no, it’s not bigger that way, it’s louder.
:rolleyes:
Absolutely. But “not much of a problem” is not the same as “no problem”. No, I realize the impractibility of establishing a global language–folks have been pushing Esperanto for that role since at least the 60s, and I agree that English is about as close as we’re likely to get in the foreseeable future. Again, my point was only to ask why it would be a necessarily bad thing if it were to be done. Not, as some of you seem to have gathered, to state that it would be either easy or practical to implement. I thought I clarified that sufficiently; apparently not.
Liar. Here’s what you said, my bolding:
I know what I said. And if the practical problems of establishing a global language could be dealt with, it would solve the problem. Nothing in there explicitly says anything about it being easy or practical, however. If I’d meant to say that, I would have come right out and said so.
And how would you have put it, out of curiosity? Would it sound a lot like what you did say? When people say: “Start with X, then do Y. Problem solved” they are not generally speaking of something they know to be essentially impossible to achieve.
Can everybody’s second language be Bulgarian? Because I’m putting a lot of effort into learn it, and it would be really awesome if you all could accomodate me and learn it too.
Thanks!
I dunno, but it probably would have started with something along the lines of “An easy and practical solution to the problem of language barriers would be…” I’ve seen the phrase “problem solved” used as often in an ironic context (If we want to get to the stars, all we have to do is invent Warp technology. Problem solved.) as it is used in the sense of a simple solution. Mea culpa for being less than perfrectly clear.
Riiiiiight. So just because you’ve had no problem getting off a plane, into a taxi, off to your international conference of pencilnecks and back again, we are supposed to accept as fact that
Bullshit. The vast majority of the worlds population speak no english. End of story.
I was thinking Latin. And instead of making it the ONE language, everyone learns that in addition their native tongue. Now everyone gets to keep their native tongue, AND we all have a basis of communication.
Too bad it will never happen.
Jeez, this topic always invokes such rancor…
First things first, I am a native English speaker. Everyone in my family speaks English. We’re all monolingual, unless I can count Latin and a smattering of Spanish.
I lived overseas for many years (conveniently enough, in a country that speaks English) but in the US I have always lived in immigrant communities. Many of my friends growing up were either born overseas or have parents who were. So in my experience…
-
Parents moving to a new country are typically balancing a number of stresses, including feeding, clothing, and raising a family, jobs, immigration issues, etc. It’s hard work. Some of my friends’ parents are here reluctantly - having to leave their countries of origin because of war, etc. So maybe there’s a chip on the shoulder for those folks. They hope to return to their native country soon, and being in the US is only temporary…
-
Reality sets in and perhaps it is impossible to move back. So now you’re in the US, and you seek out other folks from home here to recreate some semblance of community. You learn the language enough to get by, but your accent is heavy and you’re nervous in public (hell, I get rattled talking to the servers at restaurants sometimes and I speak English!). You’ve had enough experiences with people looking at you like you’re mad that you just don’t bother any more… and you just point.
-
My friend’s mother never spoke to me for the first few months when we became friends - she just smiled and talked to me through my friend. After a while, she started to talk to me. Her English was perfectly understandable in some respects, but pretty hard to figure out in others (to this day she pronounces my name something like “Bridget…” but I’m a guy and my name starts with an “R”). But she’s pretty confident about her English. Her husband is not - he’s a proud guy, a former military officer, and I think he’s embarrassed by his English (though I think it’s quite good).
-
As an educator and a researcher, I’ve interacted with hundreds of immigrant families. I have never, ever encountered a family that attempted to thwart their kids from learning English, or did not want their kids to speak English fluently. Obviously some families are better equipped to do this (perhaps they speak English). Or they end up like a friend of mine - he has two Ivy League graduate degrees, and of his four brothers two have doctorates in engineering, and the other two are still in college. His parents are from Mexico and work in construction and domestic services. They speak very little English. When my friend was a kid, his parents used to get upset because he watched so much TV - but they soon realized the cartoons actually helped him learn English. You’d never know that this is how this guy learned English… but that’s how it happened.
-
Learning a new language is frickin’ hard. I am by most accounts a very intelligent person, but I really struggle with anything beyond vocab in foreign languages. I can empathize with someone in their adult years having to learn English (just as I struggled even getting down some basic phrases in French when visiting Quebec - a language I learned in middle school. I did try to use the French but reverted to pidgin French/English/pointing).
FRM, I can appreciate the frustration, but you’d have to have a lot more data to figure out if you’re dealing with self-absorbed immigrants or people who are negotiating a new language and culture the best they can. I mean, a fast-food joint isn’t exactly the place where I would feel comfortable trying out a new language… because it’s a place where there’s always a rush and a hurry going on. I would think it’s easier to point and grunt than to attempt my nascent English, which might anger or frustrate you, the server.
The vast majority of my travels have not been to conferences. In fact, I have only been to one trade show/confernece outside of the US in my life. I’m not a research dork, I’m a manufacturing dork so I do most of my work in the factories with real people. Over half of the places I have visited have been for vacations and many of those have been to fairly remote places although I have been to a lot of big cities as well.
How many countries have you visited in your life? Tell us about how your personal experiences have differed.
To clarify further. If I’m in a shop in Taiwan with five workers and only one of them speaks English, the vast majority of them do not but I can still get along fine.
It irks me to walk into a pt’s room and find say, 5 family members of varying ages and not a one speaks English, yet it’s their loved one in the bed, needing help and no way to communicate it. Most of the docs are Indian or Pakistani or African-American–I don’t any who speak Spanish.
Overwhelmingly, these people are nice and do find a cousin or neighbor who does speak English and can act as translator. We also have a variety of multi-lingual people on staff (no full time translators, though, so we must pull people from their jobs to translate) to help us. The most common language barrier is Spanish, then Serbian, then Polish around here.
But recently I had an encounter that I have never had before. I am putting this down to the guy was a jerk, but I dunno…
Spanish guy in the hospital, history of alcohol abuse, needed major bowel surgery. Also smokes. This guy is not going to heal or recover per the “norm”–he has liver involvement from the alcohol and high risk of pneumonia from the smoking. He has complications. He is the hospital for 2 and 1/2 weeks.
Son arrives (I don’t know if he was present when the pt was in ICU; my unit got him from ICU about 5 days post-op). Son is angry, and demanding. No, not the care. No, not the docs. Son is royally pissed because his Dad doesn’t speak English and there are no bilingual nurses on our unit. We have maybe 2 such nurses in ER. We have several who are bilingual, but not in Spanish.
Son demands that pt have access to an interpreter at all times. That is 1. not possible and 2. unreasonable. Son was told that he needed to stay with pt or rotate family members through. He thought that was unreasonable. The stalemate continued until he was discharged.
I am hoping he was an aberrancy. So, OP, I feel your pain. I expect people to at least try to speak English (here). Lord knows I massacred French when I was there for a vaca, but I tried. As I did German when I visited there. In UK, they said I spoke English very well. 
First of all, only people from fucking SPAIN are “Spanish”.
Secondly, I’m in the Midwest, too. We have an ever-growing Latin American population. Because of that, there are Spanish for Medical Personnel classes offered all over the fucking place. If you are at all interested in providing a standard of care, then your hospital should pay for you all to have a basic knowledge of Spanish. You know that you have patients who can’t communicate with you. Yeah, you can have all the - snerk - Mexican standoffs you want about learning English/learning English fast enough blah blah blah and I guess that if taking the supposed moral high ground to a health-care worker than making sure you have all the tools you need to treat your patients, well god help those patients.
I suggest getting a yellow pages, opening it up to “translators” and handing it to the son, making sure he understands that he has to pay for it. This pisses me off to no end. I think it’s yet another argument for English as the Official Language—if only to send the mesage for people to learn it—but that’s a topic for a different thread.
That is not true. My husband’s father came here from Cuba. My husband considers himself Cuban, by virtue of where his father grew up, and in a broader sense, he considers himself Spanish, because that is where his ancestors came from. In the US, he also fits the definition of what we consider to be “Hispanic.” Of course, he has fairly direct roots from Spain, and for some Hispanics, this is not true. But just because someone fits under the umbrella of “Hispanic” does NOT mean that they are not Spanish as well.
As an analogy, his Irish side came here to the US from Canada. He considers himself Irish, but not Canadian, since there was only one generation in Canada, and they were removed from him by a couple generations.
Yes, by god, when someone’s in the hospital for chrissakes, let’s take that opportunity to send a message! :rolleyes:
Look, if you are a health care worker and you know that your patient population has a number of people suffering from a particular malady, that’s it’s fairly common, and that you will definitely run into it, then you had better be able to have the tools to deal with it, don’t you think?
And, Sarahfeena, yes technically you are absolutely correct. However, incorrectly calling Latin Americans “Spanish” is something I find very common here in the Midwest. We don’t have a lot of Cuban or Spanish immigrants here.
When I recycle my beer cans at the local distributer, I have to deal with a Mexican, who talks away in Mexican, and to be polite I keep nodding my head and saying ‘si, si’, as that’s the extent of my knowledge of the Mexican language. He might be calling me a shit head gringo for all I know, but, at least he is always smiling.
…and, standing on line at the Post Office this AM, I am reading a flyer for part time postal drivers. MUST SPEAK FLUANT ENGLISH said the flyer.
snort
That being said, I deal with a lot of convenience store retailers in my line of work. I bet I’m exposed to at least 10 people a day that I have trouble helping b/c they don’t speak English very well. I honestly want to help them, but there’s only so many languages I can speak. I’m a phone monkey, and while I may make enough money to go to college and learn another language, I don’t have enough for 50. Just sayin’.
Do what you like, everyone, b/c the U.S. doesn’t have an official language, and I rather like it that way. But stop getting pissed off when I have to play charades to understand you, and I’ll be a lot happier. I assume you will be too.
To the other people who don’t speak English very well but are pleasant and sweet when we work together: As you were. I enjoy your food, music, interesting traditions and nifty clothing, immigrants. Keep it coming! 
So, if you are about to move to a foreign country and start making demands on their social services you better have the tools to deal with it, don’t you think? Especially if your country shares a border with the new country, and opportunities abound to acquire those tools, right?