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If you are dining with the highest muckety-muck, and you put your food in your mouth with your left hand, they will be highly offended, but probably too polite to say anything.
Typical anti-left-handed bigotry and intollerance. People in that part of the world need ot embrace diversity and be more accepting of alternative-handed lifestyles. Handedness is not a choice and this kind of discrimination should be a relic of a past age. Perhaps some diversity training classes are in order for this group of people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by burgler09
I have decided to buy a travel book and study the language a bit in my spare time on the side of my full time language. Seems like something fun to do, but I won't put too much effort.
Thanks for the help guys!
They also have phrase books for the things that you don't learn in textbooks. You can usually find them in the major bookstores. I recently bought one for Chinese to supplement my class-based knowledge. It has more casual ways of saying introductions and other things like that than are usually taught in textbooks. Its amazing how much you can impress native speakers just by throwing out a few colloquial phrases. Like if you heard a toruist with limited English caught in a rainstorm suddenly say, "Boy, its raining cats and dogs". That's something that doesn't translate; you just have to know it.
The highest muckety muck, whatever that is, not only uses his left hand, he also coughs up the demons out of their throat every morning using that hckckckck noise. I won't even go into their preferences to sleep with, you get my drift...It is not the Americans who don't have etiquette, its just those people are different....not better.
I know these things for a fact, my husband spent a good number of years around the Persian Gulf. No Brat Just Fact.
Location: The Chatterdome in La La Land, CaliFUNia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rogerbacon
It's not about learning how to use them, it's about being physically able to use them. Squatting over a whole in the ground, even a nice porcelin whole, is not that easy for many people. Most Americans can not squat with their feet flat on thr ground. They have to be on the fronts of their feet. Try doing that for three minutes while trying to go to the bathroom and you will se how hard it is. This has nothing to do with weight either. I was 150 lbs at 6' 1" when I was in Japan the first time and I had difficulty using those toilets.
They are difficult for those with knee issues as well. I was clued in about the Japanese style bathrooms and I'm not sure if I can actually squat and use them.
Typical anti-left-handed bigotry and intollerance..
Blame it on the Romans, whose words for right and left were "dextra" and "sinistra". From which we derive the words that mean "skillful" and "evil".
I can do you one better than that. In Urdu-Hindi, the words for 'clockwise' and 'anticlockwise' are the same word, but conjugated in the male gender for clockwise, and the female gender for anticlockwise. Talk about bigotry and intolerance.
There are quite a few iPhone apps out there that translate phrases from 11 or so languages. I love 'em and if you have an iPhone, I'd look into that instead. No book to carry!
tourists do not take the time to learn to pronounce the words correctly.
I've always been under the impression that these phrase books aren't necessarily meant to be used for pronunciation, but for allowing someone to read what you want.
Unless you're on a linguistic holiday and attempting to learn the language to some extent, finding the phrase you want in English and allowing a taxi driver (or waiter, hotel clerk, etc...) to read in the local language is the easiest thing to do. (Of course, this method has its limitations and is rendered useless if your intended audience isn't literate.)
There are quite a few iPhone apps out there that translate phrases from 11 or so languages. I love 'em and if you have an iPhone, I'd look into that instead. No book to carry!
In addition, the taxi card apps that are available are also extremely handy.
Scott
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