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Thread on "Language Banditry" | ||
Tags: Language Banditry | Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 41 of 140 19 January 2009 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know there are some potential areas for "cultural misunderstandings" between Westerners and mainland Chinese... [but people who can't live with that shouldn't be there...!]
Or take the Mandarin classes in Singapore maybe! Should be clean enough for you, at least! :-) They are probably still running their "Speak Mandarin" campaign - not kidding! It was on TV all the time and even expat kids were offered free Mandarin lessons in thre holidays.] But surely nobody is complaining about the Japanese! They are among the most polite people on Earth and additionally the country is cleaner and better organised than most other countries. The Japanese probably wouldn't treat a Korean, Filipino or Indonesian learning Japanese in the same way that they'd treat a Caucasian... That is the interesting thing and probably the core of the "problem" that people are having. It's just that it's our turn to experience some extremely mild and completely harmless "racism', e.g. being treated like a spectacle just because you are able to ask directions and give the time in Japanese... (I didn't have the problem myself despite being very blonde. But on the other hand my Japanese was so rubbish that it wasn't worth fussing over I guess! ) Ever seen those ridiculous "laugh-at-the-gaijin" shows in Japan? The people on the show are always white or occassionally black, never Asian. They also have a preference for women. I'd like a word with the people who agree to go on such shows!! Edited by cordelia0507 on 19 January 2009 at 4:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 42 of 140 19 January 2009 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with everybody who have said that Musigny's approach is the most sensible. He's definitely got it right. Clearly this approach has served him well since he has learnt two foreign languages fluently as an adult. Iversen's comment made a lot of sense too, I thought!
My comment was NOT referring to the language situation for Americans which don't know much about. But this is an International forumn, right? I am a European and live in Europe. So is a large proportion of the other people on the forum. My career is partly dependent on how well I can handle certain matters relating to language usage on a daily basis. I take it very seriously. (I am currently leading Software development's answer to "Eurovision from Hell..." "And from the jury in Rome, regarding the new order management system, we say Null point (lol ;-) Everybody is at each others throat. Language + localisation of the software is one of the biggest problems. If I can avoid further annoying important people by at least not offending their languague skills then that is a plus point that I very much need. I'd be quite pleased to swap the whole mess for Yankee English right now.} Edited by cordelia0507 on 19 January 2009 at 5:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 44 of 140 19 January 2009 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah but it would likely be English, so you'd be back to square one anyway! You'd have a mother tongue that can only be used in one country + English which you had to spend a considerable amount of effort learning... The grass isn't greener, really!
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| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5997 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 45 of 140 19 January 2009 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yeah it depends what your definition is, and it sounds like you have a crap one. So let *me* get this straight — because I take interest in the language I don't have the right to live in a country where it is spoken and expect the same dignity and respect that any other stranger on the street who is not white would get? Am I missing something or was the logical part of your brain severely damaged at birth... I mean, really!!?? What the... It's called Chinese people don't care if we have anything in common or if the conversation is so boring both parties would rather commit suicide, they still want to assault me with English because the point is not talking to me as a human being but using me as an English improvement tool. There is no way in hell I'm going to talk to a boring Chinese guy/girl that I have nothing in common with just because they happen to speak 100% in Mandarin to me. There is no way I am going to end up friends with or in any kind of a relationship with any Chinese person that I wouldn't have ended up friends with if they were originally born in America a native English speaker, I couldn't be that fake if I tried. YOU DON'T SEE THE DIFFERENCE? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5997 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 46 of 140 19 January 2009 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I thought I might not have to explain on a forum for language lovers! The point is not that the COUNTRY is good for one thing — the point is that this LIFE is good for one thing! If all languages other than English ceased to exist tomorrow, I'd really have to do some searching to find a new reason for living on to be worth it... if I found it to be worth it at all. And yeah it's bitter, but that's the point, trying to express the years of frustration by showing some emotional bitter but maybe not terribly objective sentences that pop in my mind from time to time :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6073 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes | Message 47 of 140 19 January 2009 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I remain unsure that I understand. Allow me to attempt to clarify your position. You're in that "filthy country for just one reason, the language" -- your words, not mine -- i.e. to use Chinamen and Chinawomen and Chinachildren to improve your Mandarin. And yet you rail against these same Chinapeople for the temerity of trying to use you? Am I understanding you correctly? If so, I'd say that you of course do not owe them anything, but neither, as it happens, do they you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5997 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 48 of 140 19 January 2009 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
(If anyone is following Goindol's argument better than me, I'd appreciate you adding to this conversation and clarifying anywhere you think I am mistaken.) I've done my best to explain my non self-contradictory logically rigorous understanding and conclusions on this topic, so I don't know if you want to actually make an argument against some detail I'm spelling out in words, or just fuss about a "deeper meaning" you are trying to take out of just one sentence that doesn't follow from what I am stating in total. By definition if I am in a country, speaking the language of that country in such a way that it causes no persons around me to suffer any ill consequence or frustration, I am *by definition* simply "living" as everyone else in the country is "living". Regardless of what any Chinese guy here thinks of his compatriots and of life itself in general (such as "this place is filthy and sucks") he is not going to get similar criticism from you, so why does my race or nation of origin somehow add something to this equation and suddenly mean I am "using" people just because I've come to have a negative view of life here and am interested in language and nothing else? The reason I use words to describe the place from the outside looking in ('this place' 'filthy' 'these people') is because this is the view that is continually forced on me every time I try my best to go about my life in a normal way as if I was any other random person who had been and always will be *here*. I'm trying to participate as a normal member of society but being continually forcibly "differentiated" from the crowd. Chinese people like to play a sick game with me that I know no Chinese would tolerate me "playing" on them if we were in the USA. We go in two or a group to a certain place of business and suddenly the Chinese accompanying me decide to humiliate me by serving as my "translator" in the transaction. Instead of directly communicating what I want to the business in a way they can understand, my request must pass through English, a bad interpreter, Mandarin, and finally arrives quite different from what I had requested at the ears of the business and ... then the process goes back in forth in negotiation for an absurd amount of time until my "translator" has gotten things right. You say they do not owe me anything. Well if "owing" respect in place of the alternative of humiliating me, a negative value, is owing me something—then what do you say to me "not owing it to them to not beat their faces in". After all, what did they do for me that makes me "owe" them to withhold my rage? THIS IS A PECULIAR USAGE OF THE WORD 'OWE' INDEED! A Chinese in the USA would very, very rightfully be suspicious of a strange American who approached with a far from perfect command of Mandarin, showed no legitimate reason for friendship (common interests or at least a feeling of the conversation being interesting) but insisted upon it, responded very negatively to the sound of English coming from the Chinese's mouth, made implications the Chinese is a "yellow" and thus it is somehow "bizarre" and "unfathomable" for "white language" to come from his speech organs, insisted on talking on and on about himself in all gaps of silence in which such speech did not advance any natural conversational thread, and seemed completely and entirely oblivious to the fact that the Chinese is a full-blown manifestation of Homo sapiens replete with soul and feelings. I reckon most Chinese would rightfully not give the scumbag the time of day. But for some magical reason which I cannot fathom, because of no fault of my own and the fact that I was accidentally born into a country where the English is spoken natively, or perhaps because the incidence of such creatures seeking Mandarin in the US might be a millionth of the population or less while they comprise possibly as much as 10% of the Chinese population, I believe that you are asserting the situation is suddenly different when I go to China from what it is for the Chinese coming to America. If you are *not* asserting this, then can you explain to me why the Chinese in the USA should not be doubting the intentions of the American stalker Mandarin bandit?? I make no contradictions here. No matter the fluency of my Mandarin, I would never presume the right to FORCE an unwilling Chinese person in the US to deal with me, likely humiliating him in the process, in Mandarin so long as his English was not lacking to the point that it caused me to get frustrated at the difficulty involved in communicating something that needs communicated. I don't owe him a damn thing, but common respect and courtesy is a default not a thing which must be "owed". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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