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

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> > Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > > >> I think I have a pretty good background in languages myself (two years each
> > > >> Latin, Spanish, and French). However, Americans on the whole are generally
> > > >> ignorant/intolerant of other languages.
> >
> > Ignorant, yes.  Intolerant?  I'm not so sure about that.  I would say it
> > is easier to claim that Americans are not driven by economic factors to
> > learn other languages to the same extent that speakers in virtually any
> > other part of the world are.  In America and Canada, one can travel
>
> Perhaps "intolerant" is a bit too strong, but I've occasionally
> encountered attitudes in that direction.  Probably the most extreme case
> I heard of was a bicultural man who married a monocultural American wife,
> took her to Rome for their honeymoon, and couldn't understand why she
> seemed increasingly unhappy.  Finally she burst out, "I don't understand
> why all these foreigners won't speak English."  Needless to say, that
> marriage didn't last long.
Is this documented?  It's sounds like the stuff that urban legends are
made of.

> I went to an international school in South Korea and knew teachers who'd
> been there for 20 years, yet couldn't speak more than one or two
> phrases and were unwilling to learn.  It's an attitude I've always found
> puzzling; if I were dumped into another culture, heck *yeah* I'd take the
> opportunity to learn to say things.  But I guess not everyone feels that way.
Well, I don't mean to deny that Americans can be pretty provincial
sometimes.  My only problem is that most people who utter such
arguments (I'm not including you in this list) seem to be of the opinion
that this is something inherent in American culture or Americans
themselves, as if embedded in their genetic makeup.   Rather, such
outlooks are the result of complex economic forces, to a large extent.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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