Learning Foreign Languages

[Yankee]

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

Hi Jamie

Judging by what's on TV and in the newspapers around here (it's a 2-hour drive to the nearest major city, but by no means sparcely populated here), international news is pretty limited. I know there are certain current topics that are being covered pretty intensively in the schools (environmental issues, for example), but news in general, and especially international news, doesn't appear to be something that receives that much attention in the schools.

I've noticed, though, that many teenage boys around here tend to be right up-to-date on the very latest news about things such as X-Box recalls.
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_________________
Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Jamie (K)]

Amy, international news is limited everywhere. Educated Germans who I teach in the US complain that the American media hardly cover the rest of the world at all, so then I start grilling them about what their own German media are saying currently about Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Brazil, or about countries in their own back yard, such as Bosnia, Albania, Ukraine or Poland. Do you know what? They can't tell me anything, because their own media also give very scant coverage of international news. They can seldom even tell you the major issues that are current in the US, and if they can, it's usually with some bizarre slant. But something creates the impression in them that international news is covered in their media but not in ours.

Boys in my neighborhood also know all the details of the latest gameware. However, one day I was in a large bookstore when a couple of thuggishly dressed 16-year-olds passed me. I thought they were there just to pick up something they "had to get". As they passed, however, I heard them talking in standard English about various 19th-century classic novels they'd read. They were books that I know are not required reading at school, so I guess these "thugs" had been reading relatively difficult literature for pleasure.

Don't get me started on the teaching of environmental issues in the American schools. It's always activist driven and involves bogus "science" that predicts things that never come to pass. Are you old enough to remember when they scared us into believing that the world was cooling so rapidly that the polar ice caps would soon expand to cover New York? Or that by 1980 there would be no petroleum left anywhere in the world? And, of course, these things were said to be caused by the same "sins" that they now say cause "global warming".

[Yankee]

[Jan]

Good evening,

About languages : coming back home by Air France waked up early in the morning
with a standard question if you need to fill in emigration registration card ( we were bounding for Paris from J'bourg ) I two times repeated "me" - in transit to Berlin
and "I am Polish"
The very pretty French Stewardess said "in that case certainly you would need to register"
Again after reading the handed paper .
It is not for EU countries citizens Madam I am from Poland
Guess the answer
Where is Poland? Is it Europe?....

Now you may imagine why French language have some handicap with expanding .... .
Lack of education , I am afraid just guess to f...k what should I talk about with
a woman with smart clothes but empty head?

Jan

[Conchita]

[diverhank]

[Jamie (K)]

[diverhank]

Yes, those rednecks from Michigan who are on drugs and make sh*tty cars

[Jamie (K)]

[lost_soul]

Hi, Jamie

I thought gay is used to describe something that sucks, not only to describe homosectual
Thinking that everything relating France is gay maybe they just think that France sucks?
_________________
Alex

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet home Alabama
I'm comin' home to you

[Jamie (K)]

No. You need a little terminological history.

In what is now the old days, the formal term for gays was "homosexuals" and in slang people called them "queers". The word "queer" means strange or bizarre.

There is a tendency in the United States for groups that many people dislike (or of whom some members do things that people dislike) to insist that the media and society in general start calling them by a different name. For example, Americans of African descent used to be politely called "colored". However, that started to get a negative connotation, so their activists promoted use of the word "negro". A while after that, they changed it to "Negro", then several years after that they insisted on "black", then "Black", and a couple decades after that "African-American". (However, in reality blacks generally still call themselves "black", and it's mainly whites who are expected to use the term "African-American".)

In the 1970s, homosexuals wanted to try the same name-change trick to try to give themselves a positive public image, and their activists insisted the word "gay" be used. This word didn't mean homosexual, but actually meant "joyful". The word change didn't improve homosexuals' public image. And some people even got angry because "they stole a perfectly good word from us."

Proof that a name change doesn't change public opinion can be seen in the fact that when the word "gay" was promoted as a positive term for homosexuals, kids just used it to replace the word "queer". So, where kids in my generation would have exclaimed, "How queer!" when we thought something was strange and stupid, kids for the past couple of decades have exclaimed, "How gay!" instead.

The boys don't think France merely "sucks". They really think of it as "gay" in the homosexual sense. You can see it in their movements and facial expressions when they imitate French people. As I say, this is because they're mainly exposed to feminine aspects of French culture and are not exposed to masculine aspects.

By the way, the word "sucks", used to mean something is bad, is part of a longer, very racist obscenity, so you should avoid using it in polite company.

[Jan]

Hi,
Some occupations for example Air Lines Stewardesses are expected to understand the answer in the same language which they had just asked for something themselves.
English is not the Esperanto but what to do...???
They use it profoundly all over sky.
Knowing Geography ... well ?
- for English teacher just politeness but for Air France Employee ???

About woman in smart clothes and whatever in the head instead of brain.
Yes of course you are very right I don't mind....
Sometimes just dreaming how nice could it be to match both in once.
In You case I certainly would accept all given choices what ever conclusions.
Some seem to be so gorges they don't need to say a word ...
I mean woman or man , queer or gay any knowledge may be devastating for sex appeal.

Jan

[Jamie (K)]

I had an experience on LOT Polish airlines where the stewardesses who claimed not to speak English could be understood easily, but the one who was supposedly fluent was absolutely impossible to understand. When the "fluent" one gave announcements over the loudspeaker, I never noticed when she had switched from Polish to English.