1392
True (feddit.de)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Aicse@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

I have a bit of a different experience. As an engineer, I mostly use English at work, so I usually have issues explaining my area of expertise in my mother tongue and other languages I know. There are lots of terms I know only the English words , so I end up using the term in English or try to translate it and it sounds stupid.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Well yeah, ok, I have the same issue too because I've spent most of my career abroad and learned many technical terms in English and even Dutch, so for those things I have no idea what the words for it are in my native tongue.

But I just use whatever word I do know when I don't quite know the technical word in the language I'm speaking, and it's the same when speaking my native tongue as when speaking some foreign language which is not English: if I miss a word in that language I just almost seamlessly fit in the English word for it instead (or, in the case of German, I might use a Dutch word and hope it just sounds like the right word said in a strange way) and clarify if requested.

That's not at all the same as having tons of trouble speaking because you're translating in your mind.

As far as I can tell it doesn't sound at all stupid, though maybe that's because I'm generally using a foreign language to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of yet another foreign language.

this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
1392 points (98.1% liked)

Microblog Memes

5699 readers
3514 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS