How Meeting People From Other Cultures Helps You To Learn About Your Language & Culture

A friend on Facebook wrote that a song with the words, 'I don't know what I'd be without you'  was stronger (and different from) the commonplace phrase, I don't know what I'd do without you.

I wrote the comment:

Thank you for that interesting point about language. The Japanese translate: To be or not to be as to do or not to do. 

My Japanese friend, Yukiko, explained that the Japanese value action. I think of our phrases: Just do it. Man of action.

Chinese flag

The Chinese do not have the verb to be. So you constantly hear sentences such as, He good person. As any British or American speaker knows, the correct English would be He is a good person. As a teacher, I could devise a quiz with insert the correct missing word.

Doing is action. Being is thinking, or the sum of actions as seen by other people, or by yourself on reflection.

For years I had thought that my Chinese friends and pupil might be sleepy, overworked, lazy, badly educated.  After speaking to my Japanese friend I realized that they were meticulously translating directly in their head, word for word. My task was to drill them in translating, or repeating the correctly constructed English sentences.  

For examples, teach them the English sentence, to be or not to be, that is the question. To add the verb to be, that is the question. I am what I am. She is pretty. He is clever. It is useful. 

Is it good to be a teacher, or not good to be a teacher?

To drill third person singular, adding s to the verb: He says that she knows what it does. One door closes, another door opens. 

What you Can learn From travelling online to online speech contests

What I learned from watching five sets of contests over the past two days:

Visual is very important.

Magic and memorable words are important. Your humorous or serious speech needs a symbol. Watch the international winners. Which ones do you remember?

VISUAL Prop

I recall

1 the speech with the man taking off the ski jacket to show his slimmer inner self,

2 the speech about suicde and kind words which starts with a cigarette,

3 and Singapore winners Darran Tay on bullying by others and your innder self - he was wearing his white pants (Americans say underpants) over dark trousers (Americans say pants) and 4 Wiwiek with her bowl of food about visitng the elederly and not procrastinating until it is too late.

CATCHY TITLE

I have heard dozens of speeches on facing fears. I remember one book, Feel the Fear and do it anyway. Alliterative. Simple.

YOUR NAME
Mention your name and tell people how to remember it and find you on the net.

HUMOUR

A humorous speech needs four things.

A silly situation.

A visual

contrasting chrters in conversation

Surprises

A joke every minute - seven in a seven minutes speech.

If you don't have seven jokes you are not funnier or somebody else will be funnier than you are.

Call to action
End with a call to action.

What is my call to action?

Find an online club and learn. Form an online meeting. Facetime your friends. Learn about Google hangouts, and zoom. Educate the elderly.

Useful Websites
Toastmasters International Find A Club

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, not related to the actress, is a travel writer and photographer (semi-retired and travelling online during Corona crisis); speaker, speech trainer, teacher of English and other languages, Englsih language contest judge.

Introducing yourself in other languages - English, American, French and German

You may need to introduce yourself in these situations:
Calling to book or change an airline ticket or reservation.
Checking into a hotel.
Checking in at the airport.
Claiming your table at a restaurant.
Meeting a colleague at an office.
Meeting the family of the bride and groom at a wedding.
Meeting the mourners at a funeral.
Claiming lost luggage.
Searching for your lost children, spouse, friend, group.


English
Hello.(Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening.) My name is ... (Angela Lansbury). How do you do?
(Informal Americanism: Pleased to meet you.)
(First name then surname.)


American English
Hi. My name is ... Pleased to meet you.


French
Bonjour. (Good day.) Je m'appel Angela Lansbury. (Literally or transliteration I myself call; equivalent of I call myself.)


German
Guten tag / morgen/ abend (Good day, morning, evening) Meine namen ist (my name is)...

I shall shortly add in my next post:
Bulgarian
Romanian
Chinese
Russian
Hebrew
Arabic
Tamil

Call to Action
Walk around saying them to yourself until you can speak fast without hesitation nor stammering.

Write those you need in your diary. Write them on the front page. And/or the back page or inside cover. Write them on the diary page before your next trip.
Add more as you learn them. Copy them.

Useful Websites
UK
visitbritain.org
visitbritain.com
visitbritainshop.com
visitlondon.com

FRANCE
visitfrance.co.uk

GERMANY
germany.travel/en
USA
visittheusa.co.uk

LANGUAGES
duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, Teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Sharing Documents Across Time Zones When Travelling with Google Docs

Problem
How do you send different thoughts all day long to somebody else in business or family without inundating them with emails?
How do you stop clutter in your own sent email box?

Answer
Use shared google documents. You can keep updating with new thoughts or tasks, or re-edit, or change priorities.

Go to Docs.google.com and create a document. Click on share and add the email of whoever you want to see the document.

Sections could be:
ACTION
Meetings
Phone calls
Order goods
Make list
Send email
Invoice
Pay

DONE
Meetings ; arranged for date. Meeting held on. Postponed. Cancelled.
Phone calls made date and time and person.
Order goods: supplier, price and postage.
Make list.
Send email ; to, copy, subject.
Invoice: from, to, work, amount.
Pay: from, to, for.

They can also edit the document. Both of you can move items from :
Action at the top half of the page to
Done and by whom and date at the bottom of the page.

Story
I find this very useful, especially when I am on a different time zone. I won't wake up the family in the middle of the night with pings on their mobile phone by sending them a message or a what's ap message.

Tips
https://docs.google.com/document/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

PASTA - Problem, Answer, Story, Tip, Action And Author

Problem -
In the past some of my posts have had no structure. After I read them and re-read them I find that I forgot to end with a call to action. I correct later, adding my author's credentials and ask you to like my pages and share them, read my profiles, and read about my books and read extracts, and buy my books.

Answer
From now on I shall follow the PASTA structure in my posts.

P - problem
A - answer
S - story
T - tip
A - call to action (go to websites)
A - author

Story
I gave a talk on writing books and why you should write your family history to a toastmasters International speakers' club called HOD. Sina sent me a copy of his new book. I noticed that each chapter not only ended with a story, it had the sub-heading Story.

I thought, how strange that he not only follows the system used in Toastmasters of telling a personal story to illustrate a point and make it memorable (and personal to the author, therefore always original), he shows the structure in the sub-heading.

Then I recalled one of my heroines, Mrs Beeton, household management and cookery book pioneer. For a long time I thought that she invented the system of listing ingredients then method, a time sequence, to aid shopping and laying out the ingredients and utensils on the table, finally cooking.

She did not invent the method. But she made it popular. Therefore, never mind whether Sina started the system or copied it, nor whether I have started the system or copied it. I shall stick to it to organise my posts and so you know what to expect.

If you place the call to action too early, your reader will disappear. (We are often told in Toastmasters speakers' meetings by the evaluators not to give out handouts at the start because people will start reading them and miss the beginning of your speech.) So place the call to action or name of another website at the end.

You cannot guarantee that the reader will not skip to the end. I don't know whether creatives do this more than scientific, methodical people. I often am short of time, running late. I waste time reading blogs instead of getting on with important work (getting washed and dressed, paying bills, writing books, filling in tax returns). I sometimes flip from the opening of a book to the end, naturally in a library bookshop when I already have too many books and am considering buying the book, or wanting to know the end without paying the cost of another expensive book. However, I also sometimes start at the back of the back and flip forward.

I noticed a friend in Singapore flip from the back of a book. She apologised for doing so. I explained, "I often do that - I thought it was just me!" We wondered whether anybody who was Muslim or Jewish or Chinese would start at the back of the book or the left of the page. We could not reach any conclusion.

One way to keep the readers interested is to tell them they will reach information later. But you have to stop them skipping to the end. A small number of people deliberately disobey instructions, perhaps because their early training has taught them that instructors have ulterior motives and it's safer to do the opposite. However, most readers, listeners and people will follow instructions. A hypnotist picks out people who follow instructions readily.

TIP LIST
1 Read each post, mine and other people's, methodically.
2 However, note the call to action at the end.

ACTION
Write your own documents, speeches, letters, following this formula. Call me if you wish to receive advice or help. I will give a small amount of advice (two or three sentences, five minutes, reading a sentence or something which takes no longer than five minutes to read, under 500 words) to anybody free of charge if I have time to both friends, especially those from Toastmasters, and strangers. However, if you want an hour of my time, a professional job, do not know me personally, please pay the going rate.

AUTHOR
Angela Lansbury, author and speaker.
See my other travel posts on this blog. Read other blogs on grammar, spelling, language, speaking. Like my pages and share them. Link to me on Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Watch me performing my poetry and speeches on Facebook and Toastmasters International club pages and on YouTUbe.
Author of:
Wedding Speeches and Toasts. (Ward Lock/Cassell. Several editions. In some libraries. Also second hand copies on the net.)
The Best Man. (Ward Lock/Cassell.)
Quick Quotations. (Lulu.com - or buy from me when you see me.)
Who Said What When. (Lulu.com - or buy from me and get it signed when you see me.
New copies of my books are mostly £10 / 20 Singapore dollars. One of two books which are thicker, cost me lots of postage to get delivered to my home and /or with lots of illustrations are £20. Sometimes I have an old battered copy which I will sell cheaply.