Posted on 01/18/2009 4:41:47 PM PST by redhotright
Thank you to all the Freepers who commented on my first Conversation with a Liberal at FreeRepublic. One of my favorite comments likened talking with Liberals to talking with houseplants. Thanks Popman.
Here's another true story for your amusement...
My wife was talking with some liberals recently who were discussing how Europeans are so wonderful and smart because they can speak multiple languages. The implication was that Americans are stupid because most Americans speak only English. My wife, being a naturalized American citizen who immigrated from Europe, was asked her opinion on the matter.
Without missing a beat, she replied, "I know lots of Europeans who can't even speak one language, much less two."
Dropped jaws and stunned silence. It's what I call 'The Liberal Look'. Or as Popman might say, they reverted to their natural houseplant state.
ping
wait until man made global warming is finally shattered, those looks will stick for months.... nah, they’ll just decline they’d ever heard of it.
English is the language of computer design and computer programming. Try writing a computer program using Chinese and their 5,000 characters to see how it doesn’t work.
The Liberal Look - also known as the Deer in the Headlights Look. Funny!!!
Your wife is right. By the way, I’m also a naturalized citizen originating from Europe. Learning languages is easy for anyone if you start them off early. Liberals are the ones who are stupid.
All you have to remember about talking to a Liberal.....FACTS are KRYPTONITE. They usually are repulsed by those....like Dracula to the cross......or a demon to Scripture. It’s funny as hell to watch. Watch the Exorcist, sometime. Exactly the same.
I’ve seen the same looks of the faces of 2 Brit airheads who were in the airport lobby 4 months ago and who struck a conversation with my Canadian GF who’s an RN in BC, Canada. She now practices in L.A.
“So you were a nurse in Canada? You must have the greatest healthcare in the world unlike here in America...”
GF: “Actually it’s the most horrendous. If you get surgery in Canada, the chances of you getting on the waiting list is 6 months average and the odds of dying increased since the 80’s. Well, it’s more than horrendous..”
The look on those people’s faces was priceless.
Have to remember 0 is ashamed of Americans when we go to Europe and cannot speak only English, and we must all learn spanish.. I wonder if the PE and his wife are enrolled in Spanish as a second language..
Someone tell it to the global warming flat earthers, as they are about to take charge. They are convinced they are going to “save” you from environmental destruction, through sacrifice (taxation).
You married a keeper.
That’s the truth! Spent a week at a resort in the Dominican Republic this past spring. It was inhabited by 95% Italian vacationers of which we found only a few who could speak any English.
I don’t argue with liberals. I feel like I’m beating up little children. Makes me feel ashamed and dirty.
The root of it is that the basics in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and to a degree, French can sound the same.
There are some people who do speak more than one language in Europe... just as there are here in the US.
Seems to me that your wife snidely sidestepped the issue of speaking multiple languages and how it’s beneficial rather than addressing the issue.
I’m a monolingual myself, I just don’t see how it could possibly be a point of pride.
Why would you assume that the natural second language for any given Italian would be English? The Italians you met could have easily been bilingual or better, and you just didn't notice because English was not one of the languages they spoke. Now if you told me that none of the Italians you met could speak German or French either, as they are common second languages in Italy, I'd be surprised.
Anecdotal evidence only, but having spent some time studying in the UK and Paris, it was pretty clear the all other things being equal, Europeans tend to know more languages than their American counterparts. All of the German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish etc. students in the programs I attended spoke at least 2 languages, in some cases more. I dated a German girl who spoke 4 languages. On the other hand, the American students rarely spoke anything other than English.
And I don't buy the argument that Europeans "need" to know more than their home language. That may be true for a Dane or someone from some other small country. But, a German, Frenchman or Brit could quite easily go through life without learning any other languages.
Knowing more than one language is always a good thing, IMO.
***I reminded her that if every state were a different country, we would speak several languages ourselves. She got that Duh look and said “I never thought of that and your right.” ***
A very good way to put it.
Europeans MUST speak several languages if they want to do business with their near neighbor countries. They forget that we have only two neighbor countries one of which mostly speaks English (and then there’s Quebec), and many people in this country speak Spanish.
That’s true. If you know English and Romanian, you can pretty much learn how to speak any language in Europe.
Why? APf
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