:grouphug: It is intellectual honesty, though. That is what they believe - it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise and to pretend that you are an exception, if their framework does not allow for it. I used to feel a bit awkward about it, too, but now I am cool with it. I only dislike that it is painful for THEM, if they love me, to live with a belief that I will descend into eternal fires or something like that. I think that must be terrifying, if somebody really loves you, yet truly believes you are doomed - I do not envy those people for sure.

Me too. Well, only some elements of it were additions without a legal value. :) But some things we actually signed, attorney and all. What are "aspirational prenups"? Yes, the process of getting to the agreement was actually very interesting. :iagree: Definitely. Though I get what cathmom meant, it is a sort of a general marriage concern too, but I do think it gets amplified when you get different cultures, languages and "languages" in the mix...

But you know, those are all narratives, science is just a narrative too. :lol:

Wow, I went off for a few hours to teach and the discussion got lively meanwhile. :D Rebekah has made most of my points (thank you :)), just a few more comments, sorry if I repeat what she has pointed out already: I read it. In fact, I will tell you something else, too. Most of my attitudes about education have very little to do with cultivated ignorance on my part (in terms of neurology accessible for laymen, different learning theories, etc.). I get constantly accused on these boards of being "dogmatic" regarding some of my attitudes while at the same time I have read most of the standard literature you all have. I just interpret it differently, or conclude that those particular descriptions can fit a very tiny subset of people who cannot spell while they get misapplied to a lot of others, or in some cases do not see much merit in some of those frameworks offered to think of these issues (because I think some important distinctions get blurred). It is possible for me to read the exact same literature as you do and reach different conclusions about things I see in practice. :) What y'all interpret as my "dogmatism" are very often conclusions I have come to after having opened my mind A LOT MORE than you would expect. But not that much that it would fall out and not recognize plain old illiteracy and lopsided education when it sees it. Are those the only possible cases of bad spelling? Again, like I said initially, no. Not all cases are like that and not all cases can be simplified to that, a brain is a mysterious thing and there are people who do have genuine difficulties with some specific tasks. But very often, that is not the case and they get "romanticized" and excused as "quirks of an otherwise very educated and intelligent adult". I can think of a person or two whom I would describe that way, but those are our anecdotal cases. I can think of a lot more people who are just plain illiterate and think that, because something is hard for them, they should work at it exactly the same as everybody else and get whatever results and "it will be good enough". I do not take that approach. Rather, I take an approach of investing more (time and effort) into those areas. A lot of adults who supposedly "could not" do some things made up for their deficiencies in all areas by consciously focusing on them. I learned English as a foreign language, there was no time for any kind of systematic phonics instruction (I had no idea what phonics WAS until I moved to the US), we learned the pronunciation of each word separately and rules were typically something to infer, rather than be specifically taught, if you wanted to read past the classroom vocabulary. Nobody ever explained the logic of the English spelling to me nor to my classmates, I never had a separate spelling test (dictation, yes, but never a specifically spelling test nor were we asked to orally spell things), and all of us, within the limits of the English we actively know, can spell as well as you guys can. I have seen simply too many cases of anglophone children, educated in English more than two periods weekly, unable to spell that basic level of English consistently well (really - ESLish mistakes!), to believe they were ALL somehow genuinely impaired... yet all were excused by "learning differences", in numbers unfathomable to me. And because of that English teaching, I was pronunciation challenged. Because I did not even HEAR the differences between some vowels and spoke English with half the vowels it actually has. How did I work on that as an adult? I started to learn, actively tune my ears into it, asked for a help of a dialect coach :D, and while I still have a different intonation and some accent issues, my general pronunciation is actually pretty darn good now because I can individuate the things I had no idea existed before. And if I really, really wanted - or estimated it a worthy use of my time, which I do not - I could probably fix the intonation completely and sound exactly like any of you, and only out myself with some random syntax and vocab mistakes (but again, if I worked really hard on that, I could have even those pretty much die out). That is the point at which I draw some of my personal lines and say that speaking authentically just does not matter to me so much. But 1) I did improve, 2) I improved in areas in which I made minimal to no distinction before, 3) I improved to a level at which I do not have great noticeable difficulties (people understand me when I speak and they know exactly whether I mean fit or feet, even if it is a distinction I did not observe the first time I heard it - but I reshaped my habits, consciously, with some effort). My example has to do with sounds rather than with the visuals of writing, but you can effectively say the same thing about that. Those who want, find a way - those who do not want, find an excuse. I do not think people should be able to spell every word in the English language. Should they be able to "spell", in a more loose sense of the word, as in, not misspell the basic layer of the language a typical native speaker of their education uses? Heck yes, one should be literate in one's native language even if it is difficult to get there, barring those "few and far between" exceptions that I did allow an exception for - after a lot of effort which clearly demonstrated it IS such an exception, not just a case of something hard, but doable.

Same here. That was totally unexpected. :grouphug: I think this is exactly the reason why some of our family members insisted on these things. While I know cases of marriages in which improvization turned out well, there were also cases of marriages with the bitterness of some rough patches in these cultural-linguistic things. I think few people can assess the implications when they get married, like you say. I guess the difference is also how soon you marry, e.g. had we married after many years of dating, maybe we would not have put anything in writing because by that point things would have been more or less informally agreed upon - but we sort of "rushed" to get married, and our elders kind of did us a favor with the "talk about these things NOW and preferably write them down" approach.

What about me not being a native speaker? :tongue_smilie: If anything, for not being a native speaker I should be MORE aware of some of the linguistic intricacies and the inconsistencies of English in terms of pronunciation and writing, rather than LESS, and thus appreciate MORE rather than LESS when somebody has a good written English because it was a less "natural" process for me to learn it. And yet, I still believe you (general you, meaning English speakers) often blow the difficulty of your spelling out of proportions. Sometimes I have a feeling you treat it as a sort of a mystical skill than some individuals were born with and some were not, like a perfect pitch. I see it more like varying levels of natural affinity, but the vast majority of which can attain good results, exactly like in music - not everyone will have a perfect pitch, but few people cannot be musically educated because they lack affinity to that level (and yes, I have met such individuals - for one of them Latin metrics at school was a torture because she just could not get into it, no matter how much she practiced, and she could also not sing either, at all, a total inability to distinguish between different length and height of notes, etc.). Now, spelling is not music, because unlike music, everybody needs it - and yet I see so many people treating it exactly like that, as though there was this magical GREAT number of people who just "lack a feeling for it". I think individuals like that (and you may be one of them) are few and far between, definitely not all who claim to be or who mask their lack of effort and literacy by saying it is "just not their forte". THAT is what irks me, not the cases of individuals who genuinely cannot process it, like that classmate could just not get music, no. matter. what. (Funny you should mention an Austrian, though. I lived there as a toddler, LOL.)

Just curious. DH and I are not exactly a cross-cultural marriage - we have a shared passport and a shared ethnic heritage - although some of the differences between us run as deep as in fully fledged cross cultural marriages. Fellow tribe members will understand what I may be talking about. So, to get to the point: DH and I had an elaborate written agreement as a sort of an attachment to a more formal prenupt. Some elements of that agreement technically could not be legally reinforced, but we still wanted to put certain things black on white for the sake of our own mutual accountability. We felt it necessary to keep some things straight from the very beginning and to clearly define, in cases of disagreements, whose opinion will be given more weight in which aspect. Some of the things we covered, in light of prospective children and a shared household, were: children's citizenships - as well as whether and under what circumstances those may be changed, eliminated, or gained; children's language and culture of education - spelled it out black on white which language and culture take priority, what happens when we live abroad, under what circumstances children would attend international schools rather than local schools depending on the location where we might live; what happens in terms of living arrangements, schooling changes, and taking the children abroad in a case of a divorce; where do we meet in terms of religious practice and how do we raise our children as regards that. Now, it may seem very... less than romantic? :tongue_smilie:... agreeing on all things like that strictly in advance (but then again, there is nothing romantic about financial agreements either, and they also need to be done), with hypothetical children, but even though we have a very stable, relaxed marriage and are quite easy-going about many things, there were a few situations in which we were both very thankful for having agreed on some things explicitly in advance, rather than allowing everything to be a matter of improvization. So, I am just curious if you are in a cross-cultural marriage. Did you explicitly agree on things in advance? If so, on what things? Was it a loose, oral agreement - or you actually put it in writing, or even in formal writing that can function as a legal agreement? Ever regretted doing it? Ever regretted NOT doing it and taking the improvization route?

I disagree with this. People have different levels of natural affinity for different things. That I agree with. However, it does NOT mean that people with lesser natural affinity to many things cannot do A LOT to improve. You mention reading, for example - but if people who tend to spell very well also tend to read very well, on average, there is obviously some connection between something they do and something they are able to do. My middle daughter is not very languagey, more of a science / visual stuff / math type than a language type. You would NEVER know, she duly went through all the due language milestones and speaks several languages due to life circumstances and exposure - only with more effort than her sister. Hard =/= impossible. That is what a lot of people refuse to accept and just accept being "bad" at something... and that is, IMO, not okay if what we are talking about are elementary skills. Most people can work on their weaknesses and reach a decent level at which basic deficits are practically invisible.

LOL, exactly. If you KNOW you are challenged in some area, make accomodations as needed for it NOT to be noticeable by everybody else as well.

way tmi

Sure. You can also be a highly educated and intelligent adult and not speak a foreign language. You can also be a highly educated and intelligent adult and be a total dounce at elementary mental math. You can also be a highly educated and intelligent adult and geographically challenged, barely able to read maps or have any sort of mental image of them in your mind. You can also be a highly educated and intelligent adult and... You get the point. The problem is, at some point these things quit being a cute quirk or two and make you look like somebody who may be extraordinarily good in their field, but lacks educational breadth and perspective. Being a professional of that kind and being an intellectual with a breadth of education and competences are two completely different things, and BOTH are highly educated and intelligent adults. But differently educated. Which is why I do not like these stories and giggling about how So-and-So is a genius at their field, but lacks common sense or knowledge and some practical competences outside of their field. Quite often it is NOT a cute quirk or two, but basic educational deficiencies masked as those quirks and excused by a high level of formal education in one's field. So, yes, while they are extraordinary, capable, intelligent, and educated adults who lack some elementary competences, and each of us can probably think of an anecdote or two, there are also many more cases in which one managed to attain very high professional competence, but actually is not well-educated in the more old fashioned sense of the word, which certainly includes an ability to spell, barring an occasional typo, of course. And those cases are NOT a good thing.

The subject is "legiones Romanae". Legiones is nominative plural of the noun legio, -nis, f. Romanae is nominative plural of the adjective romanus/a/um, feminine form because the noun it describes (legio) is feminine. So it would be legio romana in singular nominative, but it is legiones romanae in plural nominative. So, to put it syntactically the way it makes sense for you: legiones romanae (Roman legions, f.pl.) vicerunt (conquered, perfect third person pl.) Gallos (the Gauls, accusative pl.).

The kitty is back?! Awesome! :cheers2:

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I miss the kitty too. :( That was one of the best avatars around.

Yes, very well. Especially the bolded. That is the crux, this is not a clear cut situation in either of our eyes. I talked to her bringing up the "what is the worst thing that can happen?" issue, showing that it is not going be that drastic in any case, but the more I think about this, the more it seems to me that putting it on the paper, literally, would be a pretty good idea too. I agree that the fear of failure may be a factor. Deadlines are involved, yes. Not THAT soon, but she has to make up her mind quite soon.

I am not sure we are going to become any wiser, honestly. :( It has reached a point at which somebody has to DECIDE. There is way too much theory in the air and it is only burdening her. I think a DECISION, in any direction, would be liberating for both of us, mentally. I just think the decision should be hers in this case, even if obtained by the coin method. I sort of want to check that box, if you know I mean? Choose ONE option, and then see how to commit to it and get the best out of it. It if goes "wrong", she always has a safe place to fall back to with us as parents, no matter WHAT, in life in general. I would just like her to decide, and she is paralyzed.

I did this with her. So now she is before this final step, paralyzed, "pick for me because I do not want to be responsible". You are right, we should put it in writing, black on white, maybe that would help. I will talk to her later again, now she has some matters to attend to, so meanwhile I came back here to lament.

Watch . "Di solito nella scuola può succedere agli insegnanti di strattonare qualche bambino, ma ciò succede perché magari si bisticciano o non stanno attenti, poi in classi numerose - di 26, 28 alunni - non è facile per un docente." This is better than I expected! I expected the usual "noi, se la maestra ti dava uno schiaffo a scuola, la mamma te ne dava due a casa", but I see they have changed the rhetoric. Now it is that it is difficult to do your job ("non è facile per un docente") without striking somebody now and then (beh, "può succedere"), because children act like children are developmentally known to ("si bisticciano, non stanno attenti").

This one worked. Thanks.

Update #2. Opened the Pandora's box with that major issue. She openly said that she wanted ME to decide about what really, really, REALLY should be HER decision - because she is afraid of making the wrong decision either way. I tried to point out that there are no guarantees in life, that life is a risk and that is what makes it interesting, no risk no profit, BLA BLA BLA, the things we all know. I tried to point out that she cannot "calculate" perfectly what would be a better option sometimes. Sometimes, you just have to make a choice. Even I have no idea what is genuinely the best thing to do in this particular major situation. I have my preference, as a mother, but I cannot know what is the best thing for her in this case. Which is why I want HER to decide, because she is a big child now and must start making her own calculations. Then we were irritated with each other a bit in frustration. Now I am :banghead:. More with myself than with her, though. She said that if I do not decide on her behalf, she would toss a coin. Sigh.

"Spiacenti, impossibile trovare la pagina che hai richiesto. Prova a cercare qualcos'altro." Is that Youtube link working or somebody removed it, like, this second?

Happy (belated) birthday. :) Hope you had a wonderful day.

Honest advice. Don't do it. Don't trade Switzerland for the US. In fact, don't trade Switzerland for almost ANY country in the world. There are downsides and benefits to every place. IMNSHO, the benefits (social & economic security, education opportunities, etc.) highly outweight the downsides in this case. It would be a complete, 100% non-issue for me in the circumstances you described. Yeah, it's nice to have your own house and yard and a bit more sun and be closer to family. I get that. I also totally get feeling homesick, romanticizing your country and culture from abroad, etc. But it's much, much better to put things in a long term perspective. Ubi bene, ibi patria. If you can live equally well in both places, you go with emotion, preferred weather or any other such concern that's not really "rational", but aesthetic. If you cannot live equally well in both places and if you are giving up significant opportunities and security to fall back to by moving someplace else, go with reason, not emotion.

I am in the "there is hope for humanity" mood, so I vote that this was staged. :tongue_smilie: