Re: Hello to you all!

On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Keith Gaughan wrote:

> From: Frank George Valoczy [mailto:valoczy@VCN.BC.CA]
>
> > What I have found on my travels. The Icelanders are amazed that anyone
> > bothered to learn their language, the Swedes similarly. The
> > Finns I met were the same way until they found out I'm Hungarian, then
> > it seemes as though they took it to be natural that I'd be learning
> > Finnish.
>
> Here in Ireland, people are shocked when a foreigner can actually string
> two words of Irish together. The sad thing is, the foreigners are
> usually better and more proud of the language than the natives, in
> which I sadly number :-(
A mate of mine here was stationed in Belfast when he was in the army, and
a couple of years back a friend of his from Antrim came out to visit
us. Now me being completely ignorant of what's what there, when her
birthday came around (while she was here) I went through great difficulty
to find out how to write "Happy birthday" in Irish, and I got the cake
with that written on it...and then she told me she didn't actually know
any Irish....

>
> > He was not amused. In Germany I've never had
> > anything like Christophe mentioned, rather, everyone I speak to is
> > convinced that I'm from some little village in the south.
>
> Or Switzerland!
>
No offence to any Swiss who may be here but, fortunately, I haven't been
accused of that! More often than not the guess is someplace like Sachsen
or Bayern or Austria...

---ferko

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