If you follow Yellowstone, you’ll know what kind of a reaction that gets.
“Do you see a girl at this table?!?!?”
When we (my then partner, now wife) lived in Galicia we got to be very good friends with a Galician family. I, in particular became like a soul brother with the eldest daughter. She began to teach us Spanish. Angela decided to go for an 'A' level in English when she was 30 at night school. I should say that the standard then was far superior to that of today. She got an 'A' top grade.
Morroska hadn't gone to university in Spain but it soon became apparent to Angela andI my partner that Spanish is taught to a far higher standard than English is taught in schools in the UK. So much so that Angela was appalled at the standard of English of ex/uni students studying to be nurses, My wife was a lecturer in paediatric nursing.
My father left school at 14 (1924) passing his exams with excellent results and was offered a job in a lawyers office. He couldn't take it as his father was dead and his mother was dying of cancer. He was brought up in the second toughest area of Glasgow and I mean tough, if you weren't strong you didn't get to live. As he said to me when I was 10 'you would turn your head to the wall and die'.
So he didn't come from a privileged background but as he said in school in Scotland you had no choice but to learn. At 16 he applied for a job as a commi waiter at a 5* hotel in the Italian Alps. In 6 months he was speaking fluent Italian. He then applied for a job in Lucerne in Switzerland, where again in 6 months he was speaking fluent French. I think that back in those days this would be considered quite ordinary.
Today I am appalled at just how inarticulate the majority of English, Welsh and Scots people are. I doubt if some have a vocabulary of 40 words and I'm not talking about the 'mobile phone generation'. A lot of homes in the UK only have car manuals and nothing else. There was a survey done by a Sunday paper/journal around 1990 that stated that the Dutch read on average 5 times as many books as in the UK. Having lived in the Netherlands I don't doubt this is true.
I know and accept that language changes. There are words that Americans use today that were dropped in England not long after the American revolution'/rebellion but when I hear 'my bad' used that is truly appalling and the use of 'route' - phonetic - root spoken as 'rout'. Some American expressions I love and use daily as I do from Dutch, German, Spanish and French. What really appalls me is that still so many Brits expect foreigners to understand and speak to them in English. Dumbing down is happening across so many countries in the west - keep the people stupid, it makes it so much easier to control them.
Morroska hadn't gone to university in Spain but it soon became apparent to Angela andI my partner that Spanish is taught to a far higher standard than English is taught in schools in the UK. So much so that Angela was appalled at the standard of English of ex/uni students studying to be nurses, My wife was a lecturer in paediatric nursing.
My father left school at 14 (1924) passing his exams with excellent results and was offered a job in a lawyers office. He couldn't take it as his father was dead and his mother was dying of cancer. He was brought up in the second toughest area of Glasgow and I mean tough, if you weren't strong you didn't get to live. As he said to me when I was 10 'you would turn your head to the wall and die'.
So he didn't come from a privileged background but as he said in school in Scotland you had no choice but to learn. At 16 he applied for a job as a commi waiter at a 5* hotel in the Italian Alps. In 6 months he was speaking fluent Italian. He then applied for a job in Lucerne in Switzerland, where again in 6 months he was speaking fluent French. I think that back in those days this would be considered quite ordinary.
Today I am appalled at just how inarticulate the majority of English, Welsh and Scots people are. I doubt if some have a vocabulary of 40 words and I'm not talking about the 'mobile phone generation'. A lot of homes in the UK only have car manuals and nothing else. There was a survey done by a Sunday paper/journal around 1990 that stated that the Dutch read on average 5 times as many books as in the UK. Having lived in the Netherlands I don't doubt this is true.
I know and accept that language changes. There are words that Americans use today that were dropped in England not long after the American revolution'/rebellion but when I hear 'my bad' used that is truly appalling and the use of 'route' - phonetic - root spoken as 'rout'. Some American expressions I love and use daily as I do from Dutch, German, Spanish and French. What really appalls me is that still so many Brits expect foreigners to understand and speak to them in English. Dumbing down is happening across so many countries in the west - keep the people stupid, it makes it so much easier to control them.
I is an enjin ear, i dus suspektef you maybeif a little bit bitter deerest black stuart. but i haffest a vocabullary ov much moe than fortieth wuurds. whum is a soul brother? i have neather heerd that term in in inglish.
gust beeen to the henge today to sea the son set, buoy they were clever those old gits
at the end of the solstice, it don't really matter a f&8(
gust beeen to the henge today to sea the son set, buoy they were clever those old gits
at the end of the solstice, it don't really matter a f&8(
As Mrs toby said, just as we speak, every one has a different life and culture. It does not matter how we speak, we should accept one and other for who we are regardless of any differences.
Yes but let us speak clear and in clear words so we understand eachother. We agree that words can't hurt but actions can.
It's interesting that this is such a taboo; it's fine to point out that someone is fat, short, weak, clumsy, ugly, bald, specy four eyes - but point out that they're dum, and you've crossed the line. It's interesting that in almost all fiction, all characters are considered to have the same intelligence - I can only really think of Mrs Marple and asoiaf, perhaps Joe Abercrombie, that show that some characters are dum, and some are highly intelligent.
When talking to the average person, if you mention that someone isn't that bright, you'll often get a look of astonishment that you could say such a thing.
A work colleague used to be overweight whilst at school, and it was common for people make fun of him because of it, but if he pointed out that someone (who had just been making fun of him) was an idiot, the other kids would pull him up on it.
When I worked in the harbors of a large city long ago I got used to the most severe cursing and threats. Words don't hurt, they usually hurt the one that speaks them.
So I determine that peculiar feeling of being offended by calling things by what they are is a cultural thing and woke being the fuel poured to that fire. It makes for a complex society if one has to take into account what "gender" a person is and how to address, who he/she/it sleeps with, what religion or political group they belong to and what its/their sensitivities are. I don't care how you look, if you are male/female/neutral, that your hair is purple, who you sleep with and that you are a vegan but please just do your job 🙂 You earn respect with what you actually do not by who you are. Function over form anytime.
So I determine that peculiar feeling of being offended by calling things by what they are is a cultural thing and woke being the fuel poured to that fire. It makes for a complex society if one has to take into account what "gender" a person is and how to address, who he/she/it sleeps with, what religion or political group they belong to and what its/their sensitivities are. I don't care how you look, if you are male/female/neutral, that your hair is purple, who you sleep with and that you are a vegan but please just do your job 🙂 You earn respect with what you actually do not by who you are. Function over form anytime.
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I've been away from the forum for quite a long time, and came back to find this very busy thread...
You are not alone in being appalled that "so many Brits expect foreigners to understand and speak to them in English". But foreigners don't seem to be all that annoyed. For example when I'm chatting with couple of friends from Finland and Croatia, none of us speaks the language of either of the two others. Finnish has around six million speakers, Croatian has around five million speakers; they accept that there's very little motivation for speakers of "small" languages (in the sense of few L1 speakers) to learn other "small" languages; they accept that there's even less reason for a native English speaker (380 million L1) who also speaks French (74 million L1) to learn either of their "small" languages. English is the modern Lingua Franca that all speakers of "small" languages learn.
What is more annoying is when the Brits in question don't make any allowance for a particularly strong accent (Essex, I'm looking at you) peppered with dialectisms and seem to assume that the foreigner in question must be either stupid, deaf, or both. "A CAPPA TEE! OI SAYED, OI WAAʔA CAPPA TEE!"
(ʔ is the IPA sign for a glottal stop, depending on the fonts installed on you computer, you might not see it properly drawn on your screen)
I happen to like languages, I travel a lot and learn the basics of a language fairly quickly. I also happen to have lived a long time overseas and rubbed shoulders with people from dozens of different countries for a very long time.
Your average Brit, whose exposure to foreign languages might have been one hour of reluctant French per week for four years of secondary school followed by an annual fortnight in Benidorm, has neither the need nor motivation to learn more than a dozen words of Spanish.
I think it starts with; I speak English, which second language should I learn?
I learnt French at school, then worked in Germany for a year and learnt German. Worked in Spain and learnt some Spanish, then worked in Japan and thought I can’t possibly learn all other languages. Since then, I’ve stuck to hello, goodbye, please and thank you. Might learn how to order beer if I’m there long enough
Brian
I learnt French at school, then worked in Germany for a year and learnt German. Worked in Spain and learnt some Spanish, then worked in Japan and thought I can’t possibly learn all other languages. Since then, I’ve stuck to hello, goodbye, please and thank you. Might learn how to order beer if I’m there long enough
Brian
If you substitute Canadian for Brit in the above quote, you've got me. Unfortunately, with the arrogance, and impatience, of youth I never felt learning a second language, including what is the second of Canada's two official languages, was worth the effort. I regret that, now, and applaud the vast number of Europeans, Asians, and Africans, who can fluently deal with more than their native tongue.
In Turkish there is a saying about learning languages: Her dil yeni dünyalara açılan bir kapı!
Every language you learn is a door to new worlds.
Every language you learn is a door to new worlds.
Not bitter at all. When I worked in the Netherlands I only met one Englishman that spoke Dutch and he spoke it very well. All the Scots and Irish I met had learned to speak Dutch. Many English had been 'living' and working in the Netherlands for some years, never tried to socialise with the Dutch or other foreigners and spoke zero Dutch. That goes for those living in Spain in self made ghettos, expecting the Spanish to speak to them in English. By contrast the Dutch and Germans always made the effort to speak Spanish.
I first visited Spain in 68, spent 3 days intensively reading a Teach Yourself Spanish book before I went, the friend I went with learnt zero Spanish so I was always having to speak for him. It meant that when I went to live in Spain 33 years later it made it much easier to acquire a better knowledge of the language.
We found that when we lived in the Aveyron most of the English spoke little or no French and had made no attempt to make friends with the locals. This was the same mentality I/we had found in the Netherlands and Spain.
As to your reference to 'Stonehenge'. It is an outrage that this monument has a Saxon name when this monument was being created by the Euskadi/beaker people, the Saxons were still happily loping along on the northern Steppes thousands of miles away.
This monument should be named by the Euskadi/beaker people who had been living in the continent given a Greek name for around 40,000 years.
Keith,
You give a very good reason for Europeans/EU to have a unifying language. When the businessmen set up the EEC later to be known as the EU from the basis of the European Iron and Coal Federation, their first act should have been to decide on a unifying language. I can understand that there may well have been resistance to that language being English - they had an alternative - Esperanto.
Just think how life would have been so much easier for all Europeans socially, for travel/vacation, for working in other European countries and of course commercially. Each country teaching their own language of course alongside the unifying language. I was lucky I lived in a town that had lots of English language schools. Before foreign travel really took off the town was full of French/Italian/Spanish?/German/Japanese girls ( the boys were of no interest to me). How different they were to the English girls.
EU citizens have always had to pay for legions, 27 and counting of well paid interpreters, insane. I've always thought of myself as a European first. There is no contradiction or problem with race, it's nationalism that is the problem.
diyaudio is a success where lots of other forums have destroyed themselves with cliques of quasi-religious type factions. There are only a few narcissists, the rest of the members don't present with nationalistic/political mentalities - a good blueprint for the EU, long may it continue.
Why learn to speak Dutch when they speak English so well? Not much use learning Dutch for use in the the rest of the world..
Bitter?
Whoever built it were just as intelligent as us, they became us in the mix....