I lived abroad for a while in a country I didn’t initially speak the language in. One thing I clearly remember is feeling quite different because advertising literally had no effect on me since I couldn’t understand it.

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DosUser88 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I have been in a country and I understand the language, not natively but decently. But the ads all are overly cheery, fake smiles, super weird corporate loving language that I can't take it seriously at all.

I know those elements are super common in English, but it seems dialed up to 11 in the other language. I wonder if it's basically the same in English, I'm just so used to it that it doesn't seem as fake.

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dijit 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep, I've been living in Sweden for 10+ years and have (embarrassingly) not learned Swedish to a native level yet.

The more I learn Swedish, the less ignorant I become to the advertising and "gotcha" headlines on newspapers and stickers and such; and I'm noticing its outsized (negative) effect.

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alasano 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm curious as to what prevented you from learning it to a level that doesn't embarass you?

Time goes by quickly and suddenly it's been 10 years is a perfectly fine answer.

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dijit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Swedes are excellent at speaking English (better than some British people from deprived areas).. and I work in international companies where English is the lingua franca...

My partner actively prevented it also, she was ethnically Russian (Estonian) and wanted me to learn Russian before Swedish.

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alasano an hour ago | parent [-]

Right! I forgot Sweden is basically people who speak better English than native speakers, apologizing for their subpar English.

	▲	JoshStrobl 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Finns are the same way in my experience.