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Insolent tourists: counterattack? | ||
Tags: Travel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 25 of 32 03 June 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love it when people make fun of my language. Börk börk börk.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 26 of 32 03 June 2011 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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You call that a language? I doubt anyone can pronounce it like that, are you sure it's not more like 'bork bork bork' ? :)
OK, I've just remembered one when >I< was the obnoxious tourist. I was in Vienna, and I had hopped on an escalator going down into the metro system, when I noticed a signal that read 'Bitte auf rechts stehen'. So I was there thinking, 'oh that's a good idea, you stand on the right side of the escalator so if somebody's in a rush he/she can walk past you using the gap you leave on the left side, and they even tell tourists so they don't get in the way...' when some angry guy screams something right into my right ear and walks past me before I snap out of my reverie. It took me a second to stop being outraged at how rude that was and notice that I was standing on the left side of the escalator, and what the guy had told me was "bitte auf rechts stehen", precisely. Edited by mrwarper on 03 June 2011 at 11:26pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5767 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 27 of 32 04 June 2011 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
I returned to my childhood Winterpeg last January for a visit after an absence of about thirty years and I actually was excited about practically everything, but most of the citizens just thought I was slightly simple or something. Congrats on geting the Jets back; I will be sorry for the city if you lose the Moose. P.S. Go 'Nucks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 28 of 32 04 June 2011 at 9:22am | IP Logged | ||
The dots are for aesthetic purposes only. Everyone knows they don't affect the pronunciation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 29 of 32 04 June 2011 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
Now THAT's obnoxious, dude! You come to our Internet demanding that we all speak a half-made up language like natives and to top it off I have to stick yet another key in my keyboard just to please your aesthetic criteria? Who do you think you are, Tolkien? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4857 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 30 of 32 05 June 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking as a Metropolis denizen, it's not the tourists but rather the linguistic sub-cultures that many large cities so proudly sport that annoy me. I can only hope they're tourists unaware or the size of the language communities.
A great number of Russian and Spanish speakers here, commonly behave as if they're a reincarnation of shrink-wrapped Travolta from a "bubbly" movie -- that's to say behaving as if nobody but immediate company is able to understand them. I don't have enough fingers to count all the times, when I've heard the recepient of loud and often obnoxious comments, mumble off 'idiots' under their breath as they or the offending party were getting off at their subway stop. At least the hilarity that sometimes ensues beats trying to appear to be fascinated by the empty space between your fellow passengers' heads while silently acknowledging their identical intent. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 32 07 June 2011 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually I think "Börk börk börk" is fairly accurate. OK, it came from a Swede so..
Generally I don't get too offended by people who make fun of my own language, Danish - we can speak twice as fast by leaving out all the unnecessary sounds, so obviously it is a sound tactic. But this thread started out with a far worse problem, namely the generally offensive, obnoxious and disruptive behavior of some persons. The big question is whether this problem is accentuated when they are abroad. Personally I think that this could be the case, because the persons in question assume that their bad jokes aren't understood abroad, and that their mum won't won't hear about their antics. Plus the possibility that those persons stay drunk for the whole duration of their holiday, whereas they have to get sober at least half the time at home in order not to be fired. The jokes about foreign languages are fairly peripheral in this context. The big problem is the nasty side that is revealed when people let loose. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5918 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 32 of 32 07 June 2011 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
And a lot of the necessary ones, too! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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