What Your Language/Nationality Means to You

mjd   Thursday, May 15, 2003, 22:37 GMT
Clark,

No...I wasn't offended at all. I was complaining about those who think Portuguese is merely a dialect of Spanish etc. Nothing you wrote was offensive at all.
Clark   Thursday, May 15, 2003, 23:58 GMT
Thanks; I was scared there for a minute.
KT   Friday, May 16, 2003, 00:39 GMT
Clark,

Bay Area. Mountain View.
Clark   Friday, May 16, 2003, 01:48 GMT
So you were in California. Did you ever go anywhere else in the states?
Jam   Friday, May 16, 2003, 03:14 GMT
mjd & Antonio,

Well, I think both Chinese and Portuguese are the official languages in Macau. I am not sure if English is included as well. We speak Chinese here, but one who can speak Portuguese definitely has an advantage in the job market, esp. in the government department. So quite a number of people learn the language themselves. There used to be compulsary Portuguese courses in high schools some years ago. There is still a government-funded school that teaches in Portuguese.

The teaching medium of the universities here is English, while most of the primary and secondary schools teach in Chinese. This is quite a funny phenomenon.
Clark   Friday, May 16, 2003, 05:57 GMT
For me, speaking English brings me back to my English roots and the language that my ancestors adopted to when they came to America from other places.

For me, being American means that I am from California, and many of my ancestors came to this country.

I am just bored, so no new information really. I have just been thinking about where I stand with "being American."
Simon   Friday, May 16, 2003, 08:18 GMT
After years of soul searching, he looked in the mirror and realised he was just plain old Clark. Smiling, he sat down in his favorite chair with a glass of wine, opened his book and thought "hmm..."
KT   Friday, May 16, 2003, 10:27 GMT
Clark:

I actually spent 1 yr in Denver, 4 yrs in Maryland and 1 yr in Mt View. I visited NYC a few times, once to Philly, twice to FL, once to Boston, once to NC, once to Seattle, drove cross-country once.

I think one thing about being American is you don't have to be a "mono-cultural" person. (Sorry I invented this word, are there better ones?)
Antonio   Friday, May 16, 2003, 12:21 GMT
mjd:

I only speak portuguese at home. My sister and my nephew speak some English at home as well, but not me.
Não sei por quê eu não falo inglês em casa, acho que isso vem desde criançinha.

Clark:

You can´t express yourself in Portuguese, but you can in Spanish. That´s already an ´asset´ in these days.

Jam:

Good to know some people still speak Portuguese in Macau. I didn´t know that. Wasn´t the information we get ´by this side of the world´...
It makes sense that to work in the Gov. one must know Portuguese, because all the documents must have been written in that language.´

--------------

Portuguese is called ´The Flower of Latio´ or ´The last flower of Lation´ sometimes, because it was the last Latin tongue to appear. It derives from the very same ´galego´ that Spanish came from.
Basically, it´s vulgar Latin. But, believe me, you will not be able to get a thing in Latin, if you know Portuguese or Spanish/French/Italian. To understand Latin, you must learn Latin :-)

PS: ´Latio´ (pronounced / lA-ssi-o / ) is the original region where the Latin language appeared.
Clark   Friday, May 16, 2003, 15:02 GMT
Hmm, sounds something like Bilbo Baggins would do. And yes, that is what I did (minus the wine and book). I am all for being WHO you are, and I was not being exactly who I would have liked. So, I am getting back to my roots; my Southern, English, Californian and American roots.
Rodrigo   Friday, May 16, 2003, 15:16 GMT
As a Brazilian, i speak portuguese. Wich is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Although Brazil and Portugal speak the same laguage there are some diferences in terms and accents. It is really similar to spanish but i feel that who speaks portuguese has much more facilities to understand spanish than sapnish speakers to understand Portuguese.
English to me is very important as a second language, to use when i´m travelling as it is the most spoken language in the world.
Clark   Saturday, May 17, 2003, 00:28 GMT
I do not think Portuguese is all that hard to learn. For the most part, it is phonetic, and the grammar is straight forward for the most part. English spelling, I am coming to realize, is not as bad as everybody makes it out to be, but I will never deny that it is one of the hardest languages to learn because of its phonetics.