Most language learners will probably agree that one of the most demoralizing parts of the whole language learning process is attempting to speak your target language with a native speaker, only for that native speaker to switch to English on you.

This phenomenon is so common that I’ve even heard some language learners refer to this as “getting English’d”.

To many language learners, getting English’d sorta feels like you’re receiving an insult. You’ve put hundreds of hours into learning their language and are genuinely trying your best, only to have that native speaker invalidate all that effort by switching to English. How rude!

And while getting English’d may feel insulting at first, you should keep in mind that native speakers usually aren’t trying to be rude when they do this.

For example, here are some of the most common reasons for getting English’d

  1. You’re stuggling to understand the native speaker
  2. The native speaker is struggling to understand you
  3. Speaking a language other than English was innapropriate given the current context. (In this situation, your language skills may actually be fine, but you might have just tried speaking your target language in a context where English would’ve been better, like a dinner where the only two people who understand your target language are you and the native speaker, but no one else.)

“Great”, you might be thinking. “Native speakers aren’t trying to be rude, but how do I stop getting English’d?”

With the exception of number 3, the only real way to prevent getting English’d in the future is to become better at your target language than the native speaker is at English. I’m calling this the “English Threshold” - the level of language ability past which native speakers will prefer to speak to you in their language rather than in English.

In my personal opinion, the minimum goal of any serious language learner should be to surpass the English threshold. After all, what’s the point of learning a language if native speakers will just end up refusing to speak it with you?

To surpass the English threshold, however, we’re left with a bit of a chicken and egg problem. How are you supposed to get better at speaking your target language if native speakers keep refusing to speak it with you?

Now the answer might sound a bit counter-intuitive, but your first job is to get better at listening. When you develop your listening skills first, you eliminate the possibility of native speakers switching to English on you because you failed to understand them. Additionally, by focusing on listening first, you will also end up with better prounciation and a clearer accent, meaning that you’ll be a lot more likely to be understood by the native speaker, which will give them one fewer reason to switch to English on you.

From my experience, learners who put speaking on hold for the first couple of months (or years), and instead focused mostly on listening, ended up with much better pronunciation and accents than those who practiced speaking a lot early on. I’m quite aware that this idea is controversial in the language learning community, but this is just what I’ve observed and experienced firsthand, myself.

You will eventually have to get out there and practice speaking though. Being a good listener will only get you so far. And, besides, in today’s English-speaking world, I don’t think any language learner is truly immune to getting English’d anyways.

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Now before concluding this post, I want to touch on one more interesting consequence of the English threshold, which is that some languages have lower English thresholds than others.

For instance, it’s pretty common knowledge that the Japanese struggle more with English than the Swedish do. And so, another way to think of the two language groups is that Japanese has an overall lower English threshold than Swedish does. To surpass the English threshold in Japanese, you only need to know mediocre Japanese, but to surpass the English threshold in Swedish, you have to be really fluent!

As a consequence, if we agree that the minimum goal of any serious language learner should be to surpass the English threshold in their target language, then, in some practical sense, Japanese could be easier to learn than Swedish.

Or instead, to take a much less extreme example: imagine an American learning French in order to move to Quebec vs. learning Spanish in order to move to Mexico. For an English-speaking American, French and Spanish are about equally distant languages so they should be about equally challenging to learn in theory. But if we take into account the very high levels of English proficiency among French speakers in Quebec vs. the very low levels of English among Mexicans, it’s fairly obvious that, in this situation, French would be the harder language to learn.

Relating the above to my experience as an English-speaking Canadian learning French, I can tell you that there definitely is a higher bar in this country when it comes to your French ability. Because francophones here are so good at English, for them to prefer speaking French with you instead of English, you have to meet them at their level of ability and that level is high! I’ve personally heard of at least a handful of stories where English Canadians, who chose to do all their schooling in French immersion, have went to visit Montreal later in life, only to get English’d by the locals.

But now that I’m learning Japanese, the pressure to be really good at the language seems to have mostly faded away. I still intend to get good at Japanese though, it’s just that now I don’t have to.