6 ms·

> Of course Americans aren't constantly running into people from other countries/cultures Really? Not to sound like a prick but you must live in the middle of

by carguy1983 15y ago

> Of course Americans aren't constantly running into people from other countries/cultures Really? Not to sound like a prick but you must live in the middle of nowhere. I live in LA (santa monica, to be exact). I live next to an eastern European deli, kosher jewish, multiple Chinese restaurants, sushi, ramen, and yaki joints, thai, Peruvian, Mexican, Korean, Caribbean/Jamaican/Cuban Vietnamese, French, German, Ethiopian, Greek, Italian, "middle eastern", persian, mediterranean, russian restaurants / groceries / communities / -owned businesses/ the list goes on and on and on. And of course good ol' american BBQ, burgers and beer, standard fast food, ice cream, southern soul food, tex mex, east coast seafood, southern creole, ... Many people come here from around the world to work in professional jobs, also. And many students and faculty at UCLA, LMU, USC, SMC, etc, etc. It's just that many of those people all speak English, can act 100% "American" when they need to, and their cultures have become a seamless part of American culture. This is something else many non-Americans don't understand (and Americans don't see even though it's right under their noses). In fact, if you count the languages that "Americans" including 1st and 2nd generation immigrants speak, it's vast. Ugly truth: It's just that a lot of Europeans don't count asians, hispanics, blacks, as Americans, so you hear this crap all the time on the internet due to racism and stereotypes of what America is and isn't.

babarock 15y ago
This goes beyond the point at hand. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (I'm not from the US), but we're discussing the compulsive need to translate culture, present in the US but in other parts of the world (like aforementioned french-speaking world). Trying to define the racial "identity" of what's American and who consider it such is a slight straw man. Regardless of who is or isn't American, and what languages they speak, we're discussing the need for "original" titles. Here in France, referring to the movie by its title "Das Leben Der Anderen" would raise eyebrows at best, it would often get you dismissed as pedantic douche. In other parts of the world, it's a given that you just don't translate titles.
- carguy1983 15y ago
  It's not a strawman, it's the exact argument that freehunter posed (that americans never see 'foreigners'). I'm refuting it by saying no, that's not true, and the global idea of what an american vs. what a foreigner is cloudy at best.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that Americans never encounter foreigners, but that they never encounter an area where they have to speak another language and deal with another foreign culture. Think of it in this context: when I travel to Illinois, the people there are still American and still speak English. When a Danish person travels to Belgium (same distance, ~400 miles), they are now in a country where they speak Dutch/German/French and have a Belgian culture. There are almost 10 million Belgians in Belgium, there are just over 350,000 in the US. Of those, how many speak French, how many speak Dutch, and how many speak German? I'll bet almost all of them speak English.
jcurbo 15y ago
He probably does live in the middle of nowhere. I live near DC now (and lived in Germany for 3 years) and run into the same types of places you mention - ethnic stores and restaurants of all persuasions. However, I grew up in Arkansas and you'd be surprised how homogenous it was. In some of the bigger towns (I'm talking >10k) you might start to find ethnic restaurants, for example, but I rarely saw anything else you could call ethnic. So while your experience is common for the larger cities and urbanized areas of the US, I would wager for vast swathes of the rural areas of the country the experience is more like my time in Arkansas.
freehunter 15y ago
I live in a large Midwestern city (not Chicago), so we do have people of other cultures who speak different languages, but like you said, they don't speak other languages to those around them. If a Bulgarian goes to Spain, they have to speak Spanish. Only a small portion of Spanish people will be able to talk in Bulgarian. On the other hand, if I'm in New York and go to LA (a longer distance than Bulgaria to Spain), everyone still speaks English, even if they're not originally from the US. The US has a wide variety of American cultures, and only a small disparate minority of foreign cultures.
- VBprogrammer 15y ago
  In my experience it is far more likely that the Bulgarian and the Spaniard would communicate in English than in either native tongue.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    Another reason why Americans (and Canadians and Brits and Australians) don't need to learn foreign languages: many other people speak English as well. I spent the summer in Germany two years ago. I am conversational in German, but when I would talk to someone they sometimes picked up on my accent or my use of a grammatically proper word that didn't necessarily fit with modern German trends. About 50% of them instantly switched to English. Of those 50%, only about 30% went back to German when I said "auf Deutsch, bitte." What it ended up being was me speaking in German and getting responses in English. They were all too happy to use me to practice their English. We don't need to learn a foreign language, because a large number of non-English people speak English anyway.
Androsynth 15y ago
I think you got off topic just to make your point. I grew up in the bay area and have known people from every color of the rainbow, but the only group large enough to use their own language outside of familial situations are latin-americans. This is why a lot of native-english-speaking Californians speak at least a cursory amount of spanish, but nothing else. (unless they specifically took courses in high school or college, but thats a small amount of people) Interestingly enough, you will sometimes see latin-american movie titles in spanish (eg El Norte, Y tu madre tambien). I'm sure it doesn't happen as often as in Europe, but it still relates to the original point.
- carguy1983 15y ago
  If you grew up in the bay then you should know that Asians and have plenty of opportunities amongst friends and around town to use languages other than English. Then again, if you're white... you may not have been around during those times.
  - Androsynth 15y ago
    There are pockets of asian communities, but spanish is ubiquitous. But you may be right about me not being there. Latin-americans may be more willing to speak spanish around non-spanish speakers. The numbers just work out that way.
    - carguy1983 15y ago
      My personal theory on this is that spanish speakers have been in California longer than English speakers (thereby having feelings of relative native status), while various Asian language speakers feel the obligation to include non-speakers in their discussions when said non-speakers are around because asians and anglos have been in the bay for roughly the same amount of time (since the gold rush). Although ... Asian language speakers never feel the need for linguistic inclusion when hispanics are around. Not sure about the dynamics on that one. Might just be good ol' fashioned racism.
Kadin 15y ago
Well, that's LA. Most Americans don't live in LA. (Or New York, or the SF Bay Area.) Beware over-extrapolation of your personal experiences.
- freehunter 15y ago
  Even in these neighborhoods in LA, you never have to travel to an area where the road signs are printed exclusively in the language of a foreign culture or the money is printed in another currency (something Europe is getting on board with at the advent of the Euro).

babarock 15y ago

This goes beyond the point at hand. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (I'm not from the US), but we're discussing the compulsive need to translate culture, present in the US but in other parts of the world (like aforementioned french-speaking world). Trying to define the racial "identity" of what's American and who consider it such is a slight straw man. Regardless of who is or isn't American, and what languages they speak, we're discussing the need for "original" titles. Here in France, referring to the movie by its title "Das Leben Der Anderen" would raise eyebrows at best, it would often get you dismissed as pedantic douche. In other parts of the world, it's a given that you just don't translate titles.

carguy1983 15y ago
It's not a strawman, it's the exact argument that freehunter posed (that americans never see 'foreigners'). I'm refuting it by saying no, that's not true, and the global idea of what an american vs. what a foreigner is cloudy at best.
- freehunter 15y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that Americans never encounter foreigners, but that they never encounter an area where they have to speak another language and deal with another foreign culture. Think of it in this context: when I travel to Illinois, the people there are still American and still speak English. When a Danish person travels to Belgium (same distance, ~400 miles), they are now in a country where they speak Dutch/German/French and have a Belgian culture. There are almost 10 million Belgians in Belgium, there are just over 350,000 in the US. Of those, how many speak French, how many speak Dutch, and how many speak German? I'll bet almost all of them speak English.

jcurbo 15y ago

He probably does live in the middle of nowhere. I live near DC now (and lived in Germany for 3 years) and run into the same types of places you mention - ethnic stores and restaurants of all persuasions. However, I grew up in Arkansas and you'd be surprised how homogenous it was. In some of the bigger towns (I'm talking >10k) you might start to find ethnic restaurants, for example, but I rarely saw anything else you could call ethnic. So while your experience is common for the larger cities and urbanized areas of the US, I would wager for vast swathes of the rural areas of the country the experience is more like my time in Arkansas.

freehunter 15y ago

I live in a large Midwestern city (not Chicago), so we do have people of other cultures who speak different languages, but like you said, they don't speak other languages to those around them. If a Bulgarian goes to Spain, they have to speak Spanish. Only a small portion of Spanish people will be able to talk in Bulgarian. On the other hand, if I'm in New York and go to LA (a longer distance than Bulgaria to Spain), everyone still speaks English, even if they're not originally from the US. The US has a wide variety of American cultures, and only a small disparate minority of foreign cultures.

VBprogrammer 15y ago
In my experience it is far more likely that the Bulgarian and the Spaniard would communicate in English than in either native tongue.
- freehunter 15y ago
  Another reason why Americans (and Canadians and Brits and Australians) don't need to learn foreign languages: many other people speak English as well. I spent the summer in Germany two years ago. I am conversational in German, but when I would talk to someone they sometimes picked up on my accent or my use of a grammatically proper word that didn't necessarily fit with modern German trends. About 50% of them instantly switched to English. Of those 50%, only about 30% went back to German when I said "auf Deutsch, bitte." What it ended up being was me speaking in German and getting responses in English. They were all too happy to use me to practice their English. We don't need to learn a foreign language, because a large number of non-English people speak English anyway.

Androsynth 15y ago

I think you got off topic just to make your point. I grew up in the bay area and have known people from every color of the rainbow, but the only group large enough to use their own language outside of familial situations are latin-americans. This is why a lot of native-english-speaking Californians speak at least a cursory amount of spanish, but nothing else. (unless they specifically took courses in high school or college, but thats a small amount of people) Interestingly enough, you will sometimes see latin-american movie titles in spanish (eg El Norte, Y tu madre tambien). I'm sure it doesn't happen as often as in Europe, but it still relates to the original point.

carguy1983 15y ago
If you grew up in the bay then you should know that Asians and have plenty of opportunities amongst friends and around town to use languages other than English. Then again, if you're white... you may not have been around during those times.
- Androsynth 15y ago
  There are pockets of asian communities, but spanish is ubiquitous. But you may be right about me not being there. Latin-americans may be more willing to speak spanish around non-spanish speakers. The numbers just work out that way.
  - carguy1983 15y ago
    My personal theory on this is that spanish speakers have been in California longer than English speakers (thereby having feelings of relative native status), while various Asian language speakers feel the obligation to include non-speakers in their discussions when said non-speakers are around because asians and anglos have been in the bay for roughly the same amount of time (since the gold rush). Although ... Asian language speakers never feel the need for linguistic inclusion when hispanics are around. Not sure about the dynamics on that one. Might just be good ol' fashioned racism.

Kadin 15y ago

Well, that's LA. Most Americans don't live in LA. (Or New York, or the SF Bay Area.) Beware over-extrapolation of your personal experiences.

freehunter 15y ago
Even in these neighborhoods in LA, you never have to travel to an area where the road signs are printed exclusively in the language of a foreign culture or the money is printed in another currency (something Europe is getting on board with at the advent of the Euro).