potatoes and beans
potatoe said:
i feel that if someone travels to another country they are ablige to learn the native language or at least attemp to try and learn some, its just some common curtesy.
Hi Potato, nice name...
You are absolutely right : courtesy & respect are the two main ingredients of successfull travelling. That I know for certain.
But to some people, it doesn't mean a thing. For a large part of the population on this planet, being born in an english-speaking country is an excuse to be lazy and not to make an effort to be civilized and respectfull.
If you are "lucky" to be an European (excepted England), it's easy, since in very short distances you must be forced to speak 3 or 4 different languages. Go from Torino in Italy to... say Copenhagen in Denmark (you do that in less than a day, and you'll have to speak italian, french, german, dutch and finally danish). In tiny countries like Switzerland they "only" have 4 national & official languages !
Funnily enough, the four "main countries" (in term of population and/or surface) where english is the spoken language, are "isolated" : One and two are USA/CANADA, and it's well far away from anywhere else. We could call it an "isolated island". The other two countries are REALLY ISLANDS, since I'm talking about ENGLAND/U.K. and also AUSTRALIA.
For the US, and Canada too, they very quickly forgot that they are descendants of many and multicultural Europeans and that at the beginning, the population was nothing more than a reunion of hundreds of different languages. It is a shame that now they have decided that this was past and that they don't need to learn anything else since it is well known that wherever they will go, the english language will be spoken by more and better educated, more open minded people who are better adapted to today's world where changing countries and travelling is a matter of hours. I think their attitude is wrong and somewhat a little arrogant and irrespectfull towards other countries. For them it is :
"I take it for granted that they will speak english, wherever I go and comply with my expectation". I have heard a men from South US (maybe Texas or so) insulting a waiter in a 5 stars hotel in Italy because the poor waiter could not understand a word that was said due to the horrible accent the client had. No one in fact could understand him. It was my extreme pleasure to intervene (as a client) to tell the texan (or whatever) what I thought of his attitude. For those who have the (dis)pleasure to know my way of speaking you might well immagine that it was a very "floral speech". And that kind of situation does happend a lot and unfortunately often. Let's get back to the subject :
For the English, too, the same kind of "excuse" is valid, but I must say that with the opening of the European borders, the British have made some serious efforts to learn a second language, such as french, italian or spanish, so that they could migrate or a least spend holidays in the sun... The americans are not yet up to it. I do not speak so much of canadians since they have french brothers living on the same soil.
As for the Australians, they were extremely protectionist althought non-english speaking communities have been through the years and still are very important in Australia due to the very high levell of immigration during the years 1946 through to 1970. They closed the door briefly but soon realised that it was foolish and lacked a lot of good and qualified workers. So they had to open the doors again to Asian citizens such as Indonesians, Philippinos, Chineses, Malays, Korean and Japanese.
Now Australia has become a well balanced "country of the future" and in schools you can easily learn foreign languages. It is an open country and the australian population is becomming a multi-lingual, non protectionnist population. And that is good for the future, that is good for tomorrow's world.
Have a lovely day to all