Neighbour doesn’t speak English at home

[Identiy]

I know I am just being nosey, but my new neighbour chats away in English to me, I always assumed and she is English. But I hear her chatting to her dog (she lives alone) and I don’t recognise the language at all. I have a fairly good grasp of French and Spanish, recognise German and Italian and a few others. I am just intrigued as to what she is speaking because I don’t recognise it at all. Would I be rude to ask her? I don’t want her to think I am eavesdropping, but then it wouldn’t matter anyway!!

I am just really intrigued!

Could it be Welsh?

Im white british, home counties accent, but I speak fluent creole (french patois) because I spent my childhood abroad. It often startles people if I'm speaking it to a friend from that country. You don't expect that from my mouth 😂

I’m just postmarking for when the OP comes with an answer.🙂

I can speak all 3 Scandinavian languages thanks to my heritage.

There are many languages that are not French, German nor Spanish.

I have a lot of visiting dogs here and DH insists on speaking to them in Russian. Only works when he's near the fridge.

She did, yesterday at 3.15 pm.
Her neighbour is speaking Scottish Gaelic to the cat.

I genuinely believed I was the only person daft enough to have learned some Polish because I imported a Polish cat. 8 years on, it's morphed into a strange mix of Polish & nonsense but everyone in the house understands it & speaks it. I'm probably the OP's neighbour.

Thanks for getting me out of my misery 😁🙏🏼

Oh my god, from the title I absolutely thought this was going to be a horribly racist post about how 'bloody immigrants' had the audacity to speak their own language in their own home, and it's turned out to be the sweetest MN thread I've read in a while!

Now I’m worried that my neighbours can hear me talking to my dog in a thick Australian accent…
She’s an Australian sheepdog (my dog, not my neighbour) and I swear she doesn’t listen to me if I don’t put the accent on.

ETA that I am aware they’re not actually Australian dogs, but talking to her in an American accent feels wrong.

I do this with my daughters dog. I speak to it exactly like I speak to anyone. I was outside with him last week and said five more minutes then we are going inside to have lunch. Everyone was rolling around laughing.

Your neighbour sounds hilarious! Planning on moving anytime soon?

That's actually really sad! I'd never object to people speaking their mother tongue, especially if it's helping someone else, like this would.

I used to work with a young woman who was born in a different country (somewhere in Eastern Europe, although can't remember where now.) She overheard some customers complaining in the language of the country she was born in and replied to them, and they were surprised. She sounds like she was born in this part of the UK (at least the posh bit.)

Manx?

Just seen that it's Scotttish Gaelic, so I was close !

What I have learned from this thread is speaking to pets in other languages is perfectly normal. Dog owner seem to do it in a fun way; whereas the cat owners tend to do it because that cat has pulled rank! 😸

Thanks everyone, this thread keeps making me smile

My daughter spoke like that to our cat when she was little. I remember one day hearing her say to the cat "Charlie will you please come into my room" then a moment later "thank you"

Ask an academic and they'll probably say that the Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible, but in reality there are so many dialects and differences in pronunciation that hinder this.

Danes from around Copenhagen and Swedes from the Malmö/Skåne area can understand each other as they are exposed to both languages on a daily basis being on either side of the Øresund Bridge, and people living along the Sweden/Norway border understand each other, but this is not universal in Scandinavia.

Even within countries people can have difficulty understanding each other. Older people from West Jutland in Denmark speak a completely different dialect to people from Copenhagen, with a different vocabulary and grammar. Throw a Bornholmer into the conversation with their own dialect and watch the fun!

Likewise, I'm friends with four Swedish families. Three are from Skåne in southern Sweden, but the fourth family comes from Kiruna in northern Sweden, which is 1,900km from Skåne. When the families speak in their local dialects they cannot understand each other. Fun fact - at 1,900km the distance from Ystad (Skåne) to Kiruna is further than from Ystad to Milan, Italy; and 600km further than Ystad - Paris.

What?

Didn’t appreciate the nasty jibe upthread either btw.
I’m Irish anyway but that sort of thing is an embarrassment! Cop yourself on.

Tbh I find the dialects of Norwegian most challenging!

I’m not a Norwegian speaker but have a good friend from Oslo and we stay in her family cabin up past Trondheim a lot - and even I can hear the difference between her Norwegian and the Norwegian that’s spoken by the locals there. She says that with older people there particularly even she struggles a lot of the time.

In fairness, I’m always gobsmacked at threads on here where posters are absolutely paranoid about other people speaking a language they don’t around them, and wanting to enforce English ‘because it’s rude not to speak the language everyone can understand’ — it seems to be a weird paranoia that they’re talking about the monoglot in their other language.

I can absolutely imagine that kind of person in the next bed coming on here to post ‘AIBU to think the nurse and her patient were talking about me?’ or ‘AIBU to think this nurse should have spoken to her patient in English, given that he clearly understood some?’

Ahem, yes, and remind me what's " being pedantic" in the Irish language again?

P.s. and I'm Irish!!!

@MsNevermore howl at ‘Lithuanian-speaking dog’ 😂😂😂

we are English speakers living in Italy. Dog goes to daycare with many Italian doggos. Consequently, her fluency is advancing more quickly than mine.

when we meet other dogs in the park, they chat away while I’m stuttering along to the owner 😄

I always wonder whether dogs and cats have a “breed” language - Dachshund, Labrador, Siamese etc. and then adapt when they meet other breeds!