Languages, languages…all around us.
October 4th, 2007 by stolisano
It has been amazing how many languages and people from different countries have been surrounding us. Egypt is a country that attracts visitors from all over the world. Tour guides have told us that they are mainly coming from Russia and Spain, but we have seen so many different nationalities that we gave up counting all of them.
An incredible experience for me was listening and observing all the different nationalities and languages that were represented in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It was fascinating to watch the (clearly Egyptian) tour guides walk around with different groups and each explaining the same thing, only in a different language. After hearing English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and Russian we gave up trying to identify the language.
The travel industry is quite big here in Egypt and tour guides need to learn several languages well. Once we started on our tour of Upper Egypt and later on boarded the cruise ship down the Nile, we joined a larger group of travelers. It is an amazing group of people from all over the world that are being thrown together in different groups. These groups are formed depending on what language you speak. So, people from Australia, England, United States and Canada are lumped together, while we saw other groups with members from Argentina, Bolivia, Spain, Chile, and Panama. It was interesting and fun for me to listen to our English speaking guide, then listen in on the lecture from the German tour guide next to us and hear additional information from the Spanish speaking group that was following our group around the area.
At our assigned dinner table on board of the cruise ship, we have an incredible diverse and language rich group: a wonderful British couple living in Geneva, Switzerland, another couple from Oslo, Norway and a recently married couple from Perth, Australia. When you throw these together with your two teachers from Birmingham/USA and Germany/Argentina, you get interesting dinner conversation.
Street vendors and their language abilities are another very surprising and interesting situation. All of them seem to know basic selling, bargaining, numbers and getting your attention vocabulary in ALL the languages. Even the young boys try to get your attention, by yelling “Hello”, “Hallo” or “Hola”, “Senora”, Miss, Lady, etc. When one does not respond to their calls, they usually switch the language and try another one. They are desperate to find out from which country you come from, so they can shift to that language to start bargaining with you. These vendors can make change in any money currency on the spot.
2 Responses to “Languages, languages…all around us.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I am impressed with the amount of other nationalities that were on the boat with you. I think that traveling by cruise ship is a great way to meet other people and hear other people’s impressions of what you are seeing. What is the weather like? Is is as hot as it looks? Mrs. Freyer
Dear Mrs. Freyer,
It is wonderful to have such a variety of nationalities all in one place. Mrs. Menger and I are enjoying it and paying attention NOT to generalize anybody ,just based on where they come from.
Yes, it is as hot as it looks in the photos! There is no humidity and it is very bright outside. I am wearing sunglasses all the time, which helps me not having to make eye contact with the street vendors. The hottest it has been was in Luxor, since there was no wind either.