I remember reading a post thread of advice on how to realistically write dialogue for characters who aren't fluent in a language, in which someone confidently criticised the scene in Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Nog says "The beach is transparent" (instead of "the coast is clear"), claiming it was unrealistic because nobody learning English as a secondary language would make that mistake. I didn't really think anything of it at the time, but I've found while hosting international students that it's actually fairly accurate. I've had someone tell me they go to "secret school" when they meant "private school", for example, or been greeted with "good today" instead of "good day". I think any English speaker who learns a second language does it, too – if you don't know the correct word, you reach for the closest word possible and hope you'll get your meaning across, no matter what language you're speaking. It's also quite likely that words get mixed up because their meanings have overlap (see private -> secret), and if you haven't grown up navigating those nuances it's hard to remember them WHILE ALSO speaking a language you don't use every day. In a similar vein, an English speaker speaking French might use "mademoiselle" to refer to an older woman in the same way they would use "Miss" in English*, even though mademoiselle has different connotations in French language and culture. So while "the beach is transparent" is probably not realistic in that it was played up for comedy, the concept underpinning it is certainly plausible.
*this was a mistake I and other classmates often made in French class because our school was big on referring to teachers as "miss" or "sir", so we tended to default to "mademoiselle" because it's translated as "miss", but it actually operates a bit differently!
tangentwithtanner
