It’s certainly not close if you live in L.A. And now let’s talk about our border down here. I would like to learn Spanish, and there must be innumerable excellent reasons for doing so. Mexico has a proud history and remarkable culture (as all countries do, but I think those of Latin America particularly so). But Tijuana is not much of an enticement to learn it. I’ve traveled across our northern border at Surrey BC/Bellingham WA, and I’ve traveled over our southern border countless times. If you haven’t done that, you can’t claim to know how different it is possible for border crossings to be. One, you don’t even notice unless you catch the sign marking it (I was on a train). The other is overwhelming. The poverty and gritty desolation, the TJ neighborhoods with streets that run up hillsides and end in cliff-like, rocky outcropping on the other side (that section of the border runs over some of the most rugged terrain you’ll see anywhere), the piles of burning tires, and four year old children with dirty, bare feet begging you to buy their Chiclets, or in one case, simply standing forth with a cup and demanding, “MONEY!”–all that hits you like a figurative sandbag on the back of your head. This isn’t to say that some American interests don’t share some responsibility for the conditions down there. But it is a fact that driving from San Diego to Tijuana is in no way like driving from Hamburg to Groningen, or even Detroit to Windsor. Nay more, Tijuana has traditionally been the magnet drawing Americans at their least sophisticated, for example underage college students seeking to get plastered, and who scarcely know or appreciate good liquor at all.
IME, it depends on how recently your family imigrated OR how dependent you are on a community of your peers.There are Greek immigrant families, just to pick one, with kids that are now fourth generation and in my son’s class as school, fluent in Greek and English. Why? Community values, church participation, Greek social clubs, etc. They go to Greek school once a week to learn, and so forth.Italians, Chinese, all the same way.
Again, IME, it doesn’t compare to the US as we have a larger variety of nationalities of recent immigrations.
Average Australians with families who came over in a non-voluntary fashion 200 years ago? Most of them I know just speak English, but, like in the US, are likely to have had a few years of another language in HS, the same as their parents generation.
Um. What Clothahump describes is very much like what I encountered when I first came to Norway. It wasn’t so much that I was American, mind you, but that I’m an English speaker. Since everyone in Scandinavia has to have many years of English in school, many English speakers, unfortunately, either don’t try very hard or don’t really try at all to learn the local language. (BAD idea, by the way.) When they encountered one who was really working hard at it, they were willing to do a lot to help me out.
The problem, of course, was how often “helping me out” turned out to mean “trying to speak with me in English” :smack: But they meant well.
I still encounter this in Denmark. The native English speaker who is trying to speak to the Danes in Norwegian and understand their answers in Danish? For her, we will slow down, enunciate, and keep things simple. Her Norwegian husband over there? He’s on his own.
Really, the degree of ignorance should hardly be measured by the number of languages one can speak. After all, learning another language takes months, sometimes years of study. More to the point, are we aware of what is happening in the world around us - general knowledge of other countries and current affairs of the world. Pick up the newspaper. Turn on the world news (not Fox News). Look out your window at Russia.
WRT Australia, I thought Cecil’s statement about distance was bit odd as well.
I don’t in any way claim any sort of greater intelligence, but I would definitely say (and yes this is purely from a personal observance) an average Australian’s awareness and knowledge of the going’s on in the wider world is greater than the average American’s.
You have GOT to be fucking kidding. You REALLY believe that??? This statement reveals no one’s willing ignorance but your own. I can’t remember when I’ve been so utterly dumbfounded by a statement on this board.
There is some truth to what he said. You will find conservatives deriding things like the “liberal media” and “elitist intellectuals” and “left-wing college professors” and “over-privileged college students” and “feminazi writers” and “radical artists” and all the other stereotypes that “attack American values”.
Well, only two countries actually. No offense intended to either Canadians or Mexicans, but one of these countries looks very much like ours, except for one province. Also the money’s different–there’s a picture of a queen on the coins by gosh! The other country that borders us, Mexico, has the drawback that the border towns tend to cater to American day-trippers’ and weekenders’ lowest of low-browed urges. You don’t go to those places to soak up the culture and heritage of Mexico. A TJ pub crawl or pilgrimage to Hussongs in Ensenada can in no way be compared to visiting Mexico City or touring the pyramids in Yucatan. At that point, we’re talking about places that’s a thousand or more miles away and requires a half a day of airports and airplanes to reach.
Yet I agree we are terribly insular, and the vast majority have little input from any foreign individuals or media. I wish people weren’t like that here, but they are. By contrast, I’m sometimes surprised at the way American news stories that seem to be of only local interest make the news in Europe. For instance, three or four months ago I saw a news story on German TV about the wildfires here in California. Now, we’ve all heard about the Australian fires, because of the criminal aspect as well as the extent of the death and devastation. That was an extraordinary case. But we have fires every year in California. They are dangerous and deadly to be sure, but not all that unusual.
And nominating an insufferable boor of a vice presidential candidate who plunged into the sea of knowledge at numerous colleges and didn’t get the least bit wet.
…than Europeans is debatable, but given that a slim majority just elected a racist, anti-Semitic, Marxist egomaniac with the IQ of a walnut doesn’t give me much hope.
I think it’s Vaclav Klaus, the Czech prez now heading the EU, who’s known as a free-market anti-environmentalist loudmouth. (Might have once been Marxist, though…)
I count nine before getting to the Panama Canal. Is there a barge or similar carrier that regularly takes a bus across the canal?
I doubt that there’s a nickle’s worth of difference in the intelligence of Americans and Austrailians, but I do think that perhaps Americans have been exposed to other cultures more. And the Europeans, of course, are still more exposed, the lucky things.
Since religious beliefs are most often a matter of nuture rather than nature, it might be a little ignorant to judge a person’s overall knowledge or intelligence by her or his religious beliefs. Try being a little more objective.
With no integrated system of passenger trains, buses, or even roads, I’m sure it’s it’s just as easy to get from L.A. to Panama City as it is to buy a train ticket from Amsterdam to Rome. Most of Latin America doesn’t have passenger trains at all, though I’ve heard some of the bus systems are a lot better than American Greyhounds.
And it need hardly be said that as you make the journey, the most prevalent language of the area you are traveling through will change only one time, and perhaps not even that.
Believe me, you do not want to go south past Mexico if you can avoid it, unless you’re taking a plane to South America (and not always there). It’s… just not a good idea.
Aside from which, the idea that you would drive there is insane. That’s be likely casually hopping in a car in Madrid to get to Moscow.
