Put me down for a couple too. We love Edy’s dulce de leche ice cream.
I would never deny that multiculturalism has been fun for the tastebuds. The question is whether it benefits anything else.
> I would never deny that multiculturalism has been fun for the tastebuds. The question is whether it benefits anything else.
As someone born and raised in Canada it took me until well into my adulthood to appreciate the ability to speak and read English and French. Now that I live in New Zealand I am trying to learn Maori.
My French is quite rusty now, but I feel confident that if I ended up in French Caledonia for some reason, within a few days or a week it would all come back to me. I would sound strange to a native French Caledonian, and immediately identifiable as a foreigner, but I could make myself understood and I could understand what was being said in return. Communication would occur at more than superficial levels.
It is always good and never bad to know more than one language. There is no downside (absolutely none) to being Bilingual or Multilingual.
Being monolingual (like most of you Yanks are) is exactly like being a motorcar that can take only one brand of petrol. It works fine if there is always a Shell station handy, but when the only petrol station for 50 miles is a Texaco, you’re poked!
Given that eating well is a primary contributor to human happiness, going from a country whose cuisine was styled on the English Scots and Irish to one that glories in foods from the Far East, India, France, the Middle East, Spain and Latin America is like going from hell to heaven. I was even amazed when I learned that Italians made other things than Spaghetti with meat balls and garlic bread.
Good food is no more a threat to our constitutional republic than lime juice was to the Royal Navy.