Arrogant Australians
There’s an interesting opinion piece in The Age about how Australian travellers are perceived overseas. Basically we are considered arrogant.
I travelled in 1991 and the perception was emerging then. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s worse today.
Seventeen years ago the “arrogant” tourists were Americans and Germans. Australians were considered brash but friendly.
Australians from my era (cusp of baby boomers and generation x) had a unique gift for adapting to foreign environments, a bit like the chameleon character in Woody Allen’s film Zelig. You hear that in Greg Norman’s American accent.
My own accent modified in Africa to sound Oxford or Cape Town English. I recall meeting many people who expressed surprise that I was Australian.
I think young Australians today are just so incredibly confident it comes across as arrogance when they travel.
Australians aren’t arrogant, but I think it’s a trait of generation Y to appear so, and that’s what people overseas are seeing the most in Aussies.
We are an insular society though, and probably the most monolingual western country on earth. Europeans generally speak two or three languages. North Americans are likely to know some Spanish or French. Not us, which is a shame I reckon.
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