strangeness

Foreign countries, foreign languages, what's about us?

You are twice a man if you speak two languages. Dispite of this many people don’t speak any other language or don’t even want to learn a foreign one. For these persons mothertongue is the only and ultimative form of communication.
English for example is the lingua franca of modern world. Thus leads to the effect that many Englisch native speakers think that there is no need for learning a foreign language. „Why should I learn a foreign language? – Finally God had written the bible in English!“, an American person justified his lacking proficiency. Native speakers of other languages, however, have different immunization strategies.
Depreciation is a very common form to immunize oneself against learning a foreign language. The own language becomes a very cultivated, well developed and distinct status, whereas all other tongues are comparatively primitive. It is therefore the model for evaluating the level of other languages.
„Hungarian is so primitive, because of its regular forms“, is often heard in this context. From another point of view you can say that German is very primitive, because of its irregular and synthetic forms, which are a relict of a linguistic status of the Neolithicum (and English – with its analytical grammar – has reached a modern and developed status).
„Barbaroi“, foreign people were called by the Greek. They thought, that only they had a wellformed articulation and all others speek thickly. This is expressed by this designation, which originally means „blabbers“.
Everything we don’t understand or is uncommon to us we refuse. This begins at innovations and ends at languages and their speakers. Therefore it is very important to learn another language, to see that there is not so much difference in thinking and feeling, although the expressions differ a lot. We first have to get in touch with primarily strange things – then strangeness fades away.
Not long ago there had been a Moslem district even in Graz. It had had its own mosque and bazars. The loyal Bosnian troops of the catholic Austrian-Hungarian-Cesar had lived there (in the area of the Elisabethinian Hospital of today). But nowadays it is a problem for many people, to live side by side with moslems. Although the Moorish culture has brought us science and thus Renaissance!
But who are more dangerous: fundamental Christs or fundamental Moslems? In their radical form there is no difference!