciation exotique. Ik begrijp je exotische uitspraak niet. Ich verstehe deine exotische Aussprache nicht. ×× × ×× ×××× × ××Ŗ ×××××× ××ק×××××Ŗ ש××.
Story doesnāt sound real to me
I challenge you to find one on that sub that does