Who said anything about knowing every language in the world? I am merely puzzled as to why it’s considered a good thing not to be able to read a sign in your own neighborhood. We’re supposed to be fighting ignorance on this board, not celebrating it. Wouldn’t you want to know what the store is selling? Maybe you’d be interested in buying some.
By the way, you’re a futrablisk niashama and I hope you kabramer yourself.
I am from Spain, from one of the parts with a large Basque population. The part that used to be a kingdom, actually, not the one that is right now trying to get independent… forces herself back on track for once
I spent 2003 working in the US. Due to a mistake on the part of the guy in charge of voter registration in our NYC consulate, I missed two elections (one local, in 2003, and the March 14 one). It’s the only times in my life I’ve missed an election. The first time I voted, I was 18years and 2 days old and everybody in the room cheered when my table’s president mentioned it
I have also been conscious of being in ETA’s death lists since I was 8. My youngest brother was 2 months old at the time: his name was on the list already. The whole family is listed, even the ones who are independentists.
To me, having people who want to kill me for pseudopolitical reasons is kind of an incentive: every time I vote I feel like I’m giving them an “up yours!”
(wonders how do you call in English that gesture of rapidly raising the left fist with your middle finger up and at the same time hitting the inner part of that elbow with the other hand)
This is equivalent to the American gesture of just waving a fist with the middle finger up, palm in, at the offending person or object – that gesture’s called ‘flipping off’ or ‘giving the bird’.
Related to the OP:
As someone else said, For the President, heck yeah. For the dog catcher, nah.
Tranquilis, I gotta come to mhendo’s defense: The joke wasn’t that mhendo was calling the newly enfrachised Iraquis traitors or quislings or thought in any way that they were, but that Zoe’s humorous use of the wrong homonym, “ex-patriots” instead of “expatriates,” inadvertantly called the Iraquis traitors and quislings and exactly had the opposite effect of what she was intending to convey. It’s the cute-but-disturbing malaprop that’s funny. Kind of like when Melanie Griffith complimented Antonio Banderas by saying he was quite the “pseudo-intellectual.”
Incorrect assumption! Those were words from a language I made up. It translates as “You’re a fine person and I hope you enjoy yourself.” Now, if I had said something like “P*x fz,” I would be steeling myself for a banning.
That was not meant to be moderator-bait, just an illustration of my point that when people can’t understand each other, society stops functioning.
(Did you ever get the feeling that some threads are cursed by the Gods of Chaos and won’t stay on topic no matter what? That they somehow attract thin-skinned hijackers who misunderstand one another and get angry about it for no reason?)
Anyhooo. Yes. I’d go quite a ways to vote in an important (read: non-dogcatcher) election. Even one I was afraid was a sham. Because that’s the only way I’d feel like I had at least made the attempt to see the right thing done.
Obviously, you didn’t get my point-if you do not post in a language I understand, I will have to assume that you are saying something that is not appropriate for this forum. My job is hard enough without having to go through “clever” word games.
Nashville has one of the largest Kurd populations outside of Iraq. They were relocated here by a Catholic charity organization in the mid-1990s. Interestingly enough, one of the things the Catholic organization does is relocate various ethnic groups in areas that aren’t diverse. They’ve brought Laotians and Vietnamese in large numbers to this area as well. They don’t just dump the people in areas, either, but have a group of volunteers who work closely with the new immigrants, finding them employment, showing them the sights, and generally helping them assimilate into America.
Oh, and Zoe, it could be worse. The street Al Gore lives on, is barricaded like that all the time.
Since it’s in her town… I’d think it was safe to assume that one of those languages might be English.
I, too, thought she meant she was proud of living in such a diverse town. I am also proud, the town I come from was quite diverse. We had a handful of Vietnemese move in several years ago, and signs were put up in stores and around the workplace, written in their language, to help them feel welcome. I know four languages, but yet never learned Vietnemese before I moved.
Now I’m among Swiss. A little further south there are many Russians. Unless I become good friends with one of them, or decide to move to their country, chances are, I won’t learn the language. I’m proud of living in a diverse area. But I can’t beat myself up for not being able to learn every single language I come across.
You would think so, but she did say she couldn’t read any of the languages. That was what surprised me.
I know the OP’s overall point was that she liked the diversity and that the sign she couldn’t read was to be taken as an example of diversity. But I think that was a somewhat careless example. If diversity means not being able to read the signs in your neighborhood, would you welcome diversity? I sure as heck wouldn’t.
There are people who think diversity is always good, which is just as mistaken as thinking diversity is always bad. There is nothing good about not being able to understand your next-door neighbor. There can be no community in a situation like that. But a lot of people evidently like it that way. I find people like that look at their neighbors and the businesses in their neighborhood not as people, but as scenery. A nice Thai restaurant or a Sikh neighborhood makes your city seem cosmopolitan and modern, never mind the fact that you don’t actually know, and maybe cannot know, any of the Thais or Sikhs. I have a real problem with that point of view.
So, what you’re actually saying is that putting up a sign with words you can’t read is a bad form of diversity? ie: Foreigners should not be allowed to put up signs in their own language?
Yeah, them china people canna spik ingleese so good, shoulda sheep dem bak to cheena.
