CHAT Euro-matters (was: HUMOUR: "EuroEnglish": is thisforreal???)

Raymond Brown wrote:
>
> At 6:57 pm -0400 3/10/00, Robert Hailman wrote:
> [....]
> >With regards to (a), when I was in German this summer (unfortunately
> >only for 5 or 6 days), I was quite surprised by this. I had expected to
> >be forced to resort to my shoddy grade 10 German far more often then I
> >had to - almost everyone there spoke very good English, and anytime I
> >met someone who didn't, there was almost always someone within hearing
> >distance who would help me out with my German or them out with their
> >English. Also, many times, when speaking English, their accent was not
> >distinctly German - had I not been in Germany, I might have written it
> >off as some sort of British accent.
>
> Quite - that's been my experience also.  IMHO the stereotype "zat iz not ze
> vay vee do it in Germany" ought to have been buried long ago.  But then I
> suppose xenophobes would find some other way to caricature foreigners they
> don't like.   <sigh>
>
I find the sterotype that Germans are xenophobic quite comical, because
the people who perpetuate that sterotype are being xenophobic
themselves.

I know enough Germans to know that the sterotypes aren't true, and it
makes me sad to hear them.

--
Robert