 #16 (permalink) Sat Mar 18, 2006 4:07 am Internal Combustion Engines and Bill Gates in China |
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| cooliegirly wrote: |
| because the "non-understandable" part is actually going into your brain and become your input unconsciously, eventually you will find yourself saying something you don't think you have learned. |
You're sure right about that! I remember one day when I came out with a sentence in Czech that seemed much too sophisticated for me to produce. Then I backtracked and said it in my old stupid way. My friends said, "No! You said it right the first time!" I couldn't figure out where I'd gotten it.
| cooliegirly wrote: |
| About American movies, they don't represent what the majority of Americans are like, but a group of rather liberal artists living in this one city. Same as that Hong Kong action films don't represent what an average day in Hong Kong is like, oh, wait....what happened yesterday doesn't count! |
When they were in college, my sister and her friends were having a lot of trouble with male students from one very repressive country in the Middle East. The guys had seen a lot of American movies somewhere, and from this some of them thought they could just walk up to any random American girl and ask her into bed. (Some of the guys would talk to them for 10 or 15 minutes first.) The girls refused, of course, and the guys usually took it as a very personal insult, and would get very angry. I never understood it until I was corresponding with one guy in the Middle East and he asked me, "Is it true that in America you can sleep with a girl half an hour after you meet her, just like in the movies?" Then I finally understood the adjustment problems of those foreign students.
American movies are full of all kinds of strange ideas that most Americans don't have. And I noticed when I lived overseas that many of the best American movies don't seem to get to other countries.
I've met foreigners who were surprised when they found out that only 13% of the US population is African-American. From our movies and TV shows, they thought it had to be at least 40%. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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