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Does an ESL sound rude to native english speaker?

Posted by arkafle • 9/14/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: english, esl, native

I was wondering do the native English speakers find ESL speaker rude because because of their inability to speak English well.
In many instances I've felt so when I speak to native guys.

User Comments

9/14/09

SweetViolet

It depends.

I live in a country where most people are bilingual, one of the languages being English. Sometimes their English sounds very rude because of the words they choose, even though they do not mean to be rude.

For example, if you say "you must do this," native English speakers hear this as a command and may react unfavourably. But if you say "you should do this," they will hear it as a suggestion and react much better.

If you are with native English speakers a lot, you should make a good friend among them to help you learn the right words so you don't accidentally say rude or offensive things because you don't yet know the right words to use.

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9/14/09

xmarks

I don't. Usually it is more entertaining than rude. No offense.

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9/14/09

idealpinkrose

I think they can understand if they knew that the speaker is not good at the language.

Koreans always use "yo" and "imnida" at the end of the sentence as a sign of respect. But English don't have that kind of words. Use "please" at the end when you're giving commands is what I can think of right now.

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9/14/09

NT77

I've lived in countries where English is not spoken and have had to struggle through with the native language. Most people seemed to appreciate my attempt at their language and seemed forgiving of mistakes that I made.

I think it's the same with speakers of English as a second language. For my part, if the foreigner comes up with something somewhat impolite, I try to read his facial expressions, and I try to think how difficult it would be for a foreigner to say it the proper way.

I think that most people would do the same. I think that if there were any rudeness concerning your lack of fluency in English, it would be on the part of the listener. After all, you can speak another language fluently.

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9/14/09

DailyBeerReview

Living in Miami, married to a foreigner and surrounded by ESL speakers every single day, the word "rude" has never crossed my mind. It's obvious that anything said that is not perfect is not really the fault of the speaker. They are trying, which is more than I can say for myself with 12 years of Spanish practice.

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9/14/09

cookingasshole

no...I am impressed they are trying to learn the language

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9/16/09

arkafle

thank you guys.. i got it.

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9/16/09

videoman

I speak 3 foreign languages fluently. In English, ESL students need to pay attention to the pronunciation of the following words:

1. Beach
2. Sheet

The vowel sound needs to be a long "eee" to avoid embarrassment.

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9/16/09

timethief

I never consider anyone would is trying to learn a new language to be rude when they are conversing with me. There are several people in my community who are learning English as a second language and we frequently chat about many things. When mispronunciation occurs I find a polite way to say the word correctly for them. When it comes to the written word, I frequently notice that ESL speakers use two words that do not exist in the English language in their blog posts. They are "stuffs" and "informations". Both of these words minus the "s" at the end are plural words.

This article below contains some very useful strategies for ESL bloggers that I believe you will be interested in reading.
Writing in English as a Second Language
www.bloggingwithsuccess.net/2008/11/writing-in-english-as-second-language.h...
In addition I believe you will find many helpful ESL Resources in this article roo.
ESL and Blogging
onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/esl-and-blogging/

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9/16/09

Sebastyne

Finns can come off as being very rude when speaking English because of the lack of facial expressions and body language which is minimal in the Finnish culture. They too can do the "you must obay" mistake, and forget words like please because we don't have equvalents of them in our language. Also we usually skip formalities completely, as we don't use Mrs, Mr's or sirs in our language and feel stupid doing that in other languages as well. Added to that Finns often speak grammatically very high level English so their non-nativeness is not as obvious as it would be with many other countries, so with absolutely nothing softening the blow, they can come off very rude indeed... And still not mean to.

(You might ask that how won't we end up beating each other up on a regular basis being so coarse, but I've noticed that us Finns have very highly developed skill of reading facial expressions and body language, because we simply have to be. We read of those things that people can't control, for example if you lie, your face gets a tick and even though we wouldn't know what we pick up on, we pick up on those minimal clues we can't stop giving out.)

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