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Originally Posted by mercedesjin
First, I read that article on Yahoo and I didn't see any references to where this survey was being taken. I didn't see anything said about the survey being taken all over the world. It didn't give a list of specific countries. If I missed it, please point it out.
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I read a couple versions of the article. The polling happened last month.
Carried out last month by TNS Infratest, the study asked 40,000 hotels worldwide to rank tourists from 27 countries based on nine criteria, from their politeness to their willingness to tip.
French take title as 'world's worst tourist' in survey
Quote:
Originally Posted by mercedesjin
Moving on from that, though... How can someone make an effort to not be rude in another culture if they don't know about that culture?
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Why would you travel to another culture and not make an effort to not be rude? That seems like a foreign concept to me.
If you have no interest in that culture, why would you go there?
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Originally Posted by mercedesjin
If you're going to say that there's information in things such as guidebooks, I personally don't think those are so helpful. I can go out and buy a guidebook to how to act in Japan. I can learn not to sneeze in public and to slurp my noodles. Guidebooks don't teach a person everything about that culture, though. Guidebooks can't teach a person how to act in a culture - not as well as being born and raised into that culture. So while a person can think, "Make an effort to not be rude," I think there's a strong possibility that a person may or may not know what is rude - because, like I said, ideas of politeness vary from culture to culture.
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The question is, tourists from which country make the least effort not to be rude. The answer is in the first post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mercedesjin
One last thing: maybe you can say "it seems that MOST of the French," because it's not best to make generalizations like that.
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I think that is implied in what I said. I didn't say "Every French person" I said "The French". Surveys like this are generalizations, but it doesn't mean EVERY French tourist is bad. If I say "Americans like cheeseburgers" it is a true statement, but doesn't mean EVERY American likes cheeseburgers.