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I'm always reminded of an anecdote my father told me. Once, when he was working abroad in Australia, a faxed document arrived in French, which no one else on s
by mpk 17y ago
I'm always reminded of an anecdote my father told me.
Once, when he was working abroad in Australia, a faxed document arrived in French, which no one else on site could read. So he translated it to English.
This prompted a coworker to comment "How nice, you speak two languages!" So he reminded this person that he was, in fact, Dutch - he could speak that as well.
"Oh, that doesn't count, it's your native language!"
....
- dkokelley 17y agoHe should have asked the coworker how many languages he spoke.
- mpk 17y agoThe coworker only spoke English. My dad made some remark about his coworker not speaking any language at all, but I figured you'd get that from the context. I mean really - that's pretty easy from here on out, right?
- dkokelley 17y agoVery straight forward. The point was to see the coworker realize on his own that by his own standards he spoke no languages at all.
- jhancock 17y agobut could your father speak Australian?
- radu_floricica 17y agoWell, in all honesty English is _not_ a foreign language. Except maybe for the Chinese and Japanese, who have a strong enough culture to survive without it.
- snitko 17y agoThat's exactly what I thought about. Nobody cares anymore if you speak english. Instead, it's just almost weird when you don't.