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A comment on Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English. Parent comment

Re:Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speak... by ftio on Thursday May 20, 2021 @01:31PM (#27224243)
As an Italian-American who rarely gets to speak Italian, my visits to my family in Italy are full of these kinds of things, but in the other direction, naturally.

I end up using less common, typically larger words mostly because they have direct equivalents in English, including a whole bunch that end in -ation, which in Italian typically end in -azione.

My relatives joke with me that I'm a weird, overeducated dummy who "knows" these big words but doesn't know basic idioms.

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Re:Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speak... by BrandoElFollito on Thursday May 20, 2021 @04:06PM (#27226459)
No worries, Feynman used such a word in Portuguese when he did not know the short, common one and it was a great success.

I do not remember the word anymore, it was in You Must Be Jocking, Mr Feynman. - in the party where he was teaching in Brazil

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Re:Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speak... by insipid on Saturday May 22, 2021 @02:39PM (#27249144)
I read that book when I was an English-monolingual kid, living in Portugal, and /consequentemente/ that story really stuck in my head when I was struggling for Portuguese words: https://southerncrossreview.org/81/feynman-brazil.html
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