A language learners’ forum

It looks like you can't irritate Belgians or Finns.

An amusing post, thanks.

But now a language only version (my attempt, feel free to correct me):
Any central european country: "So you speak Russian, right?"
Poles speaking about Czech AND czechs speaking about Polish: "Your language sounds like small children with a speech impediment"
Spain: "Spanish is so easy, yo hablar Espanol bueno"
Portugal: "So, you speak weird Spanish,don't you?"
the Croatian-Serbian-Bosnian-Macedonian area: "So, you speak -insert the other variant of the langauge-?"
Slovaks and Czechs: "So what language are you actually speaking, when you can understand each other?" (Slovaks take it worse usually)

P.S. one thing is pretty clear not only from this map. The balcan countries should be more popular tourist destinations. I am looking forward to visiting the region sometime. When my finances recover from Erasmus.

Contrary to the rest, isn't the one with Sweden actually a fact?

vogeltje wrote:It looks like you can't irritate Belgians or Finns.

Regarding Belgians... Well I'm not sure how irritating it would be, so a reply to this post might be nice.

Back in 2000 my friend and I arrived in Belgium in Bruges, (i.e. Flanders for anyone not sure, where French is not the main language) when, despite my fairly strong geographical and culture knowledge, i'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I thought all Belgians spoke French. My friend and I being young and silly (I don't think all young ppl are young and silly {i.e. a bit rediculous}, but we certainly were) were trying out our "Bonjours" all over (ahem, High Street/Canal, Flemish-villestad) town wondering why we were getting seemingly stern looks. How naïve and uncultured we were

So could you irritate Belgians by pleasantly addressing the Walloons (not close to Brussels, in the heartand) in Flemish with a smile, and the Flemish (again far from Brussels) in pleasant French? Or are the cultural clashes really not that deep?

Edit: Alternatively: French fries are from France!

France: any sentence in French without 100% perfect accent and grammar.

Spain: "you guys speak with a lisp, right?"
Ireland: "You're part of the UK, right?"
Portugal: "Portuguese is the child of Spanish and French".

Xenops wrote:Spain: "you guys speak with a lisp, right?"
Ireland: "You're part of the UK, right?"
Portugal: "Portuguese is the child of Spanish and French".

That's exactly what I was coming in to say for Ireland too, haha.

You can tell them jokes of this type:

Heaven & Hell

Heaven is a place where the police are English; the chefs are Italian; the car mechanics are German; the lovers are French and it's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is a place where the police are German; the chefs are English; the car mechanics are French; the lovers are Swiss and it's all organized by the Italians.

The only thing I can think of for Finland is to speak "Finnish-Swedish" very loudly and to make sure about 50% of the words you say are Finnish. Or maybe another one would be to remind us of the times we lost to Sweden in some important game of ice hockey.

The lovely Swedish people of Finland (so, not from Sweden, but the about 5% of Finland's population that speak Swedish as their first language) speak Swedish basically without the accent your hear in Sweden. Hearing this is very normal in the southern parts of the country, but I'd say that most Finns don't like it if you add a bunch of Finnish words to it, meaning you might as well be speaking Finnish

I remember once listening to some popular radio show in Finland where one of the guys was traveling on a bus in Helsinki, and he started doing just that, speaking Finnish-Swedish very loudly and adding lots of Finnish words to it. The point was to see how many people on the bus turn their heads to give him a "would you kindly get off the phone or bus" look