John Absolutely. I do understand Australian :-) and am even able to recognize it, when spoken at least. The issue of languages is really interesting. In America, where I live now, the language is called English and its forefather is called British English, sic!, so that people do not get confused. On the other hand, when I visited Britain (long ago) I learnt that they distinguished between gentlemen and American gentlemen. I was on the Polish yacht, and captain at that, so as a certified yacht captain I was treated as a gentleman and tried to pull up my manners accordingly :-).
I also had funny adventure in France. One of my interlocutors did not want to use English until he found out that I was Polish after all with poor knowledge of French. In Netherlands I was taken for English when I asked about store with marine charts. Here, during phone conversation, I was once taken for Finnish. When asked why, the guy told me he had Finnish cousin with same heavy accent. This surprised me a bit because Polish is a Slavic language. Finnish and Hungarian (both of the same stock) came to Europe very late (V-th century A.D.?) and have very little in common not only with Slavic languages. I really like all this. We should be proud of our own lineage and heritage and at the same time we should respect what others bring in because they really do. We just have to focus on positive things. And fortunately we touched some pleasant subject again after all this trouble with recent rude posting. All best Slawek At 02:20 PM 4/19/99 +1000, you wrote: >Slawek, > >I am impressed at your command of languages. But do you speak >Australian? > >A few years ago while tripping around Yucatan in Mexico, an expensive >jeep pulled up next to me and a very well-dressed wman enquired in an >American accent: > >"Pardon me, do you speak English?" >"No, but I speak Australian." >"Pardon me?" > >She missed it entirely! I had been waiting years to be able to use >that one. > >John > > > Slawek Grzechnik 32 57.4'N 117 08.8'W http://home.san.rr.com/slawek
