[369eyedea]

Curious to know how you justify your interest in a foreigner who displays skepticism when you explain you are learning their language?

If you don't have an explicit reason such as work for learning a language, how do yo explain learning a language for love of the process of learning, inexplicable feeling towards language, girls ect...

This is in order to come across congruently. Because for many people the idea of doing this is not in their psyche.

[Guriko]

I said and would say simply because I like it, followed by a sincere and confident smile. No longwinded explaining.

Though I'll have to be honest and admit that I've never met a native speaker who was skeptic towards my tries of learning his language. Curious yes, skeptic no.

Have you met many such people, 369?

[Hannibal]

Just say it's for school or you want to live there. It's short, dismissive, and to the point.

I've never met anyone who was skeptical of me learning their language.

[marty]

You must have a good reason, otherwise you wouldn't want to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours learning that language. So how about being sincere? Tell them you love the culture, want to read books in the original language, you are interested in their art and want to understand it better, you love the cuisine, you like how the women look, you like the sound of the language, etc. If you don't have a valid reason, you should think about that because without passion you won't succeed.

[InsertNameHere]

(02-09-2016 10:02 AM)marty Wrote:  

You must have a good reason, otherwise you wouldn't want to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours learning that language. So how about being sincere? Tell them you love the culture, want to read books in the original language, you are interested in their art and want to understand it better, you love the cuisine, you like how the women look, you like the sound of the language, etc. If you don't have a valid reason, you should think about that because without passion you won't succeed.

Unfortunately that's not sufficient everywhere. Based on the OP's signature, I'm assuming he's looking at an Eastern European language. I'm not sure if the 'Western conspiracy/menace' mindset prevails there, but I can speak from personal experience learning Arabic that when you tell someone you're learning the language - even more so if you can actively speak it at a sufficient level - it's quite common to get negative reactions, people calling you a spy or colonialist, people who refuse to speak it with you and insist on speaking English because they feel like your learning their language is condescending, etc. It's an ugly attitude, but it goes with the culture.

I'd be curious if this mentality is common in EE or other parts of the world, too.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I've never met anyone displaying this mindset. Everyone is extremely glad and honored that someone is learning their language, no matter the reason.

If someone started interrogating me about that, I'd just go:

[marty]

(02-09-2016 11:07 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

I've never met anyone displaying this mindset. Everyone is extremely glad and honored that someone is learning their language, no matter the reason.

If someone started interrogating me about that, I'd just go:

This. I just wanted to use the word 'honoured' as well. There might be exceptions (I don't know about Arabic countries, perhaps Quintus could share his experiences? If I'm not mistaken he speaks Arabic) but usually people appreciate if you take the effort. Especially if it's not that widely spoken (e.g. not English or Spanish).

[mammal]

In my experience people like it that you're learning their language and are not another "ugly American" expecting the rest of the world to accomodate you in speaking English.
So if someone saw that negatively, I woudl wonder about the unusual reaction, and whether I'm dealing with a negative person in general.
Now, if someone can only say yes or no in that language, and tries to say he'sthere to learn the language on a 2-week trip, then I would expect that person'smotives to be questioned.

[Sidney Crosby]

I usually just say "cause xxxxxxx girls are hot" if they are so curious, I could really care less what they think.

[RatInTheWoods]

I've always found people really appreciative, helpful and supportive.

Maybe if you are dressed like a man-hoe, running lines in a nightclub and offer that up as an excuse as to what you are doing in the country you might get a sceptical reaction ;-)

[SamuelBRoberts]

"Curious to know how you justify your interest in a foreigner who displays skepticism when you explain you are learning their language?
If you don't have an explicit reason such as work for learning a language, how do yo explain learning a language for love of the process of learning, inexplicable feeling towards language, girls ect...
This is in order to come across congruently. Because for many people the idea of doing this is not in their psyche."

I get asked this question all the time. It's a simple method of making conversation. In my case, I speak Japanese, and barely any white people speak Japanese, so people are always interested.
Handle it like you would handle anything else.
If it's a serious conversation where a serious answer is required, give a real answer. "I like learning things." "I wanted to expand my horizons." "The language is beautiful."
If you're talking to a girl, give a joke answer. A few of my favorites are, "I learned it from aliens." "It's a mystery!" or sometimes "I actually am Japanese." (I'm a large white guy.)

If someone is really suspicious to the point that they're giving you a hard time about it, go talk to someone else.

[Agreddor]

(02-09-2016 07:03 AM)369eyedea Wrote:  

Curious to know how you justify your interest in a foreigner who displays skepticism when you explain you are learning their language?

If you don't have an explicit reason such as work for learning a language, how do yo explain learning a language for love of the process of learning, inexplicable feeling towards language, girls ect...

This is in order to come across congruently. Because for many people the idea of doing this is not in their psyche.

When I was learning russian, I told natives that it was because of how commonplace the language was and the fact that i might move to central asia.

I joked about using it to find a wife sometimes.

[Hades]

The only times natives ask me why I'm learning their language is if I made a couple of flubs in a short conversation and we didn't know each other.

Then it's just a roundabout way of saying "Why persist in something you suck at?"

If they're serious, I just say "In the engineering profession, your career advances more quickly if you speak German, as many of the world's best engineers are German. My uncle works at Audi and told me it's a wise investment." They generally don't press the issue then.

I get more grief from regular Americans. "Why would you want to learn to speak German? I went to Germany twice. They speak English over there, it's all you need." That's actually a fair point, as their media is saturated with our bullshit (How I Met Your Mother, ugh). I got too far into the language to want to back out after realizing that about 70% of the youth speak English fluently.

I'm thinking about learning Russian because (from what I have seen) most of the hotter chicks do not speak English, and even English speakers are not terribly proficient.

[Fury]

I have actually gotten some skeptical looks, but overall good reception.

I learned to read, write and speak Persian Farsi several years back and when I used it in a Persian restaurant in California, the guy looked at me and said, "CIA". I denied, of course.

The catch is, I am a Black American. Probably the last person they expect to speak Farsi. Coincidentally, I ate at a Persian restaurant today in the Netherlands and the owners there were pleasantly surprised I knew it.

[PragueDude]

Czech people usually just think it's stupid and I explain that when learning Czeh it's possible to knok out 3-4 other Slavic languages... Croatian, Russian, Polish, Slovenian etc despite the differences one can get on pretty well in these places knowing at least one Slavic language.. so this is my argument claiming that learning Czech is useless.

[Disco_Volante]

I tell them I'm in their country to wreck as much young pussy as I can without spending too much money.

[swuglyfe]

Interestingly, I get this a lot in China. While most foreigners might be commended for learning any Chinese, because I'm Chinese-American, they disparage me for not knowing it well enough. At the same time, they are not inclined to recognize ABCs as 'real Chinese' either so...

Otherwise I'd brush it off with saying that I don't much like communicating with points and grunts.