I already fucking speak it, eh? That was the best part of my immigration experience - knowing the language.
Sure, but one pet peeve of mine is translating franchise names.
Roldan el Temerario? Fuck that, it is Flash Gordon!
There was a thread I started that somehow I can not find now, even in El Salvador the serial Flash Gordon was broadcast on TV with the title intact, but the more popular comic was published with the name of “Roldan El Temerario”, Roldan the Daring!
When the goffy Flash Gordon movie of the 80’s came to the old country the synergy was lost and too late did they titled the move: Flash Gordon - Roldan El Temerario to the rescue (Flash Gordon, Roldan the Daring to the rescue!) :smack:
Shoot! I forgot the Spanish, the movie was titled:
Flash Gordon - Roldan El Temerario al rescate (Flash Gordon, Roldan the Daring to the rescue!)
The silliness was exposed when not even in the Spanish subtitles of the movie it was mentioned who Roldan was! :smack:
And change goffy to Goofy.
(Gosh! – grumble – grumble – Preview, Preview… )
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Who are all these people who don’t want to learn English? I think this is a straw man. Learning a language is very hard, and I have never met an immigrant who wasn’t really trying. Also, many folks with thick accents speak perfectly good English, which can be noticed if the listener takes a moment to pay attention to what they are saying, instead of hearing only their accent. Most of the service workers in my city are immigrants, and I never have a problem with their English.
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Are we talking about customers, or customer service workers here?
If customers, well, we can’t expect people to not buy anything until they learn the language well.
If customer service folks (who I often hear people complaining about), we can certainly expect them to only have the job if their English skills are up for it. If they are not, then the person doesn’t have the skills to do the job, and that’s the end of it. Just like any other poorly skilled or unqualified customer service person you could find.
I note that I commonly encounter incomprehensible, frustrating, and apparently stupid people, who are native speakers of English.
Already asked, more or less. Currently unanswered.
Which is my side again? 
The thing is, I never said that businesses shouldn’t necessarily learn another language. Makes good business sense if you have a lot of a certain language in your area. For instance, a lot of business’s in New Mexico are bi-lingual…they speak both English and Spanish, or at least have people on staff that can help out spanish speakers. Makes good sense, as I said.
But…immigrants coming to a new country should’t EXPECT business’s to cater to their language requirements. If a business does, great…just don’t expect this to always (or even mostly) be the case.
Does ‘my side’ have you now? Have you come over to the dark side? MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
-XT
Just the side that does not say “nuts” to other ideas.
Yeesh, I make a thread and go to bed and wake up to this?
Ensign Edison, I do speak more than one language, I’m fluent in Chinese and know a little French. I’m also an immigrant myself, and for what it’s worth I occasionally serve customers who insist on speaking to me in Chinese and I wish they wouldn’t because it’s really just a pain in the ass. I’ve also had people (as in, more than one) trying to order in Russian or something. DO I LOOK LIKE I KNOW RUSSIAN. I know learning new languages is hard/maybe they just arrived/maybe they’re tourists, etc. This thread was a quick way of venting after serving one customer too many who doesn’t know enough English to even order fast food and instead attempts to order by pointing at the light-up menu behind my head and grunting. Fuck, deaf people are easier to serve than they are.
If there is going to be a debate, though, I think yes, immigrants should learn English and yes, businesses should learn whatever language the immigrants speak but only if they regularly deal with people who speak a particular language. None of this “You should learn Japanese, and French, and Urdu, and Canadian, and Russian, on the off-chance that a Japanese, or a French, or an Afghan, or a Canadian, or a Russian person walks in.” Fuck that. If you were a tourist walking around in the country you were touring expecting everyone to speak English you would be obnoxious. So what makes it okay to PERMANENTLY MOVE to a new country without bothering to learn the language? (I speak from experience here; there are several people we know who’ve lived in Australia for years without bothering to learn English, and we don’t even have a Chinese ghetto or anything where they could conceivably get along without needing to. They just make their kids translate when they can and communicate using a system of grunts when they don’t have their kids with them.) If you ask me this is pretty discourteous. I don’t support HARDCORE ASSIMILATION ALL IMMIGRANTS MUST BE WEARING SINGLETS AND HOLDING BARBECUES WITHIN A WEEK OF ARRIVAL but if you don’t assimilate, even a little, what’s the point of moving? There are ways to hold onto your culture without acting as if you’re still living in the Old Country.
Hey, I’m just a corporate peon. I think Hungry Jack’s can afford to skip over briefing its burger flippers on a variety of languages and cultures so they can better serve the international clientele.
Swell. I don’t care about the problems you mentioned; they aren’t relevant. I only asked you why it would be a bad thing if it could be done. Try thinking with your brain instead of the little rage-filled chip on your shoulder.
Cute. But, no, not quite.
Nice to see someone else getting on so well with Ensign. I’ve been down this road too many times to even post my opinion.
But…
fucking learn to fucking speak fucking english
If I were to be a permanent guest in my ethnical homeland of Europe, I’d like to believe that I’d try to learn the guttural language somewhat, in order to not inconvenience the residents. It DOES show interest/respect on the guest’s parts to be able to converse.
Anyone who thinks it could possibly be relevent how many languages I speak is way, way too retarded to even begin to engage. (I can do what I advise, if that’s your concern because your position is so incredibly weak you have to fall back on such stupid ad hominems, but I’m also not the one whining and pitching fits because the world fails to cater to my every need). Much like RSSChen, whose hatred warms me like hot chocolate. If someone like that ever liked me I’d be doing something wrong in life.
You all seem to be missing the point. And FRM, please do note all I ever addressed to you was a simple question, beginning with ‘Is there some reason’. This is in part because I thought you were talking about your co-workers, not your customers. Of course you might express frustration when someone just randomly walks up to you and starts speaking Martian.
But it is a strawman to say that anyone thinks people should learn every language. I think people should learn enough of the languages they’re most likely to encounter on a daily basis to get by, including English. I also think we should not blame others for our own failure to do this. If that’s not the situation FRM is in, then I misapplied the formula, but it still stands.
Apparently, this position makes me an intolerable drooling idiot who cannot grasp the fundamental concepts. Also rage-filled (true), and you probably think I smell bad (not right now). The sheer volume of the shrieking in response to a perfectly reasonable position like mine is evidence of the fact that many folks’ reactions are not so much about communication and personal responsibility, as they are about rabid nationalism, xenophobia, lazyness, stupidity, and/or pride.
I don’t think you smell bad, but I do think your position is a tad irrational. If, as you have so frequently claimed, it’s “easy” to learn a new language or five, then why is it so unreasonable to expect an immigrant to this country to learn the most commonly-used language? Look, I don’t care if they don’t want to learn, that’s their problem. But don’t expect me to learn four or five different languages just so I can talk to someone who can’t or won’t learn one. I’ve no doubt it would make me a more well-rounded person, blah blah blah. I don’t care. The benefit of putting in the effort (and don’t kid me, it IS a great deal of effort to learn a new language as an adult) is simply not worth it to me. I don’t encounter enough people who can’t speak English well enough to, as you put it, “get by”.
From a non-English speaking country? From a similar culture or something different? If you went from somewhere that is completely different than WA, I’ll give you some slack.
I think I’ve said five times now that I think they should learn English too. Why is it an either/or? And again, it’s one thing to be completely fluent and another to be able to communicate.
My position was made extremely clear in my last post. If you don’t encounter people who don’t speak English on a regular basis, you’re not the one I’m talking to. I am talking to people literally surrounded by speakers of other languages, who refuse to make any effort to learn anything but English.
Gosh darn foreigners! They come here, take jobs from Americans, don’t speak English! This place is full of foreigners! Ought to all be deported.
Well, as I stated in the OP, it’s a service job, for a (more or less) Australian company, in a country where the majority of people speak English, where you spend your entire working day talking to and interacting with people who speak English, where everything in the workplace is in English, where the only common language between coworkers is English… even if this had been about a coworker, I think it’d still be reasonable to complain. Probably even more so, actually. And no, there’s no reason I can’t learn their language, but absolutely no compelling reasons as to why I should bother.
China. Granted, I was very young. But I had parents who didn’t make much effort to assimilate culturally (hell, I think they were actively trying not to assimilate - Chinese spoken at home, textbooks shipped over from China etc) and they still put a load of effort into being able to communicate with people in their new country. It just seems like good manners.
Quite so actually, dipshit. I don’t know how much travelling you have done but I have been to nearly 40 countries on six continents and if you’re fluent in English, you won’t have much of a problem getting around for the most part. Hell, when the guys I know from Taiwan (who speak Taiwanese and Mandarin) go to Hong Kong or Southern China (Cantonese) they speak English to each other. Virtually all international technical conferences are held in English. It’s just the way it is.
That said, I speak enough Spanish to get along if I had to do so. When I used to go to Malaysia a lot for work I got to be pretty good in Bhasa. In fact when I go anywhere I teach myself a few basic phrases in the native tongue just to be polite. I can order a beer or say good morning in like twenty languages which is next to useless back home but buys a lot of good will overseas.
MWAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
You… ay… y’know, it’s… aaaay… it’s one of the things that Franco gets accused…aaaaaay! of, trying to get everybody in Spain to speak only Spanish. Dude didn’t get no cigar. The school system was 90% in Spanish for 200 years (no, Franco’s presidentship didn’t last that long) and it didn’t get everybody to speak only Spanish.
Now excuse me if I leave: not only is it leaving time, but I absolutely have to go someplace so I can laugh my ass off freely.
You’re funny, Q.E.D., but your handle is specially, uh, cute in this case. Heehee
Speak for yourself, paleface.
Oh I have. All kinds of them, All ages, dozens of languages. Some of them think they don’t have to learn English because they have a relative living with them to translate. Some of them AFAIK just don’t care. And some of them get royally pissed off if I don’t speak Spanish or Swahili or whatever language is their primary. And from personal experience, I used to date an undocumented immigrant and I never understood the mindset of him or his family in not wanting to learn English. I can’t imagine it was easy for them to live in a country that as illegals and then on top of that to have no fluency in the language. Yet none of them showed the slightest interest in trying to learn English.