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A discussion about your country! | ||
Tags: Place of Residence | Cultural Identity | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Satoshi Diglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5823 days ago 215 posts - 224 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 49 of 66 06 March 2009 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I have no particular complaints about them...
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| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 50 of 66 06 March 2009 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am from the UK. More specifically, London.
My country is famous for having a completely pointless monarchy, lots of big red buses, and a highly inefficient railway network. British people are famous for being emotionally stoical, being 'binge drinkers', having a dry sense of humour, bad teeth, and being distinctly UNsexy- so I am told. Technically the UK is part of Europe, but because we are an island floating freely just to the West of France, we are the 'outsiders' of Europe. Brits over 40 tend to refer to other Europeans as 'continentals'... Culturally and politically speaking, the nation is divided about Europe and really needs to make its collective mind up about whether it wants to move closer to America, or closer to the continent. We would get the Euro but lots of strange monarchists get very upset about the prospect of losing the HRM the Queen's head on all of our cash... as if the moral fabric of our society depended on it. Anyway... Perhaps ironically, London is the least 'English' place in the UK. There are really not that many native Brits (and even fewer native Londoners) to be found in London's city centre, but this diversity is what I love about the city- because London is nobody's home it automatically becomes everybody's home, if that makes sense. In fact, I wouldn't consider living anywhere else in the UK. The British countryside, though nice to look at in summer, is a real culture shock for Londoners, and vice versa. Us Brits could also do pretty well in a competition against the USA for national rates of obesity, teen pregnancy, and alcoholism. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| khatera Triglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5723 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Russian, Persian*, English | Message 51 of 66 25 March 2009 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello puccahaha!
I live in Moscow,Russia- the biggest country in the world.Well its a country with a huge history and culture,youd better read about in books.I just wanna say that its not what people usually think about Russia-there are no bears on the streets and people dont drink vodka instead of tea.lol Just said that becouse I often face with such opinions about Russia. And yeah,Russia is not only Moscow=) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheMonster Newbie United States Joined 5728 days ago 20 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 52 of 66 28 March 2009 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am from the U.S.A. but I'll write about where I'm from, Davenport, Iowa. Davenport is set on the Mississippi River, but the river is pretty dirty. We have a pretty nice downtown area but one can only appreciate the beauty at night when the bridges are all lit up. We feel the weather to the extreme. Hot, sunny summers, very cold, white winters, nothing but flowers and rain in the spring, and fall is all leaves and jacket weather. There isn't really much to do except hanging out with friends. The cops are plentiful and so are the "softdrugs", although as we all know they are not legal. Oh, and yes we do have cornfields. Plenty of them, but one must drive about 10 minutes out of the city. Surprisingly, this is an extremely urban area.
We have about 6 cities all connected but are more formally known as the Quad Cities. Edited by TheMonster on 28 March 2009 at 8:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 66 05 April 2009 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
Something to think about for London 2012 :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 54 of 66 28 May 2009 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Dark_Sunshine, I think you've done a pretty good job of summarising our country - although I don't live in London, I have been there many times and I am still pretty shocked by the huge amount of people walking around all the time - in the mornings you can scarcely walk on the pavements without knocking into someone, in my experience. When I am walking around London I am always amazed by the different languages you will undoubtedly hear just while wandering around. The Underground is terrible although I've admittedly never had too much trouble with the overground trains - a handful of delays but nothing which particularly sticks out in my mind. I think, also, that there are few places in the world which can top the chaos on our motorways. If you can drive in London, you can drive anywhere, most probably. In our German language classes at university (I do a module so as to keep it up; I'm worried about losing it) the main topics we talk about are teenage pregnancy, alcoholism and obesity; I wonder if there's a connection there? :P Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5669 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 55 of 66 28 May 2009 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am from Luxembourg, a country many people have never heard about before and so small that you will have trouble finding it on a map. Because the country is so small, we don't have a choice but learn our neighbours' languages, which is why Luxembourg is a trilingual country, everybody learns Luxembourgish, German and French almost simultaneously in primary school. We are one of the countries with the highest percentage of foreign residents, over 35% if I remember correctly, Portuguese and Italians make up the majority of foreigners living here. The population is only about 450 000 people and every day about 100 000 Germans, French people and Belgians come to work in Luxembourg. We have many European institutions such as the Court of Justice and the country's economy relies mainly on the financial and banking sector. At the moment, Luxembourg is trying hard to convince the rest of the world that it is NOT a tax haven.
We have beautiful countrysides, full of woods and castles and a very picturesque capital, Luxembourg city, with fortress ruins filled with history. Luxembourg is the only Grand Duchy in existence, it is a constitutional monarchy like the UK. Edited by Iwwersetzerin on 28 May 2009 at 2:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 56 of 66 28 May 2009 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iwwersetzerin - The language skills of Luxembourgers are so impressive! It also shows that being trilingual can be comfortably accomplished by normal 'mortals' under the right circumstances. I'd be really interested to see a documentary about how languages are handled in Luxembourg. I will try to visit Luxembourg sometime soon - it seems like a good country for a biking holiday if you have good biking tracks there.
What does your nick mean? It sounds like it might mean "translator" in Luxembourgish, perhaps? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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