Comments on: China Air Improving, Sort of

By: amy

amy — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:52:15 +0000

yeah i know how annoying that can be sometimes…
i kept getting ppl trying to talk to me in Japanese all the time in Gold Coast too…
(Not all asians are Japanese tourists, you know?)

but i am sure they don’t mean bad or racist/discriminating… they are probably just naive

By: Michelin L. W. Y.

Michelin L. W. Y. — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:17:35 +0000

Are you saying now every economic class seating on China Airline has its own movie screen and on-demand movie? It has been years since I had been on a China Airline aircraft. Now I will have to rewrite my whole travel plan to Taiwan in March.

By: Darin

Darin — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:59:52 +0000

… so basically any school that has 国際大学 in it’s name..

By: Darin

Darin — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:09:08 +0000

When I say international university I mean a university that specializes in international studies. Languages, culture, politics, things like that.

There was also a special program for international students to learn Japanese as well, but I wasn’t in that for the whole time.

By: JT

JT — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:11:14 +0000

I guess it’s the “international programme” which hold special courses for international students. Am I right? I think my friend went to that kind of program in a uni.

Mark, you are too too kind… me say’s English very broken…我說的英文很爛…

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:02:38 +0000

Well.. actually, this is the first time they’ve EVER willingly talked to me in English. Even when I’ve been on domestic flights, they usually insist on English until I tell them they’re way to focused on race and/or yell at them in Spanish. My experience has always been that Japanese people were more willing to speak to me in Japanese, or at least more afraid of exposing their bad English. I’m not saying it was easy… but it wasn’t the sisyphean ordeal that getting Chinese people (specifically Taiwanese people) to talk to me in their language in their country or on their plane, etc… Japanese people are at least to seeing westerners speak their language on TV.

Learning Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, isn’t that hard in terms of language. 99% of the difficulty is due to their racist stereotypes and assumptions that ALL white people MUST speak English, and that English should be used with white people REGARDLESS of what country they are in and regardless of whether if they can even speak English. Half a dozen of my good (Spanish and German speaking) friends from Shida left Taiwan hating Chinese culture and calling Taiwanese people racist assholes after a year or so of studying, going out and trying to make friends, and having their Chinese answered in English. Heck one of the German girls was so pissed she ended up making a web site advocating more arms sales to China. Since I CAN speak English, it wasn’t quite so bad for me, but I sure don’t like people using a different language with me just because of my looks.

PS. What does “international university” mean exactly?

By: Darin

Darin — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:18:15 +0000

The english announcements on every airline are officially the worst! I just don’t know how they manage to do it! The ladies on JAL totally talk like children english teachers over-emphasizing everything and it just sounds like blah BLAH blah BLAH blah BLAH BLeeeeeeh.

I find that people from China are much more willing to accept that you can speak their language then people from Japan are. For example flight attendants on JAL REFUSE to speak Japanese to me. It doesn’t matter if I tell them to their face that their English is completely impossible to understand, they just can’t comprehend the fact that a white person with blonde hair and blue eye’s can speak their language. Yet when you speak Chinese, people are relieved because they don’t have to struggle through your language and can watch you struggle through theirs instead.

Next time I fly, I should make a trophy and present it to the attendant who’s english sucks the least, not who’s is the best, but sucks the least.

I went to an international university here, and many many people who spoke amazing english became flight attendants. Where are they now? (I’ll tell you, they don’t do domestic flights in Japan, they fly from Japan to Arab nations. The people that speak the best english go to countries that aren’t native english speakers so that rather then having two people who can’t speak english try and figure each-other out, just one person struggles.)

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:20:22 +0000

Oh… I don’t even know if you could immitate their messesd up pronunciation. Your English is too good!

By: JT

JT — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:48:59 +0000

Welcome back!!

China Air? Mmm… they claim to be the best airline in the world… Maybe they were impressed/a bit afraid because you speak Mandarin really well!?!

I would nomally prefer Cathay Pacific. I haven’t flown with Singapore yet. We’ll see… Hope Sing live up to my expectation.

I still don’t get the idea of using that odd accent for in-flight broadcasting… Perhaps I should try it in my class lol.