Best English speakers on tour (besides native speakers)
- Thread starter Fabresque
- Start date
BlueB
Legend
Maybe, but in that case the opinion bears very little weight, to public.
Anyways, you ducked the questions.
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skaj
Legend
In which case?
The point of your questions I presumed was related to what I wrote in my last post. I am not here to talk about myself.
Tommy Haas
Hall of Fame
Europeans are impressive with their language skills. They usually speak more than one compared to Americans. Also interesting is that Federer speaks English more with an American accent than the British being from Europe. Maybe it's influence from his mom being from SA and not sounding cockney.
BlueB
Legend
In the case of not being fluent and still passing an opinon. Thus the questions about your language skills/background.
Being a native speaker, a professional translator, a professor, having a degree, or at least fluent, bears more weight then just "Oh, I don't speak/understand that language well, but doesn't sound quite right to me..."
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Mainad
Bionic Poster
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skaj
Legend
Exactly, so I presumed right and gave you a suitable answer.
Btw I have no idea who you are quoting there, it's not me that's for sure
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Raiden
Hall of Fame
Dude, almost every human being on the planet speaks in an accent closer to American than British English as a second language despite the fact that (here in Europe for example) the English we get in schools is indeed "officially" British and not American.
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BlueB
Legend
It's not a quote (I would have done it in the real forum quotes), just how your position could be interpretedExactly, so I presumed right and gave you a suitable answer.
Btw I have no idea who you are quoting there, it's not me that's for sure
But no worries, you don't have to tell us more about yourself then you would like and you are entitled to an opinion.
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BlueB
Legend
I agree. Last summer I laughed and also got irritated, with an ad on Serbian TV. It was for a private English school that follows Oxford curriculum. Insted of hiring a real British person to read it, they had a local, yet obviously completely fluent person, to do it in British accent. It sounded extremely fake and pretentious, while it could have been just fine in her normal half-american accent.
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It's because of American tv and movies.
skaj
Legend
It's not a quote (I would have done it in the real forum quotes), just how your position could be interpreted
But no worries, you don't have to tell us more about yourself then you would like and you are entitled to an opinion.
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It was a joke, therefore the smiley, at a same time an answer to your question. To be more clear, your quote / potential interpretation I understand but it would be just an interpretation, and a wrong one. I will give an example for what I wrote - someone's Serbo-Croat/English/French/Chinese/whatever could be not excellent but still good enough to detect errors in other person's text/speech, good enough to know that the other person is not excellent either.
As for (not)talking about myself, instead of focusing on posts people in this forum tend to focus on posters, and I am a bit sick of that I must say(I don't mean you in this thread, as much as I'm speaking in general).
skaj
Legend
But why do you think she has a "normal half-american accent" or that she normally speaks with half-american accent?
skaj
Legend
This is a bit exaggerated, at least in my experience, but yes many people are heavily influenced by North American English despite of what they learn in school. It has to do with the fact that most mainstream films, tv shows etc. are coming from the US.
EllieK
Hall of Fame
Speaks fluent French as well.KING MEDVEDEV IS A PURE BEAST AT ENGLISH
EllieK
Hall of Fame
Im a Scot and I now can curse in southern American y'all are a bunch of $****#!!
TheGhostOfAgassi
Talk Tennis Guru
In south Europe they dub movies.
Reason why Rafa doesn’t speak good English like the others is because he never needed to. He was coached in Spanish and lived where he grew up all this time. That’s rare for a tennis player.
In north Europe we speak better English as we don’t dub movies and we are sort of more international than Italy, Spain and France. They aren’t so interested in learning English. While in Scandinavia you can easily find kids and really old people speaking English too. Here we start learning other languages from 6 year old. It’s not like that south Europe.
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
Medvedev has lived in France & Monte Carlo for longer than 5 years.
TheGhostOfAgassi
Talk Tennis Guru
Also a reason why Novak speaks well French.
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
And on the Tour, Rafa has been surrounded by Catalan- and Spanish-speaking people, because there has always been lots of players from Spain on the Tour and his team speaks the Mallorcan variety of Catalan.
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EllieK
Hall of Fame
Yes I am aware of that.
EllieK
Hall of Fame
Federer's mother may be South African and he did speak English as a child, but if you go back to interviews in the earlier part of his career (pony tail and just after) he spoke English with much more of a German accent and pronounced a few words incorrectly. He still has trouble with the "th" sound sometimes
TheGhostOfAgassi
Talk Tennis Guru
From what I have seen when I lived in Wimbledon, the Spanish teams and players always hanging out together. Sometimes also w S American teams and players. Met F Lopez in a wine bar where he was out with his own team and parts of Rafas. Also seen Verdasco and Rafa going to eat at this tapas place in Chelsea. The Spaniards seem like a one big family.
Other Europeans often not train only in their own country if they are talented, in fact many of them trains in Spain.
HetTheGreaterer
Banned
So, do most of the Scandinavians know english well?!!
Dennish, Finnish, Swidish, Norwegian everyone?
TheGhostOfAgassi
Talk Tennis Guru
Think I saw statistics of that, yes.
Shangri La
Hall of Fame
Zverev.
C
Chadalina
Guest
Its a big match up of the tall 2h'rs who are going to dominate the upcoming tournaments.
Dr Med could be a good name, after seeing him surgically take apart mrs sasha's game.
HetTheGreaterer
Banned
And I'll automatically assume people are friendly and cooperative as well.
Nice business opportunities in Scandinavia then, mate..
(In a decade or so
)
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
Wikipedia: "A. Zverev lives in Monte Carlo, Monaco. When he was growing up, he lived in Hamburg. He also has spent his winters living in Florida at the Saddlebrook academy since he was 12 years old. As a result of his parents' background and living in different countries, he can speak German, Russian, and English."
Alexander Zverev - Wikipedia
Shangri La
Hall of Fame
Wikipedia: "A. Zverev lives in Monte Carlo, Monaco. When he was growing up, he lived in Hamburg. He also has spent his winters living in Florida at the Saddlebrook academy since he was 12 years old. As a result of his parents' background and living in different countries, he can speak German, Russian, and English."
Alexander Zverev - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
That's why.
Sorry_to_tell_you_mate
Professional
And it shows.
Krish872007
Talk Tennis Guru
Novak Djokovic.
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
So what?? Rafa's second language is Spanish.
jm1980
Talk Tennis Guru
Most native Catalan speakers are bilingual and taught Spanish from a very young age. Being able to speak both is not that great of an accomplishment
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
Being able to speak English, when a person has lived in an English-speaking country/area or has spoken it at home from a very young age or has had to learn it to communicate with people outside his/her relatively small ethnic group, is not that great of an accomplishment.
Mainad
Bionic Poster
ForehandRF
Legend
Some of Rafa's press conferences back in 05, 06 were hilarious but he was a nice guy and always autentic
ForehandRF
Legend
Spanish is easy to learn if you ask me.I learned it just by watching mexican soap operas when I was a kid back in the 90s.Speaks it like a native though.
octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
Speaks it like a native though.
Your comment means that he is fluent in two languages.
BlueB
Legend
That's almost like prising Djoković for being fluent in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin [emoji2957]
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octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
Wikipedia: ¤¤ Catalan language is a Western Romance language named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain. It is the only official language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands [Mallorca is the largest of the islands] and Valencia.
During much of its history, and especially during the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1975), the Catalan language was ridiculed as a mere dialect of Spanish. This view, based on political and ideological considerations, has no linguistic validity. Spanish and Catalan have important differences in their sound systems, lexicon, and grammatical features, placing the language in features closer to Occitan (and French). ¤¤
Catalan language - Wikipedia
BlueB
Legend
Mutually intelligible languages:
en.m.wikipedia.org
"Spanish: Astur-Leonese and Galician(high),[26] Portuguese (high in written form; asymmetrically in spoken form), Extremaduran, Catalan, and Italian(partially),[30][41][25] Ladino (very high in written form; partially in spoken form"
Some other sources give the lexical similarity at 85%.
Castelan Spanish is mandatory in all Spanish schools.
Nadal went through school in Castelan Spanish:
"The Balearic Islands took more time to make language immersion effective. A decree enacted in 1997 established that Catalan must be used in at least 50% of lessons. Schools have freedom to add more lessons, and usually they do."
en.m.wikipedia.org
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Mutual intelligibility - Wikipedia
"Spanish: Astur-Leonese and Galician(high),[26] Portuguese (high in written form; asymmetrically in spoken form), Extremaduran, Catalan, and Italian(partially),[30][41][25] Ladino (very high in written form; partially in spoken form"
Some other sources give the lexical similarity at 85%.
What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? The Answer, and Examples for 8 World Languages | FluentU Language Blog
Mutual intelligibility is when speakers of one language can understand a related language to some degree, like Russian and Ukrainian, or English and Scots. Click here to read more about the mutually intelligible languages for 8 popular world languages.
www.fluentu.com
Castelan Spanish is mandatory in all Spanish schools.
Nadal went through school in Castelan Spanish:
"The Balearic Islands took more time to make language immersion effective. A decree enacted in 1997 established that Catalan must be used in at least 50% of lessons. Schools have freedom to add more lessons, and usually they do."
Education in Spain - Wikipedia
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skaj
Legend
So, are you saying that Spanish and Catalan are the same language? Cause Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are.
BlueB
Legend
It was more tongue in cheek, I said "almost" somwhere there...
On the other hand, 85% similarity is really close between Catalan and Spanish, while the crooked politicians in the Balkans are artificially making the languages drift appart. But of course, there's only Serbo-Croatian language in reality.
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octobrina10
Talk Tennis Guru
The lexical similarity between French and Italian is 89 %. According to your logic, French and Italian are the same language.
Lexical similarity - Wikipedia
skaj
Legend
But it's not even almost the same, those are two different languages while Serbo-Croat, as you said yourself, is one language.
BlueB
Legend
Actually, I never claimed that Catalan and Castelan are the same, just similar and that Rafa went to school in Castelan.The lexical similarity between French and Italian is 89 %. According to your logic, French and Italian are the same language.
Lexical similarity - Wikipedia
I jokingly (and somewhat bitterly, for reasons other the you/Rafa) suggested that Serbo-Croatian dialects are forced into separate languages by politicians. [emoji25]
Interesting percentage with Italian and French, I'd never thought it would be that colse... Mind you, even with my very poor French, I can do very basic communication in "made up Italian". When we were there, 2 years ago, my kid asked me how come I spoke Italian [emoji1787]
Anyhow, I always found Spanish and Italian more resambling each other than French...
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BlueB
Legend
"Almost the same" was for crediting Rafa for being fluent in Castelan and Catalan would be "almost the same" as crediting Nole for 4 Balcan "languages".
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