Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

TJ — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:18:40 GMT

Maybe he just felt like messing with travelers. I know people who say strange things to total strangers just for their own amusement.

[Nope, it was definitely some sort of recruitment drive, as there were several people in the square doing the same thing, handing out literature, etc. -Raymond]

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Someone You Know — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:22:08 GMT

What do you think the odds are that when he said "Thai" he actually meant "Taiwanese"? This is a fairly common source of confusion for uneducated people in the United States.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Neil (SM) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:37:14 GMT

The man in the story strikes me as a dimwitted con-artist of some sort.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Maurits — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:03:42 GMT

You could answer in Esperanto. Nobody speaks that.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Bob — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:58:03 GMT

I generally have found that a cold "Sorry, I'm not interested" said in the language of the speaker without breaking my stride is quite effective.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

dave — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:18:34 GMT

The technique works for me, too. I just speak English to Americans...

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Boris — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:16:57 GMT

This reminds me of a medicine I once saw which was manufactured in Germany for sale in Russia. The entire label was in Russian (except, I think, the name of the manufacturer was in German), but there was a single line of English on the bottle: "Made in Germany". It was not repeated in German or Russian anywhere else on the bottle. Someone please explain that one to me.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

JCAB — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:17:03 GMT

I was born in Spain, but a few years back I spent a year in Århus, Denmark. Over there, while attending Language School, the teacher once tested us by telling us a little joke in Danish (my first!). It went kinda like this (transmogrified into American English):

"Once, there were two men sitting on the front lawn of a house in some little town somewhere in the American midwest drinking beer, when a car stopped in front of the house. The driver rolled down the window and muttered a question in some language that sounded like Chinese or something. The two men just gave him a shrug and told him in English that they didn't understand. The driver proceeded to try asking in other languages. German, Russian... who knows, but in the end he just rolled up his window and drove away in frustration. One of the men turned to his friend and said 'Maybe I should find a school or something and learn how to speak some languages'. 'How come?' asked his friend. 'Well... if I had known more languages I might have been able to help that gentleman in the car', to which his friend replied 'I don't know about that. See... that man spoke like Chinese and German and who knows which other languages, but that didn't help him any'".

Anyway...

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Thursday — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:01:29 GMT

Raymond, have you tried to patent the phrase "Social skills of a thermonuclear device"? :)

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

ulric — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:03:53 GMT

This is probably how the third Hostel movie will start.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

greenlight — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:08:55 GMT

@Someone You Know: That's not a mistake a Swede would make. Thailand is one of the top tourism destinations for Swedes. In fact, when the tsunami hit, Swedish were the non-local people most affected (/killed).

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

configurator — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:37:35 GMT

There's also the bad accent approach. Mumble something to yourself, preferably in Gibberish, then say in an awful accent "I don't speak <insert language here>", preferably with mistakes too. I say "ne parlon Franchese" a lot in France, and it works every time. I do speak some French though, just not to those people.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Alex — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:03:08 GMT

@Boris: "Made in Germany" was used by the British to mark produce made by the enemy in order to promote the home-grown stuff. The plan backfired when the label turned out to be more a sign of quality. That is why you still have the English catchphrase instead of a German one ("Hergestellt/Produziert in Deutschland").

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

prb — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:06:13 GMT

> Thailand is one of the top tourism destinations for Swedes.

So Sweden is full of perverts and child molesters?

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Anthony Wieser — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:53:49 GMT

A similar approach happened to me on the S-Tog in Copenhagen.

I think the guy was a scientologist.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Jonathan O'Connor — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:17:13 GMT

Never try this approach with a ticket collector on a German train!

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Michael Maclean — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:58:40 GMT

Jonathan O'Connor: I know someone who is English but speaks German fluently, who used that approach with a ticket collector on an English train, once. It worked.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Roman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:52:17 GMT

Wow! What should a reader accomplish for you to visit him personally?

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Morten — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:36:06 GMT

One could also do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULLfH5O8wS0

I can't wait to give it a try some day.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Stephen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:01:01 GMT

@Boris: Various treaties require that all products in international trade have the country of origin marked on them in English, even if the rest of the packaging is in some other language. The customs folks want something consistent so they can quickly process items, even if it's not in their native language, and most of them worldwide know English by now, so it made sense to standardize on that. Even if a given customs agent doesn't know English, there are only a few hundred possible values for that "Made in X" label, so they can simply memorize what the various values (or the most common ones, at least) mean and what duties to charge for that value.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

theorbtwo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:47:55 GMT

...beyond English being common, it has a very small character set, and I'd venture to say the most recognizable character set in the world. (Though there are a few countries whose short English names include an e-accute -- RÉUNION, SAINT BARTHÉLEMY, and one ô, CÔTE D'IVOIRE -- according to http://www.iso.org/iso/english_country_names_and_code_elements.)

I'll bet the average Chinese-speaker can copy down strings in ALL UPPERCASE ENGLISH and have them be recognizable afterwards then the average English-speaker can copy down strings in Chinese and have them be recognizable afterwards. This may speak more to how much Chinese people are exposed to English then to how easy a language English is.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Olivier — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:04:23 GMT

@theorbtwo: it's funny to notice that the accentuated country names are all French names.

And, French language doesn't require the upper cased letters to keep their accents... so the e-accute could have been removed as well.

And for the Côte d'Ivoire, it could have been translated to Ivory Coast, but I suppose the countries themselves decide for ther iso short name, and maybe these ones were attached to their é or their ô

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

Nik — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:14:16 GMT

I agree with Anthony Wieser -- it was probably a recruiter for some kind of cult, probably a religious cult. The combination of illogical reasoning, pretending to be helpful, and annoying persistence, points in that direction.

re: Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

CmraLvr2 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:53:46 GMT

That's funny. I have language envy...haha