International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Do you live in a country where you don`t speak the language and most people don`t speak English?
Most days it doesn`t bother me, but other days, I get so frustrated, I want to punch a wall, LOL!
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Re: Do you live in a country where you don`t speak the language and most people don`t speak English?
I live a country where people DO speak English and I still have trouble undestanding what they are saying.
I think not being able to speak the local language would make me feel pretty helpless most of the time....
Thankfully, my DH picks up languages quickly, so he is light years ahead of me, but I wouldn?t say he was fluent by any means.
A lot of people here in Luxembourg speak English but my DH is a local so when we get together with his friends the speak a lot of Lux which is hard for me. But out and about I end up speaking Lux, or French.
The worst thing is the company that DH works for's first language is German, so when we go to his company party's I have NO clue what's going on because I don't speak much German at all!!
Could you or would you take a class in espa?ol para extranjeros through your local city language school? If you're interested, PM me with your location (neighborhood if you're in Barca) and I can see what I can do.
It's tough, but stick with it. Screw DH and his job... My DH doesn't understand the frustration either since he's never truly been in our situation. You can do it! Make friends with the bartender where you get your morning coffee. Chat with the bakery people or any other shop. It's a great way to develop fluency!
We're kind of a weird mix-- we both speak English at work, but out in town, most ) Neapolitans don't speak English (younger people, say, 20yrs and younger, are more likely to, but the majority of adults still don't actively speak English).
It's hard... I feel stupid... been here 2.5yrs and still only have the most basic vocab. I will try harder. I don't necessarily feel frustrated with the Italians here, but I totally feel frustrated with myself and my lack of ability.
Oh, I am sorry if I didn?t make myself clear. I am not frustrated with the Peruvians, I am frustrated with myself for not speaking their language in their country. I don?t want to sound like an asshole_ American who expects people to conform to me.
It?s Spanish for crissakes, I should know Spanish, and I am kicking myself for not learning it when I had the chance.
Thankfully, there is a large expat community here, which has been our saving grace at times. And I have a private class where I am taking Spanish. I am bound and determined to be at least conversationally fluent by the time we leave. I want to make sure our phatom child will know and understand Spanish, and I hope to set a good example!
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Many people in Quebec City speak English but it's not like Montreal. It always begins with French, it is super Francophone, which was part of its allure. I take classes for 20 hours a week and am still frustrated. I also live in the tourist district and sometimes when I try the French they just speak English to me. That's frustrating and feels insulting, even though I know it isn't. I've decided to tell them I speak Spanish from now on.
It is really isolating. There is an English community but most of them are older and the events are boring. I wish I could just see a freaking movie in English.
Also, I have a new found respect for anyone who moves to the States and has to learn English. To the point when people start those "speak English" debates I long to punch them in the face.
It can be frustrating. When the waitress brings your meal covered in onions and since you can't tell her, "thank you, but I consider onions to be small pieces of slime on my plate can you take them off?" You just suck it up and pick through them. Slightly annoying.
Or when the check out lady asks if you want to buy a bag for your groceries and you look at her with a deer in the headlights stare because you're not sure if you didn't give her enough money, she's insulted your mother or is trying to tell you that your fly is undone. After a small pantomime performance you finally grasp the concept, but the 20 poor souls behind you in line are looking at you as if you're dumbest person on the planet or they're sad for you because you must be special and somehow got separated from the short bus group. A little humiliating.
Then one day you'll be so fed up with your crappy internet and call them to fix it. When you ask the guy on the phone if he speaks English and he says no and then proceeds to sit there in silence - as if somehow in the last 4 seconds you have suddenly become fluent and really the only reason you asked if he spoke English was in case he wanted to practice it with you. Then you'll bust out your new shiny vocabulary word, "does anyone?" And they find someone who does!
That day. That day is the day you won an Olympic gold medal, climbed Mount Everest, and found the cure for cancer. In fact, you're considering calling all government leaders and offering your services on brokering world peace, because clearly you're an unparallelled genius.
And the next day you'll be served a steaming pile of onions...lol.
In Chennai, there are a lot of people who speak English, but I'm finding that their English vocabularies are extremely limited, so I will babble on thinking that I'm communicating, but no dice. My day to day life would be much less frustrating if I could speak Tamil.
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Most days I am okay because I have a little French knowledge. A year before moving I took a French course at my college and I am able to mostly understand, my main issue is opening my mouth and being able to continue a conversation. Most days I stay home to avoid speaking which is annoying. Luckily I work on an American base so I speak English all day.
What really gets me is that we live in the French speaking part of the country, but only just over the border from the Dutch speaking part and we frequent that part of the country, I don't speak any Dutch at all. I get by with saying "Thank You". Luckily my husband was raised to speak both and English.
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I lived 7 years in a country where at first I didn't speak the language. I found it very helpful to always have a pen and paper to be able to draw what I wanted and became an expert at charades.
As the years went on, I took lessons and was able to get by in Vietnamese and could read the main ingredients in a menu if it wasn't translated into English. It also helped that by the time we left, many people in the cities were able to speak English and the expat community had grown considerably.
I can't say that I was frustrated too much, but I definitely laughed at myself a tonne!
Definitely been there. That one unexpected question just throws me off completely. It can ruin a whole shopping trip where I've successfully found what I needed and maybe even asked a clerk where a specific item was. All that confidence flies away at the checkout and I have to walk out red faced and defeated.
Here almost everyone speaks English, though in varying degrees of fluency. Not too bad.
In Italy it was difficult. I learned what I could. Things could be fine one day and then something would happen to bring me down. Great, I've learned how to translate most of the average menu! Crap, how the heck do you call for a tow truck? Back and forth. And since we were there for a limited time, and I'm a foreign language dunce, it took a lot of energy to learn what I did.
I can read a lot of Spanish now, and I can understand about 1/3 of the conversation (as long as I know exactly what we are talking about...some stranger in the street comes up to me and starts talking, forget it...), but taking the vocab and putting it together seems impossible.
I often practice what I want to say before I have to say it, and inevitably, I forget, it comes out wrong and they look at me with a blank stare.
Frustrating yes, I really really suck at languages, DS is picking it up faster than I am. Daily I am surrounded by people that speak very very little English, the guy who comes to service the pool keeps putting in way too many chemicals, to the point now that we can't put our heads under water as it stings our eyes too much, but I can't communicate with him at all to fix the problem.
My maid thinks I am a raving lunatic when I try to pantomime to her that I want her to stop ironing my underwear and bras, and my driver I am sure thinks I am BSC half the time. It can be lonely and isolating and some days I just want to give up, but I keep trying to learn more when DS sleeps, even though he is only 2 I think it is important for him to watch his parents try new things and succeed.
English appears well spoken here but most times they are just saying yes to please you, then walk away either not understanding you or with no intention of helping anyway. That is why right now I am in Singapore LOVING have everyone understand what I want!
Nope DH doesn't speak the language at all. He can order a meal/coffee and that is about it. So all the Spanish speaking is on my shoulders and I am not that good.
I am taking classes right now with a private tutor. Once those are over (I get 100 hours paid from DH's company) I will attend a language school. I will PM you my local...I could use a recommendation for a language school as I will probably start after the new year.
I can imagine that it is incredibly frustrating and isolating at first but on the flip side forces you to learn the local language faster (if you are there for a longer period of time that is). It was very convenient that almost everyone in NL speaks English but it made it much more difficult to learn Dutch.
I have learned to live with a permanent language mess in my head though, I use 3 languages on a daily basis and sometimes can't find a word in ANY language to express the notion in my head