I once traveled Taiwan with my mom. When I was planning for the trip, I heard that Taiwanese are good at English,so I expected there would be no big difficulty communicating with the locals. At that time, I was pretty confident about my English as well. However, reality was different. Since I traveled with my mom, I was the one who had to guide her and ask people when we got lost. Once, we couldn't find the right subway line to get to somewhere and I tried to asked someone from information. I have strong American accent which I thought to be "standard" and I speak English with American one, but the person didn't understand what I was saying. Instead, she understood what my mom was saying. My mom is neither fluent nor proficient in English. She even has strong Korean accent. However, for some reason, her English was more clear and comprehensible than mine.

It was a great opportunity for my mom to practice English and gain confidence about her ability. Plus, I could widen my perspective of English pronunciation and various accents around the world.

It is all about accent!

I was wondering why it is easier to understand someones English than others and one time I remember I realized I had difficulties understanding English with strong Spanish accent. That was the moment I was at club meeting in Sinchon area. There was one friend, his name is Luis, who just moved to Sinchon and started joining the meeting at Sinchon. I was eating Samgyeopsal(Grilled pork belly) and had a conversation with him. During the conversation I got to know that he got accepted at Yonsei graduate school. Thats why he moved to Sinchon and now hes living really close by the place. So I asked him where do you live? and he answered but I couldnt understand what he said. I replied sorry? and he said that again. But because I couldnt get it and it seemed like it to others, one Korean guy next to him repeated what Luis said two blocks away then I got it. At the point, everyone is laughing as it was the same words but I got when the Korean guy repeated not when Luis said. It reminded me that I had hard time understanding Mexican American uber driver what shes saying on the way to Houston airport. I really wanted to have a conversation and she was pretty confident speaking English but I couldnt really get details in her speech. It matched up with the fact that Luis is from Columbia where his first language is Spanish.

So I said to people that it is all about accent! And its so hard to get what theyre saying out of Spanish accent.

   I have never lived abroad in foreign countries so far, but I had short visits to some countries such as Japan, China, Malaysia and USA. Despite a short stay, there is one thing in common I came to realize whenever I visit somewhere. The easier my intention to express is, the harder for me to come up with in English. My recent trip was to Japan, and I want to tell you a short anecdote that happened there. I knew most Japanese are not good at English, but me and my friends had to rely on English because there was no one who can speak Japanese. Plus, they were dependent on me just for the reason that I major in English. Due to these reasons, I had to directly communicate with the person in charge when we had a question about our housing. The question was simple : "Are we gonna go to our house together after we pick up our baggage?" This is a very simple question, but I became blank slate at a moment and kept thinking of better expression while I was going upstairs in elevator. It was so funny that I was not comfortable using English even in a short conversation. What I recently realized is that foreigners use rather simple and easy words in daily lives  and they easily get the meaning even when someone else doesn't have high proficiency in English. So I thought my obsession with making a full and perfect sentence rather hinders me from being comfortable in English itself. And I became aware of the importance of 'speaking' more and more nowadays. Sometimes I become skeptical and regretful about my past English learning method and priority I had, but this kind of embarrassing episode above brings me another motivation to approach English in a better and an effective way. 

Meaning of Capitalized Words

I want to share my story related to my language use. When I was a 5^th grade elementary student, I went to Canada with my younger brother to learn English for a year. After making friends there, I knew that my peer group was sending e-mails or chats to their friends on their free time. I preferred chatting because I can get the messages instantly and send mine right away. One day, when I sending messages back and forth with my Chinese friend, she asked me not to shout at her. I didnt know what she was talking about, so I asked her what the problem is. She told me that using capitalized forms to other people is the same thing as shouting to another person when speaking. I realized that I was sending messages with Caps Lock on without thinking that it would occur the problem. Also, I didnt know the meaning of the shortened form used in chatting such as LOL which means laugh out loud or L8r which means later, so I had hard time getting what my friends are talking about. It wouldve been quite bothering for them when I kept asking questions about what they mean. 

I must have tons of stories. One of the latest ones I experienced took place in one of the branches of Hyundai Department Store that I frequent. A few months back I was looking for a new desk and I saw this fancy one, the ones that you can set the angle, the height and all. With the wife, we started browsing and per usual someone popped up right in front of us. Greeted us in English and I responded back in Korean. I asked a question in Korean and he answered in English, and then another question in Korean by me and another answer in English. This continued for about 10-15 minutes. 

Being a bilingual, I didnt realize how many bilingual incidents have overtaken my life. As I sit down an think back about all these strange bicultural and two-languages-related episodes, I feel as though I can write a novel, The Bilingual Life of Danbi Lee: The Fun and the Not-so-funs. Right at the top of my head, I can think of a time where I wanted to badly reveal that I was a bilingual because I felt like I was being misunderstood. I was waiting for a friend inside the subway station reading a book, the Time Travelers Wife. The book is not the regular paperback type. Its abnormally big, heavy, and has a huge title in English in the front. I guess this is where it went wrong. I came up the escalator and I saw a man approaching me. Then he turned around looking like he forgot something. He went to a chair and took out a pen, paper, and a clipboard. While he was rummaging through his stuff, I decided to settle myself near a pillar. I stood, opened up my book to the page where my bookmark was and began reading. I can feel that the man was lingering around me. Roaming around and about, keeping his eyes on me. He then went to some other people in the station and I understood that he was conducting a survey. I really wanted to help because I had some time to kill before my friend comes, but he just wouldnt approach me! Little after, his friend came and I put my book down and saw them whispering and pointing at me. I gave them a huuuuge smile and when he noticed, he came towards me. He didnt say a word, only bowed politely, and watched for my response. He looked into my eyes and I saw his anxiousness fade away the moment I said ahn nyeong ha se yo, muh ae yo? (in fluent Korean). He then became a chatterbox. I knew he was hesitant because of my book. He even said so himself that he thought I wouldnt know Korean because I was reading an English book. I just found it so interesting and odd that the man was intimidated by me reading an English book and how reading an English book would automatically mean I cannot speak Korean.

 Before I entered the university, I made a decision to take personal English class with my tutor because most of high school students quit tutoring after finish the college entrance exam. However, my mom didn't want to finish the English class because the linguistic knowledge will be useful in some case definitely so I continued to take tutoring. After I took the college entrance exam, my tutor and I decided to have (ANOTHER) exam-prep class for TOEIC and dictation activity with free conversation time. Fortunately, these tasks worked so I had little more speaking ability than other students in university. Especially, speaking skill was useful to take special freshman English class because the professor was a native speaker. He was very nice and passionate professor so he made me keep talking something in and out of classroom. It was burden to me because I needed to prepare something to talk to him even though I met him accidentally. I had to take the special class for one year because it was special class for new students so I didn't have more chances to talk to him. After few years later, I became 3rd grade and I met him in the campus accidentally again. I had many chances to talk to him time to time but it was very simple like just say hi. In that day, we had a conversation about his class, my class and my plan for senior something something something. It was nice (I think) and he looked nice (I think). But, before we went on our ways, he said 'I'm very glad because you still have good English speaking skills.' I was quite shock because I felt he tested me not for simple chatting. I knew that it is a compliment but it wasn't feel nice. Conversely. his words influenced to me badly. Since then, I got little misunderstanding to natives. That is-they test my English level. I think he wasn't intended with bad meaning and even if he might evaluate my speaking skill, because he is English teacher. However, it wasn't a pleasant compliment to me. Actually, it gave me bigger burden because I thought that native speakers will evaluate my language use during the conversation. 

This happened inside a subway in line 1. The man sitting next to me seemed to be taking pictures of the lady right across him. He was definitely not a Korean - more like a Southeast Asian oversea worker. Having been raised in the Philippines and being much acculturated to the Filipino culture, I did not have any hard feelings towards overseas workers. However, it was really the actions that angered and infuriated me so much that I stood up and called him out very loudly. I was not fully aware of his nationality, but for some reason, English sentences came out. I can recall somewhere along the lines of: "What you are doing is a disgrace. If you keep doing this, my people will not welcome you here. Do not disrespect my fellow Koreans..." However, this man (along with his friends or coworkers) did not and could not say anything - neither in English nor Korean. All he did was an innocent-looking gesture to defend himself. 

I think there could be two reasons behind his actions: first, maybe, he cannot speak English. If his L1 did not happen to be English, he most likely had to learn Korean to sustain a living in Korea. Second, it was his evil scheme to completely diverge so he can save his face. He fled at the next stop. Only then did it come to my senses that I should have translated what I had said in English to Korean. If one or both of the two conjectures of mine are right, then at least I could have embarrassed him more by letting my fellow Korean people on the train know what the heck was going on.

My experience happened during math class when I went to an international school in Shanghai. The school environment was where I used mostly English, some Korean and Chinese. 

In the math class, I was looking at the question that the teacher wrote down on the board thinking about the answer. The teacher picked me to say the answer and I said the answer was 'four'. 

I kept answering 'four' a few more times because he was just looking at me with a face full of question marks. All of the sudden I realized that the whole class was looking at me wondering what I'm saying, 

and at the same time also realized that I was repeating the answer 'four' in Korean 'sa'. Classmates and the teacher who can't speak Korean was just staring at me and some Korean classmates who knew I was saying the answer was also whispering what was wrong with me.  I was embarrassed about making such a ridiculous mistake. But as I think back about that time, I was not aware that 

I was speaking in Korean. I felt like I was speaking English obviously. Maybe I got unconscious about switching languages and failed to switch language mode in few seconds. It was a funny and mysterious episode that I still don't know what had happened in my brain for that few seconds. 

I wonder if mixing languages in specific regions happens to other bilinguals as well. In my case this happens when I am in China, Hongking, and Taiwan.

When I was staying in Guangzhou China for a month last year, I was staying at airbnb shared house and met many people there. Mostly half of them were Chinese and half of them are from all other regions in the world. As I can speak Chinese I spoke with airbnb hosts in Chinese, and spoke English with the others. It was about a month and we spent a lot of time together eating dinner and playing around. When I wanted to say something but I cannot fully explain it, all three languages (Korean, English, and Chinese) that I can speak came out together at a time. This happened a lot at that time.

When I was staying in Honkong, I mix English and Chinese a lot of times. Whenever, I am in the other countries such as the US, or Japan I speak only one language to people, I tend to mix two language when I am in China. Is this because my Chinese is not good as the other languages and I eagerly want to express to people?

WonJung CHO wrote:

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This is a short story when I was in Paris. 

I have been taking language (French) courses for more than a year by then and was able to speak French fairly enough to go out with friends and hang out.

One day, I went to a nice Italian restaurant with my friend.  

My friend, was also Korean. She studied French in her first-degree level and was on her second. Also, she was engaged with a French guy so her French was much more fluent than I was.

Anyhow, the point is that we were both able to use French with French. So, at the restaurant, taking seats, ordering foods and drinks were just fine.

The thing is, the server would come and go to take orders step by step, from the starters- menus- till the desserts.

Me and my friend had to keep on switch-coding due to that as we were chatting in Korean for the whole time and then respond to the server in French. Everything seemed to be fine.

Then, the server came to take the last order, the desserts. It was pretty cold and since we were both not in to caffeine that time we both ordered "hot chocolate". By the way, that restaurant had the best hot chocolates ever.

 Anyhow, the server asked us and we've answered to it.  "Deux chocolat chauds s'il vous plait" (Two hot chocolates please). However, the server looked confused.

I thought my friend's voice was too small so I answered again. "Deux chocolat chauds!" (Two hot chocolates). Again, the server looked confused.

My friend and I were so confident about our pronunciation at that point, so we glanced at each other and thought the server had just came from Italy, so he wouldn't understand.

Our decision was to change the language code into English. My friend went on and said "Deux...non two hot cholates please." This time, the server understood and asked back. "Oh, two hot chocolates? O.K."

When we nodded, he went to make the orders.

 

At the moment, I realized that it was not the server's problem. What actually happended was, me and  my friend had been saying in all three sentences above in Korean.

We have been saying "Deux (hotchoco) s'il vous plait". With the very strong tensed sounds as in Korean. HoTT CCCHo KKKKo like that, which would sound like "HACHOKO".

 

Since me and my friend were switchcoding back and forth and were both able to speak in all three languages, we did not notice our mistake AT ALL....

The server had made a guess when we spoke to him in English. Soooo embarrassing. Me and my friend talked about this for the whole day and couldn't stop from laughing. A funny, memoriable experience of language-mixing, maybe a creating of Kon-francais.

(Haha.) This is the end of my story.

 

 

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This story is from when I was in Finland for traveling in 2015. 

Staying about 10 days in Helsinki, I happened to know one Fin and we got along with while I stayed. 

After I moved to another city, we kept in touch via facebook. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I said something to him, 

and his reply was 'You are insane!'. Now I know that the word 'insane' is normally used to express one's surprise or unbelief, sometimes it has a meaning like 'that's incredibly awesome' in positive way. 

However at that time... I interpreted 'insane' as Korean translation equivalence 'mentally ill, malfunctioned', because Naver dictionary said so. (And then I got a lesson that do not use Naver English-Korean dictionary)  

I started to type a bunch of sentences to him like how dare can you say that I'm crazy and bla bla bla with some curse words maybe..? 

He must have thought what's a matter with her as reading my message. I totally malfunctioned. 

Maybe if there was 'lol' with 'you are insane', I could've got the meaning in more positively, but that sentence at that time seemed very serious to me.

Fortunately, he noticed that there is misunderstanding, so he kindly explained about that expression. 

After I went through this, I've never used naver dictionary especially when it comes to informal expression in chatting but google it.   

This is why EFL learners' should achieve their pragmatic knowledge. 

When I first arrived in the Philippines, one of the first requests I made was to ask for water. It was a simple phrase, "Water, please." To my dismay, the waiter did not understand what I was saying.

Here is bit of an explanation for such miscommunication: Prior to our family's move to the Philippines, I had learned English with an "American" accent. I learned that the /t/ should be flapped to lessen the sound of [t] when producing words such as 'water' or 'butter.' Meanwhile, Filipinos do not use the flapped t sound. Instead, the /t/s are strongly pronounced and read just as is. When anyone goes to the Philippines, they should be aware that their accents are quite different from the Americans or the British - in fact it is closer to Spanish speaking English due to the great influence the Filipinos received during their colonial days.

Several years ago, when my young niece was playing in a local childrens playground, I passed by on my way home. She called out to me. I didnt hear or see her, so I didnt respond.

Later that day, she asked why I had not responded. I intended to tell her that I could not see her- or that she had not been visible to me. So, while intending to express this in Korean- Nor anboyeoseo (Because you were not visible), I somehow uttered Nor motsenggyeoseo. However, it was interpreted by my niece as being Nor motsenggyeosseo (Youre ugly).

The selection of an inappropriate form probably occurred as a result of translating from English (my L1) while applying passive voice in a situation where it is not typically applied in English. My nieces interpretation was seemingly a result of the form I used not actually being applicable in the particular context. This may have been compounded by imprecise pronunciation (siot/ssangsiot) on my part.

Needless to say, my niece cried and I wasn't her favourite person for a while thereafter.