Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby tractor » Mon Dec 05, 2022 8:01 pm

I find some languages and dialects annoying or ugly, even without having had any negative experiences with their speakers. I know that's irrational.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby alaart » Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:13 pm

Languages are used as a political tools and influence and shape groups of people, but I think the success of this methods is diminishing. I think one should try to separate countries governments, culture and history - with the people and the language. They are connected and influence each other of course. They are part of each other, but not everything is derived from that.

The language is merely a tool of communication. As such the negative connotations I have come from culture shock, words and attitudes that are not translatable even if you learn the language and bad experiences resulting from that. But these can also be sources of great inside.

Someone quoted the Dutch bluntness as a negative value, I actually see this as a positive and one of the things fascinating me about Dutch. It's a nice contrast to some of the Asian languages where people are more subtle, and experiencing both ends of the spectrum can be quite mind blowing sometimes (just yesterday I spoke with both a Dutch and a Korean friend at the same day).

Sound was mentioned. Not all languages sound equally beautiful to my ears, and it plays a big factor in getting me curious at first, but I'm learning also languages I don't find pleasing, so I'd say it's a minor factor if I know other interesting things about the language.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby Le Baron » Tue Dec 06, 2022 12:22 am

alaart wrote:Someone quoted the Dutch bluntness as a negative value, I actually see this as a positive and one of the things fascinating me about Dutch. It's a nice contrast to some of the Asian languages where people are more subtle, and experiencing both ends of the spectrum can be quite mind blowing sometimes (just yesterday I spoke with both a Dutch and a Korean friend at the same day). .

Other people have said this to me when I've mentioned it, but it's different when it's something you exhaustingly meet every day. There's not much positive value in being unable to make sophisticated assessments about what could be said or not said or just saying nothing at all. It has the ring of egotism and a lack of sophistication and also the misguided notion that this unsolicited 'bold honesty' inspires respect rather than irritation. The unfortunate part is that this 'say what you think' actually recedes when it's thought valuable to self-interest.

I find the Asian approach more sophisticated. You can get honest feedback, but it's more considered and tactful.

I still don't blame the language. Though a language isn't just an inanimate thing, it is also a reflection of a culture. It can be used for anything from tenderness to calumny.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby alaart » Tue Dec 06, 2022 10:40 am

Expressing something blunt can be so refreshing for me, because I can really get tired of navigating all the different contexts, situations, peoples, cultures. There is a beauty in simplification, it's easy to understand, - sometimes rude - yes, maybe. Sometimes I'm thinking too complicated, and the solution is right in front of me.

Might be too much if you live there - it's been over 10 years since I lived there, so I don't remember that clearly. Of course my native German culture is also pretty direct, but we have a bit more stiffness to it, where you can be direct but have to be polite and elaborated. Sometimes if I have a good point but can't express it elegantly, I will get attacked for the lack of elegance in German. Then a discussion about the proper wording might evolve - and I would just wish we would talk more about the content than the form and make real progress in the discussion, and then I think "In Dutch that would not happen".

Another thing, some Germans - or Japanese even, they really "hide" behind the politeness or elaborated speech and talk a lot of correct and respectful language without content.

Depends a lot on the individual people of course, but just some observation.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby FRAnglais1919 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:13 am

I wanted to say Russian for a few of reasons, but rdearman doesn't want to hear any political talk. The one non-political reason is that my grandparents would sometimes talk in Russian if they didn't want me to hear what they were saying. That always irritated me as a child, and it still does :/ Thus, I feel bitter when I hear spoken Russian.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby ryanheise » Wed Dec 07, 2022 5:34 am

For me personally, I haven't developed any negative connotations, although I am probably interpreting this question too literally. For reference, (Oxford Learner's Dictionary):

connotation: an idea suggested by a word in addition to its main meaning

So I think an awareness of connotations indicates some level of understanding of the words.

But the negative opinions or associations I have held on a language have come more from a position of ignorance, before I learned what the words meant, and the more I learnt about the language, the more understanding and accepting I also became.

As an example, in Korean, one thing that initially struck me was how people would hold the final vowel quite a bit longer and make the pitch oscillate up and down in a wavy pattern, maybe 3 or 4 times, which as a native English speaker, unfortunately reminded me of the sound young children make when throwing tantrums (e.g. "No Mummy! I don't want to g/o\o/\o/o\ooooo"!). At one stage, whenever I heard Koreans speak, on the street, in a cafe, etc. I would hear this sound and that unfair association would jump into my head. But in reality, the problem was that I was forming this association without actually understanding the content of what they were saying. They could have been talking about something positive, for all I knew, and if I had known that, I would have been able to associate that sound with the correct emotions. Now that I do understand a bit more Korean, I understand that this sound can be used to express a range of emotions in a wide range of emphatic situations that are far more positive than I had initially imagined (e.g. "It's really trueeee!"), and in those situations where it might be negative, it can often be interpreted as a cute way of expressing an opposite view as opposed to a more aggressive one.

As a mindset thing, I remember in the early days setting this as a conscious sort of milestone to truly understand this sound from a Korean perspective, as in, if I could appreciate and connect with the true meaning of that sound, that would mean I had graduated to the next level in my language learning.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby Fortheo » Fri Dec 23, 2022 10:50 am

I have developed a bit of a prejudice against french, which I half joke about and half take seriously. The sad thing, though, is that I only discovered there's a lot I dislike about French culture through learning the language. I know full well that there must be a good portion of french people that I'd get along with very well, but honestly, in the past decade with this language, I've yet to make a single decent French friend despite many attempts. Maybe it's just bad luck? Instead, I've met several french people who I found to be very cold, critical, arrogant, pompous (pick your adjective). It is possible that I'm the problem, but I've just had far more bad experiences trying to make french friends than I have had making Brazilian friends or Russian friends, for example. I do have some good friends that speak French, but surprise surprise, they're from Africa, not France. Again, maybe it's something about me that just doesnt mesh well with the French. I really don't know. Anyways, those experiences have just left me with a bad feeling anytime I think about French now.

On top of that, I find a large amount of French literature and cinema to be bleak, which just isn't for me. Fortunately though there are a lot of gems out there too (it just takes some looking) and that's what keeps me going with this language along with some great BDs and of course my French speaking friends from Africa.

My experience with Brazilian Portuguese has been the complete opposite -- I love it more and more every day.
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Re: Has anyone else developed strong negative connotations with some languages?

Postby Mahoutklight » Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:07 pm

When I was very, very young, my mom, my sister and I lived with my mother's parents because of financial problems. My grandparents were immigrants from Korea so they spoke Korean around us all the time and watched Korean television (why wouldn't they). I don't hold any contempt for them but living with them was probably the worst year of my life. I had to sleep in the same room as two other people, I hated most of their food, and I had nothing to do all day. I legitimately started counting the dots on the popcorn ceiling. I'm grateful my mom's parents let us live in their house and they are angels for that because we would've probably been homeless, but for a 6-7 year old, it sucked.

Anything Korea-related just reminds me of living there and I don't even like to hear about it in passing mention, much less learn the language. Especially after I started trying to learn it without telling anyone and then my sister started being hostile to me for not knowing Korean, so I stopped out of spite. Also cause I don't even like the way Korean sounds.

Sometimes I even tell new people I meet that I'm Japanese or Vietnamese.
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