International Scouting

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This week has had a bit of an international flavour for me. I’ve have an Email from Scouter Jeremy in Canada, a couple of emails from Lotta who is a Cub Leader in Sweden (and I’m going to send her some badges tomorrow), I had a good chat (hooray for Skype!) with SM Jerry in the States, read and contributed to the blogs listed on the right and Tweeted and used instant messaging to ‘talk’ to a few other people in the USA.

None of this would have happened if I was not a Scout – ‘A Scout is a Member of the World Wide Family of Scouts’ – indeed.

However, one thing does slightly bother me. Emailing Lotta made me realise that she speaks and writes excellent English. I, however, do not know a word of Swedish. I did know a few when I camped with some Swedish Scouts in 1992, but these were mainly the more ‘colourful’ phrases and I’ve forgotten them now. I don’t have any working knowledge of any other languages to be honest Embarrassed.

But looking at the list of blogs on the right, they are all written in English. I do come across blogs and web sites written in languages other than English and Google’s translation site is very useful here. But this doesn’t always translate correctly. The idea of a site or blog can be got, but it’s not the same as being able to read it in the native language.

English is spoken by so many people around the world, that there is little need for people in countries that speak it natively to learn any other language, sorry if that sounds arrogant.

So to anyone reading this whose native tongue is not English, thank you for reading and I hope I’m not being too obscure some times.

Anyway, back to the positive, I’m able to speak to, chat, read and interact with lots of people from different countries and cultures. What could be better and more enlightening?

2 Replies to “International Scouting”

  1. Greetings from Madagascar Scouts,
    On the net I try to found some website talking about “founder’s day”
    that’s way I came to your blog.

    Scout’s are present all over the world with different cultures and languages.
    But in Madagascar we speak more our local language “Malagasy” that you can’t use Google translation and French.
    I’m agree that English is most spoken language that way I try to setup a website in english – in view to be open with our brother scout’s from all over the world !

    Keep well Nick !
    Yours in Scouting

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