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Re:I need help to learn Arabic
Great to Hear from you, but indeed I am normal user too, I hope you can find any way to communicate.
Ismail from Palestine.
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Language pair: English; All
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Ismail A.
April 5, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:The American dream! 3 of 3
(Part 3 0f 3)
I’m afraid I’m not nearly as fluent in visual art as I am in literature, but names that stand out in my mind are Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, C.M. Russell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Man Ray, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Norman Rockwell. I should mention also, our famous Architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who had such a huge impact culturally, that he even appears in a famous song by Paul Simon.
Although learn alot about your great cultural figures here in the U.S. I hope you will share with us anyway. It is often surprising to learn how different a country appears from the outside than from the inside. For example, yourJacque Derrida was revolutionary for us, and yet I was shocked to learn that your universities don’t talk about him very much as all.
Thank you for your very interesting topic.
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
(Fin)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
March 24, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: March 24, 2005
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Re:The American dream! 2 of 3
(Part 2 0f 3)
It’s funny, speaking of presidents, that JFK has always been seen as one of our greats. He was fiery and dynamic and had incredible charisma. And while he pulled a great miracle out of his hat during the Cuban Missile crisis, he also laid an egg at the Bay of Pigs. The great tragedy of Kennedy was that he was murdered before he could accomplish his great vision, most of which was finally brought to fruition by his vice president and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. It was Johnson who established “the Great Society” programs to combat poverty, and who ushered in the age of civil rights in our country. And yet Johnson is rarely remembered as a noteworthy president.
It took us a while to establish our own literary flavor beyond the shadow of the great canon of British Literature. Scholars called the period of Emerson, Whitman, Dickenson, and Thoreau the “American Renaissance,” which I always found Ironic, because it was really more an American Naissance than a Renaissance. We weren’t reborn, we were born. Of course, there is a new great wave of literature between the world wars as the American Expatriates, mostly writing in Paris developed the body of literature we often call the literature of “The Lost Generation” These writers include T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner (who never made it to Paris, but was firmly in the tradition), Archibald MacLeish, and Ernest Hemingway.
Most respected American Authors in the modern age include Saul Bellow, Don Delillo, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, John Updike, Joseph Heller, Marilynn Robinson, And David Lodge.
Of course, I can’t leave out names like Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Ambrose Bierce, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglas, Alex Haley, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen—And these are just people we hear about in the University. Many of them were discovered after the fact. There work was overlooked as the result of prejudices of the time, and only after we overcame our preconceptions were we able to read their work more objectively, and recognize their value. Kat Chopin is an excellent example of this. She wrote in the nineteenth century and was added to the literary canon only within the last twenty years. There’s no telling who might be recognized later on as our thinking continues to broaden.
(Continued once more)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
March 24, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: March 24, 2005
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Re:The American dream!
¡Hola Arnaud! ¿Cómo estas?
I agree with most of what everyone is saying about the American Dream. One thing I would add, though, which I think is essential, and which perhaps you may understand, being a Frenchman, is that we should remember the context in which America emerged as a nation. We declared independence from a country where success was determined by having had the good sense to be born into the right family. So when we speak of the American Dream in terms of being able to earn success by honest effort and perseverance, this is against the backdrop of other countries where people are born either into or out of such lifestyles, and their birth determined their destinies. America was the first (and thankfully not the only) country to institute social mobility as a fundamental value, so we can have a guy like Bill Clinton, who grew up in a poor family raised by a single mother, but who nonetheless was able to rise to be President of the United States. This could never have happened for one of the old Kings of England or of France. So the American Dream is a little more than just being able to earn your dreams by the sweat of your brow—it’s having a place to live where your dreams will never be forbidden to you because you were born to the wrong social class.
The American Bald Eagle won the right to represent our nation in a pitched battle in Congress against the Turkey, who had held the place of honor at Thanksgiving, our first national holiday.
Some other great national symbols include the famous Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, a gift to us from your own country, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and the Arch of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West. The Arch marks the point of departure that settlers often used for setting off for California in search of Gold and good fortune. And of course, there’s Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Oddly, most of us, try as we might, can only remember three of the four presidents whose faces were carved into this mountainside: George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln are easy—they are our two greatest presidents by far. The rest of us can usually only remember one or the other of the remaining two, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. I always thought Teddy’s cousin Franklin Delano was a far more impressive president than his predecessor, but FDR was elected in 1933, and Mt. Rushmore was designed to represent our first 150 years of history: 1776 – 1926. Missed it by just a smidge. They should have just stuck him in on general principle.
(To be continued...)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
March 24, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: March 24, 2005
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Expatriatism
Pavel, I was impressed with your message. I was wondering if you have ever read any of Edward Said's work. He's a brillian man and an expatriate like yourself, and I think you would have a profound connection with what he writes.
I lived outside the U.S. several years, and always with other Americans, so I have a very superficial experience of what you describe. But reading your message helped me to see something of what Said talks about.
Thanks!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
March 18, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Nations without state
Hi. I'm from The Catalan Nation/s and I'd like to know if any of you have heard about this nation. I also like to meet peole who live in a nation without state like Scotland or Basque Country etc.
Let's talk about the independence of our nations.
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Language pair: Catalan; English
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PJ
March 18, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:fue rompecabeza
Creo saber que es, espero haberle atinado. Deseame suerte
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Language pair: Armenian; English
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Jesus R.
February 17, 2005
# Msgs: 15
Latest: February 17, 2005
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fue rompecabeza
Espero que pueda leer el rompecabeza. Solamente las primeras letras.
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Language pair: Armenian; English
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Jasmine
February 17, 2005
# Msgs: 15
Latest: February 17, 2005
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Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Necesito ayuda en espacol
Hola Jesus, como estas. Pues hoy tengo una tarea para ti en Armenio. Voy a darte una oracion en Armenio, y tu tienes que tratar de leerla. puedes seguir las instrucciones siguientes: kh se lee como j en mejor, gh se lee como r en bonjour, y @ se lee como a en many.
Vale, aqui esta "Jays Ahaghordagrutyun@ Sir Mej Iparunakuma Nim Eherakhos@ Lav Aklini @ndhanrapes Yinqd Apordzir Nor Dar Eghir Xizakh .eghir Reklam Uni"
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Language pair: Armenian; English
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Jasmine
February 16, 2005
# Msgs: 15
Latest: February 17, 2005
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Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Necesito ayuda en espacol
Realmente interesante, lo que pasa es que mi pais no ha tenido esos cambios tan drásticos, las cosas en nuestra economía no son las mejores pero la verdad si gozamos de una estabilidad envidiable. Sabes que se esta trabajando aqui por lograr una democracia plena pero lo que pasa es que las cosas estan cambiando mucho. Aquí en los progrmas de televisión si se crítica y se satiriza a los políticos. En el 2000 gano el partido de la oposición, pero las cosas siempre han sido pacíficas. La ciudad en la que vivo se llama Ciudad Juárez y es una de las principales en el pais de la industria maquiladora ya que se aprovecha la ventaja de estar muy cerca de los Estados Unidos. Que padre que me cuentes cosas de tu país ya que muchas veces uno tiene una idea erronea de la situación en aquella parte del mundo.
Te escribo casi todo un discurso, pero si no entiendes algunas palabras dime para explicartelas de esa manera tienes mas vocabulario. Saludos desde México. Regards
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Language pair: Armenian; English
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Jesus R.
February 15, 2005
# Msgs: 15
Latest: February 17, 2005
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