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"Thoughts On American Tourists" by Eden Hemming Rose Everyone warned me before I went to Sweden that the Scandinavians aren’t very friendly people, but as far as I could tell, George was a nice guy. Assuming I was also a Swede, the first words he said to me were in his native tongue. I stuttered the only phrase that I knew in his language: “Do you speak English?” He grinned, repeating his question in slightly-accented English. We chatted amicably for the short time between when I got on the train and he disembarked. Then there were the two men drinking beer beside the river on a sunny day. One of them asked me something as I walked past. I smiled in my poor Swedish that I spoke English. The red-faced one, though he was undoubtedly well on his way to drunk, instantly said, “Why don’t you take a picture of us?” So I did. My friend also took me to meet his Swedish relatives while I was there. His uncle mixed Swedish and English; I could understand most of what he was saying and learned some Swedish as well. Altogether, I learned only about 20 phrases and words in the 3 weeks I was there, but my curiosity about Swedish impressed everyone I talked to. However, even before I went to Sweden, I believed bilingualism was an important tool to a greater understanding of the world we live in. Since then, I’ve also come to believe that the unwillingness of Americans to learn other languages causes many problems for them, both abroad and at home. As it is now, the stereotype of Americans in many parts of the world portrays us as brash, careless tourists. It isn’t the ‘tourist’ part that irks the people who encounter us so much –they are tourists sometimes themselves—but the brazenness and recklessness with which we traipse the world. Like spoiled children, we treat every part of the world as our own personal playground and bully those who are different from us, especially those who do not speak our language. We show them a face that is not pretty. For example, many of my foreign friends have pointed out that Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael come from America, and the antics of their ludicrous guests are broadcast to televisions everywhere. When we visit foreign countries, we give them the impression that this is an accurate depiction of Americans by being willfully ignorant of the dominant cultures. Not only do we often make no effort to learn a few basic phrases in their language, but we also carry around silly little books that might tell us, if we could just find the word…. It is this lack of effort that indicts us in the minds of so many. After all, how hard is it to learn ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘please’, and ‘thank you’ in another language? Another strike against us is that many of the people we encounter abroad know several languages themselves. This becomes obvious when one looks at something like the CIA Factbook, which lists multiple languages or dialects for most countries; some bilingualism is a necessity if one wishes to travel the world. From my own experience, it seems that most industrialized countries now require students in public schools to learn English. Most of the foreigners that I encounter who don’t speak English are in their fifties or older. It seems Europeans are best at this. Their geography requires it in a way that ours does not. We can cross our continent east to west –and most of the way north to south—without ever having to employ another language besides English. It would be excessively difficult to do this in Europe. To compensate, Europeans learn multiple languages; this allows them to roam neighboring countries. It also requires a degree of patience and receptivity that the average American does not have. The only country on our border where a language other than English is spoken does not have the economic or political strength to challenge us, and we are divided by vast oceans from the rest of the world. Our size and relative isolation work against us. Our own history is equally important in discerning where this lack of interest in other languages and cultures stems from. When the New World was discovered by Western civilization, it was considered apart from the civilized world, an appendage. It is always easier to blame others, but we are the ones who have never chosen to move beyond the geographic borders of our coasts. Thus, that belief has persisted, not only because of the boundaries of oceans but also because we ourselves stood separate from the rest of the world. Our forefathers in many ways rejected the cultures associated with the Old World and tried to create their own world that strived towards perfection. In Benjamin Franklin’s speech for ratification of the Constitution, he said it was as close to perfect as they could ever get. However, by doing so, they forgot the lessons the Old World had to teach. They forgot that they themselves were agents of the Old World culture, and passed down the myth of attainable perfection. The effects of this were slow but definite, bringing us to our present state where most Americans don’t know –and don’t care to know—anything about other, supposedly inferior languages or cultures. In spite of this, there are two distinct groups whom this does not apply to: the educated and immigrants. It has always been the case that those who are better educated are more likely to know more than one language but that is a different essay entirely. Immigrants, on the other hand, know two or more languages by necessity. Some come from countries where they had to know more than one language. They also have little choice but to learn English once they arrive here. Yet rather than learning from them, we try to suppress their unique language and culture, to either assimilate them by force or silence them, just as we did with the Native Americans. Yet misunderstandings between cultures are usually based upon misunderstandings in the languages that represent them. Anyone who knows even a little of a second language will have an example of words that either can’t be translated into their primary language or that are difficult to understand because they do not apply the same way in both languages. For example, in many other cultures, there are two ways to say “you”, one that is formal and one that is informal. For an American, raised in an informal culture that disdains such distinctions, it is easy to mistakenly offend someone by using the wrong form. This is a relatively mild example of how knowledge of another language helps one gain insight into other cultures, but our seeming inability to understand even basic concepts like this is often perceived as intolerance. Not only does this contribute to the stereotype of uncultured Americans, it also deepens existing aversions. By far, though the worst confusions come from ingrained cultural perceptions that an individual perceives as universal without realizing they are not. Marla Sutton, who works for the American Academy of Family Physicians, encourages American physicians to be more aware of their clients’ diverse cultures in order to provide them with better health care (58). The “Cultural Competence Self-Test” has some intriguing questions designed to help these family doctors gain awareness of the different world their patients inhabit. It includes such items as “I understand that the perception of health, wellness and preventive health services have different meanings to different cultural or ethnic groups.” Just because we perceive someone as sick does not mean they do, nor does it mean that they will believe in the efficacy of our Western treatments. Yet this does not mean we cannot help them. In fact, if we have a greater understanding of their culture, it is more likely that we will be able to help them in a way that satisfies both parties. By far, though, the biggest mistake we make is stripping these rich groups of their ability to teach us about the world beyond our physical borders. Few of our own ancestors spoke English when they first came here themselves and had to learn as they went, yet we attempt to pass legislation restricting everyone to English. This is a short-sighted and ignorant approach. It is easier to learn a new language as a child than it is as a teenager or an adult, and generally it is the children of immigrants who learn to be fluent in more than one language, according to Betty Birner of the Linguistic Society of America, who wrote “Bilingualism”. In fact, if my great great grandparents had been able to pass down their knowledge of Swedish, I wouldn’t be struggling to learn it today. Learning from my relatives would not only have given me the advantage of knowing another language, it would also have provided me common ground with my elders. Unfortunately, we think we are immune to the need to learn other languages, snug as we are in our isolated America. We punish immigrants unfamiliar with English, arrogantly ignoring the fact that they have their own language. Learning a foreign language isn’t just about being better tourists or identifying with our elders, though. It is about being better people. As I’ve said, it is easier to understand a culture if you understand the language, because there are often concepts within the language that give structure to the culture, and vice versa. Therefore, it is also easier to identify with a person whose language you understand. While there are romantic love stories where two people who can’t understand each other fall madly in love and live happily ever after, this is the exception. In fact, most people do not think very highly of those whom they cannot understand; they respect those whom they can understand. The ability to communicate with someone effectively (even if it is not fluently) makes them an equal. For instance, I work in a café where I have to be able to communicate well with all sorts of people. Several months ago, my boss hired a Japanese girl who spoke very little English. To my surprise, Mamiko tried hard to learn English, and now has little trouble. Examining my own attitude when she was first hired, I realize that I assumed that she wasn’t very intelligent. Her quick acquisition of the language that I speak, as well as simply being able to speak to me in my own language, taught me that she only lacked in language. Now Mamiko is teaching me little bits of her own language, and I feel like the fool. What Americans must come to realize is that we may be geographically isolated, but this country encompasses a plethora of foreign cultures. Rather than embracing this diversity, America attempts to isolate itself from the international community with its unwillingness to reach over those aquatic borders. It has squandered its own immense human resources, and alienated those both outside of and within our borders by denying them their significant uniqueness. It’s a common stereotype of Americans abroad that we are only interested in other cultures as spectator sport, and thus make no effort to learn the language or languages of the countries we intend to visit. Our immigrants, supposedly welcomed in spite of any differences, feel unwelcome in their new homes, and come to resent us for it. Now we must begin to shed this treacherous approach. We must be openly curious about other languages and take advantage of the rich cultures that themselves come knocking on our door. Only by overcoming our willful ignorance will the image of the cocky American tourist be erased.
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all inquiries should be made to:: eden@digitalisindustries.com |