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Comment by MrsPeaches | Hacker News Reader

This is very much an english speaking country phenomenon. We are used to having lots of people speak english, often incorrectly and are much more tolerant of people making mistakes (and therefore don't correct them).

You should spend some time in Germany.

I once had my German corrected by a casheir at a fast food restaurant.

So from my experience, I don't think this is the reason that people stop being able to learn languages.

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I wouldn't say it's just a English speaking phenomenon. Learning Korean in Korea and people are often far to polite to correct you, they're just pleased that you're learning the language, and let you get away with making a lot of mistakes. I continually tell people they should correct my pronunciation and teach me how to form sentences better, but even my friends rarely correct me, they say it just feels too rude.

Contrast that with Turkey where I lived for a couple of months: “You sound like a child!” they all gasped in astonishment as I tried out 3 verb tenses. My adult Turkish friends had NEVER heard a non-native speaker of Turkish! So different from the USA where we hear non-native speakers all the time (and I expect plenty of Koreans hear non-native speakers on occasion).

I once got invited to lunch at the house of a German lady. So I said I would make an apple pie and take it for dessert.

The next day, she takes a look at it and says that that is not how you make apple pie and produces a pie that she had baked (and which she ate, ignoring the one I had taken).

This lady sounds quite obnoxious even by German standards.

I'm certain this is symptomatic of being a dick even in Germany.

You have not lived in a village in Germany, it seems. :)

I have done so for a pretty long time and no, such behavior is not common for non-dickish people. If anything, people in the countryside tend to be a lot more relaxed and the situation forinti describes sounds like some old grandma who thinks the youth these days can't do anything right.

Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents.

Adults don't. Closest you can get is date someone who wants to help you out.

> Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents.

That's not universal, though. Many children are neglected to various degrees, and my understanding is they'll still work out their language if they get adequate exposure to it.

You probably only need a tutor the master the intricacies of the more prestigious registers, but that's a different thing than fluency.

>> Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents.

> That's not universal, though.

Also: children whose parents immigrated.

The parents may never end up learning the language of the new country, but their children often will.

The English will correct your accent, by lightly making fun of it. It is most clear when you are an immigrant from an english speaking country or switch class brackets.

> or switch class brackets.

Can you elaborate on that? What does that mean?

British society is heavily segmented by class, and you can always tell what class of people you’re interacting with.

Wow, that’s surprising. Seems so backwards.

I assume they are talking about moving from "working class" to "middle class" (N.B. It's not really possible to move from "middle class" to "upper class" unless by marriage and then it's only really your kids that would move class bracket.

In England, accent/grammer usage is a strong indicator of class (as I assume it may be in other countries).

Basically what MrsPeaches said and with more stratifications. I see way more than 3 brackets, the accent groups and all the other trappings of class stretch from the mythical heavenly top, people you can only theorize to exist all the way down to missing teeth and barely speaking english in hell underneath the poverty line.

I've been lucky enough to see a lot of the levels, it's vastly different to my home country which only really has the three levels (it isnt discussed) and is largely culturally homegenous.

Hehe, I've had my Mandarin corrected by an old woman selling fruit on a stick in China. It struck me at the time, just because it would never happen in the UK, but actually I was greatful.

Grateful

Hehe, how topical, and you are right of course, thanks :)

The article isn't about the ability to learn. It's about the ability to use the language at a native level. You can get "fluent" and still not have a native level of using a language.

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