Cultural Respect

[Henneth Annun]

So this thought started when I was sitting in French class, being appaled (almost nightly) by how no one seems to really care about the langauge. They think that they can pronounce everything in French just like they do in English, and that they can use expressions in the same way, and pay absolutley no attention to the cultural differences when they decide to try and speak/learn French. Why can't people understand that it's part of a seperate culture? Why can't people give it a little credit for being seperate and actually try to respect the culture and acknowledge it, instead of trying to change it so it fits their expectations?

It's like when you go on trip to a foreign country that has a significantly different culture from your own, and there's always that one couple or that group of people that end up butchering the local language, treating the local customs as somehow "below" their own or just "not right", complaining about how things are "backwards here", and expect that when they wake up they will be able to eat bacon and eggs with a glass or orange juice no matter where they are. Then they complain about how everyone is so rude to them and wonder why they could possibly have a bad trip! And when they're done they just hate how "different" everything is. If they hate it, then why the hell did they go on vacation in the first place? Why do some people have to be so ethnocentric and arrogant? Why is it so difficult to see things from a different perspective and to acknowledge the fact that the entire world doesn't speak English and eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Why is it so difficult for people to give others a little respect?

Discuss: what I wrote, cultural respect, your experiences with this, and explanations for why some people just can't pronounce a language like the language is supposed to sound.  

[IY_and_MCR]

*goes to germany and puts on an american flag bandana and a white wifebeater with noticable stains* Your craphole country wouln't get any of my crisp american dollars unless you tell me the way to the nearest big mac. And I don't want to hear me none of that fruity european talk. *places hand on crotch*
/charichture

I feel like a jackass when trying to pronounce french words, and the general "don't pronounce that last word, NO PRONOUNCE THAT ONE IT'S FEMME" tends to be a bit much for me in the morning.
Examples like "casa-ie" show that slang does not translate.
(homie)

In my school it's the history/civics/sociology teachers that piss off the language teachers. The one just hates France, and the other likes to bring up that they're a not so great of a place to be muslim.

People need to learn a bit about customs before they travel. Even people who mean well could get confused when everyone in russia stands two inches away, but when they go to germany people get upset once you get closer than arm distance.
Some people are just lame without much interest or have just been taught one way with no interest in changing, and that's just the way they are. Some people never have had someone explain things and think they're acting properly.

uh...that was all probably close to on topic.  

[trampyre]

I was lucky. When I was in school, I was always in the class with the bunch of keeners who really cared about what they were learning. We had SO much fun, because everyone was really into it. We had this teacher who even taught us Quebecuois slang. It was brilliant.  

[AEtherclaw]

whenever anyone deals with another culture even if they try to fit in elements of there own will still bleed through.
it's generally good to at least try to be understanding and have a sense of hummer about it.

ich bin ine dunkoff amariconish?  

[AdrianaKitten]

Perhaps Islands and Asian countries have it worst. Some people have actually come to brainwash them. neutral
Maybe more movies need to be made about vacationers who travel to distant places only to be maliciously attacked for sporting a striped sweater. Bring back Hostel! dramallama  

[The War on Indifference]

People are just stupid. Unfortunately, that's the only conclusion I can reach on the issue.
(This is coming from a Student ambassador, too. I'd hope I'd at least know something about respecting cultural differences after spending a month between Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.)

If I may go on a little tirade here, though, I'd like to say that it's primarily people that have that certain "in-my-own-element" thing going for them most of the time. Think favorite son/all-American football playing super popular high-school kid. He's not going to respect or try to understand anything outside his sphere of positivity because he's always been in his element and he's had so much success with what he knows.
Why would he learn all this useless crap about french-talk and sissy french things when he has fans to cater to and a game to get ready for?

Us goths are so different in that our comfort sphere is so small and so very elusive. We've got to learn to make due and learn as much as we can so as to suck every bit of gothiness out of our surroundings. We know firsthand that most people are out to get us, in the form of cruel words, ostricization, and whatever else you can pull from memory, and from this we learn tact and that sometimes "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" is a very worthwhile philosophy.

I may also be that so many people fill their lack of stable self-concept with mindless pride and (blank)ier-than-thou-ness. They fear that they may not know who they are anymore if plunged into dreaded multiculturalism and understanding, and have to bluntly thrust their American-ness into any given situation so they don't lose that precious drone individuality.

Rambling aside, I'm not taking any languages, mostly because the American method of teaching language closely runs with my theories that people have to draw lines to keep their fragile mental self from overlapping other cultures. And I'm dreadfully lazy.
Well, ok, mostly lazy, but my arguement still stands. >.<  

[osozaki girl]

i remember when we were learning about language and dialects in social studies class.
and the teacher had put up a few examples of words that were different in american english and brittish english.
and all the kids were like "do they really say that? do they actually use those words?"
well duh. she wouldn't have told you if they never used them D:  

[vincejustvince]

No one can speak Spanish in my Spanish class, it's rather amusing to listen to. This one girl is all like "LYKE OMG HOLA YO TENGO UNA HAMBURGUESA."

I'm 'alf Dominican and speak Spanish with an accent. gonk  

[Digital Malevolence]

Well, I'll be completely honest here. I don't like France or most French people I've met, but I can respect their culture, even though I dislike it.

Oh, and I only read half of what you wrote because I don't have the attention span at the moment, so if I missed a point somewhere I'll edit my post tomorrow to something more fitting.  

[trampyre]

I like where I live because it's so culturally diverse. The other day I was on the streetcar, and heard two older gents speaking in Russian, two cute bubbly young black girls speaking in French, and and a crowd of 20 somethings conversing in Cantonese. I love trying to figure out what they're saying!  

[perrenthezombie]

Ugh. Spanish classes in high school are not good. Especially in the US where everyone is totally racist against mexicans and it's seen as A-OK.

You'd think that after being corrected for the umpteenth time you'd figure out that "ll" makes the "Y" sound. Not to mention that you should pretty much know that anyway, being exposed to mexican culture and language pretty much every day of your life for 16 years...gah. Some people are so dense.  

[Gothic Muffin of Doom]

Well, umm.... you guys have very strong points of view, but I want to talk a little about that.
Being in Egypt I experience the best and the worst in the matter of language education.
Most of Egyptians usually know more than a language because Egypt was invaded by many countries which left educational traces, I for example speak English and French aside from my mother language which is Arabic, that's for the best part.
Now comes the shock, no one actually cares how their pronounciation is at all. and they all blame it on weird reasons. Arabic alphabet doesn't have the sound "P" so all the 'p's are 'b's and so on ( I don't do that because I learned French before school so I was taught the pronounciation), also the Egyptians have the habit of bending the rules of the language and making expression to suit them, but that's not the worst part, what makes things worse is that they never accept to be corrected and they don't admit their language mistakes.
About the cultural respect part, I would hate to talk like that about the people of my country, but they are really stupid, whenever they go to a country they should make fun of everything in it, from the costums to the language, and they start to act weirdly, showing off their own culture even if it's not accepted in the place they're visiting. Then, they wonder why they were treated that way.
I really feel sorry for them.  

[byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

oh so Extravagant...

I noticed that a lot in my four years of Spanish class through high school.
It is quite annoying and I felt the urge to deck most of the people in my class on multiple occasions.