Robert Karl Skoglund
Robert Karl Skoglund
Unedited Rant for May 26, 2006 The humble Farmer radio program
If you have friends or relatives in Europe you know that they all do it to you. You can email them in the best German or Spanish that you can muster, and the next day you’ll get an email back in German or Spanish. And on the bottom will be one last sentence where they shifted over to English to say: “If you can’t understand my German, I’ll write in English instead.” Even though our ability to communicate with them in their language breaks the American stereotype, that stereotype is so strong they suspect we must be doing it with mirrors. Have we brought this on ourselves? Have you found that in Europe Americans are not famous for their prowess in the humanities? Noam Chomsky is probably the only person in this country who can still remember which despotic governments and which guerilla groups we were funding as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. Don’t expect to see anything more recent than the American Revolution taught in your local school because it is too often embarrassing and the sooner we forget it, the better. And while in Europe most any kid might learn 4 or 5 languages, the business community in this country pushes for a curriculum where graduates will unthinkingly obey any order and then stand behind a checkout counter in a big box store (for no more than 22 or so hours a week ) and make correct change. But I was talking about the shock Europeans get when they encounter an American able to exchange even a few common phrases in their language. It might remind a European of Samuel Johnson’s comment that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
Unedited Rant for May 26, 2006 The humble Farmer radio program
If you have friends or relatives in Europe you know that they all do it to you. You can email them in the best German or Spanish that you can muster, and the next day you’ll get an email back in German or Spanish. And on the bottom will be one last sentence where they shifted over to English to say: “If you can’t understand my German, I’ll write in English instead.” Even though our ability to communicate with them in their language breaks the American stereotype, that stereotype is so strong they suspect we must be doing it with mirrors. Have we brought this on ourselves? Have you found that in Europe Americans are not famous for their prowess in the humanities? Noam Chomsky is probably the only person in this country who can still remember which despotic governments and which guerilla groups we were funding as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. Don’t expect to see anything more recent than the American Revolution taught in your local school because it is too often embarrassing and the sooner we forget it, the better. And while in Europe most any kid might learn 4 or 5 languages, the business community in this country pushes for a curriculum where graduates will unthinkingly obey any order and then stand behind a checkout counter in a big box store (for no more than 22 or so hours a week ) and make correct change. But I was talking about the shock Europeans get when they encounter an American able to exchange even a few common phrases in their language. It might remind a European of Samuel Johnson’s comment that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
posted by The humble Farmer at 12:23 PM
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