Since the Beatles split, McCartney has come up with some real shite, which does tempt me to think that perhaps Lennon had the more talent (unless of course it was down to old age finding him out). Who can forget:- Ebony and Ivory Simply having a wonderful Christmas time The girl is mine Pipes of peace Spies like us Temporary secretary Mary had a little lamb and We all stand together (with the frog chorus)
Get stuffed and I raise you 'The Frog Song' and Mull of fucking kintyre mate. JL had the sense to get shot before he could taint his rep too much. Harrison well, nothing of note since My Sweet Lord album. I quite like him and thanks to him we got The Life of Brian, so...
McCartney never forgot that he was, after all, an entertainer. Lennon never forgot that he was "more popular than Jesus". /thread ends :tongue:
not much. Loads of ball juggling while locked in the bog smoking B&H fags and flicking through a 10 year old copy of Penthouse...
All this thread had achieved is to bring up adverts for single women looking for a date, at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, all you can see are pairs of eyes.
She's dead now, but lead an interesting life. Buckled Tower Bridge and was parachuted behind enemy lines before the D Day invasions...
And sadly, you are probably right. I find a certain smugness in the British populace (talking generalities here of course) which has always failed to engage with other countries and really get interested in how they operate. I'm a language graduate. I was always interested in other cultures. When you get out and about and see how things are done elsewhere, you can steal the best ideas and use them to modify what you are up to. Take the documentary on the German car industry: the Brits were so up themselves believing that they were the best in the world, they didn't even bother to look at what the Germans were up to until it was all too late. The state of language teaching in the UK is a pitiful joke. We think it is normal for all conversations with Germans to happen in English - ditto Scandinavians, Cloggies -just about everyone. That will only take you so far if you want to understand their mentality. The only country the UK looks to for ideas is America - and this, it seems to me, if principally out of laziness as they don't have to bother to learn another language. Britain has a totally entrenched island mentality - I'm not sure that anything much can be done about it. It's a bit like people with psychological disorders - they only ever change if they want to, otherwise it's just a waste of time counselling them. It will still take much more time until Britain gives up its ideas of empire and world power delusions. America is a world power, but once again, if it concentrated its resources on its own people instead of power projection on the world stage, it would have plenty of cash for fixing its own broken society, its drug problems and providing health care for all. But it won't happen. It's just not in their psyche. For Germany, it was forced upon them. They were told to put a sock in it and just knuckled down and focused on their own country. Doesn't seem to have done them too much harm.
I do take your points Glidd but it has to be said that the international language is English and most educated people in the world speak it. So for a typical Rosbiff which second language would you recommend and why ?
English is of course the international language and now even more so with the WWW. You can get your business done in English, you can do a lot of communication. But you won't ever get under the skin of another culture whose native tongue is not English. Thought processes are governed by language and some other languages have concepts that don't exist in English and are therefore difficult to experience in our tongue. If you want to learn another language, the thing to ask yourself is which culture you want to examine? Obviously from a business point of view, to know Chinese would be massively useful (and you'd be highly sought after in the job market). But the thing is, do you really want to spend a lot of time with the Chinese or in China? Similarly, I've always thought that Arabic sounds cool and their script is the most beautiful in the world. But likewise, do I want to spend a lot of my time in sandy hot places and their culture seems so bound up in Islam that it just doesn't interest me sufficiently for me to want to immerse myself in it. Of all the oriental languages, I think Japanese would be the most interesting. But that's just me. Of European languages, Spanish is probably the most accessible. Surprisingly for a romance language, much of its sentence structure is very like English which makes translation quite easy. It has a small vocabulary (their dictionary is smaller than French, which is smaller than English) and the grammar is quite straightforward with very strict rules which are rarely if ever broken. Dictation in Spanish is s doddle. And Spanish is massively spoken outside Spain (the whole of South America bar Brazil). it can be a little tricky to pronounce and is a bastard if you can't roll an "r". French is a beautiful language, rich culture and of course it is close to the UK. Can be tricky to pronounce, bit of a bastard to spell. Not actually an easy language, but at least practice is never far away. There's a lot to be said for Italian, although I don't speak it (but once you've got French and Spanish, you can understand much of it - at least to read). Another beautiful language and a fascinating culture. And the language of Ducati, of course. And German is also a great language. The grammar is by no means simple, but on the upside, it's very easy for an English person to pronounce. After all, Dutch is pretty much a bastardised German, and much of English is a bastardised Dutch. My only real problem with German is that I don't really want to spend my holidays there - or at least not outside Bavaria. Their food is dire. You could go bizarre and learn something like Norwegian. Although they may all speak English, you'd be king if you went there and actually spoke to them in their language. People love this, even if you're crap. It's the thought that counts. Nothing seems to amaze a foreigner more than an Englishman actually trying to speak their tongue. Our reputation for not doing this is truly abysmal. After 26 years of living here, people still seem amazed that I speak French, whereas were I any other nationality they would think it completely normal.
A few points in there rang a few bells for me. There was the group of Chinese engineers and techs I was minder for who taught me a few phrases and creased up every time I used them. Then there was the Spanish engineer who said he liked working with me because I used rich vocabulary. Being spoken to with perfect English by a petrol pump attendant in Holland, the group of Dutch people who switched into English to continue their conversation when I walked into a hotel lounge and the group of young Dutch men who walked past me and said 'kraut' ! Norwegian would be nice because their women just float my boat. The lanuage I would most like to speak though is Gaelic, apparently it is a language of the land and environment and sounds lovely. My daughter recently graduated in Italian, but she doesn't get her language skills from me ! We have strayed a long way from 'ragheads'.
Thankfully. Mind you, I think our conversation is relevant. Intolerance of other people's cultures is what generates all the difficulties in the world. If you want to learn Gaelic, go for it. There are a lot of worse places to hang out than the Western Isles.
