Unlikely speakers of a language

Ubbquittious

Ever meet someone who you never expected to speak another language?

Back in the tiger times I was sitting in a pub in South Korea beside this English lad who as far as I could tell was as English as any other English lad I've ever met in England. I had assumed him to be the stereotypical bored expat who was begrudgingly sent over to "this sh1thole" for work. Until he started talking away to the girlie behind the bar in fluent Korean. Told me then his wife was Korean and that it rubs off

Some lad I know told me about a time he was on the bus in the Outer Hebrides and this youngfella covered with tattoos gets on, sits beside some ouldwan and starts chatting away As Gaeilge. I suppose this lad wouldn't be too unusual around those parts but here we're fairly accustomed to lads not being too fond of the Gaeilge especially if they're rebellious enough to get a load of tattoos.

jacksie66

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Livefornow

Turkish family moved next door to us in London in the 80s. Spoke english with an accent so english was not his first language. Talking to him one day over the fence, when he realised we were Irish he spoke in fluent Irish to me.
Said he picked it up from lads from the West on the sites in London. Had never set one foot in Ireland and there I was, a product of 13 years of the Irish education system struggling to keep up with him and in many cases asking for the english word

MarkY91

Met 2 Irish brothers in Bangkok who could speak Thai.

Also been told by Filipino friends of white people who could speak Tagalog and also the odd taxi driver being fluent in Tagalog too.

Arghus

After a big rake of pints my ability to string a coherent sentence of English together could be considered most unlikely, but I have risen to the challenge here and there and against all odds.

AllForIt

I'm currently doing a one year business course that is 50% business and 50% Spanish. It's the first time I ever studied a language formally outside of secondary school. We do 8 hours per week of Spanish so it's very intensive. I'm totally socked at myself at my time in life (almost middle aged) that I can now understand at a basic level a second language. I was told Spanish is easy to learn - well maybe it is in comparison to say Mandarin but its still difficult. Anyway I nominate myself as the most unlikely speaker of a second language. I'm hoping to move to Spain and use my English as an asset in work and become fluent in Spanish while I'm there.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Christy Kinahan Snr apparently speaks Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian.

Not bad for a big knacker from the Oliver Bond flats.


Guy should have tried his hand at legit business.

Omackeral

Emmanuel Eboue is apparently fluent in Korean.

spurious

I met a Polish teacher in Warsaw who spoke Irish at easily Honours LC level. She had divorced her husband, wanted something to occupy her time, so learned Irish from a 'Teach yourself Irish' book and listening to R na G online. She had been to the Gaeltacht and all.

This is written by her:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/2.663/gaeilgeoir-polannach-ar-chúrsa-teanga-sa-ghaeltacht-1.913942?mode=amp

I was sitting in a pub in Daingean Uí Chúis years ago and got talking to this guy who had the most gorgeous Irish. When I put a question to a friend from Ard na Caithne about him she told me he was an American who was a bit of a 'fear ardéirime" who came to Corca Dhuibhne in the 1980s when he was a student in Cornell University and never went home.

Is é seo an fear atá i gceist.

Capt'n Midnight

Roger Whittaker , the whistler, grew up in Kenya.

So when he was stopped in London for a traffic offence he started speaking in Bantu because, what are the chances of a policeman understanding it ? :pac:


Turned out Mr police officer could also speak it

StupidLikeAFox

Got talking to a dude outside a pub who had full on Boston accent - sounded like a full on wise guy out of Goodfellas. Turns out he was German, never set foot in the US and learned to speak English by watching gangster movies. Strange character.

entropi

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Christy Kinahan Snr apparently speaks Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian.

Not bad for a big knacker from the Oliver Bond flats.


Guy should have tried his hand at legit business.

He's from Tallaght.

Ficheall

One of my lecturers of maths trí Ghaeilge in uni was from Greece. He'd moved over years before without any English, under the mistaken impression that Irish was the main language here, and then had to learn English while he was here.

OldMrBrennan83

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andekwarhola

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Christy Kinahan Snr apparently speaks Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian

To be fair, not all of us get six spare years (in the slammer) to brush up on our language skills.

Canard

AllForIt wrote: »

I'm currently doing a one year business course that is 50% business and 50% Spanish. It's the first time I ever studied a language formally outside of secondary school. We do 8 hours per week of Spanish so it's very intensive. I'm totally socked at myself at my time in life (almost middle aged) that I can now understand at a basic level a second language. I was told Spanish is easy to learn - well maybe it is in comparison to say Mandarin but its still difficult. Anyway I nominate myself as the most unlikely speaker of a second language. I'm hoping to move to Spain and use my English as an asset in work and become fluent in Spanish while I'm there.

Congratulations on that It's very true; Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, but that doesn't mean that learning a language at all is easy, so credit's due where it's due. Once you get the bases of one down the rest become easier, like climbing stairs!

As for the thread topic, I have two funny ones. My French ex was helping me with my French because I had an oral exam coming up so we went to his, some guy outside spoke French to him and I didn't know who it was but was a bit shy at the time to speak French in front of someone I didn't know so when we went upstairs I was a bit quiet about it, then the guy asked if we minded "if I watch the shnooker lads", I realised I must've mistaken this clearly Irish guy for someone else, and starting chatting away in French. Only for him to turn around and ask me in perfect French (he was Irish/French) whether I studied French! :eek: Seriously nothing weirder than seeing someone with such a standard, elegant French accent and such an insanely thick Irish accent.

Similarly, last year on Paddy's Day in Paris I went to the toilets in the pub we were in when someone told me there was a queue (so many people that I'd assumed they were just chilling there). I joked about Irish people having priority and a red-haired girl told me "I'm Irish too, but we all have to make the queue". I told her she couldn't be Irish because we don't say that in English, then I got chatting to her and basically she was indeed half-Irish and had lived in Ennis for some time, but had the most bizarre French-Irish accent I've ever heard... like using French false friends but with a huge Irish accent. I find it really interesting how all that works in the brain, but I wouldn't wanna sound so strange. :pac:

arctictree

Ubbquittious wrote: »

...Until he started talking away to the girlie behind the bar in fluent Korean.

To be fair, unless you are fluent yourself, you would have no idea how fluent the guy was. Could be just rattling off a few phrases.

Reminds me of a relative who used to tell everyone that her son had fluent German. I can speak it myself and when I heard him speak, it was extremely broken.

ignorance is strength

David Norris speaks Irish.

Shenshen

I was living in Montreal for a while, doing an internship at the Goethe Institute there, and met a great many highly unlikely people speaking perfect German.
My landlady there was from Norway, but spoke German fluent enough not only to teach it, but to consistently beat me at Scrabble. Her French was flawless as well.
But the most interesting would have been a young lady from St Lucia who had migrated to Canada just the year before. She had learned German in order to be able to read E.T.A. Hoffmann's work in the original and was delighted when she found out that I was from the town he spent most of his productive years in... and there was me never having read a single book by him!

maudgonner

Yu Ming!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM

OK, he may not be real. I do know an Australian girl who speaks fluent Irish though.

WoollyRedHat

Harry Potter speaking parseltongue.

Jimbob1977

If I recall correctly, David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party and a Loyalist paramilitary was a Gaeilgeoir.

Meet a teenager in Kerry, what most here would describe as a Scobie i.e tats tracksuit etc speaking fluent Irish. It is just not the association we have of Irish speakers.

andekwarhola

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

If I recall correctly, David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party and a Loyalist paramilitary was a Gaeilgeoir.

Read before a lot of them tried to learn it to eavesdrop on republicans in prison

ziggy

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whisky_galore

Irish people speaking Irish.

Canard

Canard wrote: »

Congratulations on that It's very true; Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, but that doesn't mean that learning a language at all is easy, so credit's due where it's due. Once you get the bases of one down the rest become easier, like climbing stairs!

Strange... I've started and restarted Spanish about a dozen times, and I just can't get my head around it enough to have decent conversations. And yet, Chinese (and the Shaanxi Dialect) I found reasonably comfortable to learn. (Still nowhere close to being fluent but getting there)

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Colin Powell learned Yiddish as a teenager because he worked in a Jewish-owned shop.

Wibbs

An ex of mine from many moons ago who spoke latin. I don't mean in the usual stiff strangulated British public school, or Catholic Church religious way, it sounded like the normal language it was(and kinda sexy TBH). Now in fairness she was Italian and from Rome, but still. She could also read ancient Greek. And spoke passible French, good Spanish and extremely good English.

Yer Da sells Avon

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Colin Powell learned Yiddish as a teenager because he worked in a Jewish-owned shop.

Pity he didn't learn how to pronounce his own name.

Avatar MIA

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

If I recall correctly, David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party and a Loyalist paramilitary was a Gaeilgeoir.

I was wondering why his wife Linda has such a grá for it (see what I did there :pac: ) She's quite an advocate for it. Believing that Irish is their language. too.

As per thread - QEII

MightyMandarin

Hapax Legomenon wrote: »

Pity he didn't learn how to pronounce his own name.

Says here his mates actually called him 'Coe-lin' as a kid so he just stuck with it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/gop2000guide/powellpost.htm

Powell's parents, Jamaican immigrants and subjects of the British empire, pronounced their son's name KAH-lin. But Powell's childhood friends in the South Bronx, impressed by the heroic exploits of World War II flyer Colin P. Kelly Jr. (known as KOH-lin), altered the pronunciation and its been KOH-lin Powell ever since.

robindch

Walked out of my office one evening a few years back on South Anne Street, crossed the road and at the corner with Molesworth Street, saw two people in a rental car about to turn left the wrong way up Dawson Street. I waved and, luckily, they saw me and stopped and wound down the window to say, loudly and with some irritation, "Wear Kyemdyen Stryet?"

So I stepped over a little closer to the open nearside window, switched to Russian, asked for some paper and a pencil, which they produced, drew a map and generally explained how to drive to where they needed to go and where to park when they got there. When they said they were happy, they suddenly drove off without waving goodbye or saying thanks or looking surprised in the slightest.

Вот жизнь!

Canard

Deleted User wrote: »

Strange... I've started and restarted Spanish about a dozen times, and I just can't get my head around it enough to have decent conversations. And yet, Chinese (and the Shaanxi Dialect) I found reasonably comfortable to learn. (Still nowhere close to being fluent but getting there)

I suppose I did generalise a bit! I tend to see Chinese etc as very difficult because I’m in no way artistic, I never handwrite notes, so I’d be awful at it. But spanish has tons of verb forms which I personally have gotten used to, but it would probably be very different for others. Spanish is quite user-friendly though since it’s entirely phonetic and very logical, but maybe Chinese is logical in its own way!

JohnnyFlash

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

If I recall correctly, David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party and a Loyalist paramilitary was a Gaeilgeoir.

His daughter/wife still runs Irish language courses in the very heartland of loyalist Belfast. There was a documentary about it on Radio 1 recently. And some Presbyterian secondary school up there had also started giving Irish language lessons.

irishrebe

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Ever meet someone who you never expected to speak another language?

Back in the tiger times I was sitting in a pub in South Korea beside this English lad who as far as I could tell was as English as any other English lad I've ever met in England. I had assumed him to be the stereotypical bored expat who was begrudgingly sent over to "this sh1thole" for work. Until he started talking away to the girlie behind the bar in fluent Korean. Told me then his wife was Korean and that it rubs off

Some lad I know told me about a time he was on the bus in the Outer Hebrides and this youngfella covered with tattoos gets on, sits beside some ouldwan and starts chatting away As Gaeilge. I suppose this lad wouldn't be too unusual around those parts but here we're fairly accustomed to lads not being too fond of the Gaeilge especially if they're rebellious enough to get a load of tattoos.

I was in a pub in South Korea where I knew the bar staff well thanks to my frequent visits, sitting at the bar having a drink and waiting for my mate, when a Korean man of around 60 sat down and ordered a drink. Seeing the big foreign head on me, he asked where I was from, and I said Ireland. He casually started talking away in Irish, asking me what I was doing in Korea and what part of Ireland I was from. I was stunned speechless for a few seconds before I replied. Turns out he'd always been interested in Ireland and had taught himself the language and all, but he had never actually been there. His Irish was way better than mine.

arctictree

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

His daughter/wife still runs Irish language courses in the very heartland of loyalist Belfast. There was a documentary about it on Radio 1 recently. And some Presbyterian secondary school up there had also started giving Irish language lessons.

Maybe out of my depth here but loyalism does not necessarily equate to a fondness of the English or the English language. Britain is a union of 4 nations in which each nation has their own sub culture, identity etc. It is certainly possible to square that circle.

irishrebe

arctictree wrote: »

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

His daughter/wife still runs Irish language courses in the very heartland of loyalist Belfast. There was a documentary about it on Radio 1 recently. And some Presbyterian secondary school up there had also started giving Irish language lessons.

Maybe out of my depth here but loyalism does not necessarily equate to a fondness of the English or the English language. Britain is a union of 4 nations in which each nation has their own sub culture, identity etc. It is certainly possible to square that circle.

But it is quite unusual for Unionists in Ulster to have an interest in the Irish language. Hence why the recent(ish) upsurge of people from unionists backgrounds taking Irish classes was so newsworthy. It's considered a Nationalist thing by many. Most of the Catholic schools teach Irish but the Protestant ones don't.

Big Nasty

I get great enjoyment of hearing second generation immigrants, especially African or Asian kids speaking English with an Irish accent.

Stroke Politics

Back in the day, there was a maths lecturer in U C G who would lecture as Gaeilge. Tony Christofides(Sp?)....

Paddy Cow

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Got talking to a dude outside a pub who had full on Boston accent - sounded like a full on wise guy out of Goodfellas. Turns out he was German, never set foot in the US and learned to speak English by watching gangster movies. Strange character.

I was working in a B&B, checking in some Canadians and their accent was so strange because it was distinctly Irish mixed with Canadian. I actually thought they were taking the p!ss or something so I had to ask them about it. They said they were from New Foundland and it's quite a common accent over there due to the huge amount of Irish immigrants in the past.

byhookorbycrook

Deleted User wrote: »

I was sitting in a pub in Daingean Uí Chúis years ago and got talking to this guy who had the most gorgeous Irish. When I put a question to a friend from Ard na Caithne about him she told me he was an American who was a bit of a 'fear ardéirime" who came to Corca Dhuibhne in the 1980s when he was a student in Cornell University and never went home.

Is é seo an fear atá i gceist.

Pósta le gaol m'fhear céile.

Ken.

Anyone mentioned Trump and English yet.

Mountainsandh

Not so much surprising as she's so smart, but Jodie Foster has quasi-native French, it's always a bit unsettling to listen to her in interviews over there. She went to school in France for a while too I think.
(am French, so it's the same as people hearing Irish spoken by some foreigner, sort of)

Varik

Japanese Empress speaks Irish.

Mountainsandh

Paddy Cow wrote: »

I was working in a B&B, checking in some Canadians and their accent was so strange because it was distinctly Irish mixed with Canadian. I actually thought they were taking the p!ss or something so I had to ask them about it. They said they were from New Foundland and it's quite a common accent over there due to the huge amount of Irish immigrants in the past.

Yeah Mr M has travelled there a few times, and we have friends who come over once in a while , St Johns and many areas over there have a distinctly Irish heritage, and the older folks often have a striking Waterford accent. One of our friends in question still has a good hint of it, although he's of the younger generation.
This is Graham (a Newfie), the singer, judge for yourself
https://youtu.be/YkHKnL3GJp4
https://youtu.be/YJv94-bqMvQ

iomusicdublin

I had a friend years ago from Leeds / Hull area, very strong northern accent. We were abroad and a group of Germans came in and he started speaking fluent German. He had moved to Germany aged 8 for 7 years (father was UK military). The Germans said he spoke flawless German with a very posh accent from Münster.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

There's a Japanese salsa band who perform entirely in Spanish. To hear them perform, you would assume they were Latin American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32p0h8wNOtk

thomil

Bit of a long one, but I have to get into the background a bit.
I used to work as an armed guard for a private security company that had been contracted to guard US Army installations in Germany. Ironically I was also one of the few guards at my post who were reasonably proficient in English. Anyway, one day, security at the garrison I was working at had been tightened significantly, with no reason given, as usual, and we had to search EVERY vehicle that wanted to come on base. As luck would have it, it was exactly on that day when one of our tenant units returned from one of the German training ranges, I think Grafenwöhr, but I'm not sure. Tailbacks were already impressive, and when you add a forty vehicle army convoy, it quickly became mayhem.

My colleagues were working feverishly to get those vehicles processed as quickly as possible, when the hatch of the command vehicle of the convoy suddenly flew open. Out came the most massive soldier I have ever seen, in full combat gear, built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, and with the skin colour and facial expression of a VERY pissed off Samuel L. Jackson. He came stomping towards us, and started chewing us out in Bavarian German, with the thickest Bavarian accent I have EVER heard. Mind you, I'm half Austrian, so I'm more than familiar with some of the "alpine" dialects, but he was something special.
Turns out he had been raised in Bad Tölz, a town in Bavaria that until a few years ago housed a sizeable US Army garrison, right at the edge of the Alps, and had not only picked up German, but the local dialect as well.

Patrick_Swayze

Was on a school trip in Croatia about 10 years ago now, Dubrovnik to be exact. Was walking through the streets and next thing some croatia guy just stops us and starts speaking irish and inviting us to see his pub. Went inside to see a load of hurls signed by DJ Carey and other jerseys. Said he went to Connemara to learn irish when he was here for 2 years. Apparently was his dream to get drunk in every county in Ireand which led to him staying longer