Robert Seeberger wrote:
> Do you watch many American movies in english? (I mean without dubbing or > subtitles) > If not, it may help fine tune your understanding of the ins and outs of the > less formal forms of english speech. Almost exclusively. (The Dutch don't dub, it's too expensive for a too small an audience, except for the occasional children's movie that is) Still constantly hearing English doesn't really help to fine tune to that level. And anyway the Hollywood genre mostly contains the f*ck, sh*th**d and b*st*rd style. I do like watching BBC programs. But they are notorious for silencing *anything* that might even be slightly abusive to anyone. There is that finer grade of understanding. Being a German (with a strong German background) in the Netherlands I do sometimes have problems with it in the (absolutely very tolerant, calvinistic, informal) Netherlands. I have experienced at times, that as soon as soon as you speak the language without any obvious accent, people become very unforging towards the slightest language or social mistake. There is that something (the je ne sais qua) in a society that you can only pick up on if you are physically in that country, and someone almost rubs it in your face. Also I have found that for people in their surrounding, some things are so very obvious to them that it would never in a million years occur to them to explain it to anyone. (Language wise or other) I especially had *that* problem in Belgium (very conservative, catholic, rightwing country with a very rigid society structure). Although the Dutch and a large part of the Belgians speak the same language there are some huge cultural differences you'd never pick up on if you weren't actually living there. I used to work in Belgium and at times the intolerance got so bad that I had to remind my collegues that I am still a foreigner among their midst even if the language is the same. They sort of never thought of me as a foreigner, therefor they treated (and thereby also judged) me as one of their own. And that is no fun for someone with a very liberal, free, non religous and informal upbringing. The German background being more rigid and formal then any Belgian could ever be, (the part gets me into trouble in the Netherlands) did however help me very well to adjust to the Belgians. Sonja Wadda ja mean, multicultural? :o)
