Some Generalizations: Jehovah’s Witnesses and German drivers

As human beings are wired to do, I seek patterns to make sense of the world. From these perceived patterns come generalizations that – hopefully - contain some truth that helps me successfully navigate my way in the world. Of course, when you meet an individual such generalizations must be held very, very loosely. I have made some gross generalizations in this blog and will continue to do so. But, individual people are always so damn unique!

For instance, Judith has a friend who is a Jehovah’s Witness (JW). Ok – I need to admit right now that I have only met JWs at my door when they were evangelizing and have found them to be the closest thing to zombies that I have ever met. (Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers). So – the pattern is: JWs are zombie-like. Generalization: JWs must be dumb and lack critical thinking skills. I think it is clear that I have a prejudice against JWs. But, Judith likes this woman a lot – so I was sure that she would not meet the pattern. And, indeed she did not. She was absolutely charming, intelligent and – this is an aside but feels relevant – a knockout. So, I will admit, I assumed that it must be her parents that were the zombies.

Totally wrong. Judith’s friend and her mother came by Judith’s house for a visit and the mom was also absolutely charming, intelligent and very, very talkative. Ok, she was speaking rapidly in French so I probably only caught 20% - but it was a charming 20%. She had absolutely no zombie-like qualities. So, the pattern is totally broken, the prejudice is exploded. (I have to add at this point that even though I had this horrible, now-proven-wrong prejudice against the people who practice the JW religion – I have long loved them because of their fight for our first amendment rights. If you don't know this history, please read this to get the gist of how crucial JWs were to the expansions of our basic freedoms: http://www.adherents.com/largecom/jw_freedom.html
It is because of them, for instance, that this atheist wasn’t required to stand and say the pledge of allegiance at school.)

Interestingly, when Judith’s JW friend and mom came over, the subject turned to Germans. The mom was talking about how much she hated the German language – how difficult it was. But, then she added that as much as she hated the language, she loved the people because they were so polite. And, everyone there (all French folks) quickly agreed that Germans are more polite than the French – particularly when it comes to driving. Given my last blog, I thought it was important to add this in….

Speaking as a person trying to learn French, I did find it amusing that she was talking about how hard German is to learn. I understand that German has its difficulties with declensions and all that. But for an English speaker, German has some real advantages. Consider these two sentences:

Was ist das?
Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?

The meaning of both is: What is that?

The German seems straightforward to me and one can easily learn - and say correctly - three German words with that sentence. But, what the hell is going on in the French? Where is what? Where is is? Where is that? And how the hell do you prounounce that, anyway?

And she thinks German is hard????