Lippard.Multics 01/29/87 1910.8 mst Thu Subject: Dave Barry on foreign languages Excuse me, can I have some tomato sauce for my lingua franca? by Dave Barry (Arizona Republic, 29 Jan 1987) Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the past 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. Oh, sure, they speak SOME English, but usually just barely well enough to receive a high school diploma here in the United States. This can lead to problems for you, the international traveler, when you need to convey important information to them, such as: "Which foreign country is this?" And: "You call this toilet paper?" To their credit, some countries have made a sincere effort to adopt English as their native language, a good example being England, but even there you have problems. My wife and I were driving around England once, and we came to a section called "Wales," which is this linguistically deformed area that apparently is too poor to afford vowels. All the road signs look like this: LLWLNCWNRLLWNWRLLN -- 3km It is a tragic sight indeed to see Welsh parents attempting to sing traditional songs such as "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" to their children and lapsing into heart-rending silence when they get to the part about "E-I-E-I-O." If any of you in our reading audience have extra vowels that you no longer need, because for example your children have grown up, I urge you to send them (your children) to: Vowels for Wales, C/O Lord Chesterfield Parliament Luckystrike, the Duke of Earl, Pondwater-on-Gabardine, England. But the point I am trying to make here is that since the rest of the world appears to be taking its sweet time about becoming fluent in English, it looks like, in the interest of improving world peace and understanding, it's up to us Americans to strike the bull on the horns while the iron is hot and learn to speak a foreign language. This is not an area where we are strong, as a nation: A recent poll showed that 82 percent of the Americans surveyed speak no foreign language at all. Unfortunately, the same poll showed that 41 percent also cannot speak English, 53 percent cannot name the state they live in, and 62 percent believe that the Declaration of Independence is "a kind of fish." So we can see that we have a tough educational row to hoe here, in the sense that Americans, not to put too fine a point on it, have the IQs of bait. I mean, let's face it, this is obviously why the Japanese are capable of building sophisticated videocassette recorders, whereas we view it as a major achievement if we can hook them up correctly to our TV sets. This is nothing to be ashamed of, Americans! Say it out loud! "We're pretty stupid!" See? Doesn't that feel good? Let's stop blaming the educational system for the fact that our children score lower on standardized tests than any other vertebrate life form on the planet! Let's stop all this anguished whiny self-critical FRETTING over the recently discovered fact that the guiding hand on the tiller of the ship of state belongs to Mr. Magoo! Remember: WE STILL HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Ha ha! Getting back to the central point, we should all learn to speak a foreign language. Fortunately, this is easy. HOW TO SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: The key is to understand that foreigners communicate with each other primarily by means of "idiomatic expressions," the main ones being: GERMAN: "Ach du lieber!" ("Darn it!") SPANISH: "Caramba!" ("Darn it!") FRENCH: "Zut alors!" ("Look! A lors!") Also, you should bear in mind that foreign people for some reason believe that everyday household objects and vegetables are "masculine" or "feminine." For example, French people believe that potatoes are feminine, even though they (potatoes) do not have sexual organs, that I have noticed. Dogs, on the other hand, are masculine, even if they are not. (This does not mean, by the way, that a dog can have sex with a potato, although it will probably try.) PRONUNCIATION HINT: In most foreign languages, the letter "r" is pronounced incorrectly. Also, if you are speaking German, at certain points during each sentence you should give the impression you're about to expel a major gob. OK? Practice these techniques in front of a mirror until you're comfortable with them, then go to a country that is frequented by foreigners and see if you can't increase their international understanding, the way Jimmy Carter did during his 1977 presidential visit to Poland, when he told a large welcoming crowd, through an official State Department translator, that he was "pleased to be grasping your secret parts."