Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
This goes right to my point. Norwegians should not be annoyed with the way Americans speak when they are visiting America. Just like Americans should not be annoyed by the way Norwegians speak when they are visiting Norway. There ARE going to be differences. There ARE going to be instances where you might interpret something as offensive that was never meant to be offensive, and indeed is not offensive in the place where it was said.
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I might be wrong, but I think there is the possibility that you are making an incorrect assumption. I also don't know whether this is the context Hidea has in mind, but based on a number of TV shows and movies I have the impression that there are many Scandinavian family, business, and government settings involving multiple languages. For Scandinavian languages, each speaks their own language when the others are fluent enough to listen but possibly not comfortable to speak. If people from other countries are present English may well be used by everybody at the meeting. So it is quite possible for a meeting in Europe be taking place in English with no participants having English as a first language.