I did. But I honestly thought there might be a Perth Washington. Bigger :smack: to me.
Personally, I don’t consider it an unreasonable request that if you move to a particular country, you try and learn the local language- be it English, French, Spanish, Cantonese, or Swahili.
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed about living in Queensland is that everyone speaks English, except the Tourists. I spent several years learning French at High School, which hardly qualifies me as even remotely bilingual, but I still know more French that 90% of the people around here.
Last week at my other work, I made a reference to a difficult employee being fired pour les encouragement des l’autres (ie, being made an example of) and not one single person had any idea what I was talking about.
Then again, hardly anyone has any idea what I’m talking about even when I’m speaking English, so I shouldn’t be too surprised there. 
niblethead -such anger! My goodness. Forgot about this thread, but here are some clarifications.
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I missed a word in that sentence, it should read “Spanish speaking.” When I refer to people who speak Spanish and live near Chicago, I call them Hispanics. I hope this is ok with you-just wanted to check. Irrelevant trivia-I dated a Cuban for awhile in college. He said his family was descended from a noble Castillian family. I liken this to all those Norman invaders that my kind of people always claim to have come from. Most likely, we are all from the rabble.
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I am leaving nursing in less than a year. I have no plans to learn Spanish and no desire to do so. In my 20 years of nursing, I have never encountered a person like this man. I get by with my pts with gestures, pidgin Spanish and their pidgin English. But overwhelmingly, they plant a family member at the bedside–something to do with their culture, strong family ties and all (psssst-that’s sarcasm), and we muddle through.
In the case of discharge instructions (which the vast majority of them are non-compliant in following-as are the rest of the [non-Hispanic] pt population)-we get an interpreter to make sure 1. the family member isn’t telling them the wrong things and 2. that they were instructed-which is then documented, so that they can’t come back later and claim they weren’t. It’s a legal thing, and no reflection on Hispanics.
- These were illegal immigrants, BTW, but I didn’t want to skew the thread in that direction. The majority of our pt population is illegal immigrants-not that they don’t deserve care, they certainly do, but it speaks to a mighty sense of entitlement to be here illegally and demand that I speak your language, no?
No. Why should it? Why is anyone’s unwillingness to learn a language either the result of a character flaw or a noble right depending on where they had the accident of being born?
I keep hearing comments like yours asserted, eleanor, but I have yet to see them explained. Maybe it would help if I started thinking of everyone who’s not from this country as having to prove they’re good enough to live amongst us American gods. Frankly, that is the only way I can make all this math work.
Because it a matter of choice. I did not choose to be an American, I was born here. The language I was exposed to growing up was the culturally and historically dominant language of English. In our country, having an accepted primary language has been a material benefit… it has eased the clear communication of ideas and greatly lowered barriers to domestic commerce. It has also promoted a sense of national unity in a nation of immigrants. People who move here have a couple of options, they can learn English and fully integrate into the society we have collectively made or they are free to continue speaking their native language and be somewhat divorced from some of the benefits of living here. It is always positive when somebody takes it upon themselves to learn something usefull, like a second language and everybody should be encouraged to do that, however, it is unreasonable in the extreme to suggest that the responsibility for fostering clear communication with immigrant populations should be equally shared by the host nation. Especially, IMO when we’re discussing uninvited guest populations. Immigrants CHOOSE to come here and implicit in that choice is the recognition that they will have to adopt our laws, social customs and at least to some extent our common language. In simple math it is less costly and much easier to ask a minority immigrant population (even one of millions) to learn English than it is to ask the entire nation to become functionally multilingual.
cowgirl and others, I know plenty of people in my parents’ generation who don’t care to learn English. My own father is one of these people. They are only proud of their own country and even though they live here and make money here they don’t want anything because they are going to move back as soon as they get money. Plenty of them don’t even want to become citizens.
As for me, I speak Hindi, English, and Punjabi, can comprehend Urdu and can speak Spanish if you go s-l-o-w, can ask for the bathroom in Japanese and also ask where you’re from, and can say a few simple sentences in French with atrocious pronounciation. Oh, and I can speak Canadian pretty well, too. 
I think I pretty much fit Ensign Edison’s view of what Americans should at the very least try to do. And - and this is not a point against Ensign Edison at all, since he has already agreed - sure I think immigrants should learn to speak English. Why not? English is a beautiful language IMO. Too many people take it as though learning a new language is losing something of yourself. I think learning a new language - even a few phrases - is always a good thing, and only enhances the right side of your brain.
What are you talking about? What character flaws? What American gods? WTF are you talking about? Where has anyone said that anyone needs to prove they’re good enough to live among us? Where do you get such notions?
I can say hello, that is pretty and wassup in French. I can dredge deep and come up with some conversational German (this after 2 years of middle school, 4 years of HS and one year of college Deutsch). I can ask you if you are hot/cold/in pain in Spanish, among other things. But I am supposed to learn to speak Spanish to accomodate people who are not immigrants here? Should I learn Korean or Arabic as well? I could have probably stood to learn Hindi-it might have helped with some of the docs–oh, wait, that’s right–they speak excellent English, and have no problem code switching.
Why are you, Ensign,disallowing an entire ethnicity the ability to learn, grow and move up? People of Hispanic origins can’t learn to speak English? Immigrants from hundereds of other foreign countries have done so-what’s so special about Mexico? Or Puerto Rico? etc. Funny how the Korean kids all learn English and do well in school-but the Hispanics, nope, they can’t learn English-damn the white man for keeping 'em down! I am being facetious here, and realize that there is much more to the picture than just language barrier, but damn-it sure sounds like you are condemning the predominant culture for wanting to stay predominant (at least in language).
How does the fact that people need to know how to communicate in English make people stating that fact into some sort of fascist ethnic-cleansing monsters?
I so do not understand your posts here.
eleanor, you’re making yourself look like a jackass. I have not only repeatedly said I think they should also learn English, I’ve repeatedly clarified the point, and now other people have done so for me. One was the post right before yours. Maybe it would help you understand better if you actually, you know, FUCKING READ THE POSTS.
Don’t want to share the limelight, eh?
Three’s a crowd.
There may well be a jackass here, but it is not me.
Nowhere, nowhere in this thread, can you find anyone touting second class citizenship for non-speaking people OR that we consider ourselves American Gods (has a nice ring, though…).
I get that you agree that they should learn English. Newsflash: I don’t feel the need to learn Spanish. I dont’ see why the burden should be on me or any other American. Should the Chinese proprietor learn Spanish to accomodate the Hispanics moving in? Where does this end? It ends with all of us sharing a common language-English. I pick English because it is the dominant language here. How is this hard to understand?
The more you whine about how impossibly hard and burdensome and stupid and boring it is to learn another language, the more I wonder why you cut people who don’t learn English no slack.
You’re funny. Do you have a stand up act? Show me where I whined about how impossibly hard it is to learn another language. I took German for 7 years. It wasn’t hard at all-it was lovely. I would love to learn French, but have no time now, between 2 jobs, 3 kids and grad school.
Seriously, what is your major malfunction? And btw, is English not your first language-your grammar seems a bit shakey…
Is it true that the AMA is thinking of amending the Hippocratic Oath so that it reads, “First do no harm (with the possible exception of Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants…”)?
You seemed to like learning a language and want to learn another. I am told that Spanish is easier than French. You may not have time now, but when you do, you might find that Spanish is more useful in your work than French.
Of course, I’m kidding about the Hippocratic Oath, but aren’t you a nurse? Did you take the Florence Nightingale Pledge or is that terribly dated now?
I think that improved communication between patient and nurse would be for the welfare of the patient.
And if you are not a nurse, this entire post is silly. Nurses, like other professionals, do what is required to put themselves in a position to do their work well.
Of course, each person can only do so much. But that’s why the burden falls to you.
I hope grad school is coming along okay!
It might be interesting to return to FRM’s specific circumstances. First, Australia is proposing the idea of an English language test as a prerequisite for citizenship. See here
Second, in Australia, there is considerable baggage associated with immigrants being required to pass language tests. For a long time in the 19C and up to the middle 20C (and to an extent even later), there was a White Australia Policy, the genesis of which seems to have been paranoia that strange coloured hideous foreigners were going to take the jobs of good white men.
One aspect of this policy was a truly inspired Kafka-esque stroke of bureaucratic genius (which is the baggage I referred to above): the notorious “dictation test”. The idea was that immigration officials could insist that a potential immigrant pass a language test in any European language that the official thought appropriate. In practice of course, if (say) a Chinese applicant spoke English, but said official doesn’t want “people like that” in, official tested him in French. Or German. Or Lithuanian. It’s thus not surprising that there is a degree of resistance to language tests in Australia.
[/slight historical hijack]
It really depends on where you are and what circles you run in. I’m well traveled, too, and I cannot count the number of times I needed to speak in French, German, or pidgin Slavic/pseudo-Russian in order to be understood . Heck, even living in Budapest, a major European capital, most of the local shop owners did not speak English. The businessmen? Depends. The younger ones spoke English, the older ones tended to speak German. I lived in a town in Croatia for three months where absolutely nobody except for a couple of kids spoke English. Villages in Transylvania? Same thing. Better know some Hungarian or Romanian if you want to get around there.
English is certainly the language of international commerce and trade, but I don’t think the language is nearly as universal as you make it out to be.