Re: Linguo-Racial Complex

Op Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:35:47 +0200 schreef Olusculum:

> I had the same experience in Russia this year, i can speak fairly good
> Russian with a foreign accent and some wrong endings and when i met
> strangers to buy tickets and stuff they automatically tried to speak
> English. By the way, it was useless because i could speak Russian and it's
> quite rude too because I was the person in the first place addressing them
> in their mothertongue and they forced upon me a language that I may not be
> able or not willing to speak. So as i'm not from an Enlgish speaking country
> it was as if a third invisible person would stand between us. So they spoke
> to me in a (often) broken English, maybe to show that they could, that their
> studies of English wasn't in vain, just to please themselves, and i answered
> in Russian. That's quite kafkaian ;)

Foreigners in my country (Netherlands) often complain that it's so hard to
learn the Dutch language because people always start speaking English to
them as soon as they discover they're foreign. But that's not rude, in fact
it is hospitality - you try and accommodate the guest. All the guest has to
do is politely explain that he _really_ wants to try his hand at the other
language.
I was in Togo, West Africa, and when I would try speaking a little Ewe
(nothing fancy, just a simple 'good morning') there, people would pass out
laughing. A _white_ man speaking _our_ language? That is so unheard off, in
fact that is such a breach of the very foundations of how things are in
this world, those poor people had no other way of expressing their
disbelief but to simply pass out laughing.
Same thing when I took a bucket of water and put it on my head. That's just
something a white person doesn't do. It's impossible.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on hccnet point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)

And then there's this:
at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
.

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