Petr Kovar posted on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:10:52 +0200 as excerpted: > One might ask whether the new system was respectful to values of > (traditional) family institution. > > Surely, a driving force behind these changes was completely different in > the Eastern bloc when compared to the U.S. In the East, the people in a > collectivist system including women were expected to self-sacrifice for > the well-being of the whole socialist society, whether in the West, the > personal success in an individualist system was what mattered, I assume.
Very interesting/educational. Among social commentators and in general society, is the society now becoming more individually "selfish" to the same degree as in most of the west, fully rejecting the old Communist social system along with the politics, or is some sort of middle ground being chosen? How is that viewed? (In reality, I understand there's still Communist parties and etc as part of the political system, and I suppose they'd reject the whole new system, but I'm talking in general, much as the reference to the West must be in general when discussing the emphasis on individualism.) >> Incidentally, and even further off-topic, I wish I could speak or just >> read and write *any* foreign (to me) language as well as you do with >> English. I would never know from your posting that you were not a >> native English speaker, and a well educated one at that. > > Thank you for your kind words! I still think, though, that my English > skills are quite limited in terms of phraseology & idioms. But I'm > working on it! :-) You are quite fluent, even eloquent. But phraseology and idioms are certainly a challenge when translating even across dialects. I grew up (ages 4.5 to 11, 6+ years) in Kenya, East Africa, a former British colony. That was in the 70s; we were there for the 10th anniversary of independence, in 1973, so they hadn't been independent long, and the English spoken there was far closer to "The Queen's English" than in the US. I /still/ think of "the boot" instead of "the trunk", and understand "bonnet" tho I think "hood". And spelling... metre/centre vs meter/center, coloUr, etc. But the event that really brought home the "issues with idioms" to my mom, and thru her retelling, to the whole family (tho this is English/other misunderstanding, not a an en_US/en_UK thing), was a discussion she had with one Kenyan young man (this was a secondary school and teacher training college, so... teens). They were joking, and my mom remarked "You must be pulling my leg, now." (The idiom indicates a deliberate exaggeration beyond credulity or tale as a joke, basically seeing how credulous the hearer is.[1]) Given the context of the thread, it's interesting this comes up now, as he thought he was being accused of improper contact! Obviously I was young at the time, and this was well before the victimizations I mentioned earlier, but the event left an impression of the dangers of misinterpreted across cultures idioms that has (obviously, given my recounting of the story) remained with me to this day. One of the other effects I've personally noted over the years, from my time there, where I was exposed to other cultures (including Indian) as well, and from later cross-cultural experiences (Navajo Indian, Central American Spanish) is that while I only picked up a smattering of words from all the various languages (my younger sister did far better, and actually took medicine in Mexico, she's a doctor), I'm /far/ more tolerant/understanding of "foreign" word order than most native English-only speakers. "Yoda-speak" comes off as slightly stilted but it isn't at all as difficult to understand for me as it seems to be for others, and I appreciate listening to and reading non-native English speakers who haven't quite mastered it to the degree you have (I really had no idea until you mentioned it, that you weren't a native English speaker, you're that fluent, only the name giving a hint, and I don't pay as much attention to that as many do), as it often gives me fresh insights into word or phrase meaning that I'd not get, otherwise. (I love reading direct order-preserved word-for-word Ancient Greek to English, for instance, tho order-preserved ancient Hebrew to English is rather harder as the order is FAR different, to the point I have to work hard enough at just basic parsing, that I miss the nuances available to me when reading from the Greek.) --- [1] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22pulling%20my%20leg%22 -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
