Culture Shock for a French Girl in America

Mitchell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Y1MvYoyXs

Mitchell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Y1MvYoyXs

[Deleted User]

Well, I got a bit of a "culture shock" trying to listen to the "speaking machine gun fire" on this video ....😉 If I met this wonderful young lady in person, I would first tell her, that there is no reason o need to talk this fast and that I would be able to even audibly understand a lot more of what she is saying if she shifted a gear or two down ....

Aside from this. I would say that many non-Americans are aware of such culture shocks when visting or living for a while in the USA; more so than US Folks might experience when visiting or living in a different country.

Mitchell

Thanks for the humorous response Wolfgang! I agree with you that she speak way too fast, in fact faster than most native speakers of English I have met. Like you I think non-American's know a lot more about the USA than American's know about the rest of the world.

C Mc

America is a nation of contradictions from its genesis to now. She has not come too far from her religious bias, slaveholding, racist, murderous, gun-carrying, flag-waving, treaty-breaking, wealth-making on the backs of the poor, silver-tongued promising-politicians, Statue of Liberty, wall-building, Muslim-hating, arms-peddling, climate-change-denying, etc. America has become better at masking her dark-side while living her past, openly. Her political parties seen to be one side of the same coin.

As for the young lady, she should have read before coming to America Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. It was a huge sensation when published in 1970. It envisioned a world in which rapid change made people go insane. Is it essential to grasp the book, develop the best defense against the future, and America 's culture is to think about it, to imagine different scenarios and to try to avoid being taken by surprise? How many will agree today with NPR's Martin Kaste marking the 40th anniversary (2010) of Toffler's best-selling book?

Regardless, she seems to have gone through the different phases of "Culture Shock" (honeymoon, frustration, adjustment, and acceptance) as for now. Prepare for America's Future Shock, more to come. CM