Re: [wolfrunners] Languages & SF/F (fwd)

Tom Wier wrote:

>Is this documented?  It's sounds like the stuff that urban legends are
>made of.
I can add some personal testimony to this type of behavior.  I lived in Spain
for 4 years (my Dad was in the military, and he got stationed there).  There
were many Americans who never went more than 20 miles from the base, and never
learned to say anything besides what you could get out of children's shows
(American ones, of course).  They even saved up their vacation time to use
once
they got back to the States.  Luckily my parents were not of that type.  They
often dragged us kids around to see the country, and forbade us to eat
American-style food when not on the Base.  It was miserable back then, but I'm
glad they did it.  Sort of like homework ... :-)

On more than one occassion, my family sat in a restaurant and watched American
tourists get increasingly angry as the employees were unable (or unwilling) to
speak English to them.  One time a man was shouting at the unfortunate owner
about how it was the law that all restaurants had to have bathrooms.
Hopefully he never made it to the fish market.

Back in the U.S., while I was working in a bookstore, we had this one regular
customer who was completely intolerant of anyone speaking anything other than
English.  One day we had a  Hispanic family come in.  They spoke decent
English
to us, but for obvious reasons spoke Spanish to each other.  This old lady was
quite offended by that.  Once they left, she went on a tirade about how
everybody in America should be speaking English.  In irritation, I pointed out
to her that in most countries you needed to be bilingual.  Her response:
"Well,
we're in America."  That explained everything.

I don't think this kind of behavior is typical of most Americans, but it is
for
a significant number of them.  And they are so obnoxious about it that the
rest
of us get a bad rap.

Marcus