International flights into Switzerland usually arrive at either Geneva or Zurich airports. Geneva is the second most populous city in Switzerland. It is also a global city, a financial center, and a worldwide center for diplomacy. As I looked around I could pick out people from Japan, China, India, Italy, France, Germany and many other countries. Listening to them speak was a real treat … a melody of languages. Both of these airports are very convenient to traveling to Zermatt, Switzerland, a gateway to the Matterhorn. But don’t miss taking a little time to visit the azure blue lakes; Lake Geneva and Lake Lucerne with their castles. Then it’s on to the Matterhorn, Switzerland’s most famous mountain of 14,692 feet; the mountain that movies have been made about. It is located in the Penninie Alps on the border of Switzerland and Italy. In German “matte” means “meadow” and “horn” means “peak.” It is the tenth highest peak in Switzerland.
There were seven of us, four adults with three children, in our Honda Odyssey making our way towards the Swiss Alps. The morning was sunny with a few white billowy cumulus clouds making their way lazily across the wide expanse of blue. The road was very straight most of the time with a few curves intermingled. Looking out the window, we saw green fields dotted here and there with acres of yellow flowers that looked like sunflowers. The beauty took my breath away. It was so picturesque, just like in the travel magazines I had seen.
Off in the distance, I could see mountains rising up from the green plains we had been traveling through. At last I could see them … the Swiss Alps. This was the home of Heidi, my favorite childhood novel. I can still remember some of her adventures. Her grandfather lived here and cared for her in these wondrous mountains. The Heidi book is among the best known works of Swiss literature and well worth reading to your children.
As we drove into Zermatt, a beautiful, little tourist town at the foot of the Alps, we parked our car on the outskirts and walked from there. No cars or big tour buses allowed in the village. The train stops here and goes no further. This is one of the great ski and climbing centers in the world. This deep valley is nestled between two steep, sculptured mountains. The air is crisp and clean with an Alpine flavor. Summer flowers drape themselves from each building along the way. Its cobblestone streets and pathways take you back in time to a simpler way of life. It is beautiful. It is exhilarating. It is special to be here; to see this great mountain and walk the cobblestone streets of Zermatt.
The Matterhorn is truly a magnificent mountain. A dream comes true, just to be here.
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I was waiting at gate C 5 to board my flight. It was supposed to leave in 10 minutes. The announcement blared loudly over the airports’ PA system, “Flight 4659 will be delayed and will not be boarding for 30 minutes. We are sorry for the inconvenience.” I had a connecting flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. What if I missed it, I thought. What will I do?
In 30 minutes another announcement and another delay, this one said we would have another hour delay before boarding. Frustration started to set in. By the time I boarded and got on my way, I knew I would miss my connecting flight. We found out that are delay was caused by Air force I, It was landing at the San Francisco Airport and so they closed it down to all incoming flights. That was so exciting. Oh the joys of International travel.
I was on my way to Guangzhou, China via Hong Kong to look for new items for our business to sell. I was to meet a business associate in Hong Kong who would take me to our hotel that night or should I say in the middle of the night. We were to meet with a couple businesses the next morning and then catch a train on to Guangzhou.
When I finally got to Hong Kong, it was about 2 a.m. and my business associate was nowhere to be seen. I did not have a phone number to call him or an address of where to find him. All I could do is stand around and hope he came. I waited for over an hour before he showed up. Imagine being in a foreign country in the middle of the night not knowing anyone, where to go, or what to do. Not the best scenario, I would say.
I am glad to say all worked out. We did meet up, make it to our hotel, our meetings, and caught our train. Canton Fair here we come! Guangzhou used to be called Canton due to the Europeanized names being used by the English Colonies but has since been changed back to its Chinese name.
My trip was successful despite my frustrations with the airline. I saw some great places, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Yiwu and Shanghai. It is unbelievable the capabilities that the Chinese have in manufacturing goods. The industry of the Chinese people is amazing.
Have any of you had frustrations or stories of interest with your International travel? We would love to hear about them.
The other day at lunch I ran into a friend at McDonalds’s. As we were waiting in the order line, he said, “I feel like you need to know Spanish just to make an order.” As I looked at the pretty girl at the cash register she looked like she could be Mexican. As we got closer, she sounded just like the two of us and I could detect no accent. She sounded like a plain, old Utahan. Her English was perfect … according to anyone from Utah.
As I have reflected on the statement of my friend, I realize that I have frequented many fast food businesses that hire a lot of Spanish people, some with heavy Spanish accents. This also includes hotel, resorts, restaurants and many other service related businesses. Years ago I read an article about a person who hired a lot of people and he commented that he found his best employees were immigrants. He said they worked much harder and were more loyal than the people born in the United States. So when he was looking to hire, his preference was to find someone wanting to work that came from another country.
A few years ago, a man from Mexico worked for me. He was well educated, loyal, honest, resourceful and a very hard worker. Whenever I gave him a job he did it fast and he did it well. I just pointed him in the right direction and let him go at it. He could do construction work; painting, electrical and you name it. He could do it all. As we worked together I found he could even repair my automobile whenever I had a problem. I found he could do anything and everything I needed done.
One day I asked him how he had learned to do so many things. He told me his father owned an auto repair business and he had learned to repair engines and do body work as he was growing up. Then he went to a University in Mexico City and received a Civil Engineering Degree. I found he could do almost anything I needed done. He was an invaluable employee. It took me about a year to find out who he really was.
The one thing I have not told you is that he spoke hardly any English and I spoke hardly any Spanish. We made a great team. We resorted to the use of sign language, pointing, drawing and things like that to communicate and sometimes an interpreter. I found he could read English if I gave him something written down. He could follow diagrams but he couldn’t speak the language. The very sad thing is that I paid him a menial wage and no one would pay him anymore because he could not speak English.
Eventually he went back to Mexico feeling he could make a better living. What a disservice we, as a country, are doing to these immigrants that come to our country looking for the American Dream. These bright, motivated, industrious people could be valuable assets to us … if only we would require them to learn English so they could be more functional. We have wonderful ESL language courses that are easy to us and cover many different languages for people coming here to find their American Dream.
Aside from France, French is the official language of 22 other countries and it is also the co-official language in countries including Haiti, Madagascar, Switzerland and Luxembourg. In addition to that, it is also the un-official second language of countries such as Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. It is also spoken in some parts of France’s former African colonies like Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger and Bénin. Over 75 million people use this language all over the world.
The standards for the French language including its correct pronunciation and language usage all over the world are set by its capital city, Paris. The French people are actually very protective about their language and they formed laws banning the use of non-French words even from official publications and websites.
The standard for French is based on the dialect known as Francien. It has been the official standard language since the mid-16th century. It has greatly replaced other regional dialects of French spoken in northern and central France. French dialects are further subdivided into 5 classifications namely, Central, Northern, Eastern, Western, Southwestern.
Like other languages, the French language also has its own characteristics. A lot of its letters are silent. As a result, pronunciation of the words can differ significantly from its spelling. Many people who try to learn French find that pronunciation is the hardest part to learn due to its new sounds, silent letters and liaisons. When all these factors come together as one, speaking French can be very tricky. Speaking French is more than just familiarization of the vocabulary and grammar rules because the letters need to also be pronounced correctly. Speakers who try to learn this language are not likely to sound like a native unless they learned the language as a child. However, learning how to speak French correctly is not impossible with enough practice and patience and using a good language course like Pimsleur. Some of the other important components of the language are inflection, declination and using grammatical gender. Also, in French, the forms of some words do vary as to how they are used in a sentence. It is quite different than English.
You really can use a second language when looking for jobs, business and travel purposes. French is one of the most useful languages and can be used throughout the world. When choosing a language to study, consider that French is one of the languages that will give you more in what ever you are planning to do.
Because you must walk before you can run, you cannot start right off thinking in a language, especially when you must proceed at the relatively slow pace of that of the typical foreign language college course. You must begin thinking in English and translating foreign words into and from English to your new language. Only gradually can you abandon translation and come to think in the language. But until you begin to think in your new language … you don’t really know it.
In the very first weeks of a course in a foreign language, students nearly always translate word for word. That is all right for the kind of elementary sentences you get in this stage, but it won’t do at all when the going gets tougher. Yet many students persist in this word-for-word translation throughout the entire study of a language. For a language like Spanish this is less likely to get you into trouble (because the grammar and word order are so much like English) but in other languages like Latin and German, it does not work so well because the word orders are quite different from the English ones. A second-year student in German can easily get lost trying to find his way word for word through the seemingly impenetrable thicket of a German sentence. For the German word order is so different that it makes little sense, you must learn to think in the German word order and get a sense of the sentence as a whole before you look up the specific words you do not know. And even when you are concentrating on specific words, you must keep in mind the relationship between words. The over-all meaning of the word is very important for you to be able to translate them properly.
You will discover yourself that this is the only way you can translate complicated sentences. If you are doing no better than word-for-word translation, you are in trouble and you will need a lot of help. We cannot tell you exactly what your difficulties will be since they will be different for different people. One frequent difficulty, however, is that the student who does not have the basic elements of the vocabulary, such as relative pronouns or irregular verbs, memorized, will find that it will be very difficult. It needs to be something that comes naturally and if it doesn’t, it will be very difficult. If you don’t know the syntax or word order well enough to be able to tell where they are in a sentence you have more problems. This is particular difficulty for students of German. Thus in a sentence like Haben Sie den Bauer gesehen, der auf dem Wagen sass? (“Have you seen the farmer who sat in the wagon?”), a badly confused student may try to translate der as a definite article rather than as a relative pronoun. An example of a parallel problem is in a French sentence like Elle a recu les fleurs que lui ont envoyees des amies (“She received the flowers that friends sent her”), where the unobservant student may read the objective pronoun que as the nominative pronoun qui thus making the sentence make no sense. By looking over the whole sentence structure and then by relating the words to one another, you would not make a mistake like this.
In your favor, a good language from PimsleurMethod will make it a much easier adventure and you will have success.