A language learners’ forum

rdearman wrote:It is overwhelmingly in English. In fact I had a Frenchman tell me: I didn't come here to speak French. The implication being that I should continue to speak in English. Most of my French speaking was with non-native speakers. Bit of a chat in Italian the day after the gathering ended on the castle tour with a nice Italian chap.

They had a non-english area which was a great idea, but would have been nice to have a lecture room dedicated to non-english. Some people were organising impromptu meetups in variuos languages. I think Brun Ulge went to a Japanese one.

I'd say if you're planning on language practice in anything but English you will be disappointed.

Actually I spoke plenty of language besides English. For me that's never been an issue.

rdearman wrote:In fact I had a Frenchman tell me: I didn't come here to speak French. The implication being that I should continue to speak in English. Most of my French speaking was with non-native speakers. Bit of a chat in Italian the day after the gathering ended on the castle tour with a nice Italian chap.

So it simply depends on who you choose to chat with, no? It's under your control, then, no?

(My original question was about the language used among LLorgers but replies about languages used with other Gathering-participants turned out more interesting )

Another question: We always complain about people switching to our L1. Did you do that to people? Switching to their L1?

No. In fact I avoided using it as much as possible. I have spoken more Spanish than English for sure.

tarvos wrote:No. In fact I avoided using it as much as possible. I have spoken more Spanish than English for sure.

Sorry, I shouldn't have said "English". I meant switching to your interlocutor's L1, like switching to Spanish on a Spaniard.

French natives again... During my first lunch I happened to sit at the table with a French guy and an Italian guy, who code-switched but mostly spoke Spanish together I think in general using an intermediate or advanced L2 is pretty common. But wow rdearman was unlucky with that French speaker. I might have preferred to speak something else but I did speak quite a bit of Russian. At a multilingual event that's more fun than English tbh (with non-natives, obviously..)
I was able to understand some conversations in Swedish but couldn't contribute

The most disappointing part was that the organizers are mostly multilingual too but I've only dealt with them in English. It's boring enough to deal with all the stuff like registration etc... The email contacts list didn't mention which languages they speak, and in person their badges often weren't visible

In the Llorg Group: mainly English (and Swedish with Tarvos, Iversen and Solfrid Christina).

Outside Llorg: Swedish with fellow Scandinavians and others who wanted to practice their Swedish; English with nearly everyone else; German and Spanish whenever the situation arose; Esperanto with esperantists, Irish with a handful of people including a lad who only spoke Scottish Gaelic; A1 French with a few people; the occasional sentence in Mandarin, Cantonese, Danish, Slovak, Russian, Italian and probably more.

As long as I know my stuff, I can switch on the spot.

I've always wondered - why does a conversation have to be in ONE language? There's abundant listening opportunity everywhere and every day so it's really just speaking opportunity that we really want, so if Tarvos spoke to me in Chinese and I to her in Dutch, that's great practice, too, no?

Brun Ugle wrote:Here are the forum members who showed up for the picture.

Can we have a legend, please? I've been dying to know whether that's RDearman or Iversen in the middle but I suspect I'd offend one or both of them if I asked...

smallwhite wrote:I've always wondered - why does a conversation have to be in ONE language? There's abundant listening opportunity everywhere and every day so it's really just speaking opportunity that we really want, so if Tarvos spoke to me in Chinese and I to her in Dutch, that's great practice, too, no?

Of course that's possible, but not everyone is used to that approach. I think that Cesco Reale mentioned that in one of his talks some years ago, and he regularly switches languages, even mid-sentence.

smallwhite wrote:Can we have a legend, please? I've been dying to know whether that's RDearman or Iversen in the middle but I suspect I'd offend one or both of them if I asked...

So, top to bottom, left to right:
tarvos, myself
zenmonkey, Rdearman, ??
daegga, vonPeterhof, daveprine, Elenia, Sprachprofi
Serpent, Brun_Ugle, Solfrid Christina

Missing people: Vedun, Iversen, druckfehler, Aidan_Sweeney (I never met the last two, but they were there). girlyrobot wasn't in the picture either (she joined the forum after the gathering).

If you count people who are/were mainly active on HTLAL, we could probably add another ten.