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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA5243 ; Tue, 22 Dec 92 17:00:44 EST Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:9204 comp.os.linux:19962 Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!mailgzrz.TU-Berlin.DE!ceres.fokus.gmd.de!gmdtub!bigfoot!tmh From: tmh@keks.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.linux Subject: Re: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST) Message-ID: <TMH.92Dec19211451@keks.first.gmd.de> Date: 19 Dec 92 20:14:51 GMT References: <1gksolINNmkg@frigate.doc.ic.ac.uk> <mathias.724467456@sune.stacken.kth.se> <id.M2XV.VTA@ferranti.com> <1992Dec18.043033.14254@midway.uchicago.edu> Sender: news@bigfoot.first.gmd.de Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd Organization: GMD-FIRST, Berlin Lines: 58 In-reply-to: goer@kimbark.uchicago.edu's message of 18 Dec 92 04:30:33 GMT Subject: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST) From: goer@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) [...] Incidentally, although it's true that US Engineers often have really terrible language skills, this is due more to geographical isolation than to organic stupidity. There's just no need for multilingualism here in the states, the way there is in Europe, esp. in the low coun- tries and Scandinavia. So there are no hispanics in Chicago? I've heard it said and seen it written, that it's downright impossible to get a haircut in downtown Miami, if you don't speak Spanish (and easy to get your throat cut in any language :-) Chicago at the turn of the century must have been far worse than Europe; there were all kinds of nationalities there, far to many that everybody could learn each other's language. So they chose a "lingua franca" only that it was English rather then French (or Polish, as your name seems to suggest). I've heard that there was a vote in Congress at one point in the past of the US of A, where English won over German as the national language by a single vote !?! I had more than eight years of Latin in School (first foreign language in fift grade), then English in seventh grade, French in eighth and Spanish in tenth grade. Did some Chinese at the university for kicks and got along quite well in Rome last week, were people threw Italian at me (I threw back a mixture of Spanish and Italian words that I was picking up). You say that US engineers have terrible language skills. This is often said about engineers in general and not limited to the US (many of us are said not to be able to form a single grammatically correct sentence). What you probably meant was that US engineers didn't speak foreign languages. I believe THAT phenomenon isn't limited to US ENGINEERS :-) US citizens don't speak foreign languages, but so don't people from the UK. While I put some blame on the US educational system (very bad the foreign language section) part of it is an odd mixture of ignorance and arrogance. But mostly it is: Which language should you learn? Most everybody speaks English, so why bother? It is said that most people in the world speak Chinese. Unfortunately there is no Chinese but more than 600 dialects with often enough people from one village unable to understand a single sentence from people of the next village. Most educated Chinese speak the Bejing Dialect as a foreign language (an easy LANGUAGE to SPEAK, unfortunately it can't be written or read--you have to deal with the symbolic writing used by ALL Chinese and the Japanese). Perhaps you should learn Arabic (wide audience but some tough pronounciation) but in any case Spanish should be useful and easy to learn and apply in the US. Does this post contain a message or some deeper meaning? Not that I noticed, sorry for wasting your time... --- Thomas M. Hoberg | Internet: tmh@first.gmd.de 1000 Berlin 41 | tmh@cs.tu-berlin.de Wielandstr. 4 | Germany | BITNET: tmh@tub.bitnet +49-30-851-50-21 |