My husband, who is prior military, lived in South Korea for about a year. He told me of a local sight-seeing tour that he took with many other military and civilian tourists. The tour guide was of course, Korean and he was more than happy to show some of the wondrous sights of his country. Believe it or not, some on the tour were livid because the Korean tour guide spoke broken English and they had the audacity to chastise him for this. This not only showed the utter ignorance of these Americans, but also their inherent arrogance. To actually berate a local citizen in his own country for not speaking clear, American English is beyond words. My advice for these audacious Americans is to learn the language and customs of the country you live in. In the words of this article, “Learn something new. Just learn.”
Top Ivy League universities like Princeton, are offering language and many other courses online. Check out Coursera.org to find a language that interests you or go to the BBC’s Web site (bbc.co.uk/languages/steps) and take FREE 12-week language courses in French, Italian, or Spanish.
Are you tired of trying to code your own Web pages or paying someone else to build your Web site? Do you want to build games and apps? Fret no more. Code Academy can get you well on your way with interactive lessons on everything dealing with programming that will help you become the next big name in technology. Visit CodeAcademy.com today.
To become a truly amazing Web developer, you will need to go beyond the code and learn human interactions. That means that you need to become an effective member of a team and those teams are usually comprised of a diverse group of individuals. Many times things are often lost in translation, but knowing the language or customs about someone else besides yourself will arm you with a depth of skills to become more in touch to the needs of others, and less “techy” or aloof.
