The Seven Types of Language Speaker

Native English speakers are a peculiar bunch. Blessed with the world’s dominant language, many of us will pass our entire lives without needing to use another one. Yet those of us who DO need to dip our toes into the treacherous waters of talking foreign will fall (fail?) into one of these seven language types:

1: The Patronising Pigeon

This chap – and it’s usually a chap – has been speaking English with non-native speakers for so long that he constructs all his sentences entirely in pidgin. He rarely gets lost in translation while travelling, yet since so much of his English language conversation has been with women a decade or several younger than himself, his communication style may confuse, if not actually alienate, Anglo acquaintances.

“The Beatles…. You know The Beatles? Famous band. Same-same One Direction. Long, long time ago.” “Yes, I know. I saw them at The Cavern.”

2: The Proud Polyglot

This chick – it is usually a chick, and I’m one – is unutterably proud of her ability to speak one or even more languages with approximately the fluency of a learning disabled Dutch ten-year-old. Yes, even when surrounded by Scandinavians, Indonesians, Dutch, Malaysian Chinese or any of the myriad groups for whom fluency in three, four or five languages from several language families is absolutely standard, even with interlocutors who speak English as well as we do, we’ll break out our absymally accented schoolgirl French, dog Spanish or pidgin Chinese, or, worse, combine two or more languages into a noxious language soup, and do all this in the subliminal belief that we are achieving something laudable, and, in fact, impressive, so find ourselves utterly bewildered and a little offended by our friends’ bizarre insistence on continuing to communicate in English.

3: THE EXPLICIT ENUNCIATOR

This is a dying breed of Anglo linguist, raised in the school system of yesteryear. Britons, in particular, specialise in this form of communication, since many of us believe on some deep level that we still have an Empire (with a capital E), and that the people in this Empire (roughly coterminous with “Overseas”, also with a capital O) still speak English. More to the point, if these overseas subjects do not speak English, they certainly should do, and by talking to them in English, we can help them learn. This gentleman – and it’s usually a gent – will speak VERY VERY LOUDLY AND VERY VERY CLEARLY AND REPEAT THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THIS IS HIS WAY OF EDUCATING THE NATIVES, YOU SEE. YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE?!!!! He will do this even if, as is sometimes the case in France, though rarely anywhere else, he understands the local language perfectly well.

4: The Silent Wonder

Teenagers are fantastic. Yet the self-consciousness that strikes with the discovery of hormones, and spots, and girls, or boys, or both, has a peculiarly muting effect on any foreign language, reducing even the most chatty teen to mystifying monosyllables. That is, of course, until a parent takes over, when the Silent Wonder will rediscover the gift of speaking in tongues, and hiss embarrassed corrections to parental grammar, vocab and manners as though they were ordering treatments for crabs or candida in a chemist. Proud Polyglots often spawn Silent Wonders. I can’t imagine why.

5: The Loquacious Lush

Not to be confused with the Proud Polyglot – although she becomes even more convinced of her linguistic genius after a glass or two of vino – the lush can ONLY speak foreign languages when sufficiently well-lubricated to shatter the veil of embarrassment that stands between him and the classroom humiliations of yesteryear. His (or her) linguistic competency forms an almost perfect bell curve, which typically peaks around the fifth beer or the end of the first bottle of wine and trails off again towards zero once the third bottle of wine is opened.

6: The Lucid Lurker

The Lucid Lurker hides her – and she is usually a she – language abilities under the proverbial bushel, since she’s good enough at the relevant language to know that she’s actually embarrassingly bad at it. After a companion, perhaps the Proud Polyglot or the EXPLICIT ENUNCIATOR, has run all attempts at communication into a hole in the ground, she’ll begin with a little English, just to establish that she genuinely does need to speak another language. When that fails, she’ll move onto alarmingly competent foreign. Extended travel with Lucid Lurkers can be psychologically very tiring for Proud Polyglots.

7: The Freaking Foreigner

The number of exclusively Anglo folk, raised in exclusively Anglo linguistic environments and Anglo cultures, who speak any language with remotely the fluency of any bloody German you meet anywhere outside Germany ever, is minuscule. However, these freaks of nature do exist, and should be recognised as a model for the rest of us. They treat foreign languages as at least equivalent to English, as languages to be studied, practised, spoken correctly, grammatically and with an appropriate accent. They sometimes even believe that writers in said languages may approach the abilities of the divine Shakespeare. And in this they are thoroughly, utterly, foreign. Which, when it comes to languages, is a jolly good thing.

Image credit: Bernal Heights Park II by hobvias sudoneighm on Flickr’s Creative Commons.