Why You Can't Trust Native Speakers

[@raphaeldemo9966]

As a person who speaks American variety of English natively, I can tell you innately that something sounds weird and I can guide in how to fix it, but if you asked grammar rules, I wouldn't really know how to explain them. However, for Spanish, I've been learning as an adult and have been exposed to the grammar rules, I would have a better chance in explaining it due to paying more attention.

[@sillysad3198]

humans experience their native lang differently, a native speaker typically can't even comprehend your problems/questions. it took me years to unlearn my native language in order to understand its structure and master it.

[@faithlesshound5621]

To some extent that's a new thing, that schools don't teach the grammar of the students' native language. In the UK that was in full swing by the 1980's. The aim was to let them "warble their native woodnotes wild." By now many don't know what a verb is, or a noun, let alone a gerund or subjunctive. That went along with not explaining that the written language is not the same as what you hear in the playground or on the street. Another consequence is that you have to learn the grammatical terminology for the first time when you learn a foreign language. Having surmounted that barrier makes learning your second foreign language easier.

[@raphaeldemo9966]

@@faithlesshound5621 , I was born '85, and I know all those things along with verb and noun agreements: "They eat, S/he eats." Other than that I wouldn't know how to guide a non-native

[@jaelin9107]

"Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac."

[@AFVEH]

I'm from Spain, I bet you'd know more grammar rules than I do. I just know what sounds good or bad, same with English, because I learnt it as a little kid. The language I know more rules in and stuff like that is probably French.

[@thethrashyone]

You're right, I do tend to hear a lot of "No one says _____ anymore", only for someone to come in and counter "What are you talking about? I say it all the time." The simple truth is, a lot of vocabulary is 'region locked' to an extent. You can't simply say "It's 'soda', nobody says 'pop' anymore!" when some regions of the US absolutely do, in fact, still call it pop. And even _within your own region_ there is bound to be vocabulary other people use that you don't, since socio-economic standing, age group, ethnicity, and even just more localized regions (towns, even individual neighborhoods) can have differences in vocabulary. I can tell you that almost nobody at all calls a hotdog a "glizzy" in _my_ specific area, but that doesn't mean nobody says it at all. -It'll be a cold day in hell before -*-I-*- use that word unironically, tho.-

[@davidbraun6209]

I grew up calling them "soft drinks" but know the word "pop" and immediately think the speaker is from the Midwestern U.S. That's rather like Serbs' knowing the word "glazba" (so I have read, so if I'm wrong please correct me) as being the Croatian word for what Serbs call "muzika" ("music").

[@_S.D._]

We still call it 'pop' here in my neck of the woods. In high school, i moved 2 counties up, and my new friends looked me like I grew a second head when I asked where the pop machine was. They spent the rest of our high school career trying to teach me to speak properly because I sounded like a hillbilly. It did not work 🤣🤣. You can take the girl out of the hollar, but you can't take the hollar out of the girl.

[@karenblohm3279]

Pop! Middle of WI. My cousins in Milwaukee say soda.

[@carolthedabbler2105]

I grew up in Indiana, where people (still) say pop, and I had heard "soda pop" too. But I went to college in Massachusetts, and the first time someone asked if I'd like to go to the basement for a "soda," I asked if there was a snack bar. She said no, just a machine, and I realized she didn't mean "ice cream soda"!

[@david672orford]

Many years ago I was talking with a coworker whose native language was Portuguese or maybe Italian. She said that she often struggled to find the expressions she needed in English. Often she would ask Americans whether a particular expression was correct and be told that it was not. She gave some examples. They were all grammatical correct, perfectly understandable, and many of them would be familiar to any well-read English speaker.

[@Carlos_AM]

My German teacher was hungarian and she was awesome. She had been Certified to evaluate c1 students. And i always thought she understood my stuggles better than German teachers and she was able to give better feedback on how to Improve.

[@bladerunner3314]

As a German, I know our language can be daunting. For a teacher not being aware of this fact, that's a bad teacher.

[@Asphyx12]

I currently learning German as well i come from Indonesia. One thing so hard for me is memorizing all Artikel for Nomen and then there's the dativ akkusativ, präteritum perfekt and etc.

[@danielleclark-zack864]

@@bladerunner3314 My german teacher once told us that how to say something along the lines of having a headache, and then later on in life another german speaker told me that what I said basically meant I'm saying that "I give sick(disgusting) head." and honestly I've had trust issues ever since. Idk which one was messing with me but I don't have a need to speak duestch anyway so I just avoid it altogether lol XD

[@bladerunner3314]

@@danielleclark-zack864 Ich habe Kopfschmerzen - I have a headache. The other one I can't even parce what that would sound like.

[@danielleclark-zack864]

@@bladerunner3314 lol, so this was YEARS ago just for context. But yeah, I see what went wrong now. To be noted, the native speaker said it's not a direct translation but would be treated as "slang". "Mein kopf ist weh.", would be the offending statement.

[@PandaHernandez23]

I've had a Chinese dude arguing with me on the HiNative app (I'm a native English speaker from England) that the word 'rubbish' is archaic and no one uses it because an American told him so.

[@thebusinessfirm9862]

In Australia we throw the rubbish out, too.

[@stevenhuffnagel]

The words “fall” (i.e. autumn) and “gotten” are archaic, yet they still use them in the US. 😂

[@ihavetubes]

Depends where you use it. No one here in America uses that word but if you go to England tons of people use that word.

[@kaijuslayer3334]

I mean rarely anyone will use it. It’s unique to mainly British English. Which is the lesser English in terms of population that uses it, and also isn’t the standard of what English is taught worldwide. That’s usually American English. You guys may have made the language, but much like how Brazil has become the main representative of Portuguese, same thing for America.

[@MW_Asura]

@@kaijuslayer3334 Yet British English is the version that's taught in Europe and the rest of the world.

[@robertoallegra]

I don't know why, but the only times I've been repeatedly told how I apparently mispronounce the words *of my native language* by someone who didn't know anything about my language, it was by an American who had some Italian ancestor. My current strategy is answering in Italian and when they say that they don't understand what I'm saying, telling them a giant "I rest my case". It still doesn't work.

[@robertoallegra]

​@@ConontheBinarian Genuine answer: no - it would make no sense. Italians speak standard Italian, sometimes in addition to the dialect/language of their region (unfortunately less and less, for new generations). Italian is the same everywhere, with only slight variations in accent (how we open some vowels, aspirate some consonants...). The only people who I ever see correct the pronunciation of Italian natives ("it's not bruschetta, it's bwusheeaeda!") are foreigners who never actually learned any Italian, have never been to Italy, but and are under the delusion that language can be somehow acquired by sheer lineage.

[@francisdec1615]

@@robertoallegra I'm from Sweden. I'm fluent in English and German and know a little Latin, but not very much. However, one idiot in my school, who didn't even know German, ridiculed my German pronunciation. Another idiot in a forum criticized my interpretation of a Latin book by Vegetus, though he doesn't know any Latin at all himself. I'd say that most people with that level of ignorance are - of course - from the US. I have heard people mock my Swedish, but those were other Swedes thinking that my accent sounded a bit hillbilly. I have never heard a foreigner say anything about my Swedish. That would be absurd.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

The classic ignorant americans who think they know thing better than actual natives. Those ones are always hilarious.

[@yurigagarine6998]

​@@francisdec1615 woah I had no idea Swedish was still spoken to this day. Insane.

[@AlexGunMetal]

Ah, those "know it all" Americans. Always them.

[@liskowalski771]

So, I'm a non native english speaker and I went to some language courses abroad to improve my english. Last year for example I went to Malta and let me tell you, I witnessed every flaw of having an untrained native speaker as your teacher. She was a barrister by profession and she came to Malta from the UK. To start with: she called general american accent "netflix english" and hated on it every single time. She tried to push her accent on us (london middle class I belive) as the only right pronunciation and talked about american tv having bad influence on people's accent. Not only that, she hated whenever someone was using any word used in american english. She would count writing color instead of colour as a mistake and stuff like that. She looked like she was going to explode when my friend called her an attorney instead of a barrister. She had troubles explaining grammar to us, because no one taught her how to. I don't hate on her as a person, but I do think her lack of education made her a mediocre teacher. I consider the time I've spent in her classroom to be more of a waste

[@WGGplant]

She sounds like the type of person you should hate as a person lolololol. But I never knew her personally so idk.

[@steelirony1622]

Crazy part is, American English, especially Midwestern English, the accent is closer to traditional old school English. Its immigration that changed British English to what it is today, as well as the east coast of the United States. Our clean easily understandable Midwestern English, is the standard for English, and I will fight anyone about it.

[@alicemilne1444]

@@steelirony1622 I'm afraid American Midwestern English is not closer to "traditional old school English" (whatever that may be). Linguistically, there is no one single "Midwestern" accent anyway and there hasn't been for at least 100 years. There has been a massive amount of immigration to the Midwest region and the different kinds of immigrants formed the accents there over the past 150 years. Specifically, the North Central accents of the Great Lakes region and the Dakotas have been strongly affected by German, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish immigrants. There is also a phenomenon known as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, which you might like to investigate. The original accents of the 13 colonies were never "traditional old school English" as they were formed by merging of the multitude of different accents that existed among the colonists who came from different parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and whose accents had been coloured by their local dialects or the languages of their countries (Welsh in Wales and Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland, or Scots in Scotland and the province of Ulster in northern Ireland). The non-rhotic accents of some eastern and southern States in the USA were a reflection of some of the accents that came from south eastern England, over the centuries. These accents were not due to immigration in Britain at all (where the majority of the immigration has been to England since WW2), but developed organically in the southeast of England, e.g. in the original Boston in Lincolnshire and in London and the county of Essex and had been evolving for several hundred years. This article, written by an American linguist, explains the differences: www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-united-states-of-accents-midwestern-american-english And here is a dialect coach explaining the Minnesotan accent (search for the clip on YT): "You Betcha! The 'Midwest accent' explained by a dialect coach" As for the UK, there is no single "British accent". There are more than 40 different dialects across the whole of the UK and there are hundreds of different accents. There is an app that was designed by the Linguistics Department of the University of Cambridge (in England) that can pinpoint your accent in England to within a radius of 20 miles based on your pronunciation and the kind of regional dialect words you use. They're not so accurate in Scotland (where I come from) because they haven't done enough research there yet, but even so, they managed to pinpoint me within a radius of 40 miles.

[@liskowalski771]

@@WGGplant apart from being such a weirdo she had her moments. I personality disliked her for making to much unasked for comments about how she thinks that people from my nation are notorious drunks. Some people from my group thought of it as a funny joke but idk. Tbh amongst some teachers I had throughout going to such camps she was one of the few who actually treated us like adults who understand English, but want to learn more (I was always in c1 groups) and not like kindergartens who just learnt how to say a cat. I had far better teachers, but they weren't a majority and I understand how for some people there she was the only teacher they had that seemed normal, bur yeah I disliked her

[@SonjaHand]

Well she's right, American English is trash English because in USA we are bombarded with so many people from somewhere else blurring the language. This also is why USA English is popular, it forgives so much, especially tonal, accent, grammar and mispronunciation. In fact in the United States there are so many languages spoken that most people pick up the localized slang depending upon the area they're from or move into. English in the US is so persistent that the Mexican people have terms for people who live along the border and blend both languages.😅

[@lugo_9969]

My native Dutch teacher refused to deviate from her boring PowerPoint presentation. She had zero empathy and was only teaching (monologuing) for the money. Needless to say , she found this polyglot to be her worst student. We parted ways fairly quickly. A year later I bumped into her at the supermarket and she was astonished that I spoke it fluently by then.

[@LoulousCorner]

Damn! I've done a couple of cvo dutch courses, and they were bare bones, open the book, and do stuff from the book! By the end of the second course (A2) and 2 different teachers, the whole class was ok at reading, writing, and doing exercises. But speaking was a whole other matter! Not a single one could really apply the stuff taught to speaking. Maybe that's a case of getting what you pay for as these are quite cheap courses, but provided so the language is accessible. I find better resources online and with self-study materials.

[@ZigaZagu]

"No thanks to you."

[@AUniqueHandleName444]

That's just because Dutch people are unpleasant by nature.

[@blueredbrick]

Learning Dutch should be really easy for any germanic speaker including the English speakers, its so connected in grammar and words and idioms history that is just fun to experience. but also the more roman languange speakers could learn it quickly if the damned Dutch didn't automatically switcht to English or another second language you' d both share. I live on the border Nl and DE and sometime it's just more natural to speak your own native tongue and synchronise with words and expressions from your conversation partner. The bulk of communication is non verbal anyway. But as the video mentioned it is so much effecient to learn multiple languages with play at a young age and also dont punish yourself your doing it not 100 correctly, when locals find you took the effort to learn some of the language you get instant respect and more openness

[@chzinch]

@blueredbrick Too many Swiss do the same thing of automatically switching to English. You have to really become fluent before they stop. It's a long process.

[@jungle_run]

As a linguist who works among a minority language in Papua New Guinea, you are correct. Just being a native speaker is not enough. I've spent years essentially teaching them how to teach me their language. It is slow. However, a good teacher and more importantly good materials makes it much easier and quicker. It's just most people don't realize how much of their language learning was done ahead of time in preparation to pave the way for their learning.

[@afiiik1]

The materials used for learning English are often aimed at Spanish speakers so you get chapters on distinguishing B and V which is completely useless for Slavic speakers who never confuse these consonants. But we could really use more time spent on translating slavic aspect into the English system of tenses...

[@markohakkola5180]

Are you with SIL? I'm in Mali.

[@jungle_run]

@@markohakkola5180Yes, Papua New Guinea.

[@tschaytschay4555]

I am German and had 3 years of Latin in school and nothing tought me German grammar better. We were 3 latin students in our class and we were the only 3 who understood our German grammar lessons easily and would help the other students together with our German teacher. :D

[@Calvin_OBlenis]

I learned more about English grammar in my first semester of German than in the 9 years of school before. German also made Shakespeare easier to understand.

[@Valfara770]

hehe, German here too, but never took Latin and really struggle with Grammar of other languages. That's why I basically only speak German and English because English is easy enough grammar wise and German I just know how it works, but I could never tell you why it works. Or what the rules are. That's why I really struggled with French and only speak a smattering now, even though I had 6 years of it in school.

[@Clodaghbob]

Same here. I’m an English speaker and I learnt English grammar in Latin class. That was very helpful when I later learnt German.

[@alo5301]

Mit Russisch habe ich später im Latein die 6 Fälle kapiert.

[@paulmentzer7658]

My father always told the story of how he earned an "A" in English, for his English teacher found out he was taking Latin. He had a few other stories like that, but it was the Great Depression and his family broke up so he had to quit school after eighth grade and go to work to earn a living.

[@gazlator]

As a History and English teacher of thirty years' standing, I can only echo the truth of Raff's comments here. Having an understanding of a subject is one thing; having the patience and insight to be able to teach it to others is very much a different thing altogether. And even those skills are far more of an art, than a science.

[@connie_d]

if someone whose first language isn't english says "could of" they've been taught by someone whose first language is english

[@Dracoscythe1]

In all fairness "could of" and "could've" are very easily confused as they sound almost identical (at least in my dialect of American English) so the teacher could be teaching the contraction but the student is just getting them confused.

[@TornadoCreator]

Nah, they've just been taught by a stupid American. They probably say "could care less" as well.

[@00RoxPink]

People who pronounce etcetera as "ex etera"

[@connie_d]

@@00RoxPink perfect example :D think there's more people saying "ect" than saying "etc"

[@mynameisben123]

@@Dracoscythe1exactly this, I think most cases of spoken “could of” is actually “could’ve”. And if a native speaker writes “could have” I’ll bet you they just incorrectly interpreted people saying “could’ve” and just guessed how it was spelt.

[@RichiEnglish]

I am a non-native teacher of English (bilingual) and I am always ignored and overlooked because of it (I have been rejected by international schools for 13 years now - last time this summer in Malta, for instance), although (watch this video)... :D I totally agree with Metatron. However, I've met amazing native language teachers as well. I wish international schools gave me a tiny-whiny chance one day. Metatron, I wish you and I could have a convo-collab video about this topic. Funny story: I went to a Level C1 course in Malta this summer (just to practice). After the first lesson, I was told to go to the managing director because they thought my English was better than C1 and I might have intimidated other learners. While I was having a convo about the possible options with the director, one of the NATIVE teachers overheard me speaking and came to the director and asked him if they were hiring a new NATIVE teacher because that would have been amazing. The director said they weren't hiring anybody, they were just assessing my command of English to find me a group and a level which would be suitable for yours truly. The NATIVE teacher of English was utterly surprised that I was NOT a native individual. He excused himself and effed off... :D Result: I was not hired, and although I have been in touch with the language school, they have still been rejecting me finding a plethora of excuses why I cannot be employed by them. I love how open-minded people are sometimes (irony shall be detected here). COMMERCIAL/AD: Any international schools, PLEASE HIRE ME! :D **disclaimer: any grammatical mistakes are intentional here and will NOT be corrected**

[@torelly]

Some Italian-Americans think they are more Italian than real Italians.

[@faithlesshound5621]

That's also true of Irish-Americans, who appear to be 90% of the Anglo population. Cultural appropriation! It used to be clear in the UK that those who emigrated to the colonies, and their descendants, remained in a time warp of sorts. Like "dressing for dinner" in the tropics.

[@aris1956]

Linguistically, however, one should not trust what they say in Italian. They often use dialect expressions that often mistake it for standard Italian and many know things from when they first came to America or their ancestors. In Italy certain things over the years have changed a little bit, even linguistically.

[@torelly]

@@aris1956 Believe me, I know. Venetian was the language of my great-grandparents. Venetian is the official language in some Brazilian cities, I hold Italian citizenship, and yet, I don't go around teaching real Italians about their language and culture.

[@Nihil847]

Same goes for a lot of Latinos too lol

[@Lil_Ducky97]

​@ConontheBinarian I work with an Italian who told another Italian worker he wasn't Italian because even though he had an accent he couldn't speak the language and wasn't born in the country 😂😂 my partner was given the pass though (I disagree though) because even though he wasn't born in the country he has heard of his dad before (who was born in Italy and is part of a well known family there)... go figure 😂😂

[@TerryVogelaar]

Native speakers tend to make different kinds of errors. For them it is much harder to distinguish between similar sounding words. Example: 'two', 'too' and 'to'. For me as a Dutch guy, I immediately know which one of these I should write, because each of them translate to a different word in my language (twee, naar & ook). Same for 'there', 'their' and 'they're'. Even 'our' and 'are' sound similar in English.

[@arrunzo]

It's common for native speakers of a language to confuse homophones--or at least, what to them are homophones. You already named some examples that trip up some English speakers, but I'll also throw in the example of "should of" instead of "should've, and of course, the classic example of "they're", "their" and "there". In a similar manner, Spanish speakers mix up the letters "B" and "V" because they are pronounced identically in spoken Spanish, whereas non-Spanish speakers would never confuse "B" and "V" because the sounds are very distinct. The distinction is so non-existent that I've heard the word "básicamente" pronounced as "vásicamente" (like the "V" in English). Likewise, in Brazilian Portuguese, native speakers may miswrite "mal" as "mau" because they pronounce the letter "L" like the letter "U". The words "mal" and "mau" are pronounced exactly the same in Brazilian Portuguese. But again, if one has the advantage of being a non-native speaker where certain sounds are more distinct, then learners won't make the kinds of mistakes that native speakers do.

[@SvendleBerries]

"Weather" and "whether" is another example. I see many native English speakers use "weather" interchangeably.

[@HenryLoenwind]

@@SvendleBerriesAlso, native speakers have great trouble distinguishing between "have" and "of" for some reason.

[@SvendleBerries]

@@HenryLoenwind Yeah, that too.

[@wizardsuth]

So the librarian at Unseen University just repeats the Dutch word for "to"? Yet the other wizards understand him perfectly.

[@danielt.9101]

I'm a Brazilian English teacher who was raised bilingual in Portuguese and English. But even that did not automatically make me a good teacher. I still had to learn teaching as a skillset. And even to this day I still find myself in situations where I don't really know how to explain why some things in English are the way they are. 😅

[@kimfleury]

My linguistics professor was Bosnian, and she admitted that she couldn't explain why some things just sound right even when they go against the formal rules of the grammar in any language. The example she gave was when you answer the phone and someone asks to speak to a particular person, who happens to be you. The correct grammar according to the rule is to say, "It is I." But that doesn't sound right to the ears of a native speaker, so most will respond, "It's me." Even as an ESL speaker of English she picked up on what sounds right.

[@SinarNila]

​@@kimfleury Interesting example it's me is the most usual and colloquial but the most correct linguistically and uncommon is "It's I", the focus of the phrase is talking about about the subject the personal pronoun I, not about the oblique pronoun that is object or "me". Nice example.👍👍👍👍

[@romanaww]

​@@SinarNilaI know what you're talking about, but grammatically, the subject is "it" and the object is "me", so it's strange why some prescriptive rule books would argue saying "it is I" was more "correct", right? Like you wouldn't say "it is she/he" in a similar context either

[@broscastefano]

My prof at the university used to say that non-native teachers are the best because they had to learn the language their self, especially they had to figure out those illogicalities and irregularities every language has that natives give for granted.

[@SweetBananaDigital]

I had several different Spanish teachers in my years taking classes through all levels of schooling, and hands-down the single best Spanish teacher I had was not a native speaker. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some good teachers that were native speakers, but this teacher was by far the best at the skill of teaching. I also do think there’s some value in being a language teacher as a non-native speaker, because you understand what it’s like to have had to learn the language as a student yourself, rather than having learned it natively. Again, that doesn’t mean all non-native speaking teachers are the best, but I think it is one positive aspect that a non-native speaking teacher can offer, provided that they are also a good teacher with sufficient knowledge of the language.

[@samsadwajedenesfuter5335]

Non-natives learned a new language conciously and teaching others requires that

[@kaptenteo]

This is a very good point. Knowing one's own language doesn't necessarily mean you know how to *teach* said language to someone else. I'm a non-native German teacher. I learned the language while living in Germany and at the same time attending courses held by professional teachers who specialized in specifically teaching adult immigrants. These teachers inspired me to become a teacher myself and indirectly taught me a lot of techniques that I would later make use of as I started a teacher's education back home, a few years later. I think my experience of having learned the language from scratch, from skilled language teachers, made me able to become a better teacher myself. It gave me a different perspective of learning a language, I think, which has helped me professionally ever since. One of the classes I took over had even been taught by a (non-educated) native speaker before, and the students actually mentioned that they started learning a lot more from my methods, as compared to their previous teacher. Obviously, a native speaker's knowledge can also be invaluable, and as you say, having both skill sets/experiences available in a classroom is likely the optimal situation for students. Not necessarily a bilingual teacher, but you want the actual real-life experience of growing up speaking the target language, but also the technical education that comes from a teacher's program at university, and the personal experience of having learned a new language from the ground up as well. Either way, simply being a native speaker means very little without context.

[@christopherdieudonne]

1:22 As a native English speaker who has taught English in France for 20 years, I completely agree. It's not enough to be a native speaker; you have to know how to teach your language. Being able to explain the ins and outs of your native tongue is a skill many teachers of English lack. I'm fortunate enough to be a language nerd and a grammar freak that I am able to explain how English works. Another important factor is you have to enjoy teaching to be effective. A lot of English speakers see teaching as a job and not a career.

[@chzinch]

As a colleague with a similar background to yours, including being a grammar and language "nerd", I fully agree.

[@EnglishStrippedBare]

As a long time ESL teacher around the world, and native English speaker, you are dead on! The majority of 'teachers' I've met and worked with abroad have been lackluster, to put it politely. Myself included. I didn't major in English or teaching. I just kind of fell into doing it. It really took a few years to learn the ropes of how to actually teach, and many more years after that to improve my teaching skill set. After 20 years, I'm still learning better techniques and improving the quality of my teaching.

[@t_ylr]

Yup I used to teach ESL back in the day. Almost all of them spoke. Spanish or Hmong. I speak Spanish so I had a much easier time then some of the other teachers. Not because I used my Spanish, the entire class was in English. It's was because I understand Spanish grammar. So I could explain certain things more easily than some of the other teachers. Or because I understand why the Spanish students were making a certain mistake.

[@jan_phd]

" I just kind of fell into doing it." Lousy English.

[@EnglishStrippedBare]

@@t_ylr Yeah, that makes sense. When I first started teaching I didn't know the grammar rules, or at least how to explain the rules. I knew how the language functioned for my personal use, but imparting that to someone else is much different and very hard.

[@EnglishStrippedBare]

@@jan_phd Not at all. It's a very common phrasal verb. You may not like the repression but that doesn't make it lousy.

[@digitorist]

It's not only the teacher that's important but also cultural acceptance of learning other languages or having other people learn your language. My wife grew up in Spain and told me about students actually being mocked for having a correct English pronunciation. I on the other hand am a Flemish speaking Belgian and in every day conversation, when we hear someone struggling with our language we immediately switch to English or French. This often makes it difficult for learners to advance quickly because they don't get the opportunity to practice.

[@gabrielesolletico6542]

"My wife grew up in Spain and told me about students actually being mocked for having a correct English pronunciation." Oh yeah, that happen too!

[@OmniscientlyMe]

I know an native English teacher in Japan that has had non-native teachers that have never left the country try to correct his pronunciations using Japanese phonetics. Or have students do the same.

[@purelightapologetics4930]

Yup! When I was learning Hindi, I worked really hard on pronunciation and I had multiple Americans correct my pronunciation of Namaste to the American version of the word. (Americans say it nah-mah-stay and Hindi-speakers say it nuh-must-ee.) When I got to India, the Indians asked me if I really spoke Hindi because none of the other Americans pronounce it right, but I do. Except, apparently I never pronounced the word for “one” right.

[@Lafly84]

Reminds me of when I was stationed in Germany and wanted to practice German phrases - as soon as they heard my US accent they would break out into English to practice with me.

[@gabrielesolletico6542]

That's very common.@@Lafly84

[@lisapop5219]

Agree. I would be a horrible English teacher. When I lived in Korea, I was approached several times to get me to become an off book English tutor. I didn't do it because I knew my limitations. I can teach some things but something like languages, I don't feel that it is something I'm qualified to do.

[@xepharnazos]

I always paraphrase the esteemed Dr. Harry S. Plinkett on this: You don't know how to speak your own language, but your brain does.

[@theresamimnaugh1190]

❤I just love the way you explain the “mechanics” of language. You make it easy to understand the correct process to get the optimal result. Thanks so much!

[@kaji_sensei]

A great take on things, Metatron! Another reason why I think it's good to have a mix of non-natives in with one's teachers (especially ones who speak your native language natively themselves) is that they have likely experienced many of the same challenges rooted in things like differences in grammar, writing system, confusing vocabulary, etc. and have useful strategies for overcoming them. By contrast, native-speaking teachers can sometimes be confused about what is being asked when students present these kinds of questions (especially if not professionally trained in teaching or linguistics) and may just default to answers like, "What do you mean, it's perfectly natural" or "That's just how it is".

[@arjay9745]

This is 100% correct and can't be emphasised enough. I don't know why people assume this, but most often, native speakers have no idea. Sometimes it's actually someone who's learned the language themselves who's best at teaching it, because they grasp where the stumbling blocks are and how to surmount them.

[@carnifaxx]

That's certainly true. In our university, we needed to have (amongst other languages) a German class, I'd never learned German, but our teacher said she requested that students accepted to this particular study program (it was specialized history) had to have a German exam from high school, but it was not applied, so she wouldn't care and just continued on that level - that meant I had 3 months to get to the same level as people who had German at least 3 hours per week for the last 4 years. Nevertheless, I was studying with my friend who happened to have the exam (probably the lowest possible score to pass, though) and it turned out that he didn't even understand the basic rules and was just memorizing correct answers to tests etc. So while I was self-teaching daily for hours, I was able to improve his German just by the way :D (During the same time, I had also English, French, Latin and shortly also Old Church Slavonic + old scripts, so that was fun :D )

[@sststr]

Are you familiar with the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw? Later turned into a musical "My Fair Lady". The musical includes a rather entertaining number "Why can't the English?" It's very entertaining and good example of the hazards of native speakers, especially in England :)

[@timothytruter]

I agree with this, I'm a native Afrikaans speaker, but I'm required to use English more often than not in my daily life. I often find myself having to think what is the Afrikaans word again or have to look it up to confirm.

[@SinarNila]

I have almost the same point of view as Metaton on this topic. Being native to a language doesn't mean anything, nor does being non-native mean you own that culture and language. What makes you an expert, owner and teacher of a language is your love, dedication and commitment to a language, whether planned or natural. Every language is made up of its own history, linguistics, cultural policy, grammar and dictionary, and customs, whether national or international, natural or planned. Anyone who has commitment and training in the language is a language or bellelettrist and who can teach it. I'm tired of seeing natives talk shit in several of their languages, why? because they have no linguistic and cultural commitment to what they speak and that is why they teach the wrong language at various levels. Teaching, being a teacher, a tutor is a gift and not everyone has it, not everyone is a great communicator, those who communicate not only teach but also learn a lot, this requires a lot of detachment and humility from those who teach, helping others to evolve in the language taught by them. For these reasons above, I do not privilege either natives or non-natives of a language. It's the attitudes and bonds with that person's language, whether they're a great listener and communicator, that makes you learn a language in its essence.

[@danij5055]

You use the word bellelettrist but misspell Metatron? 😅 Other than that, I completely agree with everything you're saying. In fact, you said it quite well!

[@SinarNila]

​​​@@danij5055 ,🍟😉☺️😂🏁👍🫂🔵🔵🍻🟦🏞️👌🍾🌄🌅🤝🙏🏳️🌍🌎🌳💙. I chose this belletrist (this word have one t no two tt😉) to honor and praise the work of our angel Metraton. It's one thing for him to explain English, anyone can do that today. Now explaining Chinese and Japanese at the basic, informal and colloquial levels is already a skill, he does it. And another thing that Metraton does very well is demystify and dispel the myth of tonal Italian music. I love Metraton's work, I don't have his patience or his satire, and I'm not a native speaker of Italian but I agree with him that they transformed Italian into a kind of Vietnamese and Western Chinese into a sung and toned language. This never existed but as they distorted Italian, someone has to pull the group's ear. That someone is our Metaton. Hugs 🫂🫂🫂🫂

[@davidbraun6209]

There was a story about an American GI who had married a Japanese woman and started to teach her English, except he taught her words "not printable in family publications" but told her the words had innocent meanings. She eventually learned he had played a trick on her. Then also, there was the South American tribal chieftain who said he had told the anthropologist his (the chief's) name, but it turned out the "name" was the tribal word for his male part. So you're right about not always trusting the natives. Now, that noted, I thought the bilingual person raised in that one's language and mine sounded like an ad for a man named Urbani as a teacher of Italian and Sicilian.

[@ROMANTIKILLER2]

I definitely had that experience, and particularly to teach beginner and low-intermediate level students, untrained native speakers are often terrible at teaching, especially those whose school systems do not provide a solid foundation for grammar and syntax, so that they cannot really elaborate why a certain structure, tense, etc. is used, it just sounds natural. In fact, years ago before I decided to change career path, I used to find teaching English to beginner students far easier than teaching my own native language, where I would not make mistake but am not always really sure why a certain rule is in place.

[@BenBenBenBenBenBenBenBenBenB3n]

One massive advantage that non-native-but-very-proficient people have is that for the most part, they had to find specific ways and point of views to understand certain things that are not intuitive. For instance, I am a native French speaker learning Japanese, and I have friends who are native Japanese speakers who learn French. I can help them in many regards, but there are a couple things that I couldn't explain in another way than "I don't know, we just do it". Teaching the French R to people who never made an uvular sound in their life is very difficult. So what did I do ? I went to ask my other Japanese friends who CAN do the French R consistently, "how did you figure this out ?" to then transmit THEIR methods, which actually help. In some cases, their experience of learning is more valuable than my native-ness and I think it's so cool

[@anta3612]

People learning English encounter the same sort of issues. One of the hurdles people face when they go from the classroom to the real world is communicating with native speakers who will tend to use a combination of regional vocabulary, slang, idioms, incorrect grammar etc. As we all know it's important to know the difference between correct language (which is what we are taught in school) and street lingo and which situations are appropriate for each.

[@TheVampireAzriel]

I appreciate videos like this that remind me not to get too cocky in my position as an ESL teacher so I can continue improving my teaching method.

[@EyeKahnography]

I have taught language for a while and I found it very jarring to realize how hard I had think about what words I choose instinctively knowing 'they're the right ones to use' but then now having to explain to someone new to the language the 'why' so they can learn how to navigate word choices with understanding. One of our papers we had to write was explaining why 'more beautiful' works but beautifuler and much beautiful do not. It was interesting but a lot of us don't realize how many little rules are second hand as we live in an environment and just assume others also know. It can be challenging but very rewarding.

[@TheOtherMwalimu]

I have tried to explain this with other people. Many people seem to think that just because one is a native speaker they are best qualified to teach that language. For example, I am much more confident and qualified to teach Swahili, my second language, than most native speakers. Sure, they might be a good conversation partner, they might be a teacher, but they might be a horrible teacher. In fact, I feel more confident when teaching Swahili than I do English- my native tongue! 😅 For years, I couldn’t tell you anything about the English language except for just speak it. But, I have actually been through the process of learning Swahili and can better explain its structure, use, translation, and how to learn quickly as an adult. Good topic, Metatron, that I haven’t seen addressed.

[@echobase6372]

I have gone through an intensive adult language study program and eventually became an instructor as a supplement for the native speakers. This is 100% dead on. Even the teachers with educational degrees frequently couldn't articulate why some things were said, often saying "it's for emphasis" or some other abstract idea. Once being immersed enough to understand the language for what it was, I was able to clearly and simply explain the concept to my students as I had been forced to understand how it works instead of it just being so. This actually lead me to analyze English much more in depth and to get better at explaining and comparing weird English sayings and concepts as well.

[@michaeljespersen6151]

I want to add to the points made by Metatron. I am Danish, but I studied English at first the highest possible level in school and high school, and subsequently for a number of years at the university as my main field. The best English teacher I had wasn't any of the ones with English as their native language, but rather a Dane excellent English skills. Across my ten plus teachers, I had maybe six or seven that were native English speakers, but it was still the Dane that was the most effective teacher. The reason was.. well.. Danish and English grammar is extremely close. The two languages are closely related. However, the Danish teacher, being intimately familiar with both Danish and English, knew that 90% of our grammar is the same, and 10% is different, and she could focus intensely on those 10%. The teachers that were native English focused broadly on all English grammar, although 90% of what they covered was stuff we already knew. There's a second point to be made against native speakers necessarily being better. I stopped studying English, and switched my field of study to woodworking and later construction. I've sometimes worked with translating manuals for tools and building processes from English to Danish. A lot of professional fields have highly specialized language, and a normal native speaker will be of barely any use if you need to learn a language for a very specific field. Heck, a Dane who works in engineering and construction, but who barely speaks English, will know more English engineering and construction terms than your average Englishman. The language of the field is so highly specialized that knowledge of the nomenclature of the field is much more important than being a native speaker. If I need to learn English because I'm a construction engineer, and I need to work with a team of English or English-speaking experts, learning English from even an university-educated Englishman is going to be next to useless, because they'll be completely ignorant of engineering and construction terms. When I studied English at the university, for example, there was a one-year course that you could take after your bachelor that taught you "Medicinal English", specifically tailored to English students who need to translate anything related to medicine. If you need to, for example, translate the instructions for a medicinal product to doctors, the text will be filled to the brim with medical jargon. Your normal native speaker will have NO clue what the text is about.

[@samshort365]

Many years ago, my Italian aunt made us all laugh when she said that they don't speak Italian in Italy anymore because she couldn't understand the Italian RAI news that regularly airs on our local multicultural Australian TV. She migrated to Australia from Sicily in the early 50s and had only been back for a visit twice.

[@franziskk3417]

In my university we had 2 teachers for every language, both bilingual but one non-native to teach us the more technical aspects (like grammar) in our own language, and one native to practice pronunciation, do exercises and so on... I always found that a very pleasant experience and a great way to have all the pros from both teachers.

[@eddavanleemputten9232]

I speak four languages at native speaker level, and learned all of them as a child because my family traveled a lot. As a result, I learned those languages ‘organically’, by living in countries where those languages were the lingua franca and because those were the languages all classes were taught in school. As a result, I make the same mistakes a true native speaker would. I pick up languages, idiomatic expressions, local pronunciations and dialects ridiculously easily. That does NOT make me a teacher. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked to teach or coach someone. I’m always extremely hesitant because my grasp on the actual grammar rules isn’t as solid as a teacher who actually learned how to teach that language. I know when something is right or wrong, but will need a grammar book to know the rule behind the ‘why’. I don’t know the exceptions by heart, I just apply those exceptions correctly because they feel ‘right’. As a result I always say I can help with vocabulary, pronunciation and conversational skills, but can and will not ‘teach’ in the traditional sense. I’m under-equipped for that. I do often proof-read things for people. That can go from contents that ends up on websites, articles, scientific publications, college applications, CV’s, even dissertations for a doctorate’s degree. Even then, I will always make it very clear that it’s not a hand-over-and-get-perfection-back kind of thing. I will need the text in the original language AND the translation I’m to proof-read. This is to get a sense of what the author means. Then, I’ll go over the text with the author in a multiple choice kind of manner: “If you mean A, then use X. If you mean B, then use Y. If you mean C, then use Z.” There will be the odd “What the heck do you mean here?” as well. The entire process can take several meetings of going over the entire text before I’m satisfied the end product isn’t just linguistically correct, but also brings across what the author means as closely as possible. And no, I’ll never completely translate something from scratch. Most of the stuff I do ends up with someone else getting credit. That means they should lose some sweat over it.

[@Fafr]

Here's how I'd go about it: Native people are good at maybe sometimes casually explaining something and teaching some small things about their language, but if you want to actually _learn_ their language, they're not the ones to go with. Another reason it's that way is because native speakers most likely don't remember how they were taught or anything. They know how to speak a language and it's natural to them, To them, it's not "i do this and this and then this which requires this to make a sentence". Rather, to them it's just "i think of something and the sentence appears". I myself am russian, and I'm only glad when people sometimes ask me something about the language like "how does this work" or "is this true". But if I'd have to actually teach the language from beginning to someone, I'd ultimately fail because I don't truly know my language, the language just appears by itself.

[@Lafly84]

My old Spanish professor in college started out as an American kid that was hired by the local Mexican restaurant as a dishwasher in his teens. He learned Mexican Spanish in a general manner - including spicy slang. Fell in love with the language, went to university majoring as a teacher and minor in Spanish. He traveled around Central and South America and Spain, and then came back to the US. Works full time as a middle school Spanish teacher, and teaches several classes at the local university in Spanish. Great guy and teacher, and the best language instructor I have ever had.

[@stacey7529]

My 1st and 2nd Español teacher's were native speakers. It was through a instution which was based at a university. The language courses were for anyone. The 1st teacher had no concept of the grammar or how to teach Spanish in general. The 2nd teacher just spoke to us in Spanish at a native speaker speed. We were A1 level. I now do private lessons with a native speaker, and she's excellent.

[@mglenadel]

What I’ve learned by both learning a second language and teaching that second language later on, is that the most valuable lesson a would-be teacher can learn is HOW they’ve learned the subject. If you are a native speaker of a language, you learned it when you were a child, and very likely you paid no attention whatsoever to how you learned. If you’ve learned that language as an adult, you were able to notice how you did it, and you may have some insights into the pitfalls of learning that particular language as a native speaker of your own language. So, the best English teacher to Brazilians would be a Brazilian, so on and so forth.

[@stevenhuffnagel]

“No matter what they teach in schools, Sicilians were black and never said amuninni, because my grandma told me so” - American proverb.

[@surgeeo1406]

This isn't the first time that a grandmother becomes equivalent to absolute truth... Remember Cleopatra?

[@obeastness]

There is a situation that has stuck in my mind, it was when I was having a conversation that involved horses, it was on discord, and I was talking to a native Japanese speaker. I had mistakenly used the counter 台 to refer to the horses, the native speaker corrected me saying we just use 匹 for horses, I was a bit shocked, so I asked them, what about elephants? They told me, also 匹. What had occurred in my brain is that I had confused 台 and 頭 and so I was feeling incredibly incredulous about the information I was being told. I'm almost certain you can't count horses or elephants with 匹 but after this I'm left with uncertainty on the topic.

[@nursejoed]

I try a reverse approach to help me with my (native) English. As a French learner, I watch English-learning videos for native French speakers. It helps me with both languages and gives me a better theoretical base of my own language.

[@tammyburnett3881]

Native English speaker teaching in Italy. I do mostly conversational lessons but also Cambridge exam prep. The Cambridge prep classes that are the best for the students have two teachers who alternate lessons, an Italian teacher who also teachers English in a public school and me. The italian teacher focuses on the grammar, which she can explain in both languages, and I focus on listening comprehension, speaking, and pronunciation. I think this is the best method for the students.

[@josemelo9950]

As a Portuguese and French Teatcher once told me, if you are a native to a language you can hear something and tell if it sounds right or wrong. But in most cases it's just about that.

[@tomate3391]

My thumb rule is always the more advanced you are in your target language, the more you need a native speaker. If you are A1 it is often better to have someone who has your native language. But If you are on the way to C1 oder C2 you need as many native input as you can get. However, as you already pointed out, a non professional native teacher has also his/her limites. As a German who learns Spanish y started to speak already very early with natives. I can not complain, everything went fine. But now, I read books in Spanish and even my language partner sometimes does not know the word what I could not understand in the book, mostly because it is a specific term or it is a word or expression which is not common in the region of my language partner.

[@princessinvidia]

Great video! I am a native English speaker and I'm a foreign language teacher. I have taught English in the past but currently I am teaching Spanish. And, though I am a highly proficient Spanish speaker, I am not a native speaker. I get a lot of attitude from people from time to time about how native Spanish speakers make better Spanish teachers, but that is so untrue. As a person who 1) Has learned the language myself and 2) Has been professionally trained to teach it, I have insights into Spanish vocabulary and grammar that native speakers usually lack. Moreover I have personal insight into what is going to be difficult for Spanish students, so I can create lessons that will be especially helpful with those difficult topics. I have been trained as an English teacher too - and that was a very eye-opening experience. I got such insight into my own language and how people learn it. I don't recommend that anyone go to a class just because the teacher is a native speaker. Professional training, as you point out, is crucial for anyone who wishes to be an effective language teacher.

[@MARiordan]

That all makes a LOT of sense! Thank you. I, a native English speaker, have spent the last 48 years living in Brazil. I know that my Portuguese is much better than most of my peers (I am a professional translator and so take great interest in speaking and writing correctly) but I am still learning nuances that I learned in English as a child.

[@Snowicorn]

I studied English in a language school for 8 years and in the second half of those 8 years I had a native teacher and a non-native teacher (there were classes twice a week and they were switching every other class), which was probably a good thing, because I realise now that studying there has helped me A LOT in learning the language.

[@TheZenomeProject]

The reason why I can consciously talk about English grammar rules is because I frequently tutor the SAT and ACT in my spare time. Most people don't do that and they kind of just know the rules unconsciously, so of course they would have no idea about how to teach it!

[@hans-joachimtenhoope1744]

My mother once became infuriated at a German teacher in the Netherlands. I think that was probably because of a difference in dialect, as she originated from Hanover. And yes, she had not been to Germany in a few decades.

[@davidbraun6209]

And what would the Hanoverian think of someone who had taught the words "Sessel," "Erdapfel," "Ertag," "Ziestag," "Samstag" and "Krapfen" as well as "Stuhl," "Kartoffel," "Dienstag," "Sonnabend" and "Berliner," one wonders.

[@abyssstrider2547]

​@@davidbraun6209Isn't Erdäpfel and Kartoffel the same word?

[@davidbraun6209]

@@abyssstrider2547 Erdapfel is what south Germans and Austrians call Kartoffel.

[@abyssstrider2547]

@@davidbraun6209 Nice i was able to connect the dots on my own.

[@PowerControl]

Here we call it Grumbeere. Other Germans think it comes from Krumme Beere (crooked berry) but it comes from Grund Birne (ground/earth pear)

[@JohnA-l4g]

I once asked a hotel receptionist in Avilés Spain if she hable inglés and she spoke it better than a lot of Americans.

[@pierangelosaponaro2658]

There are advantages whether or nor the person multilingual. Native speakers make fewer mistakes. Perhaps the grammatical explanations can be harder. The native know vocabulary, slang and numerous expressions better normally. It can vary. As long as a person is knowledgeable and can make clear and detailed presentations, it will work out.

[@euchale]

I´ve been on the other end of this, were someone approached me to teach them German because I´m a native speaker, and while I tried we both pretty much agreed that a professional will do a much better job than I ever could.

[@ErickWhite-Gronok]

I am taking some lessons now. Course I am using a program where the words are pronounced or brought into context with native speakers. There are certain things I miss. My French Teacher in High School, didn't just teach me the vocab, and putting it all together. She would explain the differences in the words. Her father was Belgian and Her mother was French and she married an American and moved over here. She had a high level of professionalism, actually teaching degree, and knew the language from a few different perspectives. I loved how she would make sure we knew if something was a false cognate, or (unlike the programs and one of the other teachers I had which didn't work out) "WHY" something was the way it was. WHY that phrase was translated that way, or when it was said a certain way the perspective they see it. Taking some stuff on my own, when I see something brought in, and they just say (professional or otherwise) This means this. Okay. I can tell from my studies that those words do, in fact NOT MEAN THAT. I need to know the exact translation literally into English (my native tongue) and then explain what it translates to and why. I need to know those things, and even funny stories that goes with mess ups, cause that's HOW it sticks in the head. I am a little bit different than others as I have a very archaic formal sense of English from old family, old movies, and old books I loved growing up. When I was younger, even for English teachers (And my other professors) I had to dumb down my vocabulary. Some thought I was trying to be arrogant, others I was trying too hard. All that was just with me naturally picking up the words. I needed the same thing in my foreign languages. While learning some Irish Gaelic (which I need to go back and continue studies) I would notice not only some words didnt really fit with the others, or that some were always translated some way, but I knew they didn't fit. No one told me. I had to go find translation software, and other OLDER dictionaries to find out what that word REALLY meant. If I understand what it really means, then like the older terms and language versions, I understand why it's translated a certain way now. I know, this is a book for a comment. What I like (and helps me learn) is the textbook pronunciation, and then a deeper explanation as to why. I need how I would use it in terms and places I would commonly speak (Games/Programming/computers/linux/gardening etc) to understand those points conversationally (and cooking) just so I can express myself in those areas I am most involved. I need to know the exact translation and then what it means. For instance, "Mind your own business" being "Mind your onions" in French and its explanation from my professor has stuck with me for over 20 years. Thus learning for me has to be a combination. Some other professors "here is the vocab" this is what this phrase means, etc.... is not the way I learn. So It's gotta be some combination.

[@Silyeu]

This makes sense because I noticed when I was trying to help someone learn Norwegian, I could tell them which words to use in different sentences, but I struggled to explain why. I hadn’t been in school for years so I had obviously forgotten a lot of grammar rules that I don’t think about daily.

[@andyking957]

Your assessement is quite ok. I had a great spanish language teacher from Mexico at our local peoples education facility. She had been a trained french language teacher before she came to Germany so she had the necessary teaching skills too. It was no problem for me she did not speak spanish style castellano, because my collegues are from Mexico anyways. Then she got children and left, her replacement was a jounger spanish native who did not have teaching skills, wo I was out after the next semester too. There I studied japanese for 2 semesters too, but the teacher who was a univeristy student from japan studying in Germany. She was not that bad, but was progressing too fast for me, no chance to follow up if I missed one lessond because of job appointments. I had a english coversation class with a retired (non native) german school teacher, quite good at first, but after some years the level of the other participants was not high enough to have use for me... So not only the teacher is of importance but the other participants în a group learning situation. And requirements will change over time... One thing a native teachers in most cases do much better is about the cultural aspects arround the language.

[@ThatWeebyGamer]

I definitely feel this, I live in Japan and I've started studying English Grammar in Japanese. Everyone in my class expects me to be an expert on the subject but I have never studied English Grammar before, I've studied general linguistics before but nothing so focused. Honestly I think being a native speaker makes the class more difficult compared to my classmates who can barely speak English but have studied English as a second language since middle school, I can tell them which sentence is correct but I can't explain why, when asked what's the difference between two similar phrases I have to really think and draw from my past experiences, it's exhausting

[@HighAdmiral]

I saw this title and thought about some of the times I myself have made a similar point. It's better to learn from someone who knows what it's like to learn the language than to learn from someone who just does it instinctively not knowing why. How many times has a native speaker, myself included, just laughed at something that sounds weird instead of understanding the mistake being made?

[@Jerald_Fitzjerald]

i'm currently in a very rigorous course in which we're in class for 6-7 hours a day 5 days a week learning from natives or native bilinguals who generally have professional language training. my class has 6 teachers from various places within the country, i'm happy to have such a good academic environment for learning

[@meteorplum]

I think a native speaker who also learned and speaks other languages non-natively is the best bet as an all around model. The native speaker part gives you appropriate accents, grammar, and vocabulary. The second language part, especially if their second language is not closely related to their native language, gives them insight into the kinds of trouble learners run into.

[@UngKristen]

As a corollary, don't assume you're speaking a language better than a native speaker just because you pronounce every letter clearly and don't contract anything

[@SinarNila]

True, faithfulness to the lang. Natives are independent and unfaithful to native lang, by the reason of intense growth and intimacy with it.

[@duckpotat9818]

​@@SinarNilawhen you know all the rules back to front, you can break them

[@josedelnegro46]

If better were the question we would be in the trees and the none human primates would be landing on moons That a person is willing to communicate makes him or her able to me. I tell Americans who are well off and well educated with perfect diction that the last words they speak in their life will be to an unwashed migrant bastard like me after their proud family has tossed their ass in the old folks home. Take languages as the come to you. Do not force you self on to them!

[@Wingzero90939]

That’s also true, and even if it is grammatically wrong,if the non-native speaker speaks like a textbook, while they may be technically correct, they are absolutely going to stand out. Our native languages are full of common errors that we routinely disregard.

[@nihilisticgacha]

I studied one semester of some languages at a university for fun (my major was not linguistics), and I agree with what you said very much. While my university did not advertise the courses as "having native speakers as teachers", they didn’t ensure the same quality for all the languages they offered, so I had had classes in which the teacher is native but their major was not related to language at all. I guess it’s because all these languages classes are elective for both linguistics students and non-linguistics students (to get enough credits for graduating), but the experience varied greatly depending on the language you choose. For some you learned a lot, for some you barely remember anything after the exam.

[@markjohansen6048]

Yes. I used to write technical manuals and I often read manuals written by others. And I noticed that just because someone know s the subject doesn't make him a good teacher. For example, I saw several cases where I wanted to learn X, and the manual mixed together X, Y, and Z, with no clear statements about whether you needed to do Y and Z to do X or not. In at least one cade, the answer turned out to be no. It was a very technical subject so exposing would be complicated, but it was like: I want to know how to repair my plumbing. So the writer begins by saying what parts I need. Good. Then the writer tells me just where to find them at Ace hardware. Now I eonder, are they only available at Ace or could I get them at Lowes? Then he gives directions of how to get to Ace hardware from his house. Well I don't live at his house but I have to read a bunch before I realize these directions don't apply to me. Etc.

[@robinhowells159]

I learned Spanish from a friend in Argentina. We both loved the same music & it pushed us into learning each other’s language. We learned to only use simple sentences when speaking to each other. Never use slang until you have a good foundation of the language. I could never roll my ‘r’ correctly & he taught me how to do it. But, it was music in Spanish that pulled it in for me. My friend was a guitarist & he recommended many Rock bands from Argentina to give a listen & that was a big help. I was listening to the song ‘Influenzia’ by Charly García & realized I was singing along in Spanish. That song was a cover of Todd Rundgren & I knew the English version very well, so, it clicked. I’m a East Coast Yankee that speaks Rioplatense Spanish.

[@robinhowells159]

@statin Gracias, practicando todos los días.

[@workingmothercatlover6699]

My Dad spent a lot of time in Germany. Years later, he's still fluent. My sister took German in highschool. Well, Dad decided to tutor her. Her grades dropped because Dad knew a different dialect than the teacher. 😊

[@michaelgrabner8977]

A teacher doesn´t teach "a dialect" but "Standard German" and "Standard German" is different than the regional dialects...different vocabulary, different pronunciation and different grammar and those diffrences are also valid within all those different regional dialects as well and that´s why in Germany (and everywhere else) is taught - in school - one "Standard German" for all Germans (and for all those who want to learn German as a second language).

[@Bakarost]

​​@@michaelgrabner8977achtually meme insert here

[@andreasarnoalthofsobottka2928]

In German it also depends on the time of day. All day long it is das Korn and der Weizen; in the evenings it is der Korn and das Weizen.

[@Robidu1973]

One thing that greatly helps in learning a new language is being able to intuit it. You may not get it right the very first time, though, but the more you are getting used to the new language, the more you are going to notice patterns and regularities. This, however, comes at a huge cost, because the "learning factory" teaching style is absolutely detrimental to Intuitives (notably the Ne variant of that) who tend to zone out in that situation: There just isn't anything that would invoke their curiosity, and so detachment creeps in. As an Intuitive you need to get a "feel" for the language first - the rest (that is, grammar and all that kind of stuff) is supplemental and should be taught as that particular individual progresses, and if things are going well, it frequently corroborates what that person has already discovered by himself. As far as I am concerned, learning English didn't feel like a burden at all, because my teachers have ben quite apt in triggering the students's curiosity. French, however, only worked in the first two years of learning it, but the next two it was this "learning factory" style swotting of conjugations which profoundly ruined it for me. Then, in 11th grade things have been messed up so thoroughly that I ditched it afterward. Latin had been a bit too technical with a strong focus on its grammar quite early on so it didn't really "stick". The beauty of being out of school for quite some time now really has its advantages when learning anything new: You can do it according to your preferred style, which is exactly what I'm going to do with Czech. Since there isn't anybody who could potentially screw things up, it should run rather smoothly.

[@just_foxy35]

Now 3 years ago I started a 1 (school) year long course as a preparation for CEA certificate exams and we had 4 different teachers for our level, 2 teacher of my nationality, 2 native english speakers from america, specifically Cleveland and Atlanta. Teaching-wise, I was more content with the methods and approaches of one of the non-native speakers, genuinely one of the better teachers I ever had for any subject. One of the worst teachers I've had about ever for any language was the one from Cleveland. There is a lot that goes into teaching a language, the knowledge of the usage of the language, the theoretical grammatical knowledge, and your capability to share the information in an effective way. And then there is the nuance of every person will benefit from different approaches. To be completely honest I've not even learned anything new about the language there really, I mostly just, familiarized myself with what the exam entails and had the room to practice for it if anything. It felt more like the preparation classes I took at the end of primary education for admission exams into secondary education. I as a perfectionist might be bitter about missing full point count by 6 points, but I am at the end of the day in possession of a C2 level certificate. And that should give me, along with the bit where I've said I didn't really gain extra knowledge my linguistics interested ass I didn't already have going in, some foothold on judging the narrative of native speakers always being a good thing. I very much do agree, not everyone born into the language has the skills necessary to properly teach it to another, in a grammatically correct, easily understandable, and useful way. You can certainly ask your friend to teach you some useful phrases if you plan on traveling to their country, but I wouldn't count on them being very helpful on teaching you the ins and outs of the grammar and inner mechanism/functioning of the language, that they picked up as a child by exposure, without thinking about it. I mean just think back to how your own language's language classes looked like for you or your classmates back in say 5th grade

[@just_foxy35]

oh fuck I didn't mean to write a fucking essay xD

[@Cavouku]

Ask a native English speaker what the "adjective order" of English is, and they'll reveal that they probably haven't heard of it before (I didn't know about it until I was maybe 20). But they can tell when you do it wrong (I ran into a few ESL people that ordered their adjectives in confusing ways). There's a philosophy in game design that players are quite good at identifying when a problem has occurred, but not the cause of it. I feel an ESL learner, and probably anyone learning a new language, should think of native speakers similarly.

[@david672orford]

Hmm. Yes. And if you explain adjective order to them, they will tell you that in English it is always adjective-noun. Because they were not aware of the concept until that moment and have not had time to think of counter examples. Ask them whether that means that "We need someone strong to lift a box that heavy." should be corrected to "We need a strong someone to lift that heavy a box." I wonder how many noun-adjective phrases I can fit into one short paragraph: "The surgeon general and the representative of Amnesty International came at last, weary from traveling, to the river wide and deep. Said the surgeon general, '100 pounds sterling would I give not to ford a river so treacherous.' To this the representative of Amnesty International rejoined, 'So would I, but it is the best option available.'"

[@adisca2k]

@@david672orford Doesn't the adjective order refer to the order of multiple adjectives applied to the same noun? Ex: "big round white italian soccer ball" vs any other incorrect order like "italian white round soccer big ball".

[@Cavouku]

@@adisca2k At the least, that was my meaning of it, aye. Though I don't mind him bringing up that other topic.

[@adisca2k]

@@Cavouku Makes sense why a native speaker wouldn't even know about it. I learnt it through exposure to the english language way before I was taught it in school. The correct order just sounds good, while an incorrect one sounds odd.

[@terubokmasin3247]

I think not only native speakers but those who are exposed to the language for a long time would, by instinct, pick up on the adjective order or rather disorder. You sort of got used to a form your mind has accepted as the norm that when something anomalous comes along, you just notice.

[@ShamankaIlona]

It depends of course what is the reason for learning a language. But no one is better in the language than a native speaker. Language is a communication tool and the main reason for me at least is to learn language for communication purpose. To learn real, alive language not a grammar book language, which was made by standardising the language by making some kind of average language which no one uses in their everyday life. Of course somebody may need this standard language for work. Also if you learn this perfectly polished version of language you while native speakers will understand you you may not understand completely them. And yes, you will sound like and AI or something. There is no such thing as wrong or correct language. Language is constantly evolving. Dialects and regional variations are not wrong versions of a standard language, as somebody would think, but luckily this notion is going away and people are more tolerant towards local dialects now. That is only my opinion. English is my third language. It is not correct. But I don' care. I can understand it. I can communicate, that is the most important thing for me.

[@akdollface007]

You are so right! My sister and I have an entire lexicon of words we use with each other (and understand each other in complete conversations). If anyone was trying to learn English (our native tongue) from us, they would be screwed because they would speak partially in proper English, partially in slang/bastardized English, and partially in our own new language (thinking that they were learning correct English).

[@RoseNZieg]

knowing and teaching are two different things. teaching involves patience and the ability to articulate their point across.

[@ditta7865]

Thank goodness someone has explain this thoroughly as someone who doesn't speak any other language but the country they live in. I always wanted to know how it worked. Thinking along the lines of grammar and good teachers. I would think about how as kids you learning your own language and trying to think if it was the same.

[@Voltaic_Fire]

Being a good teacher is more important than knowing the language.

[@teacherjeremyford6625]

I'm currently in Taiwan and I agree with you, Metatron. I've had native speakers who work in the same building tell me completely contradictory information about the meaning and use of various words and phrases. I take note of these things, but my vocabulary and skill in the foreign language is not vast enough at this time to understand these contradictions. I'm going to a Chinese teacher who is bilingual and it is nice to be able to ask them to explain these things, why I might be told two opposite things from two people who work in the same building with me. "Why does this person say this, and this other person say the opposite?" I don't have to accept one way or the other as true, with a bilingual teacher (hopefully) they can explain it to me.

[@gabi7730]

This is off topic, but is that crocheted ghost in the background? It looks great! Also, in my work we are half/half natives and people from abroad. And we are terrible at explaining the language to them. We are even from the same part of the country and there are big differences in our vocabulary and sometimes even in our understanding of grammar (like which preposition is correct in which situation).

[@Arbaaltheundefeated]

In some countries (including my own) the local differences can be so great that two native speakers of the "same" language can have actual difficulties understanding eachother at times, so this message really doesn't surprise me even if I hadn't given it much thought before.

[@iw9472]

I'm a language teacher and a professional translator. I teach English, my native tongue is Spanish. My English grammar is better than my Spanish. I can't teach Spanish because I'm not trained to do so.

[@SinarNila]

It's interesting and deep. The language of your emotion and heart is english. The language of your reason and brain is spanish. You can explain English, cos it's the idiom you choose to love and teach with proficiency and personal compromises for real life.

[@newcreation1cor517]

For someone like me who has studied linguistics and enjoys studying language as a hobby, I prefer a non-professional because they are more likely to let me lead the language learning sessions. On the other hand, for someone who knows nothing of the language and has never studied a language before, I 100% agree. I taught English in the past (my native language) and it was super difficult for me because I learned everything intuitively as a kid. On the other hand, I currently teach Spanish and Chinese at a super low levels, and my knowledge of how to learn those languages as well as where I had questions as a learner helps me teach the language better

[@faithlesshound5621]

The "Angry American" is a feature of the internet, as is the "Clueless Yank." They are often the same person.

[@DragonZlayerx12]

What do you think about the LDS missionary training center’s way of training people languages? After 6 weeks for “easier” languages (Romance languages for English speakers) to 12 weeks for a “harder” language (Korean, Japanese)

[@bipolarminddroppings]

I speak three languages, and whenever I'm asked to translate an English idiom I usually give a ten minute lecture about the etymology of the phrase/word and try to cover as many use cases as I can think of and more often than not, I miss something or I can't properly translate the English because I'm not a native speaker of the other two languages.

[@robertdobie3400]

As someone who's studied several foreign languages, I can say that, ideally, one should be taught by both native and non-native speakers: yes, having a native speaker as a teacher can be helpful in learning to listen to and understand authentic pronunciation as well as in learning some of the nuances of the language; but at the same time, some of my best teachers have been non-native speakers: having had to learn the language themselves as a teen or an adult gives them a special insight into the unique difficulties and traps that learners of a new language face. They also seem to have a better grasp of the more formal aspects of the language, such as grammar and syntax and seem better able to explain them to new learners.

[@the_flying_airplane5335]

Spanish is my second language, while I'm a native English speaker. I've had to teach English to native Spanish speakers, and Spanish to native English speakers. The latter was way easier, because I've spent years studying the grammar rules and learning which situations call for which verb conjugation (subjunctive took years to get down properly), and knew all the grammatical terms so I could refer to them to explain why something is said a certain way. But when I had to teach beginner English, I really struggled to explain why. I remember trying to teach how to form questions since it's very different from Spanish, and it was so difficult to explain the rules and patterns. I know them intuitively, but it was the first time I had to consciously identify the patterns and explain what was going on. So definitely, being a native speaker doesn't automatically make you a good teacher of that language.

[@David_Palacios]

You have no idea how many of my fellow Spanish speakers have rejected and even resisted the fact that the voiced stops in the Spanish language all have fricative allophones word-medially, even though they employ those very allophones when contesting my explanations, either that or they start speaking slowly to demonstrate how I’m wrong, and I’m like “of course it’s going to sound different if you say it slowly”, and when I show them the employment of these allophones they just say “well this guy’s saying it wrong” or “that’s just lazy speech”. Generally I think there’s something about the nature of phonemes and allophones that it’s really hard for native speakers of any language to wrap their head around, almost as if they thought that pronouncing certain sounds differently in certain environments equaled colloquial or “uneducated” speech.

[@francisdec1615]

Ignorant people. There was a guy in a Swedish forum, who said that the Stockholm accent sounded "gay" because of the vocabulary, which is completely wrong. Most other Swedes dislike the Stockholm accent because its intonation sounds arrogant. But people who know nothing about languages often make mistakes like that.

[@andreydoronin6995]

It's fairly common in Russia. Grammar N*zism is quite widespread here and people would often attack anything no matter whether it's a dialect variation, informal speech or a real grammatical error.

[@stevedavenport1202]

Agree100% I was a so called English teacher in Mexico in the 80s. I am a native speaker and had no idea about grammar rules. Non native speakers were far more effective. The only advantage to being with a native speaker is practicing and listening once you already have a solid working knowledge of the language.

[@baldbollocks]

My Father was raised in British india. Myself in London. He always said we couldn't speak English properly. I used to laugh. Then after emigrating to Canada for 30 years and chatting to my brother I absolutely see his point.

[@goukeban6197]

When I was taking lessons in Japanese, I chose a tutor who was non-native, because I wanted someone who'd better understand my doubts and needs as a learner.

[@russellcurtis6334]

I worked as an english teacher in China for eight years and I had multiple “Aha!” moments while training in TESOL, features of English grammar I had been using my whole life but never realized I was using; things like countable vs. uncountable nouns, etc. I had never consciously realized it was part of English grammar until I studied how to teach English. I can confirm what you are saying. You can always trust a native speaker to be able to tell you when something is wrong, but you can’t trust them to know *why* it’s wrong. 😅

[@pakde8002]

Depends on your goal in learning a language. If you want to be able to speak with and understand people in informal situations, which is most of our daily communication, it's best to learn from someone who isn't well educated in language. The best way to learn is immersive. Get a good translation dictionary to build up vocabulary but don't worry about grammar too much. That will become more intuitive as you listen and gain understanding of grammatical nuances. After you're proficient at speaking take up reading newspapers, magazines and finally novels and poetry to gain a finer appreciation for the language. I learned more in six months working side by side with an uneducated native Spanish speaker than in two years of high school Spanish. Within six months living in Indonesia I was able to communicate well and within two years I was receiving compliments, not only of my understanding but also dialect, which isn't easy btw with the southeast Asian ng sound. Most foreigners I've met didn't get that at all. After seven years completely self taught I was able to make money doing translations for international NGOs working in Indonesia.

[@DanielHowardIRE]

Very true. I used to teach English as a foreign language to intentional students. I'm from Ireland but now teach French and Spanish instead. I'm passionate about languages and linguistics so I've always got on very well. However, the amount of "English teachers" whose only qualification is being a native speaker and get hired on that basis is amazing. Most of these don't know how to teach or any knowledge of pedagogical approaches. This also applies to native speakers of other languages. We've had two unqualified Spanish teachers in my school and they were only hired on the basis of being native and both struggled with teaching. On the other hand the best English teacher I've worked weigh was a lady from Uruguay with a C2 level and was amazing. Despite this, some students complained about her because she wasn't native. 😢

[@jpteknoman]

As my old Tae Kwon Do teacher said "the talented make for the worst teachers because they instinctively know how to do things without knowing why it works". Unless someone is a trained professional in how to teach things, just knowing them won't make them capable of passing on that knowledge. This is why i dislike the argument some people make that "if that teacher knew how what he teaches works, he would do it and make more money than just teach it". Doing and teaching are 2 different things that require completely different skills. I could teach you all the theory behind drifting a car but i can't do it myself because i lack the dexterity for it

[@spencerburke]

Agree with the main idea of this video. Spot on. There's one other point, though, not mentioned re some bilingual or non-native teachers. Most academic reseaech suggests that there can be a tendency amongst successful learners of a target language to be less sympathetic to other learners' problems. The attitude is along the lines of "I managed to do this years ago, why is it so hard for you?" Additionally, there can be resistance to the notion that learning strategies that undoubtedly were effective for them mqy not be so universally. Not suggesting for one moment that this defines these teachers. Just that it's good to be aware of the possibility.