Quote:
Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
What is fascinating is describing the experience of living in a foreign environment as some sort of hell, and not as an exhilarating way to discover a new culture and expand one's horizons. It speaks volume about the insularity of Anglophone North America.
Not all Americans are like that of course, and I know some who have great interest in French culture and language, but I cannot imagine something similar being written in Europe. It's just bizarre. Here soccer players move from country to country, and no one would write something like "Bilbao is not a welcoming place for non-Spanish speakers, this is particularly difficult on the wives of soccer players, bla bla bla".
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American NBA players think Toronto is too exotic, so Quebec City would be like an anthropologist living amongst an Amazonian tribe. Plus, they’re professional athletes. Life is sport is life. They’ve been groomed since childhood to avoid diversions and concentrate monomaniacally on excelling in their sport and to be a competitive prospect in their professional league. If they learn another language, it’s in the pursuit of that goal. It’s not in their interest to take weeks off of their training schedule to learn a language for a single market they’ll most likely be traded away from.