LL-L "Language use" 2013.04.30 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 30 April 2013 - Volume 02
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From: Roger Thijs <rogerthijs at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L Language use

> From: "Obiter Dictum" obiterdictum at mail.ru
> Subject: LL-L "Symbols" 2013.04.28 (01) [EN]

 > PS. The knowledge of English is very poor in Moscow,
 > even in hotels. In the metro it is a puzzle to find out what
 > is the best ticket for the number of rides one plans in one's
 > timeframe.
 > Rodger, what had you expected? (and why, for that mater? I have a
theory, but I would like to know how you explain it).

Some thoughts:

I was staying in the Cosmos hotel facing the park with the famous “all
Russian” monuments. As a matter of fact the hotel is not really focused on
foreign tourists, though very much on internal Russian tourists. So the
organized tours were advertised in Russian only and done with Russian
speaking guides. Even the lady at the Intourist desk did not speak English.
For me that is quite different with what one finds in downtown hotels in
St.-Petersburg.

At the little shops of the entrance of the park one sells nostalgic
t-shirts with CCCP texts and symbols. The youngsters in the street though
rather wear t-shirts with texts as “I love New-York” though, but do not
speak English, or just a few words.

I attended a transport exhibition in pavilion 75 in the park. Flanders had
a big nice group stand for the ports of Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Ghent, but
very few visitors. A lot of people though visited the boots of companies
from the Baltic States. At these stands business is possible since
everybody talks Russian.

I presume the motivation for learning English is not bigger that the
motivation for Americans to learn French. And btw, Russia was strongly
present on the Hannover Messe some weeks ago and I think German still has a
competitive place as foreign language at business level in Eastern Europe.

My next visit will be to the Innoprom fair in Ekaterinburg in July. It is
hard or impossible to find travel guides in English for that town. I must
admit that it is even difficult to find travel guides in Russian for that
town in Moscow. Where to find a road map in whatever language for
Sverdlovsk Oblast? And the town is candidate for World Expo 2020.

The good things: I love the food in the restaurants. The steaks are still
fried in real real real butter.

Regards,
Roger
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