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

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Marcus Smith wrote:
> > 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.
>
> An Hispanic acquaintance of mine related a personal story about when he
> was speaking in Spanish to a friend of his, and someone actually walked
> up to them and told them something to the effect of "You're in America,
> speak American"!  Personally, I like to hear foreign languages,
> especially tonal ones, something about it just intrigues me, even tho I
> have no idea what's being said.  :-)
<shudder> I feel for your Hispanic acquaintance.

I've *heard* of people who honestly thought the Bible had been written in
English, of *course,* but it may be apocryphal.  OTOH I once went to a
small international church in Athens (I was there for a week on a school
trip), and the minister?  priest?  what do you call them?  (wasn't raised
in a Christian family, plus there seem to be a gazillion denominations,
so I apologize to Christians/religiously-knowledgable people who know the
terminology) had people read a passage from somewhere in the New
Testament (can't remember which, alas) in about 7 different languages.
English was the only one that had an apostle "James."  In all the others,
it was Jacob (or however it is in Aramaic?).  I had a fit of laughter
over that one.

YHL