For those who have ever moved to a new city/country
- Thread starter Pacion
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africana
New Member
I had a similar experience when I moved from west africa to the states, changing from British english (and better grammarcl5814 said:
) to "American"My progress was sped up by being around immature high school kids who liked to tease and whom I generally despised lol
It took me a long time to identify with people in my age bracket (actually I never really did) mainly because the high school education/level is fairly low in the US compared my schooling in Nigeria
In general adjusting was fairly easy since we were already aware of important aspects of American via media/TV/movies. School was way easy (much easier than what I was used to), and my parents had already lived in the States before and had freinds/relatives so the transition was fairly smooth
that was 10 years ago
lynn said:
Yea, the accent business. Quite tricky. I didn't want to change my accent but had to in order to be understood.
Speaking tempo. Yes, your observation is correct as far as i am concerned.
British vs American English. We use different words in british english than in american english. The best example i can think of now is "petrol" or otherwise known in America as "gas". That is probably the difficult part to learn, with the new accent in second place.
africana said:I had a similar experience when I moved from west africa to the states, changing from British english (and better grammar
Mmmm, somebody else also noticed the grammar difference.
I found that the "America" that is portrayed in movies is quite different from the actual country "America". Maybe if you lived in Hollywood, you could identify more with the movie-America.
Pacion
New Member
cl5814 said:
Change accents? I tend to think of it more as "evolving one's accent"
For further examples of British english and American english, have a look here http://www.dance-forums.com/showthread.php?t=2328
It funny, when I think of it, as a child we moved a couple of times and it was quite easy to fit in. But I was quite lucky I guess cause I was never mobbed by other kids.
As a grown-up I tried to move one and I lived one year in Norway (Norwegian mother, Egyptian father), but I felt completely out of place. But I think it also had to do with the setting (had finished university, difficult to get to know people).
I'm always scared to loose the feeling of home, or not knowing where it is.
As a grown-up I tried to move one and I lived one year in Norway (Norwegian mother, Egyptian father), but I felt completely out of place. But I think it also had to do with the setting (had finished university, difficult to get to know people).
I'm always scared to loose the feeling of home, or not knowing where it is.
motardmom
New Member
I had a whole post all typed out... then it was devoured by the post monster, a cousin to the sock monster who lives in the washing machine. Grrr!!!pygmalion said:So how about moving to a country where you don't (yet) speak the language -- as an adult? Does anybody here have experience with that? Any tips?
(No. Not for me.)
My tip? Don't go to the Philippines if you want to learn a language that will be useful in other areas of your life. Or even if you want it to be useful in the Philippines, because it may not be as useful as you hoped. It might be interesting if you are a linguist, but it's not particularly practical when you return to the States.
Learning Bisaya was rough on various levels. I experienced a lot of frustration with my first tutor, I kept asking questions that he didn't have answers for. My second (and best) tutor moved. My third tutor was basically a paid translator: tell me what you want to say and I'll tell you how to say it." Ugh! I wanted to know how to structure a sentence on my own!
There are 107 dialects in the Philippines. Often they are totally different languages. They are all Malay-based so the sentence structure is the same, but a lot of the vocabulary words are different from dialect to dialect. The national language for the Philippines is Filipino, which is more or less Tagalog with a twist. The other national language is English. Both languages are taught in all schools (tho public schools are not as proficient at teaching English...) So everyone knows Filipino and English, but fluency varies widely depending on the quality education the person received. (Public or private.) Filipinos are so mobile, they can be working in Iloilo (Ilongo-speaking) on Wednesday, and by Friday be working at their new job in Bacolod (Bisaya-speaking). So suddenly they have essentially a new language to learn. With this mobility you will often hear people conversing, explaining to each other what a word is, or more often they will just default to English for that word then continue the conversation in the dialect. It's not too difficult to follow a conversation if you know the pronouns and a few vocabulary words in the dialect because there is enough English mixed in. (I also had to be careful about who I was practicing with or else they'd screw me up with their vocab words from a different dialect).
So, after I had lived there for a couple years, I had picked up enough of the dialect that I could avoid getting ripped off in the market, and follow a conversation, (identify when people were talking about me in front of my face...), and just generally get along just fine. I was not conversant tho. It was hard to find someone who would speak to me in the dialect as well. They wanted to practice their English with a native speaker.
Ah, well... it was pretty cool anyway... (I did pick up a little Korean there too, from a 5 year old TRI-lingual - yes, fluent - neighbor-boy.) Mayong gabii!
I still have this idea in the back of my mind to move to Germany. The IT industry was (or is ?) quite hot in 2000-2001 (the last time i enquired about it). Learning german would be interesting since Afrikaans is sort of based on German. Germany would also be very centrally located to travel through europe. I know they also speak some german in northern italy and switzerland.
I learned some german over summer a few years back. She was a native speaker and the classes were lots of fun. It was meant for a traveller to german.
One day, one day ............
I learned some german over summer a few years back. She was a native speaker and the classes were lots of fun. It was meant for a traveller to german.
One day, one day ............
I had to learn Norewegian when I lived there for a year. It wan't difficult, but I think it's because I had been exposed to it, can speak English and most Norwegians speak English as well. I find it difficult for people who do not know a similar alphabet. I remember we had a Thai girl who could speak only Thai and was trying to learn Norwegian. She had a tough time. It's like us trying to learn Thai.
When most of the people speak English (e.g. Norway), the main disadvantge was when I'd go to a store and speak Norwegian (practicng), then the shop-keeper would speak to me in English. And I don't want English, I want to practice.
When most of the people speak English (e.g. Norway), the main disadvantge was when I'd go to a store and speak Norwegian (practicng), then the shop-keeper would speak to me in English. And I don't want English, I want to practice.