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Tri lingual parties a regular occurrence? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4394 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes  Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 33 of 43 20 January 2014 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, the thing is, that back in Bulgaria if you'd want to get quality education, that would get you into good university at home or abroad, you go to a public school. Private schools there are usually made for those who'd go only to get a whatever high- school diploma, because mom and dad can do the rest with money. There are only two private schools that are as good as the top - tier high schools, and these are The American college and The Italian lyceum, but both of these are for the God chosen ones, and they usually cost a small fortune to study into. About knifing, nobody got knifed, though I thing I've seen people with knifes, yet everything else in the bullying deparment was very miserable indeed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4420 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 34 of 43 20 January 2014 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I enjoy the turn this thread has taken, from what language to speak in multilingual parties (and not in the political sense) to a discussion around language and religion/social class etc. And to tarvos, thanks for your contribution, I see that I was rather ignorant about the link between relgion and historical developments in the Netherlands. I learnt something.
To return to the original topic of the thread, almost every party I attend are with people speaking different native languages, so normally the common language will be French or English. It has happened from time to time that another lanuage has been dominant, e.g. a majority of German-speakers, but even then they will mainly keep to English and French in order not to exclude anyone. Only once, when there was a world cup football match on, Germany vs. Portugal I believe, the Germans outnumbered the rest of us 7 to 1, and obviously the match was eagerly commented in German.
I don't know how it is now, but when I grew up in Oslo in the 1970s, you could very easily tell who was politically leftwing or rightwing by the way they talked. Anyone who used a lot of female forms of nouns, verb endings in -a and a few other "radical forms" would normally be leftwing. People speaking some sort of "riksmål" would most certainly vote conservative. Of course there were exceptions, but in those days your choice of language was often a political statement as well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4488 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 35 of 43 20 January 2014 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Religion is a slightly strange subject in the Netherlands. Historically we were called
"tolerant" of religion (because Catholics and Jews were secretly allowed to practice their religion in protestant areas), but historically the divide between the separate religious classes (and even the liberals and socials) was always a part. This broke down during the hippie age in the 60s and 70s, when people from each pillar started intermixing. Until the 1960s or so, you belonged to either a Protestant pillar, a Catholic pillar, a Labour pillar, or a Liberal pillar (or in some cases a Jewish pillar). All newspapers, radio stations, later also television programmes, were affiliated with one of these pillars - people only watched their own pillar's programmes. So in the Netherlands, knowing whether someone was a part of the "reformed" or the "secular" or the "catholic" community was important. In many towns and cities, you will see that each area has a school for each of "Catholic", "Protestant" and "Public". This even went down to the names - the protestant schools were often named for the royal family, the Catholics after saints, and the public schools could be anything like "The Butterfly" or "The Two-Masted Boat" or the name of the neighbourhood or whatever. There is even a famous saying "Twee geloven op een kussen, daar slaapt de duivel tussen" (two beliefs on a cushion, the devil sleeps between them), which meant that different types of religion do not mix in a relationship. It may partly be historical but also refers to the distrust of the other pillars. However, since the 70s and the liberalization of thought in the Netherlands, those historical pillarizations may be relevant for older generations, but the current youth really doesn't bother with that affiliation anymore, unless they are very strictly religious (and that's a grand minority). By the way, I am a good example of a youth where the affiliation was lost - my family are all Catholics (oh woe betide the one who married a Protestant, but no one did), but the religion broke down in my parents' youth and was never transmitted past my own generation. This is a common occurence nowadays - parents who don't baptise their children even though they are baptised, or only out of tradition, not out of a particular religious belief. Edited by tarvos on 20 January 2014 at 4:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 43 20 January 2014 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
It has not changed much :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4034 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 37 of 43 20 January 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Finland there are virtually no private schools because for basic education it is forbidden by law to ask for tuition fees, or so I believe. Everyone goes to the same schools and I haven't really seen or heard of any class-clashing though I'm sure it exists somewhere.
Also I was raised godless in a godless household in a religious void and we don't speak of income as if it were taboo. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4553 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 38 of 43 20 January 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, quite a thread indeed. I haven't been following since I thought that I didn't have much to share in terms of experiences in trilingual parties, but now that I suddenly recalled the English-Norwegian-Japanese party I attended in Oslo the thread seems to have moved on! Oh well, if anyone's still interested in that topic, I've written about my experiences at that party here and here. Now on to the real topics :)
About discussing incomes, there does seem to be quite a bit of variation in cultural attitudes. Here in Russia, while talking about incomes in terms of exact numbers is considered somewhat rude, the rules are more lax when it comes to expenditures. I myself still run into a but of a "culture shock" about this. It's been a little more than a year since I moved to Moscow and got my first job, and I still can't get used to people whom I only just met asking me how much I pay in rent. Lately I've been wondering if it's a Moscow thing I don't get because I'm not from here, a Russian thing I never acquired due to having spent most of my formative years outside the country, an adult thing that I've yet to get used to as a recent entrant into the workforce, or a universal human thing that I fail to comprehend with my barely existent social skills. Seeing some of the other responses on this thread I guess I can rule out the latter two possibilities :)
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| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4150 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 39 of 43 20 January 2014 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thinking to all of my experiences with people of various nationalities, the only questions/assumptions about my income or religion have come from people who grew up in Poland or eastward. Very interesting how different subjects come up in different cultural circles.
The best multilingual event I ever went to was the wedding of two friends who are Bulgarian and Peruvian. It was a fun mix of Spanish Bulgarian Russian and English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4314 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 40 of 43 20 January 2014 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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At Christmas my wife and I visited my wife's aunt and uncle, with my sister-in-law and partner, my brother-in-law, and my wife's parents.
The parent's and aunt and uncle spoke to each other in Platt Deutsch. They spoke to the rest of us in Hochdeutsch. I spoke mostly Hochdeutsch with everyone, but English with my sister-in-law's brother who is more comfortable in English than German - he's French. My sister-in-law and he spoke French and made loving eyes at each at the other end of the table all night, at the other end of the table my father-in-law got into a heated political discussion over the democratic future of China in Platt, I spoke in German to by brother-in-law and he in English about his masters thesis on the underdeveloped nature of comedy writing in Germany. Lots of alcohol was drunk. Edited by patrickwilken on 20 January 2014 at 9:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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