- 7 Posts
- 18 Comments
3·10 days agospoiler
Correct, they are Polish. Except all of them moved to Anglophone countries in young adulthood - none of them is what you would call a heritage speaker.
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I’m afraid not🙂
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It cannot be Australia, since their native language is not English.
Right, except I asked about their native language, which is not English 🙂
1·10 days agospoiler
It’s neither South Africa nor the UK, though I’m surprised how often the native speakers of this particular language are mistaken for South Africans, given that I can think of hardly any salient connections between the two🙂
The correct answer is:
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Polish. Thanks for your guesses and congratulations to all those who were close or even hit the nail on the head, even if somewhat hesitantingly.
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A fair guess, but no :)
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An interesting and well-argued guess, but I’m afraid it’s nonetheless somewhat off the mark.
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Slavic is a good guess
🙂
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Your deduction is correct. They are Polish.
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No🙂
I suppose that’s a pretty solid indication that they learned it well 🙂
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One of your picks is correct
🙂
They both initially moved to England for university - him at 19 and her at 21.
That’s right, none of them is a native speaker of English - their English is learned via the standard combination of school, extracurricular courses, media exposure, and other typical means available in largely monolingual countries, and subsequently polished up abroad (at least two of them moved to Anglophone countries for university). Thus, I figured that the undercurrent of their native pronunciation should be sufficiently conspicuous to allow for making some educated guesses about their origin 🙂
„Then 3 hit me with surprise rhoticity and now I’m confused.” Hopefully at that point the challenge became entertaining 🙂
That’s an interesting and unexpected guess. It would seem to me that no. 3 in particular doesn’t sound even remotely Welsh, but perhaps absolutely wild guesses (to use your phrase) dispense with such stereotypical assumptions🙂
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They indeed are! Was there any particular hint that led you to this conclusion?