"Do you speak...?"
So this will be a straight up rant. I only have about ten minutes left on this internet and heading to the beach today makes the next internet stop questionable. This week's cultural topic is:
LANGUAGE
Many people study them, everyone speaks at least one (I guess except for maybe deaf people and I guess even deaf people can sign, which is kind of like speaking, but in the technical sense, not really). But I always find it unbelievable when people speak many.
I speak english and french and I'm fairly priviledged in that respect, being virtually fluent in both languages and I can get by in Spanish, which is nice. At one point last week I was bored not knowing what's going on, so I picked up a Spanish newspaper and understood a great deal of it. Unfortunately, local news from rural Spain doesn't really concern me too too much...and global news would have been more of an asset. But nonetheless, understanding and being understood are very very important.
Half the fun of being a tourist is getting around, and though this will sound pretty ignorant, but being in a different country with a language different from any that you speak is a real bitch. In Europe, though, people are brought up to learn at least two, if not more and usually if they speak more than two, they speak at least three really really well. Luckily for me, the most commonly taught second language is english. The third most commonly taught third language is french. So I'm well set up.
But there can even be differences in within the english language, the most apparent ones are between british english and american english, where the use of the "our" v. "or" suffix and "ise" v. "ize". Also, did you know the word "properly" isn't a properly used word in American? Yeah, I just learned that too. It wouldn't be correct.
But what the hell is correct, anyway? As long as we can be understood, who cares about anything?
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