Members From Around The World Share Your Thoughts!

Discussion
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Paul @pdecker wrote in a recent post;
“we have a really great mix of different cultures and first languages which add to the great feeling of friendship and sharing”

I have been a member of It’s Foss for about 6 years. I thought it would be nice, for those who care to share, as to what country you are from, where you live now, and your first or primary language. Location beyond country is up to you. I live in the US. The US is a big country and while a lot of people may have heard of the states of California, Florida, and New York, I be willing to bet only a few (outside of the US) have heard of the state of Maryland where I live. So my entry for myself is;

I’m from Maryland on the east coast of the US and also live there now. Language is English.
Live close to the capital of the US.

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@easyt50
I also live in the USA, in the State of Arkansas, close to the mighty Mississippi River!!! Goes without saying that English is my primary language!!!
Been cold with snow on the ground here, how has the weather been like in Maryland!!!

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I live in Australia, in the state of New South Wales.
I have lived and worked in the Outback, but for most of our life ,we lived in Sydney. On retirement we moved to a small coastal town about 150km south of Sydney. We live out of town, on a small farm.
English (Au variety) is my native language, but I have studied German
My ancestry is British… Northern England, Shropshire and Newcastle on Tyne, plus some from London. They were immigrants in the early 1900’s

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I live near Vancouver, British Columbia, on the “Left Coast” of Canada. English is my language, but I’m learning a bit of Spanish to help when I vacation in Mexico.

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Hi Daniel,
Got our 1st snowfall of about 7 inches (18 cm for our metric friends) on the 5th of January. Schools were closed for 3 days. Today not bad temp wise of 47 F (8 C). Next few days going to be low to mid 30’s for the high temp ( 0 to 2 C).

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Interesting thread. I love how many of us are from different parts of the world. We can learn so much from each other.

For me, I started west of @Daniel_Phillips as an OKIE, born in Oklahoma. Then I spent many years in the deserts of Arizona, farther west, next to California and on the border of Mexico.

To raise our kids, we moved to the country in East Tennessee. Tennessee is such a wide state, that it is known by its parts as West TN, Middle TN and East. I live near the Great Smoky Mountains, a national park in the US. But whereas the moutains surround us, we are in a “valley.”

My native language is American English, although I took 3 years of French in high school. I was starting my course in Spanish when my mom took ill, so that will have to wait. But, I hope to visit South America, Ecuador specifically, and want to be able to know more than what I taught my kids in school (colors, numbers, and greetings). :smile:

Sheila

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I’m on the West Coast of Australia - Perth - one of the most (not “the most”) isolated metropolises on the planet… I live sort of on the “outskirts” of the CBD - but it’s only 15 minutes to town on a train… In the “Swan Valley” - not far from vineyards and fruit orchards… The river is a 5 minute walk away across vacant, mostly bushland (was the site of a now demolished mental hospital).

Spent most of my life here since late '72, apart from a brief (3 years) stint in Melbourne when I was in high school in the mid-to-late 70’s.

But originally born in Newcastle, New South Wales…

Aussie English (“Strayan”) is my native language / dialect, but did three years of French at high school - and - before moving to Perth, lived in Greece for a year, and could do some conversational Greek (it’s easier to pickup languages when young - I reckon they should start teaching 2nd [or 3rd?] languages to primary school children).

Ancestry is approx 1/3 German, 1/3 Irish, 1/3 English, but slightly more German than anything - both my grandmothers spoke some German as young children, my paternal grandmother’s parents were both German, my maternal grandmother’s father was German - my surname however is English - from Somerset (via a convict who got 14 years transportation in 1838 for manslaughter).

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@klaroy
North of Seattle?

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@daniel.m.tripp
Perth!!! Makes me always think of the Malaysian MH370 plane that was lost in the Indian ocean West of Perth!!!

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@Sheila_Flanagan
Do you ever travel West to Memphis!!!

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Deserts fascinate me. They bring people together because mutual support is very important in an isolated location. It is a spiritual experience too, there is something more real, more beautuful, about the Australian Outback. It has stayed with me forever… we still live ‘out there’ and commute to town.
Do you have any reflections on the desert experience?

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I’m from eastern Iowa in the U.S. I grew up on a farm outside a small town. Eventually the farm went under during hard times.

I went to Iowa State University which is where the first automated electronic digital computer was created. I’ve probably mentioned that before.

I’ve never lived more than about 100 miles from where I was born.

I only speak English. One of my kids took a few years of French and the other a few of Spanish.

My computer languages are BASIC, Pascal, COBOL, RPG, C (very little), assembly (even less), BASH, Terraform (DSL), and Python. I did make a very small Java change the other day at work with a developer looking over my shoulder.

I used an Apple IIe in high school, a Commodore 64 when at home during college, worked on a PDP-11 when away at college, an IBM mainframe for my first job out of college, and since then have been on the PC side of the world. Although for the past seven years or so almost all of that has been on AWS.

At home I run Ubuntu 24.04 on my laptop and Windows 10 on my old tower. Work means I run Windows 11 on that laptop.

I worked from home for a few years during and after COVID. They’ve asked us to work in the office two days each week for the past six months and going forward. Not sure what every else’s working situation is.

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Im 16 and im from Dombivli( a small city ) Dist. Thane ( near Mumbai ), Maharashtra, Bharat :india:. I was born here itself and have never moved.

My mother tongue is Marathi, but i can read/write/talk in Marathi English Hindi and Sanskrit.

Im on itsfoss community from 4 years…

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I live in Helsinki, Finland. Finnish is my language but we have to learn at least two foreign languages at school. Now the kids start their first foreign language at age of 7. My choices were German, Swedish and English. At the moment I’m learning Italy with Duolingo but as I’m 50 years now it’s more like trying to learn at least few words / how to order beer🤭

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I’m from Budapest, Hungary.
My first language is hungarian of course.
I grew up in a communist country, I had to learn russian in the school from my age of 9 until I graduated in 1989 at my age of 18.
We all hated that (the kids for sure, but maybe the teachers too :slight_smile: ) as hated almost everything that was pushed on us because of political and ideological reasons.
From my age of 13 I also learned german, but not in the school. My parents took me to a teacher.
My grandfather had a vacation home very near the lakeside of Balaton, and that time german tourists were very common there. As people from East-Germany were forbidden to travel to anywhere in the west, families split up by the east-west border could meet there, and have a great vacation together… that was really a splendid place for them to meet, so the vacation business was built around Balaton mainly to serve german tourists; my grandfather needed someone who can speak with his guests. He tried to learn it too, but at his age of 60 that was not very successful. So those few summers were excellent occasions for me to practice :slight_smile:

So I learnt german, and I liked it because it wasn’t russian at least :slight_smile:
1989 and 1990 were very interesting years in Hungary, not because I graduated :grin:, and finished highschool, but that was the year when communism (they also called it socialism) faded, russian army was withdrawed shortly afterwards. After we (Hungary) opened the western border for the east-germans, many (50 000 … 80 000) east-german refugees travelled to west across our austrian border, so I can tell I lived in an exciting historical time. :slight_smile: Shortly after that the GDR collapsed, faded, vanished, whatever, and suddenly there was only one Germany, no more West-Germany and East-Germany.

That also had the side effect, that Balaton lost its recurring guests, the vacation business there struggled for a time, my need for the german language vanished. But I did not regret.
After my graudation in 1989, in 1990 I went to college, there I learned english. My choices there were russian, german and english, choosing one was mandatory. I choosed english, because I felt I know of german enough, still had the “dislike” for the russian, and I thought english would come handy later (oh, how right I was then!!! :smiley: )

I saw there mates trying really very hard to learn english grammar, but having my knowlegde of german, for me it felt very much like an entertainment - it was sooo much easier than german before!
I still remember our english teacher was a big fan of Beatles, so beside the obligatory lessons we listened a lot to Beatles songs, we wrote the lyrics, tried to understand, translated, them etc… that was a lot of fun!

Thinking back, I did not regret to have to learn the russian too - I can’t remember more than a few basic words, but I still can read the cyrillic texts.
Would you guess, that helped me a lot on our vacation in Greece?

This is my story with languages.

I love to be here among you, friends! Even if it’s just a virtual presence :slight_smile:

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I had the opposite experience. I never clicked with English grammar until I reached high school and started to learn German. Then the strictness of German grammar suddenly made me realise that English grammar, although less strict, was important.

I think learning a language also taught me to appreciate other cultures.

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Great idea, wonder who came up with that …

Just to start, I am from yorkshire originally, so the only one on the site who speaks english real good !

Ha ha ha

Yorkshire jokes by the bucket full…

Born and spent my first 48 years in yorkshire, but worked all over the north , secondary schools, university, apple then NHS always in computing or informatique.

Then got an offer to make myself redundant with a nice sum, jumped at that and left the UK to tour europe, france, spain, portugal … 6 months later and bored with playing out every day so bought in france charente maritime. After a divorce from my english wife, met and married a French girl some 10 years back.

Together we moved south to the Mediterranean and into a naturist village on a island linked to the mainland by 2 bridges.

I had started a computer business in the UK before leaving, eventually restarted it in France which was difficult as the government tax system did not have a code for computer professional at that stage, so changed statue 4 times for tax.

All of my clients are european from france, spain, Belgium or Netherlands so mainly speak French all day but my grammar leaves a lot to be learned, my wife corrects my written work but I get away in conversation.

Now retired but continue to do the local repairs only offering linux for installs and support but virus removal on windows with strong bias to move them to linux as a solution.

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View from my desk, sea fed lake where I paddleboard, swim, most days.

Hard life !

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Wow!
That’s beautiful!

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@Daniel_Phillips I have made the trip from here to OK so many times I have lost count. :slightly_smiling_face: The summer after my father passed, I drove my kids and I back and forth helping settle my mom’s affairs probably a total of 8 trips during summer break from school.

Now that my mom is ill, I go every few months. My first solo road trip after high school, was to hop in my car and drive to Little Rock. My dad often left for weekends to go fishing at Arbuckle Lake.

We have also taken several trips, always by car, back to the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. Arkansas is always part of the trip, crossing the mighty Mississippi River. We even drove Highway 66 from the west coast to the northern part of Oklahoma.

@nevj There is something about the desert that is so stark and beautiful. Having grown up in the dust bowl, the flatlands of Oklahoma, it was so different from anything I had ever seen. The city of Phoenix was beautiful, especially at night, standing on South Mountain looking out over the valley, I did not think I would ever be able to leave it.

The Sajuaro cactus stands tall in regions surrounding the major metropolises of Phoenix and Tuscon. The sandy soil is hardly good for growing many vegetables and fruits, and dangers abound from scorpions showing up in your kitchen drawers, packs of wild boars running across the roads in the outlying areas, watching out for wild elk that traverse the highways and offroads while driving, but there is something about the ruggedness of the environment that differs vastly from all other places I have lived. And yet nature does survive in this climate. Animals of the Arizona Desert

Hot without humidity in the summer and only during monsoon season does it rain in short, heavy bursts, everyday. Winter is mild and the second of only two seasons there.

But Arizona is not all desert. As you near the northern edge of the state, you climb almost 7,000 feet in elevation to Flagstaff, where rocky cliffs and winter snow abound. If we missed “playing in the snow” that is where we would drive for a roadside pulloff to throw snowballs and build snowmen with our first daughter.

Of course, the Grand Canyon lies along the northern ridge and is one of the most beautiful of the national parks. I visited many times.

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You are right in that it is an experience that resonates with the spirit and one I am glad was a major part of my life.

Sheila

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Your link was interesting.
Australian deserts are more semi-arid than true desert

There is indeed something magic and enticing … you only experience it by living there, not by a quick tour.
Thanks for sharing.

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