that OT: Tredennick, u-370, 68000, 5100... thread

From: vrs <vrs_at_msn.com>
Date: Fri Aug 20 13:56:09 2004

> > except for some realy ninor quirks, I can go almost everywhere
> > on the world and perfectly recognize the speed linkit, no stop znoes
>
> American unilinguality probably has more a place in the past than in
> the future. I would attribute it more to just nature and geography than
> any militant intent. One border is the Pacific ocean and another is the
> Atlantic, perhaps the #1 and #2 largest oceans on earth, a luckier
> situation probably couldn't be planned.

I think this gets close to what is going on in the American psyche. We live
in a huge country, and really a very homogenous one. Most of the time, we
don't even realize "foreigners" exist. People from other contries
(understandably) resent that. Similarly, people here resent having to
change their established behavior for quasi-mythical "others".

Lately people here seem to treat their neighbors as quasi-mythical.

> A standard question one got when working at IBM was, "Oh, I see from
> your name that you're French. Have you ever been to France?" probably
> a pretty enlightened place, relatively speaking.

He'd heard of France, but never met anyone from there. I feel the same way
about North Dakota :-).

    Vince
Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 13:56:09 BST