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Would you find it disrespectful? | ||
Tags: Relationship | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 61 15 July 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on the situation. For example, if I had the feeling the other person genuinely didn't care about my language and culture, I would pretty soon wonder why s/he was interested in me at all. If however I could see that my lover does have some interest but feels inhibited I could definitely understand that and I'd try to tone down my sometimes alienating nerdiness and perfectionism and be more encouraging.
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| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4700 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 10 of 61 15 July 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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This thread baffles me. Don't you love your partner? What difference does it make?
I think this is a pretty egoistic point of view. I'd help her learn German if she wanted, but if not, that'd be okay, too. I'd be with her for what she is, not for which languages she speaks. Edited by atama warui on 15 July 2012 at 9:34pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 11 of 61 15 July 2012 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Love, after the initial infatuation, is something both partners have to work for. And to me, that includes trying to understand the cultural background of the partner, to a certain degree. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 12 of 61 15 July 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
True, but we're also a much more connected global society now than we've ever been. It's much harder to ignore other cultures, in general, and if the other culture is American, it's near impossible. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 13 of 61 15 July 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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This may depend on where the two live. If a speaker of language A is living with a speaker of language B in country A, speaker B would learn language A by default. The issue then would be whether speaker A would also choose to learn language B. Well, some speakers of B would get exercised over speaker A not learning their language, some wouldn't. I myself am generally a believer that people shouldn't get into a committed relationship to learn all they can about their mutual cultures, but to be together. Now, of course, if speaker B has relatives that don't speak language A, it would be nice for speaker A to learn language B for family visits, but perhaps they can all just speak English (or some other common language) during those visits? :)
Another possibility is when a speaker of language A and a speaker of language B live in country C. This happens to be my own case, I am a native speaker of Russian while my wife's native languages are Hindi and Punjabi, although her English skills are near-native. She is busy and is generally not into languages, so she will never learn Russian, while I am into languages and have Hindi on my target list, but haven't really done much about it yet. We've been married for 23 years, so the English-only household linguistic arrangement seems to work for us. Edited by frenkeld on 21 July 2012 at 11:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 14 of 61 15 July 2012 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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It wouldn't bother me one bit. The fact that I found a partner that I truly love who doesn't speak English would make the learning of that language worth every minute I spent on it and could careless if they bothered to learn English or not.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 61 15 July 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Once upon a time my greatest wish was to move to Spain and marry a Spaniard. I cannot imagine that I would have found a Spaniard willing to learn Norwegian in a million years. I do not belive that this would have made me love him less.
Having said that, I always found it baffling how people could marry someone about who they did not have even the most rudimentary knowledge. A Norwegian girl I once knew married a guy from India, and I found more out about his cultural background in 30 minutes' conversation than she knew after 6 months of marriage. She had no idea what his native language was or which religion he had, and their cultural levels were light years apart. He was a very educated man, and she was practically an idiot. I lost contact with her shortly after, but I cannot belive that they were married more than the compulsary three years. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 61 15 July 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
You assume everyone speaks English or another large language. Which is not the case in many families. (Or for exemple try to explain to monolingual French family that you don't consider French to be enough "lingua franca" :-D). It may be egoistic but I'd feel strange if there was no way of communication between my family and my beloved one (apart from my translations) because I might want the beloved one to become a part of the family in future. And for this, the basics of the language would surely suffice because both parties would try their best to communicate. And the needed topics could be learnt on the go :-) And even though it wouldn't be an obstacle for the two of us speaking, I would take it as a sign that my partner doesn't consider my country to be an option for our future life at all. (Currently, I have the opposite "trouble", my czech boyfriend isn't too open to the idea of us living somewhere else :-D but it is slowly changing) The truth is that you can throw it all away because you are madly in love. But as someone already wisely wrote here, you are madly in love just in the beginnings, after that there is a lot of work :-) P.S. at this mixed-couple topic, I always remember not only the few mixed pairs I know but as well one documentary film about a Czech man and a Chinese woman who have been married for years (living here) and now they are both as good in the language of the other one that he even asks in Chinese and she answers in Czech. I know this is a level not necessary or needed for vast majority of couples, but for me, it is such a beautiful symbol of understanding each other, valuing each other so much and having spent countless hours speaking and obviously enjoying it even after years. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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