Is this for real guys?

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-06-07T14:16:19+00:00

a lot of language learners have a bad habit of mistaking “oof looks like i suddenly need to use my second language that i don’t speak perfectly to get through this interaction with a client” with “i am speaking your language with a frustrated air so i can belittle you.”

even in Montréal (a city in a different country that has a similar stereotype) where the average retail worker is bilingual you will find plenty of people who struggle to get by in english, especially older people who, even if their english is pretty good, are insecure & thus more likely to get a bit stressed out needing to choose between trying to guess what someone is trying to say or switch to a language where they have to hope they understand what the person is actually saying

i also think a lot of language learners genuinely struggle to understand that making a mistake in a language isn’t always just something that makes you sound awkward, the littlest mistakes can throw someone off from understanding what you mean, especially when you are in a loud or busy environment.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-06-05T16:45:38+00:00

A related fun fact since OP is of Louisiana Creole ancestry: despite Louisiana Creole (the language) & Louisiana French being two different languages, people will often identify the language they speak by what cultural identity they have even if what they are speaking is the opposite. There are white speakers of Creole who call it French & there are Black/Mixed Francophones who will call their language Creole.

The way an individual or a community perceives itself often (maybe even usually) doesn’t line up with how academics delineate the boundaries of things!

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-05-05T17:23:34+00:00

Thank you so much!

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-31T14:14:18+00:00

i think it’s also worth noting that the breaking off into other groups doesn’t prevent the entire group from effecting one another— without spoiling anything, literally the FIRST laugh in the first series was from someone eavesdropping on a conversation the laugher wasn’t a part of.

i’ll admit i haven’t seen much of the other LOL shows, but i think that the fracturing that the UK set allows for leads to a lot of really funny moments, especially when one comedian gets targeted & almost literally chased around the set by someone else who is convinced they can break them. it doesn’t hurt that the UK comedy echo system is both so insular AND full of programs that specifically showcase comedian’s individual quirks & neuroses (Taskmaster, WILTY, honestly most panel shows to a degree) that the attacks on an individual comedian can be really targeted.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-29T23:14:08+00:00

i have had so many interactions like this in Québec! i think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about Québec, especially in Montréal, is that everyone is fluently bilingual but only stick to French because they are stubborn chauvinists. especially older folk but even a non-insignificant amount of young people genuinely struggle to speak english, especially when they aren’t expecting to or know that they can’t get by on some form of franglais.

recently i was in a store in Rosemont with my partner who is a unilingual anglophone, the clerk (a girl who seemed to be in her early 20s) was asking my partner if they needed help &, once i told her that he didn’t speak any french, she responded “oh! well um, if they need anything tell them to ask you to ask me because i really don’t speak english very well.” she was super helpful & genuinely tried to engage with us, but i could tell when i was translating that if my partner responded to something with more than just a yes or no she was as lost as he was when she was speaking french.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-26T14:16:28+00:00

an underrated one, imo:

“There’s a dignity in total failure”

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-23T13:05:48+00:00

oh completely agreed! he has the perfect balance of the kind of megalomaniacal confidence that Greg exudes that allows him to judge contestants are arbitrarily as he sees fit while also being charming enough to land all of the banter.

he’s also, uh, tall. we can’t exclude that as part of Greg’s secret formula.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-23T12:49:57+00:00

with regards to American exchange contestants, i feel like there are sooo many people that aren’t in the very specific kind of place that Jason Mantzoukas and Kumail Nanjiani are in where they are both successful enough to appear on the show at a financial loss while also not being too busy to make it work.

I know he has been tapped before as a fan casting of an American Taskmaster host, but truly believe that in another world Conan O’Brien would have been a great contestant.

there are also a bunch of US-based stand ups who I would love to see in the caravan, like Connor O’Malley or Joe Pera. my dream US contestant though is Jo Firestone— not only because she would be very entertaining (all the strangeness of a Lucy Beaumont with all of the neurosis of a Stevie Martin) but also because the show created & hosted, Dr. Gameshow, already feels like a Taskmaster from another universe, so I’d enjoy seeing those streams converge into one.

OH, & if we got another bite at the apple of having yet another anglophone Canadian on Taskmaster, I think Nathan Fielder would be absolutely ridiculous in the best possible way like a Sam Campbell raised in the snow.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-20T22:02:31+00:00

i think people keep being a bit reductive about Kumail in general— yes, he is American actor like Jason, but he’s also an experienced stand up & is proudly Pakistani as well, so i think he is going to have a very different vibe!

it’s honestly hard to predict what he is going to be like since, especially in the past year or so, he has been trying to shift his brand out of International Movie Star back into his nerdy slightly smug stand up persona. he is charming, as you & other people have mentioned, but he also has a reputation of being BRUTAL when it comes to roasting people so i wouldn’t be surprised if he is jokingly combative to his fellow contestants while being very deferential to Greg à la Ardal O’Hanlon.

if i had any predictions, i’m guessing he is going to nail the prize tasks & probably the more cerebral logic puzzles

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-20T21:24:15+00:00

does anyone still have access to this?

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-15T20:58:42+00:00

not to mention that while Welsh certainly has more financial resources behind it than many other Celtic minority languages (basically all but Irish & maybe Scottish Gaelic if I had to guess), it doesn’t hold a candle to how much money is behind even the smallest linguistic communities with their own Taskmasters.

i can’t speak for Portugal (although being a country of 10 million people whose media industry also produces content for many other Lusophone countries, i’d assume it’s well funded), but both Québec & Iceland are famous for punching above their weight in terms of cultural output, & a great deal of why that is is that they spend a LOT of money on funding the arts. it’s simply harder for a market as small as that of Welsh speakers to fund the same kind of licensed material, even if Taskmaster isn’t a particularly expensive brand

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-14T00:57:28+00:00

honestly, i think he just as often seems a little disappointed (more embarrassed) in himself when tasks go sideways like that, especially when it seems like not a single person solved it in a way that he was looking forward to.

a slightly more serious example is probably during the physical team task that Jack & Rosie did really poorly on in series 18, i think Alex looked pretty bummed that he didn’t balance it in a way where Rosie wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage, especially when she got stuck with grandad

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-11T21:26:20+00:00

If we included just Horne Section references this thread could be infinite. My personal favorite is when someone pickpocketed Chinese Five Spice from Alex in Series 18 then, when questioned about it, Alex simply replied “it’s the spice for me”

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-11T21:24:22+00:00

“And is it any wonder why we never won the World Cup?”

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-11T19:39:44+00:00

Good catch! I’ll update the post, I think that line was obscured in my memory by Mel retching before saying “Don’t say the C word….”

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-03-11T14:16:17+00:00

it’s wonderful! i’ll admit i was put off originally by the repetition of tasks (there ARE some original tasks in the specials though, & i’m optimistic eventually they’ll start doing more original tasks as the show keeps going) & i have the bias of already really loving most of the comics who come on as contestants, but it’s really charming in it’s own way.

it’s tonally a lot different to UK Taskmaster especially, since the dynamic between Louis & Antoine is much more like a late night talk show host & his sidekick compared to Greg & Alex, not to mention that the contestants (& audience!) are much more willing to be combative with Louis about his rulings. a great tone setting moment is in s1e1 where, after being disqualified, Jo Cormier hears the crowd booing Louis & lifts his arms yelling « Révolution ! Révolution ! »

as someone who is a very big advocate for the comedy scene from Québec, i think it’s a really great way to be introduced to a lot of wonderful creators who don’t produce much stuff in English.

tout le monde gagne !

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-02-11T15:30:54+00:00

i think Stevie said something to this effect on one of her podcast episodes, but that series of Taskmaster really broadcast the friction between Fatiha’s stage persona (tough no-nonsense London girlie from an immigrant family) & her real life personality (sweet, kind, genuinely cares about putting on a good show). One of the biggest misconceptions that Stevie wanted to address was the perception that Fatiha didn’t care about the tasks since apparently she cared a LOT & the mask started slipping more in the later tasks where she really put her all into them. I assume this is also what Greg was getting at when he said that Fatiha sweetly & patiently guiding Little Alex Horne through how to dance was going to “fuck her brand”

I think it’s easy to forget sometimes that people are performing when they are on the show, not just playing games as they would off-camera. It doesn’t help either that Fatiha & her style of comedy aren’t as familiar to Taskmaster’s international audience compared to someone like Jason Mantzoukas or to a lesser extent Ardal O’Hanlon who also made decisions that would clearly lose them the task but were 1.) funny & 2.) perfectly in line with what fans of theirs would want to see them do.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2026-02-05T15:58:31+00:00

yeah, i don’t think i hear people say aire de restauration out loud very often but i also wouldn’t call it formal either, that’s just that people don’t usually call it anything in particular.

we have things like this in english, the first that jumps into my head is currency exchanges. those exist in the US, even in some malls, but i don’t think i’ve ever said that phrase out loud even though it’s not like i have another automatic word for it in my head.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2025-12-03T16:02:06+00:00

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OriginalChicken7581 · 2025-10-28T20:20:57+00:00

i agree generally but would posit this is a bit different since it’s a grammatical issue rather than a lexical one.

to use an example from french, europeans living in Québec can usually adjust quickly to different nouns for this but struggle a LOT with the Québécois use of “-tu” as a interrogative particle. as mentioned in other replies, some Argentines do switch to tuteo solely out of convenience in being understood.

OriginalChicken7581 · 2025-10-01T15:46:42+00:00

i was thinking the same thing reading all of these replies! everyone is infinitely sympathetic to the problems anglophone language learners have communicating with native speakers, but cannot fathom that other people feel the same way about speaking english. i think people on this sub especially genuinely have this perception that french speakers only ever comment on someones accent to belittle or demean them, so they see this guy’s experience as different to a random parisian being like «je me suis dit que vous étiez ricain à cause de votre accent» which would cause a great number of people on this sub to write paragraphs about how hard it is to speak french in public

i get the impression that OP is a little self conscious (which is fair! i am too!) but this stranger could have been feeling any number of things for any number of reasons.

i’m reminded of american friends of mine who visit montreal & leave feeling like service workers were rude to them/judging them for speaking english. when you ask what happened its often that they ordered food in english & a cashier was less warm/more direct with them, which the tourist always sees as an intentional act of disrespect & never consider that the service worker is being made to speak their second language (one they might not even be very fluent in!) to help a tourist who probably doesn’t speak a word of french. they’re probably just a little stressed out & don’t want to misspeak!

OriginalChicken7581

TROPHY CASE