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Americans, What’s An Example Of Good Efforts You’ve Made Trying To Understand A Very Different Culture. A
I have coworker whose name I think is Arabic and I asked how it’s pronounced. (We are WFH and have never met so this was an online meeting and she speaks Arabic.) I said it back and she said it back and I didn’t hear the difference but she did. I apologized to her and said that I understand because my last name is French and there are only maybe a coupe of areas in the US that I know of that can pronounce French phonetics.
She understood since she is also born and raised here. Do you have an example of meeting someone from a different culture who lives in the US have tried to learn and really wanted to learn? Success stories welcome.
I have some also.
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#1
I had a friend from Mexico and he and I would trade factoids about where we were from. I once told him that Louisiana is the only state that has Parishes instead of counties as municipal areas. He later told me that he heard this as a trivia question on the radio and knew the answer because I mentioned it.
Final score:
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#2
I met a woman from Tanzania and loved talking to her about the differences between Tanzania and the US. She was very open about talking about her experiences growing up there and it is always really nice to learn about other people’s cultures. It wasn’t a random inquisition from me, she had asked me out for drinks and so we were getting to know each other and “where are you from” and “ what brought you to this very particular part of the US” were talked about. (I’m super guilty of these questions because historically this particular area was isolated for so long.)
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#3
When I was visiting England lifetimes ago there were two guys from France staying at our hostel and one spoke English and the other didn’t. We chatted with them quite a bit and played board games with them with Benoit translating for James. I told Benoit that I had only seen that name here as a surname. I also said some common French phrases we say here and he couldn’t understand me. I said it in English and he said it back in French and it was like a lightbulb went off for me.
I totally can’t get the back of the throat sound. None of us here do it so that’s one reason it never sounds the same and another being the attempt to wipe out French altogether here. (The exception was Catholic schools teaching is as the second language but my grandmother couldn’t understand what I was saying either after so many classes.) He was really nice to talk to me about it all.
People will say if you have heritage from a country in Europe that doesn’t mean you are that. I still very much feel a connection to France for language and food and to Canada and especially the native population there for the education when my ancestors were there before being kicked out.
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