All four of my grandparents immigrated from Japan to Hawaii and despite having lived here for 50+ years never spoke more than a few sentences in broken English to the grandchildren. They understood more than they spoke, but there were a lot of gestures to get the message across. My parents, aunts and uncles all spoke to primarily in Japanese.
It’s not like they lived in a community with only Japanese speakers. So how is it that over 50+ years learned to speak more than a few English sentences at a time or did they just not want to be bothered speaking to the grandchildren?:rolleyes:
I don’t know, but I’ve heard other stories like this. However my impression is usually there is a social support network around the non-speaker so they don’t really need the new language. They live in an ethnic district where they have friends and businesses who speak the home language, and/or have bilingual people who can translate important information for them from the society at large.
But yes if I lived 50 years in a new nation, I’d work hard to learn the language.
I saw it a lot in Thailand. Many Westerners live there for years without not only bothering to learn a single word but not even desiring to. Granted it’s a tough language to crack, but you really should learn at least “survival Thai,” directions and food and numbers and stuff.
A lot of them are Bangkok residents or some other city, and spend all their time with their Western friends in Western-style pubs. But I knew an American who died recently at age 69. (Or was he 68?. Not sure where his birthday lay.) He lived in a very remote area of the Northeast for decades and did not know a word. He was a computer consultant, and all his clients spoke English or were abroad anyway. And all his wives, and he had many over time along with mistresses, all spoke English.
New immigrants always move into enclaves, they always separate themselves from the outside world, and they always raise children who try like hell to get out of the enclaves and into the broader society, where the better jobs are. It happened when the English came to Virginia and didn’t integrate with the Native Americans, when the Irish came to New York and didn’t integrate with the Native Americans, and when the Norwegians came to the Dakotas and didn’t integrate with either the Native Americans or the native Americans.
My parents, when they lived in Mexico, had a friend from NY who had been there 20 years and could barely speak a word of Spanish. I think he lived in an expat bubble and the Mexicans he socialized with could speak English. I couldn’t stand to live somewhere and not know what’s going around me or not follow TV shows and such.
We moved to the Netherlands when I was a kid, and my English-speaking mother struggled to learn the language. She took classes, and even had a tutor for a while, but she never got really fluent. I think it’s partly because it’s harder to learn a language when you are older and also because she didn’t go to work or school, so she didn’t have the same amount of contact hours as we kids did. We didn’t live in an enclave, but she did have mostly English-speaking friends.
You’d think that, but the American I mentioned in northeastern Thailand actually had a pretty good handle on all things Thai. He even lived in Laos for a spell, also not caring to learn the language. It was strange his lack of interest in the language itself. He was a genius when it came to computers but socially an awkward nerd otherwise – I think he did spend some time in an asylum in California back in the day – and was a real oddball. Maybe language was just something he could not do and accepted it.
But yeah, he was an exception. All the others I knew or met who didn’t speak the language were interested in one thing alone: Living a Western lifestyle at a cheap price and to hell with the locals.
Yep, initial-arrival immigrant (or expat) bubbles have been and are very real (the complaint that recent arrivals are especially “failing to assimilate” or flaunting their otherness is as old as there have been newcomers in any place; what used to happen was that the locals could in turn bubble them out, and if/when neded carry out conversations through a middleman).
It *can *be strengthened by factors such as having your job or wealth enable you to always have attendants and translators, or having a strong enough support network of people who DO communicate that you need not go outside it, to a dominant ethnocultural environment where the “outsider” will remain treated as one forever no matter what. With many expats there is as mentioned a worldview that is still 100% from the reference frame of the place of origin and don’t really feel like making the new place “home”; not much to be done about that.
But mainly what ISTM to happen in many cases is that the persons reach that level of “a few sentences in broken (local language) … understood more than they spoke … a lot of gestures to get the message across” that to them hits the “good enough for survival” spot, and many just stop there.
As **Weedy **points out, acculturation becomes harder the older you are. Historically, also, many initial-arrival immigrants would need to be so focused on working to feed and educate the first generation of children, that they would forsake for themselves aspects the “learning the culture” bit – no chance for the socializing or popular culture consumption that really develops further your ability to communicate.
In the particular OP case, they may not have been exclusively-enclaved but living in Hawaii would mean a sufficient access to Japanese-language newspapers and other media, many public accommodations with multi-language signage, and other initial-generation people with whom to interact ocassionally. So the “good enough to live with” point was arrived at and worked. Also, there is the possibility of a cultural expectation that it behooved the following generations to learn to communicate with their elders on the elders’ terms, not the other way around.
Thank you RDelirious making a point that I never thought of before. Especially in Asian culture with our strong sense of filial piety, the younger generation should have shown respect to our elders and cultural heritage by learning our “mother language”, it wasn’t for our elders to learn our “inherited language”.:smack:
I always thought it odd that my parents would go to Japanese language school after their regular school. But again, filial piety and cultural responsibility would be likely reasons.
I think another major factor was my grandparents (like the majority of the early immigrants to Hawaii) didn’t plan to settle in Hawaii, planning to return home, so there was no reason to learn English.
In Hawaii, because of our plantation culture in the past, immigrants lived in camps separated by race, Japanese / Okinawan camp, Filipino camp, Chinese Camp, etc., but there was great interaction between the camps resulting in our unique “pidgin English”. And my grandmothers were true housewives who at least in their later years rarely left the house. My paternal Grandmother wouldn’t ride a plane and to my knowledge never left our island (Oahu) and certainly never ventured over the ocean.
I mean, WHY would you move somewhere, or even visit, if you didn’t care about the culture?
I got to go to Japan for a short vacation, but spent the three months beforehand immersed in a Japanese podcast (JapanesePod101).
I have Asian relatives who came to this country without knowing much English, but spent their first year or so diligently watching American TV with their dictionary handy. This was in the 50s, so I’m assuming their education was via I Love Lucy:
Hmmm, to bond with my spouse, I should say “Don’ Go Near The Bandstand, Loooo-cy!” or “You got some splainin’ to doooo!”
I am very much afraid that I am a typical example. Montreal is something like 70% French speaking and I have lived here a few months short of 50 years and have only the most primitive French. I took courses, I studied it, but it just didn’t take. Of course, I was teaching at McGill, no French necessary and all the office staff, my colleagues, etc. were English speaking. And the majority of the populace is bilingual anyway. It helped that my wife had spent a year as a student in Paris and her French is pretty good.
So what is my excuse? I seem to have a block against learning languages. Just as some of you find calculus (which seems obvious and almost trivial to me) baffling, I just cannot seem to take it in. And there was no great pressure to learn it. BTW, I used to be able to read it easily and used to subscribe the Le Devoir, which I will describe as the serious French language paper here. I stopped when they hired an anti-semitic columnist who was actually from France and epitomized the old anti-Dreyfusard mentality.
I find it extremely hard to learn languages. Admittedly, that’s one reason why i don’t think i could move to most countries. But if i found myself in, say, Portugal, I doubt I would be able to do much more than some basic survival sentences, understand a bit more, and get good with gestures.
(Actually, I travel, so I’m already pretty good with gestures.)
I was involved in a Canadian government immigration study in the late 70s, which concluded, amongst other findings, that most first generation immigrants to Canada never fully assimilated. This applied to ALL immigrants, including those from the US and the UK, whose lack of assimilation was masked by their cultural and language similarities to Canadians. Young children in immigrant families assimilated quite well, as did those born after arrival.
Interestingly, one major cultural change in first generation immigrants was a drop in their post-immigration birth rate to near Canadian norms.
The American experience has traditionally been the immigrant generation keeps speaking their native language, their children speak both the Mother Tongue and English, then the next generation just English.
When you’re a kid in school, other kids laugh at your language, correct your language, speak fast and casually.
When you’re an adult, even if you get out and around a bit, people are too polite to correct you, speak carefully to help you understand, and don’t care anyway.
And if you’re unlucky, your attempts at learning the new language are mocked by your kids.
Author Douglas Preston related his experiences moving to Italy, where he and his wife thought they were speaking the language well, until their children (fluent via school exposure) made fun of their stilted Italian in front of amused Italian guests.
It woule be very easy in the Philippines, and in almost a year, I’ve learned only a few words of Tagalog. Virtually everything printed is in English Onlly, including all government and business forms and documents, prolduct labels, warning signs. Government-mandated nutgrition labels, En glish only. Even my utility bills. Not even bilingual, just English. Everybody who has been to school can speak at least rudimentary Englissh. I don’t have a single item in my kitchen pantry with a single word of Tagalog on the label. School textbooks are English only, even though classroom discussion is usually in Tagalog.
Yet, all TV stations broadcast in Tagalog only, and English language probrams are dubbed Tagalog, not subtitled.
I lived in Jordan for two years, and learned very little Arabic, because all my jobs were in English-speaking offices, and most of the people I knew socially spoke excellent English. My wife worked i a hospital, and learned some Arabic, but all medical talk among the staff was in English.
