The following comments of Fang Fang’s are quite interesting and have caught my attention – I’m bringing them over from her first post on the site:
The way a language is used can interestingly reflect the speaker’s mentality, character, outlook on life and other revealing factors. We all have our very particular, personal way of expressing ourselves. This is great and should be conveyed into the foreign language, too, in my opinion.
Now, apart from our unique way of communicating with words, I believe it’s important to blend culture into the language. Not only our own, but that related to the foreign language. In fact, knowing this new, different culture will help us better learn its language. More importantly, it will help us understand the use of a particular idiom or why things are put into words a certain, typical way, for example. I’ve more or less turned around Fang Fang’s last sentence above, but this is true both ways, of course, since language and culture go hand in hand.
Unfortunately, we don’t always have access to real people in flesh and blood who can introduce us to the new culture. However, using all the modern or traditional tools we have at our disposal, we can learn about their way of life, beliefs and traditions. And this will give us an insight into their language that grammar books alone cannot provide.
I think that is the reason for illustrations you found in school education books. I hope you don?t look at my reply as a sentimental journey only when I mention that the English education books I had been used to read, during my time at public schools, always had advice to the culture of the concerning country! As my time of pupil have gone by for a long time and unfortunately my wife and I don?t have children I wonder whether the nowadays school educations do always teach a little foreign culture yet?
There is a whole industry in the United States (and I suppose in other countries) that deals with teaching other cultures to people. The trouble is that this kind of information is not included in typical language books, which usually limit culture to food, arts and holidays. Occasionally school textbooks bring up proverbs, but they always seem to be equivalents to the same proverbs that exist in the learner’s native language. However, it’s the proverbs that DON’T exist in the learner’s native language that are the most revealing.
For example, there is an Arab proverb that says, “Support your kinsman, whether he is the tyrant or the tyrannized.” There is no similar proverb in English.
Central Europeans have a beautiful proverb that says, “Lies have short legs.” I love that one, but we don’t have exactly that saying in English.
If you want some good material on various national cultures, look at the books in the Culture Shock series, and at some of the books from Intercultural Press. They’re fascinating.
Hi Conchita, I agree with everything you are saying here. Just one thing: Wouldn’t it be better to refer to English as a second language rather than a foreign one? I mean, when you use English on a daily basis it more or less becomes a second language to you and it is no longer foreign, is it?[YSaerTTEW443543]
Hi Jamie, you might call me a nitpicker but do you really think you can teach culture? Yes, I know that you are referring to the cross-cultural/intercultural/cultural diversity training industry and I totally agree with you that its market is constantly growing. The question is what exactly can such a training course achieve? I think what you can do is raise awareness of cultural issues and initiate an exchange of experiences, views and perceptions. But “teaching other cultures to people”? Is this really a sound concept?[YSaerTTEW443543]
The big question, Torsten, is: do I feel English is a second language to me ? Anyway, I wasn’t referring exclusively to English, but to any language other than your native tongue/s, that is, other than the first you learn, if you want.
Your definition of the term is probably correct, although I feel it’s incomplete. You may be using a language everyday and still be learning it. Now, when does it become a second language to you? You may already have two native tongues. In this case, do we call the foreign one a third language? When I say ‘foreign language’, perhaps I mean ‘language of a foreign country’. Or maybe I’m just confusing ‘second language’ with ‘second nature’, hence all the doubts !!
You can teach a lot of a culture to someone. In fact, I have enough experience with people of certain cultures that I am asked to coach the cultural trainers.
For example, a Japanese man must be taught that he shouldn’t continually fill an American guest’s beer glass to the top the way he does in Japan. For him it’s a sign of hospitality, and he expects the American to stop drinking and let the full glass sit there when he’s had enough. To the American, leaving that beer in the glass will cause a guilty feeling, as if he were wasting food, and he’s liable to drink it up every time the Japanese fills it.
You can teach an East European that plagiarism is considered a serious offense at American schools and universities, and that they can fail a course or be kicked out of the whole university based on just one incident. (I know of a Ukrainian who lost his student visa and was deported after he plagiarized once in an MBA program.)
You have to teach many Arabs that, regardless of what they’ve seen in movies, a normal American girl won’t sleep with him a half hour after he meets her or just because he has asked. Not knowing this can get these men into a lot of trouble.
Once I had to teach a Czech lawyer that she needed to sound friendly in a job interview and not pompous.
There are also overarching cultural matters that have to be taught to people. Many foreigners in the US have to be taught new ways of handling time. They have to be taught that just because an American is friendly, it doesn’t mean the thinks you’re his friend. Some Germans need to understand that Americans are concerned about the same environmental issues that Germans are, but that Americans think of them as challenges and problems that can be solved, while many Germans act as if every problem will bring on the apocalypse. People have to learn a whole different style of writing (clearer and less pompous). One famous Russian ballet dancer said that when he defected to the US from the Soviet Union, he had to learn to stop lying all the time.
So you can teach pieces of a culture, and when it’s all put together with experience, you have taught culture.
In Spain, children (or parents, rather), can choose between Religion (about the Catholic faith only) or Society, Culture and Religion (a broader, bigger area) as a compulsory subject – the Catholic Church strongly diisapproves of this law. My children now prefer the second option, which is fine by me (and which I would also choose for myself, I must say!). Another compulsory subject is Ethics. But, unfortunately, there is no subject that deals mainly with foreign cultures. Their English and French coursebooks may give them a vague insight into those cultures, but not necessarily, as Jamie explained. School exchanges are organised, but I’m still waiting for my children to feel some kind of enthusiasm about it!
There is a similar Spanish saying:
“Liars get caught before cripples” (se coge antes a un mentiroso que a un cojo).
Frankly Jamie, you would have to teach that to all men! But would they ever learn, I wonder!
When they meet an attractive girl, most men only think of one thing. We all know that – it’s a universal truth! When a girl says no, a few men may occasionally think she means it, but usually, they believe (or want to believe, rather) she means ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘try again’ and can be awfully persistent or worse, unfortunately.
PS: Please, fellow women, don’t leave me alone in this!
That may be true where you live, but it’s not normal here. Sure, men may think about that when they meet an attractive girl, but in my experience here, it’s peculiar to men from very restrictive Middle Eastern countries, especially Saudis, that a man will walk up to a girl, talk to her for a couple of minutes, bluntly ask her to sleep with him, and then get angry when she refuses. Nobody here has problems with Albanians doing this, with Bosnians doing this, or Indonesians or Filipinos. It’s a specific problem with men from very restrictive Muslim countries. And of course they won’t behave this way with Muslim women or women from their own countries. They do it to American or European women.
This is not a matter of generalising, it’s a matter of genes!! And no amount of denying, especially on men’s part, will make me change my mind – even if (or particularly because) Jamie is starting to twist facts :roll: !!
The situation is that you are starting to generalize more than I am. One of the ways some people deal with a generalization that is unpleasant to them is to generalize even more and claim that ALL people do whatever it is that’s offending someone. However, it’s never true that ALL people of a certain group or category do a certain thing, so the person is trying to combat what she thinks is a delusion with a still bigger delusion.
Once again, you and Alan can’t tell the difference between a sweeping stereotype and a leaky generalization. You also can’t tell this difference between making a stereotype or generalization and saying that “many people of a certain group do X”. That is all I have said about any group. I don’t say that MOST of them do something, or that ALL of them do something, but many. MOST Middle Eastern Muslims don’t accost American women they way I described, but ENOUGH of them do to cause a problem and a lot of resentment, and it is so rare among other groups that Americans usually associate the behavior only with Arabs.
Sometimes only a minority of a certain group does something, but in a certain situation, if someone does that thing, the person is almost always from that group.
Example: Very few people of any group cheat on exams in my ESL classes. However, if someone does cheat on an exam, that person is almost always from Poland or the Balkans. No Arab, Chaldean, Chinese, Vietnamese, German, Japanese, Estonian, Lithuanian or South American has ever cheated in any of my classes. In fact, very very few people from Poland or the Balkans cheat in my classes. However, if someone does cheat, he is almost always from Poland or the Balkans.
Another one: Almost no Arab will present me with a phony doctor’s note saying that he can be excused from class anytime he wants due to some vague, undefined malady. However, every time I have received such a note, the student and the doctor were always Arabic.
One about Americans: Most Americans never see the inside of a jail. And Americans aren’t the only people who sometimes get arrested here. However, if a student wants to be excused for missing a test or assignment because he was in jail, that student is nearly always American.
If an American student around 22 or 23 years old stays after class a lot, talks to me in a certain way, and tries to make friends, there’s an almost 100% chance that her father abandoned her family when she was small. I know this from many experiences. If I go into class and find half a loaf of banana bread waiting for me, I immediately know which student left it there, because there is a whole cluster of demographic traits that seem to result in banana bread being left on the table for the instructor. Even if I don’t know exactly which student did it, I still know the approximate age, the marital status and the general family situation of the person. It sounds crazy, but these things have happened many times, and my assumption is almost always accurate.
Hi,
maybe they do cheat all and you just haven’t caught them
old teacher , old eyes…?
just kidding
I am quite sure you are right about Poles ( at least about cheating in the schools).
The tradition , Polish tradition is not exactly about cheating
but much to long the education system was completely theoretic and was just promoting cheating …!?
They were expecting from students in my school to study 47 hours a week( 47 lessons) and many of them not one by one but with a window/break (1or2 hours window/force pause)
What had caused that you were in the school many times from 07:30 to 21:30.
Plus travel time and the exams… well ,no fair teachers and schools - no fair rules or something like this.
I think, it is quite popular even nowadays in Poland , maybe except some schools? (I mean cheating in the school)
the education system had changed twenty times and I have no idea which direction good or bad …
regards
Jan
Hi Jamie,
I have a problem with generalisation.
In my opinion if there is even only one exception of a rule,that rule isn’t worth too much anymore.
Real life is always different than statistics.
Show me one math teacher who ever won on lottery.
You are only one person, and even with all of your acqaintances together still just a few people who divide millions by their experience.
Because you’re a teacher, your friends probably teachers as well from the States, more likely than a Russian miner.
That miner sees a couple of things of life a bit differently, and if he makes generalisations, I’m not sure if those would be the same as yours.
I wouldn’t even be sure he’s not wiser than anyone of us.
There is another thing too:
If someone has that much of self-possession like making generalisation of people, then he might not be able to acknowledge if he’s wrong every once in a while.
Spencer
Would you please tell us what messages you are referring to? Also, please specify who exactly you call an imperative imperator and why? As far as I can see all the forum members who are interested in exchanging their ideas and thoughts have real names and I’d greatly appreciate it if you would call us by our names rather than by some vague titles.
Hi Jan,
A couple of months ago
Anonymous wrote:
"And second, sorry if my English is so unintelligible. I did my best to make myself understood. It’s a pity that English-speakers cannot communicate in any other language.
At least, non-native speakers do try to speak English."
Jamie wrote:
“Don’t stereotype. I can communicate with you in three other languages, and I would understand you in at least another three or four”
At this time I totally agreed with Jamie.
Allthough in Europe Americans have bad reputation of not speaking any other language ( it’s not even a reputation, it’s kind of fact, since I know a lot of them who spent even some months here and still don’t know one word of Hungarian, put in context after spending two months in Canada I passed my driver licence-exam with no help of interpreter) I do know it’s NOT true, a lot of them speak other language, just NON OF US HAVE MET THEM.
Someone please tell me what’s the difference between generalisation and stereotype.
If I say:
“I’ve never met any American who spoke other language than English, so I think most Americans only speak English”
Whichone did I just do?
Don’t get me wrong, this is not my point of wiew, I just would like to point at the danger of making generalisations.
Someone’s going to get offended always.
Why don’t anyone make generalisations from the other way?
Which country the most of scientists come from?
Or something like this.
Just for a change
Spencer
Hi Torsten and Hi everybody,
I write sometimes just to fast ( without thinking )but I don’t mind at all, it is even surprise for me afterwards.
Well some of my emails which I wrote before after short period just disappear.
Of course they were probably political incorrect (I guess) and I understood what is quite a standard at my house maybe somewhere else will be just offensive, but it kills the fun of reading answers (well fun for me).
I don’t know who my be the" i. i. "but I like him already very much.
Of course the first suspected is me myself ,I was born long before first computer appeared
and seamen are traditionalist and we are quite happy to do
things like they were in Bible or something like this.
regards
Imperator Jan
I can’t tell the difference about generalization and stereotype good enough ,but I read the Jamie posts with interest and it is sometimes impossible do not generalize and I have nothing against generalization - everything except what will be boring please.
? Anyway, I wasn’t referring exclusively to English, but to any language other than your native tongue/s, that is, other than the first you learn, if you want.