Europe and Russia in the Playground II

[Aedilred]

By "properly inflected", I suppose you mean Latin-like? :p 'cause said functions exist in e.g. Finnish (though you're correct, dative is the third most commonly found case in nominative-accusative languages and they're more frequent than ergative-absolutive languages by enough that dative is the third most commonly reported case) but they're expressed through different means. For example, Finnish has a productive causative infix "-tA" [A = doubling of a or ä depending on if the word has nasals or not], but while normally the forced agent of a causative construction (something like "John made Mary do it" - in Finnish "make X do it" is a form of the verb "do") would receive dative markings, in Finnish a locative case, adessive, is often used instead.

Indeed, in all the 14 cases of Finnish there's no accusative and no dative, but Finnish certainly marks prototypical patient (genetive or partitive) and receiver (mostly adessive) anyways. Morale of the story being, while the functions exist, the cases used to those ends aren't always the prototypical ones.

Not specifically "Latin-like" (Latin is the most inflected language I've studied most, it's true, but inflection isn't a specifically Italic, Germanic or even Indo-European trait, after all, and I'm well aware that these things work elsewhere), it's just that English has become almost completely non-inflected, certainly as far as nouns go, so as Gwynfrid says it's not a particularly useful concept.

That said, and bearing in mind your later point, irrespective of how foreign languages are taught I do think it's useful and important to teach grammar properly to native language speakers at a relatively early stage - obviously they'll already have a vocabulary, but once they've got to grips with that, teaching them how the language actually fits together and - by extension - how you can play around with it, would be really useful. I don't recall ever being taught English grammar beyond a very basic explanation of the distinction between parts of speech. Any knowledge of subject/object, tenses, cases, moods, voices and so forth has come entirely from my foreign-language-learning... which doesn't seem right, really.

[Eldariel]

Not specifically "Latin-like" (Latin is the most inflected language I've studied most, it's true, but inflection isn't a specifically Italic, Germanic or even Indo-European trait, after all, and I'm well aware that these things work elsewhere), it's just that English has become almost completely non-inflected, certainly as far as nouns go, so as Gwynfrid says it's not a particularly useful concept.

That said, and bearing in mind your later point, irrespective of how foreign languages are taught I do think it's useful and important to teach grammar properly to native language speakers at a relatively early stage - obviously they'll already have a vocabulary, but once they've got to grips with that, teaching them how the language actually fits together and - by extension - how you can play around with it, would be really useful. I don't recall ever being taught English grammar beyond a very basic explanation of the distinction between parts of speech. Any knowledge of subject/object, tenses, cases, moods, voices and so forth has come entirely from my foreign-language-learning... which doesn't seem right, really.

I 100% agree that teaching linguistics helps; but it absolutely shouldn't be involved in foreign language teaching from the start - linguistics offers tools for learning the language, but spending time you should spend on the language on learning the tools is horribly inefficient. Rather, teaching natives linguistics through their native language helps massively in foreign language acquisition, and makes learning the basic concepts much easier. At least in Finland this is already what they try, but it should be in a more natural and "native" way than currently (we're taught e.g. the Latin names for cases and infinitives [5 in Finnish] among others, which are not very descriptive for a native speaker of a Uralic language and as such they have to learn Latin while learning the terms, and since the terms are considered largely useless, most people just learn 'em for the exam and forget afterwards).

I'll say this: I never knew whether to use dative or accusative in German before I learned which semantic roles they code while studying linguistics. Nowadays it's clear; prototypical receiver is in dative, while patient is in accusative. Why this wasn't taught to me in comprehensive/elementary school I'll never know; it's not exactly deep theory. International Phonetic Alphabet is another thing - I've only now properly learned to read phonetic alphabets, which means it's come two decades too late for me to easily acquire these phonemes. We actually had IPA coding for all the words in our English books and few of the signs were mentioned in the passing; how bad would've it really been to spend a month on learning IPA and then enabling children themselves to figure out the pronunciations for all the foreign languages they learn (all Finns learn at least two foreign languages so it would certainly be beneficial).


Still, while linguistic competence helps with language acquisition, you can also learn all that from using and reading; you never need to learn the grammar if it comes naturally to you. That's of course how children learn their first language, but it also works for auxiliary languages. That's how I've learned English for instance - I've talked with people and read books. Now that I'm applying for a minor in English Philology this year, I actually have to learn the grammar properly. There are so many things I've never paid attention to that feel entirely natural to me even though I'm not actually a native. Subjunctive for one, the irrealis 'were', the progressive aspect vs. plain tenses, predicative object pronoun allowing nominative over accusative while an actual object requires accusative (that is to say, I can say "It was he/him who said it" but I have to say "They drowned him"), the various defective verbs (beware, quoth, the auxiliaries) and all that.

I don't need any of that information to learn English nor do I need to acquire that information to speak fluent English, but especially at a later age the linguistic information can help particularly with understanding phenomena I haven't encountered in any of the languages I speak fluently (such as the accusative/dative use in German). Of course, I don't need to really know dative/accusative and use them properly to produce understandable speech in German. They're a key to a higher level. There's no reason for me to strive for perfection in German grammar if I have trouble remembering core vocabulary or producing basic sentences. Once I want to reach the level of a fluent German-speaker, then it's relevant but it's a waste of time to learn the details if I lack the general picture (and of course, it's again only useful, not necessary).

The way I'd map language teaching would be:
- Teach basic linguistics in a simplified, understandable manner in the native language classes keeping to terminology in this same language. Teach IPA given time.
- Teach basic vocabulary, word order, pronunciation and things required to produce sentences in a foreign language class for the first year or so and then just have the students speak a lot, teach each other vocabulary (it's been studied that by far the best way to remember something is to teach it to someone else); also include reading (simple literature), games, videos, etc. Genuine articles, not ones tailored for learning 'cause the ones designed for education tend to be boring.
- Start focusing more on grammar beyond the obvious like word order after the students can converse properly in the foreign language, so hopefully in a year or so. A dedicated person can reach conversational level in few weeks-month by just talking, but in school there are only so many hours for the language and only so much dedication and interest so it's like to take longer. Still, I posit this kind of an approach would make life much easier for the students and achieve superior results.


In short, let them achieve a rough-on-the-edges conversational level first and then start to polish it, rather than try to keep everything perfect from the very start. I think the most important is that the students learn to talk and understand the language, rather than that it's perfect. Perfection comes with use, you can't perfect something you don't know.

[Gwynfrid]

Eldariel, as somebody who's been on the receiving end of a lot of language classes, over half of which have been, sadly, wasted, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I never knew whether to use dative or accusative in German before I learned which semantic roles they code while studying linguistics. Nowadays it's clear; prototypical receiver is in dative, while patient is in accusative. Why this wasn't taught to me in comprehensive/elementary school I'll never know; it's not exactly deep theory.

... Also, this. You just explained one of the major reasons why I never managed to be any good at German. I don't recall having ever learnt the meaning of "prototypical receiver" or "patient" and their relationship to cases, and I suspect that, if I had, one particularly discouraging roadblock would have been removed from my path.

[Jon_Dahl]

So... Is there anything else in Europe than languages? :)

I always find it funny when people talk about that they can talk a few words of some language. Usually the basic level of any language yields no benefit, except when you travel. Granted, I've had massively positive experiences just by learning a handful of Arabic and Hungarian before I have travelled to countries where these languages are spoken. People have gone from :( to :) :) :) when I have said "Elnézést uram" or "Ramadan Kareem" (during Ramadan, of course).
Once I studied German for 2 years and never used it. Those were the years that I wasted. Back then, I had an idea that you can learn a language just by going to classes and having no connection to the people or culture. Luckily I have now learned languages that I actively use.

Nevertheless, I always facepalm when I see people giving a long list of languages and mentioning that they can speak a few words of each language. Why have you studied so many languages so briefly instead of mastering one or two? In professional life the person with three well-spoken languages is always more valuable than the guy with five so-so languages. In my profession you are only deemed to have a decent command of a language if you can speak and write like a native. Anything less than that and the customers are not pleased. Maybe things are different in the academic circles?

[Eldan]

One reason is that I meet a lot of people who speak a high diversity of languages. Just in Switzerland, a country about 300 by 200 kilometers in size, there are four official native languages and dozens of others from immigrants. Sure, I only really speak Swiss, German and English with some broken French, but even just in my group at work, there are Spanish, Italian, French, Ukrainian, German, Russian, Nepalese and English speaking people. In my house neighborhood live Turks, Serbians, Portoguese, Albanians and probably more. I need at least a few words of a variety of languages to just navigate my daily live.

[Eldariel]

Eldariel, as somebody who's been on the receiving end of a lot of language classes, over half of which have been, sadly, wasted, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

... Also, this. You just explained one of the major reasons why I never managed to be any good at German. I don't recall having ever learnt the meaning of "prototypical receiver" or "patient" and their relationship to cases, and I suspect that, if I had, one particularly discouraging roadblock would have been removed from my path.

Yeah, they're the semantic roles (that is, the meaning of the message, not the form). Turns out languages care a whole lot more about the actual contents of the used message than word classes. E.g. Pichi uses verbs instead of adjectives but it has different verbs for each of the things like "be.good", "make.better", "be.beautiful" and so on. Every argument of a verb (that is, participant associated with the action the verb is describing) can, however, be assigned a role based on what it means. You receive help, for instance, which is why help has a dative object. That is, in a sentence "I'm helping him", I am the agent (party actively instigating the activity, in this case helping) and he's the recipient (he "receives" help; different from "patient" in that "patient" is completely inactive while "recipient" is somewhat active in the action). There's a full list of them alongside simple explanations on the Wikipedia. They really helped me grok this particular point in German.

So... Is there anything else in Europe than languages? :)

I always find it funny when people talk about that they can talk a few words of some language. Usually the basic level of any language yields no benefit, except when you travel. Granted, I've had massively positive experiences just by learning a handful of Arabic and Hungarian before I have travelled to countries where these languages are spoken. People have gone from :( to :) :) :) when I have said "Elnézést uram" or "Ramadan Kareem" (during Ramadan, of course).

There's a massive difference between knowing few words and knowing nothing at all in an actual communication situation. For instance, my father doesn't really speak Spanish. Yet, when were on a trip in Spain while I was about 5, we rented a car. Now, we didn't know that Spanish rental cars are returned with the tank almost completely empty (in most North European countries, the custom is to always return them with the tank full). He checked the meter but it never occurred to him that the tank could be anything but full so he just made a mental note that the meter is broken. As a consequence, the car of course stops on some small mountain way. In spite of not knowing Spanish, he was able to communicate with a Spaniard he found after a walk of a few kilometers well enough to explain his problem (he started with "gasolino finito", got a response which he guessed meant "Is it completely empty?", he responded with "si si, total finito", got more words he didn't understand as a response, but some time later they pumped a bit of gasoline from the Spaniard's car into a canister and we get our car to a nearby gas station).

It also looks good on the CV. You also tend to know infinitely more than somebody who doesn't know any at all, which makes figuring some one-liners or whatever out much easier, even as just intrigue, let alone if knowing it is actually essential. Also knowing a bit of a language makes it a lot quicker to improve later. It also helps with understanding natives of that language when they're speaking some other language non-fluently; you can mirror your knowledge of the structures and the meanings of the words in that language to the language you're communicating in to understand some ungrammatical structures they're using.

Once I studied German for 2 years and never used it. Those were the years that I wasted. Back then, I had an idea that you can learn a language just by going to classes and having no connection to the people or culture. Luckily I have now learned languages that I actively use.

That's also about your life choices. You can actively build contacts with German people and use the language. You can also e.g. read German literature, watch German movies or whatever. There're plenty of good products on both fronts from even the last century. The internet in particular means there's no excuse for letting your languages rust; you can use them if you choose to.

There are also plenty of other benefits than actual language competence to learning languages; broadens your horizons and improves your cognitive functions, eases future language learning (learning even a bit of how to think in any given language makes you much better at acquiring new languages), etc.

Nevertheless, I always facepalm when I see people giving a long list of languages and mentioning that they can speak a few words of each language. Why have you studied so many languages so briefly instead of mastering one or two? In professional life the person with three well-spoken languages is always more valuable than the guy with five so-so languages. In my profession you are only deemed to have a decent command of a language if you can speak and write like a native. Anything less than that and the customers are not pleased. Maybe things are different in the academic circles?

Well, first, few reasons why people might only know a bit of a language:
1. Many people have studied languages in school. Most people who've studied at school won't master those languages. Same might apply later; you try it out, decide you'd rather not learn it after all (you suddenly become so busy you don't have the time for it, your interests drops or whatever). Or maybe you took a course and it ended. Maybe there's nothing more advanced available in your corner of the world on the topic.
2. In some countries (e.g. in Finland) you're also forced to learn some languages that many people don't want to learn and thus you're left with a weak, but existent command of a language you don't particularly care about (Swedish in our case; not that much of a problem in academia but for most of the population, their practical interest in Swedish is minor).
3. You've never officially studied the language but you've picked it up through living in the country for a few weeks or months, or through playing games/watching subtitled movies in said language, etc.
4. You don't reach native-level just by studying. That's a fact. For that level, you need to actually actively use the language in an environment with native speakers. As such, everybody who's started studying any language in school but hasn't immersed themselves in that language by reading, hearing and speaking it daily with masters lacks the true mastery. It only makes sense to move onto another projects while setting off to acquire true mastery in your previous ones.


Now, regarding your question, in academia at least, the level you need is of course the level required to read scientific articles in that language. Since you can use dictionaries to that end and much of the vocabulary in any given field transcends language boundaries, you don't need to know too much to achieve this. Of course, the better you are the faster it is and thus the more practical your access to publications in that language is. It's a different matter for e.g. me (I study general linguistics) of course, since we study the nature of human language as a phenomenon and thus any amount of information from each individual language is useful for reducing the amount of work we have to do when we begin the process of assembling typological comparisons.

But yeah, there's no such thing as a useless language even if literally nobody else on this planet learns it. Similarly, there's no such thing as useless language skills even if you can only count to ten. And of course, you can learn languages as a form of self-improvement, out of intrigue or for any number of reasons. Me, I'd always rather read, watch or play all my movies, books, games and even TV-series (rare, but it's happened before) in the original language; that alone gives me enough reason to never stop learning languages.

[Asta Kask]

Nevertheless, I always facepalm when I see people giving a long list of languages and mentioning that they can speak a few words of each language. Why have you studied so many languages so briefly instead of mastering one or two? In professional life the person with three well-spoken languages is always more valuable than the guy with five so-so languages. In my profession you are only deemed to have a decent command of a language if you can speak and write like a native. Anything less than that and the customers are not pleased. Maybe things are different in the academic circles?

I learned French and Russian a long time ago (and was never a very good student) so I've forgotten most of them. German is sufficiently close to Swedish that I've learned a little from song lyrics. And I'm fascinated by proto-languages and constructed languages. I've even got a book on "Modern Indo-European", which is one interpretation of Indo-European (and they say that they don't aim to recreate the language exactly - we have nowhere near the data to do that).

[Maelstrom]

I think something's very wrong. Glasgow's had four sunny days including today. Did someone of you break Scotland?

Ah! That's where my sunlight went today! And the showers robbed me of a garden day :(

[Eldan]

The weather just likes screwing with me. It's been 25 degrees and sunny for a week now. Then, four day Easter weekend. I get up today and it's, like 5 to 10 degrees and the ground is five centimeters deep in hailstones.

Too bad for you, though, weather! I love walking in the rain!

[Eldariel]

So, 20 degrees in Finland over Easter. When did I fall into an alternate reality?

[Eldan]

So, 20 degrees in Finland over Easter. When did I fall into an alternate reality?

I really don't know. We had over 20 degrees these last few weeks and rarely any real rain (the only exception, of course, being the four day Easter weekend). But then, we also had a snow-free, warm winter.

[Kaworu]

The same in Poland - we had only one week of snow during winter this year.

Global-warming is stealing our winter :( :( :( :( :(

[Asta Kask]

I'm dreaming of a white christmas.

(Or the more awesome version):

[CWater]

Hey! This seems like an interesting thread. I'm from Finland and Finnish is my mother tongue. In addition to English, I also speak decent Swedish and some Japanese and Italian. I tried to start learning French and Spain last autumn, but ended up not having enough time. I hope to try again next year.

My reason for wanting to learn to speak more languages is because I love travelling, and while English is a sort of lingua franca, there are many even in Europe who don't speak it. Not to mention in the rest of the world.

So, 20 degrees in Finland over Easter. When did I fall into an alternate reality?

Same feelings here. I don't complain, it is nice.. But it feels so strange!

[lio45]

Global-warming is stealing our winter :( :( :( :( :(

Actually, and ironically, I would bet that for a significant proportion of this forum's users this past season has been the very coldest winter they've ever seen in their lives.

[Gwynfrid]

Indeed, speaking as an immigrant to Canada, I would say it's not global warming who stole your winter. It's more, well, us. We want a refund on that!

[Hyena]

Russian here. Can't really tell you anything else without cursing or involving in politics, but yeah. Russian.

[Kalmageddon]

Russian here. Can't really tell you anything else without cursing or involving in politics, but yeah. Russian.

I know how you feel. I can't properly communicate without hand gestures, this forum is very stereotype unfriendly.

[Eldan]

Indeed, speaking as an immigrant to Canada, I would say it's not global warming who stoles your winter. It's more, well, us. We want a refund on that!

Hah! See, I should have believed it when my crazy conspiracy theory neighbor told me that the UN was stealing our weather.

[Asta Kask]

Hey! This seems like an interesting thread. I'm from Finland and Finnish is my mother tongue. In addition to English, I also speak decent Swedish and some Japanese and Italian. I tried to start learning French and Spain last autumn, but ended up not having enough time. I hope to try again next year.

All Finnish study Swedish, don't they? Speak... not so much.

[Eldariel]

All Finnish study Swedish, don't they? Speak... not so much.

I would say the academical types tend to speak fairly-extremely good Swedish. Hell, half of the party song book used by the Faculty of Arts is in Swedish. Now, everybody else on the other hand... :p

[CoffeeIncluded]

The same in Poland - we had only one week of snow during winter this year.

Global-warming is stealing our winter :( :( :( :( :(

No, global warming gave us Americans (and fellow Canadians too) your winter on top of ours.

Take it back. Please.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Russian here. Can't really tell you anything else without cursing.

It's okay, all Russians eventually have to go through the phase where we realize talking with nothing but swearwords is actually seen as a *BAD* thing in most cultures.

[Eldariel]

So, it's May Day Eve tomorrow. How widely is it celebrated, actually? Big student party and carnival here; what about the rest of you.

[Eldan]

Technically also May Day, and even celebrated in some parts, but around here, mostly International Worker's Day, so public festivities/demonstrations/riots. In the larger cities, people tend to stay away from certain streets.

[CurlyKitGirl]

Love this thread; started off saying 'hey, where's everyone?' and quickly devolved - or rather, digressed - into languages and linguistics, a tiny bit of dancing around politics and shortly followed by complaining or being pleasantly surprised by the weather.

So in order: Cornish, living in the UK. Modern languages (in rough order of fluency): English and French; reading/listening Spanish and Italian; Japanese and Hindi and then Cornish. From extension of Old English and Old Saxon, combined with English, general linguistics knowledge and a lot of guesswork I can stumble my way through a German children's book with about sixty percent accuracy.
Non-modern languages: various dialects of Middle English (defined by me as any English written post-1150 and pre-1550); Old English (two dialects); Middle Scots; Latin (mostly Classical and Mediaeval); Old French; Middle French; Old Norse; Middle Italian (or rather, enough Italian to read Dante and possibly a bit of Petrarch, but very little from anywhere else in Italy) and an extremely tiny bit of Ancient Greek. Well, Classical Greek and Koine Greek to be precise. I hesitate to even include it because the Greek I've picked up tends to be from reading facing page translations, commentary or lecture notes and things so it's more like 'I recognise that word!' than having any actual comprehension other than guesswork.
It's very easy to see what I studied from A Level (or local equivalent) into uni isn't it?

The weather! Sunny over Easter! 'Twas shocking. There was warmth, blue skies for days and a gentle breeze. Also sunburn.

re: May Day: there's the May Day bank holiday on the fifth and lots of local celebrations. There's usually a May Queen and general May Day celebration in most villages or towns. Padstow and a few other places in Cornwall have 'Obby 'Oss festivals, and other places in Cornwall have flower boat rituals. And, of course, there's Flora Day in Helston.
When I lived in Oxford May Day was a Big Thing.As in shops would open around three or four in the morning because on May Morning Magdalen College choir sing from the top of the church at six, then there would be morning parades and Morris dancers and things on Broad Street and that area. I also know something similar's starting to occur in Durham, though with more leaping into local rivers (now banned in Oxford because the river under Magdalen Bridge is only a few feet deep at low tides).
What else?
Just general festivals, celebrations and things really, some even celebrating Beltane; there're early morning swims in the sea, but those are becoming more and more every day. And of course those neo-pagan wiccan druid types hold Beltane at Stonehenge or other special places.
Oh, and many bonfires and may poles. And much drinking and eating and music, usually of the semi-folksy type.

Personally I can't wait until Golowan in June; it's a week of festivals and things held between St John's Eve and St. Peter's Eve and celebrates Things Of A Vaguely Pagan Nature, But Is Now Mostly About Art, Culture and Heritage. Also fun, food, drinking and Mazey Day. Which itself is about parades, fun, food, drinking, music, drinking, parades, food, drinking, culture, art, music and drinking. Also a fair. And things.
Well worth travelling for.

New topic to enter in the sprawl?
Places in Europe-and-Russia people want to visit whether they be native to Europe-and-Russia (EaR), just living there or wanting to travel there from non-EaR?
I'm pretty much down for everywhere. I've basically been to Brittany, London and Newcastle. I need to get out more.

[Aedilred]

New topic to enter in the sprawl?
Places in Europe-and-Russia people want to visit whether they be native to Europe-and-Russia (EaR), just living there or wanting to travel there from non-EaR?
I'm pretty much down for everywhere. I've basically been to Brittany, London and Newcastle. I need to get out more.

Well, basically I want to go EVERYWHERE, but there are a few places higher on the list than others.

I'm a massive Catalanophile. But I've never actually *ahem* been there. I've been to the Balaerics, rather a lot in fact, hardly uncommonly for a Britisher (though not the nightclubby bits) but not anywhere in old mainland Aragon. So that would probably be the first.
I've also always wanted to visit Vienna.
There are quite a lot of places I'd like to see in eastern Europe. Sadly many of the mediaeval cities I would have loved to have seen are probably now buried under 20th-century concrete (yo, Minsk, Kaliningrad) but anything to do with the Habsburg, Jagiellon or Byzantine empires that's actually left in that part of the world, sign me up.
And Istanbul. Of course.

I want to go back to the Languedoc-Midi, because on my previous visit I felt like it was quietly getting on with being the best place in the world. It probably helps if you're on holiday, of course. Carcassonne and Beziers were disappointing, but Narbonne is definitely worth another look, and - a little further afield, so are Orange, Nimes and Avignon. I'd also like to drive over the Millau viaduct if I got the chance. Really, I think I could probably fairly happily spend the rest of my life moseying round Britain and France, but I'm a bit of a dilettante by nature and would like to travel further afield as well. Also on the list of "places that I loved and want to go back to" would be the Rhineland and Moselle valley, particularly round Trier, and, being an historian by nature, I don't think I could legitimately pass up the chance to visit Aachen.

I also feel like Rome merits another visit. I've been there twice and "done" all the big tourist sites, but it was just as amazing the second time round and I suspect there's still a lot there I haven't seen. In particular I'd like to visit Ostia again, because that blew me away, even more than the ruined cities round the bay of Naples. And in that part of the world, I've got short shrift on Naples itself - particularly the wonderful museum - twice now and want to do that justice. I also want to see Paestum, which I came close to ten years ago but didn't actually get to visit.

On the fringes, but still what I mentally think of as "Europe" for various reasons, Leptis, the ruins of Antioch, and the battlefield at Manzikert. But given the political situation in or remoteness of some of those places, I doubt I'll be able to visit any time soon. Kiev probably falls into the same category.

That's not counting most of the "obvious" tourist sites I haven't yet been to - the big Egyptian sites, the Parthenon, the theatre at Delphi, Babylon (even in its "restored" state) and so on. And that's just in/around Europe

[Eldan]

Another vote for "everything", please.

But really, Great Britain is the great gap in my list of places I've visited in Europe. That, and Rome.

[Asta Kask]

So, it's May Day Eve tomorrow. How widely is it celebrated, actually? Big student party and carnival here; what about the rest of you.

Big parties, many a virginity lost.

Edit: Are we allowed to have this thread? I thought we weren't supposed to talk about "country matters".

[Eldariel]

Big parties, many a virginity lost.

I think we've just continued the Swedish tradition. That would make sense, at least, and that's like half the things in Finland anyways.

Edit: Are we allowed to have this thread? I thought we weren't supposed to talk about "country matters".

I wouldn't worry. The ban only applies to politics and religion; there's no need nor interest for such in this thread from what it looks like. Certainly talking about local traditions, languages, places you'd like to visit, stereotypes, etc. should be more than fine within the sphere of this forum's field of interest.