Fun With Friends?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I wouldn't have said that about languages - I've met loads of Americans who were far better at speaking other languages than the Brits - not so inhibited, I think.

[J. M. Pescado]

Traveller bias. If you're meeting Americans regularly, you're meeting the travellers, which would disproportionately speak a foreign language, particularly when bound for Europe. I'm not really much of a language person myself, although I do know how to shout useful phrases like "SURRENDER OR DIE!" in a dozen languages. I also speak the universal language of gun. But if the British aren't much for foreign languages either, that would explain why they're stuck with their backward American cousins.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Now why on earth would you say "backward" JM?

[Database]

I know a friend who can say "sh*t" in 10 different languages. 

[Renatus]

He's calling Americans backwards because we are backwards in many ways. Languages, for example - actually go into the States and you'll find that the number of people who speak more than Bad English is shockingly low. A second language is not required unless one wants to get into some universities, and then only two years of it is required, which is just enough for the average person to remember the word for 'dog' ten years later. Americans are generally monoglots - and tend to be proud of it, absurdly. Some of the more stupid ones actually get offended at signs/packaging featuring Spanish as well as English.

[veilchen]

That annoyance goes both ways JM. The french have a law that prohibits businesses to advertise or publicly display signs in the english language, and Americans are the only western people the french insist on having a visa before they allow them into France. All other Europeans can enter France with only their ID card, or a valid passport at the most. At least that was the way a few years back.

I had an American friend visit us and 5 of us decided to go to France for a day or two. We actually had to bribe the border-patrol to let her in; she didn't have a visa, we forgot the French insisted on that for Americans. That was however, about 15 years ago, it might have changed meanwhile, but somehow I doubt it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

But since our country has been so slow at bringing back identity cards (why they ever got rid of them is beyond me!) British people are definitely second-class citizens in Europe as they have to show passports (and have them stamped in many cases)  and not merely an ID card.

It always annoyed me, too, that US citizens never needed a visa to enter the UK, but the US always insisted on one from UK citizens  - now surely these things should be reciprocal, and maybe that's all the French were doing - reciprocating!

[Oddysey]

Traveller bias. If you're meeting Americans regularly, you're meeting the travellers, which would disproportionately speak a foreign language, particularly when bound for Europe. I'm not really much of a language person myself, although I do know how to shout useful phrases like "SURRENDER OR DIE!" in a dozen languages. I also speak the universal language of gun. But if the British aren't much for foreign languages either, that would explain why they're stuck with their backward American cousins.

That's basically why my dad learned what Spanish he knows. Or used to know. He's retired Coast Guard, so when he was XO of a cutter in the Caribbean, (The Durable, if anyone cares.) he had to be able to tell people "Put your hands in the air" and "Where are the illegal drugs/weapons immigrants?" even if he didn't speak Spanish. Though I seem to remember something about not actually ever learning Spanish. Something about threatening them with a shot gun . . .

I took a trip to Europe last summer. France, Belgium, and Germany. Everyone was very nice, and the signs on the transportation were in about a dozen different languages. Most people spoke English, too (To my great annoyance, since I didn't get much chance to practice my French) although that may have had some to do with my Dad's mangling of "Parlez-vous anglais?" and "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" (He actually knew German fairly well, as he lived there for several years in high school.) The menus and signs and things were mostly in French or German, except in train stations, but that wasn't a big deal because I've been able to read basic menu-ese since French I, Dad knew enough German to fill in the gaps between cognates, and we had a very useful phrasebook/traveler's dictionary with most of the words we ran into.

Honestly, French isn't that tough if you know English and a bit of the Latin you can pick up in textbooks and dictionary. Grammar's generally much trickier than vocabulary, but one can learn to read enough French to get around during a week in Paris, as my brother discovered.

[ZephyrZodiac]

It's having the right attitude that counts!  That's why immigrants to a country who make the effort to communicate are generally able to settle better than those who just want to recreate their own home village wherever they are.  The host community will in most cases (though not all, unfortunately) accept those who mae an effort to get along with them, but will often reject those who have made it clear that they have rejected them first!

[breyerii]

I agree that Roman mentality wasn't - isn't - known for flexibility.

I happen to like their descendants very much, and even though they are not the most flexible, they are certainly the most giving and friendly people I've come across. You're talking about my favorite vacation country, so be careful (even if you are one of them )

Trust me veilchen, I know my modern day Romans. I live with one...

The Rostrum is a Roman forum for giving speeches. You were perhaps referring to the corvus, an early Roman device used to facilitate ramming and boarding. The device was ultimately abandoned as the Romans gained more naval warfare experience because it destabilized the ship and thus made it prone to sinking in storms.

Well, here is a brief recounting of how the rostrum (weapon) became the rostrum (forum); scroll down the page. However you were once again More Awesome Than Me: I had really meant the corvus.

Not wanting to sound as though I'm overly patriotic, (I'm part Irish and part Scots, so don't have a big axe to grind for the English) but I would have said the British Empire at its peak was greater in many ways than the Roman one, and unlike the Roman Empire, which disintegrated into chaos, the British Empire grew into something far better - the British Commonwealth. And despite the War of Independence, the US never broke its ties with Great Britain, which must say something for the strength of the relationship!

The British Empire was larger than the Roman one, but also the world had, in a way, grown much larger. Few lands the Romans wanted remained outside their grasp.
Then, to say that the British empire "grew into something far better" could seem to imply that it was an evolution instead of a traumatic fall. Britain was spared internal chaos and multiple invasions, but the empire fell none the less.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Okay, it was a downward slide, but at least it was fairly gradual and gave most people time to adjust.  And most, though I admit not all, of the ex-colonies, have escaped the massacres that are still happening in some parts of the world.

[breyerii]

Ahem, we're really transforming this thread into an arena for past glories... 

Rome declined slowly as well, if we consider that the downward spiral started before the III century (Commodus) and ended in 476.

Say, we should really put an end to our war of ghosts empires. We're talking about different stadiums of human history, trying to determine who was "better" seems quite an unlikely task.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You're right, of course!  And since empire-building is rather politically incorrect these days, perhaps the whole thing is better left in the past.