They gave me credit for communicating.
I understood the questions without difficulty.
I answered.
I expressed myself without difficulty, but with mistakes.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.
Is it important to speak a language perfectly?
Is it important to make essentially no mistakes or to try to make no mistakes?
To try to sound like a native speaker?
I think if you've been following my videos, you know,
that I don't think it is.
Uh, remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe, click
on the bell for notifications.
The reason I want to talk about this is because my wife and I
watched the final of the French Open tennis tournament a few days ago.
And it kind of reminded me of how important it is to focus on communication
rather than these what I would call almost futile pursuit of perfection.
At least futile for most people.
And so the reason I'm talking about it is because Novak Djokovic, who is an amazing
tennis player, just a delight to watch.
And who's also, uh, a real gentlemen as are all of those top tennis
players, Roger Federer, um, Rafael Nadal, so much respect, so much
respect for their opponents.
Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a quality that it seems very often than in some
circles has gotten gone out of style.
You know, win at all costs trash talk your opponent, uh, this kind of thing.
And it's, I find that so distressing.
You can compete, but after the competition is over, then you
should respect your opponent.
And of course that's what Raf, uh, Raf, of course, and, and Djoko do.
And so the other thing that they both do and, and as does Serena
Williams, is if they're in front of a French audience, they will respect
their audience by speaking French.
Now, of course you have to be able to speak French and understand French
in order to answer questions and communicate in French to thousands of
people in the audience and potentially millions of people around the world.
And so I was so impressed with Djoko.
Uh, and I I've heard him speak, um, English, obviously
he's flawless in English.
Uh, I've heard him speak Italian.
I presume he speaks Spanish.
I'm sure he speaks Russian, but his French is wonderful.
It's natural.
It's pleasant.
The, the fans at Roland Garros we're delighted to hear him in French.
I was delighted to hear him in French.
I was almost proud of him.
Good for you.
And, but he doesn't speak without mistakes.
He doesn't.
He has what I guess is a Serbian accent in his French.
He made mistakes with his gender.
Uh, you know, he, he said things like, for example, instead of "ma famille",
he was thanking his family he was, he decided to thank "mon family".
Doesn't exist.
There's no mon, there's no "family".
And it's in any case "ma".
Doesn't matter.
However, if, if there were a French teacher there, if his French teacher
from school, we're gonna, you know, give him marks for his, uh, talk
there, she'd probably mark them down.
And I know that, uh, like in Canada, where in the federal bureaucracy, they handout,
you know, bonuses for being bilingual.
If someone were to say "mon family" in their tests, they would be marked down.
They probably wouldn't get their, uh, bilingual bonus.
Uh, and, uh, but yet other people will not make that mistake, but they can't
get up in front of thousands of people and naturally, and comfortably speak
in a way that they look comfortable.
The audience is comfortable.
Communication is taking place.
So how many of the students who got very high marks in French say in
the Canadian school system and the English-speaking school system are capable
of getting up in front of an audience like Djoko did and speak in French?
And so the communication is so important, of course Djoko
would like to speak better.
And apparently in a previous, uh, interview, he said that, uh, you
know, he's working on his French, he wants to acquire more words,
which is the right thing to do by the way, work on getting more words.
A lot of the grammar will fall into place.
Uh, occasionally review the verbs.
Um, I'd love to have Djoko on link.
I think he'd really improve, but the point is he would like to improve,
but wherever he is, whatever his level is, he's not uncomfortable using it.
Now, obviously you have to be at a minimum level.
You can't be up there and not understand the question.
And this was when I was in Ukraine, for example, in Kiev and I was interviewed in
both Russian and Ukrainian on television.
Uh, I could understand the questions, I answered and some people
pointed out that I made mistakes.
Sure.
I made mistakes.
But I think the fact that I spoke in both Russian and Ukrainian to a
television audience, first of all, there was the audience in the studio
and also people watching on television.
They gave me credit for communicating.
I understood the questions without difficulty.
I answered, I expressed myself without difficulty, but with mistakes.
And so I think this is important.
We've had this discussion about pitch accent and all this other stuff, and
people can spend their time doing that.
But I think the bigger thing is to, to focus on communicatin.
As I've said before, just about everybody that I have dealt with in English and
I have dealt with non-native speakers in English in my business career, be
they Swedes, Germans, uh, Japanese, uh, you know, French, Chinese, Spanish.
Most of them speak with an accent.
Most of them speak with mistakes.
And yet they communicate very comfortably.
Everybody feels comfortable.
They feel comfortable because we have the impression I, as a native speaker,
that the person I'm speaking to understands perfectly what I'm saying.
And I understand perfectly what they're saying, even if they make the, a mistake.
So we obviously, we all want to improve.
Uh, and we have to get to a certain level before we can, you know, be comfortable.
And before people listening to us can be comfortable, but once
we're at that level, then I think we have to focus on communicating.
Rather than again, it's not a matter of you shouldn't, but those who communicate
at a less than perfect level should be given credit for what they can do,
should give themselves credit for what they can do, even if they are motivated
to continue working on getting better.
So I just wanted to give kudos to Djoko and I should add
in, I've seen Rafa do this.
Roger Federer of course is magnificent in so many languages.
I've heard Serena speak very good french, Serena Williams.
Um, So, and, and we should also recognize that English speakers, we say, wow,
you know, so-and-so spoke French.
And if we have...
like, I know that, uh, whatever that English, tennis player can't
remember, Scottish tennis player spoke Spanish very well, but these
non-English speaking athletes and politicians and others, they're always
speaking English and they're speaking English well, albeit with mistakes.
And I'm always impressed.
Even when it comes to speaking English.
I'm impressed.
When I hear people, hockey players, you name it, American like
baseball players in the US from the Dominican Republic or somewhere.
And they all speak English so well.
More English speakers should make the effort.
To speak those languages and get up in front of an audience like Djoko did,
like Serena has done and so forth.
So I'm full of admiration for those people, even though they
speak less than perfectly.
And I'll leave a couple of videos that kind of follow the same subject.
Bye for now.