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124 sats \ 4 replies \ @zuspotirko 22h \ on: When do you feel like communicating in a non-English language? AskSN
I speak English, German and French.
I only ever feel like switching back to German when I want to say something with a very precise meaning. German has what we call "Nominalstil" which basically means German has a lot a lot a lot of nouns. This is good for when you want to communicate about something very narrow, very precise.
French is, imo, a fun language to just make casual smalltalk. I feel the filler words like "bref", "alors", "donc", "eu" are so much more expressive. You can communicate so much vibes casually here. When english uses filler words "um", "uh", "hmm" they feel even more empty. Related are filler words like "like", "well", "so". Boring filler words.
On the other hand what I love about English is how much range it has. You can talk in slang or use AAE words. There are pretentious Latin phrases you can put in everywhere. A British "village" accent is so different from Queens English/BBC English, is so different from a southern accent or a generic American accents, is so different from Aussies or Nigerian or Indian English. You can talk fast and slow.
Ofc German has lots of accents too - they might even be much more distant from one another than English accents. French can have quite a range too. But it subjectively feels not as vast and as freeing oneself as English.
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Are you a linguist?
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No. 3 languages is not at all uncommon in Europe. Basically mother tongue + one foreign language + English as lingua franca.
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Loving your insights so much. Thanks for giving me a broad overview of the unique characteristics of each language. Just how amazing how our worldview is literally shaped by the scope and spread of the language we speak
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