No Hablo Ingles?.

[Spunky Porkstacker]

Butt hurt? Nah. But I do enjoy making fun of people like you, the kind of people that made my Grandfather embarrassed of his Sicilian accent and to refuse to go by his real name because it also sounded too Sicilian.

EDIT: You also missed by about a mile.



That's a different problem than what was described in the OP. I don't know what the fix to that is, maybe it's something that can be corrected as a byproduct of smaller classrooms.

It is very distracting, my daughters school won't do the smaller classrooms and the school suffers for it. Schools are running on a thread as it is,not enough money for that.

 

[ShiftyDevil]

There were plenty of middle aged and older Italians who never learned English when they came to the US. They lived in Italian communities and never needed to learn it to get by. Now many of their descendants are bitching about Hispanics not learning English. And when the Hispanics have all been Americanized in a few generations, their descendants will ***** about the next ethnic minority "refusing to fit in".

Yep it's a dumb cycle that'll be repeated until the world itself is homogeneous.

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

Don't speak to Tribar unless you speak full 'Merican.

 

[Mitchapalooza]

Don't speak to Tribar unless you speak full 'Merican.

Your avatar frightens me

 

[Monster]

It is very distracting, my daughters school won't do the smaller classrooms and the school suffers for it. Schools are running on a thread as it is,not enough money for that.

We spend more on education than defense. It's not the money. It's how it's spent.

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

We spend more on education than defense. It's not the money. It's how it's spent.

You're right, I should have worded better.

 

[CRM 114]

Don't speak to Blackhawk Paul unless you love Detroit.

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

Your avatar frightens me

Superman II!!!!!

Don't speak to Blackhawk Paul unless you love Detroit.

GO LIONS GO!!!!

 

[ijustposthere]

We spend more on education than defense. It's not the money. It's how it's spent.

Where are you getting your numbers from? Everything I've found shows much more spending on defense than education over the past few years.

 

[ruprecht]

¡Bienvenido a los Estados Unidos!

 

[Urblock]

¡Bienvenido a los Estados Unidos!

Speak English or be banned!

 

[clonetrooper264]

Speak English or be banned!

Nunca voy a hablar ingles!

 

[ruprecht]

I am reminded of the first sentence I ever learned in Spanish class. "Me gusta jugar al ajedrez". Which of course means "I like to play chess". That comes in real handy when you are south of the border.

 

[bearmick]

Did you stalk her? Be honest. LOL at white people in a foreign country still wanting to be accommodated because they don't want to learn the 2nd most spoken language in the world (Chinese is first, English is third).

These are the most spoken first languages. English is the most widely spoken language in the world and is the official language of international trade globally. It is, without any question at all, the most valuable language in the world to know, and would certainly be the world's "default language", both culturally and business-wise, if we were forced to pick one.

And this is coming from a major (in American terms) leftist who almost always disagrees with conservatives about EVERYTHING.

 

[Ares]

Nunca voy a hablar ingles!

 

[bearmick]

A couple questions:

As an immigrant to a new country should you be expected to learn the language? Or is that an unrealistic or outdated expectation?

How long should it take? 1 year? 5 Years? 10 Years?

I would argue you should learn the language of whatever country you move to at some point. Native fluency is not required. But a working proficiency would do. In my book 5 years is long enough if you're making a legit effort. If you've lived in a place for 10, 15 years or more and you still don't know how to communicate then you're just not making an effort IMO.

Thoughts?

Agreed. This is probably one of the only things you and I are going to agree on.

If I was moving to a non-English speaking country, I would make a point of learning the language (fluently, but that's just me personally) BEFORE I moved there, so that I was prepared upon arrival, for both the benefit of others and myself. It doesn't help anyone to not be familiar with the local language in any place they live.

I would be embarrassed to be living in a non-English speaking country and be incapable of communicating in the normal and expected manner with the general population, and would certainly never expect the locals to speak or accommodate a foreign language for my benefit.

 

[bearmick]

Yep it's a dumb cycle that'll be repeated until the world itself is homogeneous.

In a strictly practical sense, it wouldn't be a bad thing for the world to be linguistically homogeneous. As long as we can still enjoy vibrant and diverse forms of culture, music, food, art, and other ways of living. The only thing multiple languages achieves is preventing humans from understanding each other.

 

[Tjodalv]

In a strictly practical sense, it wouldn't be a bad thing for the world to be linguistically homogeneous. As long as we can still enjoy vibrant and diverse forms of culture, music, food, art, and other ways of living. The only thing multiple languages achieves is preventing humans from understanding each other.

Actually, linguistic hegemony would have dire effects on culture, the arts generally, but literature and music most of all. It's fairly obvious why for literature, but you fail to take into account that virtually all aspects of music are a direct result of linguistic differences: rhythmic patters are structured around specific iambs common to the composer's language (this is why Czech, or Hungarian, etc. classical compositions are often easily identifiable from the more common Italian, German, or French); melodic content is naturally derived from intonations inherent in speech; and harmony is further distilled from those intonations (sort of, it's more of a preference of certain harmonic devises, but don't really want to get into that). Pretty much everything that makes music regionally distinct is a direct result of differences in language.

 

[bearmick]

Fair enough, that certainly makes sense with regards to music.

 

[botfly10]

Why do people fucking care what language someone speaks? People can live in whatever community they want and speak whatever the **** they want. Why does anyone get to have an opinion on what language someone else speaks?

If you have to interact with someone who doesn't speak english, you do your best to communicate the best you can. Its BASIC HUMAN DECENCY. If it doesn't work, fine. Move the **** on. I assure you, folks that do not speak english are much more disadvantaged for it than you are.

I swear to **** the united states is the only country in the world where so many people can't fucking fathom that not everyone speaks the same language they do.

So tired of people that act like basic decency and consideration is just far too imposing for them to engage in. They fucking piss and moan about how other people are not considerate enough to account for their needs... yadda yadda yadda.

Shut the **** up and manage your own person. Its the only thing you can actually control, so can you fucking please manage the most basic level of human decency.