On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 15:56:13 -0700, PTRAVEL wrote:


"devil" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 15:16:36 +0000, Barney wrote:


Well my experience found that those who are rude and impolite are
mostly American. I realize only a few can spoil it for others. I
have met Americans in Canada that even refered to this country as a
"third world country"

To be fair though, I suspect Americans stand out for a bunch of reason,
starting with there being more of them.

People may just not notice those who behave. Probably think they are
Canadian :-).

Another issue: surely this sort of observation will bepend upon places and
destinations, and what type of tourism.

BTW, last time I saw obnoxious tourists in a restaurant, in Jasper it was,
they group of overly noisy folks, behaving like in conquered land, was
French. Then, digressing since these are not tourists, there is always a
group of overly loudy elderly Cantonese ladies in the back of the city
bus. Again, if they expected other folks to understand them, they would
probably make themselves less obnoxious too.

An interesting observation, because I've always found the Cantonese language
to be rather loud and harsh. My wife, who is Chinese and whose primary
language is Mandarin (though she can also speak Cantonese) agrees.
Mandarin, IMHO, is a more fluid and melodious language. However, I don't
think the character of the Cantonese language (or any other language for
that matter) is inherently obnoxious -- the additional tonal variations, as
well as the specific phoneme set, more or less dictate that other cultures
will find it harsh.

But my point was that, in circumstances where they expected no one to
understand them, they had no hesitation in speaking very loud.

That was the obnoxious part. In many ways similar to tourists in foreign
land. Behaving as if in conquered land. (I must say, looking back in my
own early life, I was at some point probably equally guilty of the same
behavior.)