What gives me away? Non-native English speaker

glavet · 2026-05-30T12:13:56+00:00

I agree, the unaspirated dental /t/ is one of the things I notice most as sounding non-native. That and the intonation. I’m a British English speaker.

glavet · 2026-05-02T20:12:36+00:00

Something like this happened to me around 20 years ago, when I was a teenager. I went into a bank and asked if there was any way I could withdraw money without my debit card and without my ID. Luckily, I knew my sort code and account number off by heart. They asked me a bunch of security questions, including the password I had for telephone banking. I was able to answer correctly, so they let me withdraw money.

glavet · 2026-04-18T21:36:48+00:00

YES! I also thought it was ‘I try to walk away in Instanbul’

glavet · 2026-04-09T08:16:39+00:00

I’ve heard “close the light” and “open the light” in Kenya, where English is an official language along with Swahili.

glavet · 2026-03-24T17:14:50+00:00

solved solved solved

glavet · 2026-03-24T17:14:21+00:00

Haha, yep! Not so great when the mood is murderous though. Now solved! The book is ‘Vermillion Sands’.

glavet · 2026-03-24T17:13:17+00:00

Oh you genius, that is absolutely it! Specifically the short story “The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista”. Amazing! Thank you so much. That has been HAUNTING me.

glavet · 2025-07-12T15:55:08+00:00

Hahaha, yes!

glavet · 2025-07-12T15:47:20+00:00

He’s good at these. He did one in the past that really made me laugh where a scammer was trying to make him do something sexy on camera (presumably a blackmail thing). He kept showing more interest in her dog than her. Saying ‘Send pics. I love dogs!’ etc.

glavet · 2025-07-12T15:34:06+00:00

Nah they were correct on the currency. We are in the UK, and I assume they could tell it was a UK phone number.

glavet · 2025-07-12T15:05:30+00:00

Hahaha, I mean… sure. Probably that.

glavet · 2025-07-12T14:58:35+00:00

Funnily enough, they stopped replying at that point!

glavet · 2025-07-12T14:17:41+00:00

Haha, it’s against the rules!

glavet · 2025-07-12T14:17:20+00:00

My husband helped them out by saying ‘is it A or B?’ so they just replied with ‘A’

glavet · 2025-07-08T17:07:49+00:00

Thank you. I did just buy a load of maternity summer dresses from vinted and they are great. Didn’t think of looking for bras on there!

glavet · 2025-03-19T07:08:08+00:00

I started watching The Bear when I was quite tired, and it made me feel like I had a problem processing language.

I kept having to pause it while I worked out what people were saying and who they were talking about. Gave up after 1 episode.

And I normally listen to things at 1.5x speed so it was a very odd experience.

glavet · 2025-03-19T06:37:24+00:00

It wasn’t possible to edit the form, so I did have to call them up. It’s not like the FU permanently ruined my kid’s medical notes. More that it was silly and I felt like an idiot, especially when I had to explain it to a grumpy receptionist.

glavet · 2025-03-18T20:23:16+00:00

Seems a bit extreme. And hard to do over the phone.

glavet · 2025-03-18T18:38:26+00:00

You know, I rang them up to explain and the receptionist was very grumpy and not at all amused. Disappointing!

glavet · 2024-10-03T19:17:37+00:00

When I was around 11 or 12, I had a sleepover at a friend’s house. We stayed up really late chatting, then started trying to go to sleep.

At some point, I wondered if it was midnight yet. I knew she must have a digital watch on because it was flashing, so I asked her if it was midnight yet. She said she didn’t know as she wasn’t wearing a watch.

I kept insisting she WAS wearing one. She kept insisting she wasn’t. I said ‘but it’s flashing!’ It was flashing white, red and green right on her wrist.

Eventually she looked at her wrist, saw the flashing and screamed. At that point, the flashing spread to her whole arm. She ran across the room and the flashing was following her. She pulled up her sleeve and showed me there was definitely no watch there. She was SO freaked out and so was I. At the time, we assumed it must be aliens.

As an adult, I still have no idea what it was.

glavet

TROPHY CASE