English as an inherently arrogant language

One thing I've learned about the English language from learning other languages is that English, inherently, comes across as being arrogant. Many phrases in English, for instance, talk about the other person, whereas in other languages, the phrases are more modest. For instance, the biggest phrase I've noticed is the way to say "you're welcome".

In English, we say "you are welcome"...meaning that we are taking pride in what we've done and we put ourselves first. In Spanish, the phrase is "de nada", which is literally translated to: "It's nothing." In almost every language I've learned, it is this same way. In Mandarin Chinese, for instance, you say, "dui bu qi", which means that it was no problem or don't worry about it. The same phrase is said in Cantonese Chinese, but it's said as: "mn sai ha hay". It also translates to "don't mention it". We, of course, have these same phrases in English, but our default way to tell somebody "you're welcome" is to simply say "you are welcome". We put ourselves first, even in our language and choice of words. Japanese also translates from "please do not worry about it, or please don't mention it."

This got me thinking: what other phrases in English are "arrogant" compared to the other languages around the world? One of the most fascinating things to me was in Mandarin. Receiving compliments in English, we automatically say, "oh, thank you." But in Mandarin, it's very common to say, "nali, nali" which means, "where, where?" It's considered to be a bad thing to even accept a compliment in Mandarin. In this manner, the Chinese say something is "not bad" when they mean that it is in fact pretty good.

Even saying "goodbye" in English is different. In Spanish, the phrase is "adios". Literally broken down linguistically, "a" means "to" and "dios" means "God". Interesting, isn't it? They also use "hasta luego" which means "until later" as one of their more common ways of saying goodbye. This same phrase is echoed in Mandarin, where the default way to say goodbye is "zai jian". "Zai" means at or until and "jian" means to see. Literally, it's translated as "to see again". In English, the phrase is more definite, more final, than in any other language that I know, at least.

See if you can find some other examples similar to this! That's all for now, but it's something I'd been curious about and when I actually thought about it, it was pretty interesting.

 The first is a picture of the house where I'm staying. The people of Ecuador are very friendly and they love to let the sun shine into their houses. There are many windows because of this in their houses!

This is an example of a street in Cayambe, though it's at the end of the busy street so there aren't too many people around. You can see the mural in the middle of the intersection, which is very common place here. There is also the picture of the mountains in the background. Que bonita!

And this is the front of the house; this is the gate that I go out of every morning. It's definitely a beautiful sight!

That's all for now; I thought I would put up a few pictures for everyone to see!

Ordering Chinese...in Spanish

This past weekend I had the chance to walk around Cayambe more and just get a better feel for the town itself. There's two main roads, including the Panamericano (the Pan-American highway) that goes into Quito. I live on one of the main roads, called Ascazubi. The other main road is more like the two-way highway that we are familiar with. There's a dividing line between and many gas stations as well as popular restaurants. There's even a Ford dealership there!! It's the little things that remind you of home that get you excited, right? :D

There's many places to buy biscochos, which are a specialty here in Cayambe. I guess tourists come from all over Ecuador to try the biscochos here in Cayambe. They are really just little biscuits, but the people here eat them with dulce con leche (caramel sauce). I've yet to try them, but I've heard they are the best here in Cayambe. I did stumble across a Chinese restaurant, and after inquiring with my co-teachers decided to try it out once I made sure it was reputable and safe to eat in. Staring at a Chinese menu in Spanish was definitely interesting. For the first few minutes, my brain was translating first into Chinese then back into English to figure out what I was looking at. Definitely quite the experience! I was even picturing the Mandarin characters that went with the food before I pictured the English words. I finally decided on chicken with vegetables, which was delicious. Broccoli, carrots, onions with fine white meat chicken and your choice of white or brown rice to go with it. I wound up taking maybe 3/4 of the meal to go because the portions were just the same as they are in China. I wanted to ask for chopsticks, but I hadn't looked up the Spanish word for chopsticks before, and guessed they probably wouldn't know the Chinese word (even though at least one person from the waitstaff appeared to be from China).

This Friday, the students will have the opportunity to make Valentine's Day cards. That should be a lot of fun! And on Tuesday the 14th, we are going to have a Valentine's Day party with all the students. I've seen just about every level of student now, from very early beginner to the student who is nearly done with the course here. It was fascinating to speak with him in class the other day. One of the topics was predicting things in the future, using the tense 'there will be'. He understood immediately and even understood the point of the question. The lesson asked that I ask him, "What do you think will happen in 2050?" his response was something to the effect of: "They say that the end of the world will be in 2012, but I don't believe that. I think it is important to do whatever you like to do regardless of what will happen." It was amazing, and very rewarding for me to see that someone could progress so much in a language in only two years of studying using this particular method. He was only fifteen, so the majority of his exposure to English happened at Wall Street.