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Linguistic comradery | ||
Tags: Cultural Identity | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5405 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes  Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 17 of 20 18 February 2010 at 12:23am | IP Logged |
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I have many times heard of people from Serbo-Croatian speaking part of Yugoslavia who were happy to meet anyone from the Ex-Yu when abroad regardless if they spoke Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian. If the same feeling of camaraderie was felt between the people who actually live in their native countries... Of course there are cases of people who won't talk to each other even if they meat a speaker of one of the Serbo-Croatian language abroad, but mostly the hostilities end when for example a Serb meats a Croatian in Germany, then they all forget they don't speak the same language. :-D
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| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5434 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 18 of 20 18 February 2010 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
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There's definitely a feeling of closeness within Spanish speakers. That comes just to
show that a language is not only a sum of words and grammar rules but the treasure of a culture. Each time I heard Spanish I don't only heard Spanish, I heard the smell of our food, the color of the sun I grew up staring at, the Spanish and Mexican movies I could see as a child, the voice of my first girlfriend that Christmas we went to dance salsa. All the jokes I know, all the things I've talked with my relatives, all the basic things I know about the worls, the books I've read, the song I've sung, all our problems and all our prejudices and all our complexes are written in Spanish to me. When someone speaks in Spanish is speaking in the language of my brother, my sister, my father and my mother. I don't think this is new to any of us around here. A lot of us learn languages because they let us access to a world of meaning and experience which is not only intellectual but also emotional. That's why I'm learning Italian, for example, not because I think it's especially useful. Someone said that it's weird the fact that two latin americans feel an empathy between them even if they're from very far countries or from two "different" countries. If you check Latin American history you will see that there's not such a thing as different countries in Latin American. Our history was exactly the same four centuries ago and it has been almost the same in last four centuries as well. We have our fair share of dictators, of corruption, of pseudocommunism, of United States influence and intervention (whether you think as it of positive or not), and most important, of constant feeling of being defeated by the rest of the world and constant proud of being more positive than the rest of the world. There's a feeling of union against a world with which we play a role: we are the "latins", everybody see us as one because that's what we are. And Spanish? Yeah, also the same. There's something in our genes that only us have (Italians have a little of that too); we have, for example, a sense of humour that only we can handle. Oh... Spain... we could go to every place in the world, and in none of them we feel as good as in out mother land, Spain. There we could feel at home. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5857 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 19 of 20 19 February 2010 at 7:26pm | IP Logged |
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There is such a feeling of camaraderie among Chinese too. This is especially true when you meet another Chinese overseas, even if they do not speak in the same dialect. This camaraderie will last as long as no political issues are raised (This has always been a problem for a very long time....)
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| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6142 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 20 of 20 19 February 2010 at 8:52pm | IP Logged |
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In military/intelligence circles there's a definite sense of camaraderie between the
Anglophone nations (US,UK,Canada, Australia and NZ). For what is worth, the next two groups in terms of "closeness of working relationships" (apologises for my tortured English) are both groups with very strong English skills - Scandinavia (incl Estonia and Netherlands) and South Asia esp India and Pakistan. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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