And remember: “Arbeit macht frei.”
It seems to me that ** Duffer ** 's plan was not realistic. In customer support you need really fluent speakers. You can’t train monolingual people and hope they will speak fluently a foreign language. Well… you can if you’re reaaallyyyy not in a hurry (say, you can wait for some years).
Which makes me wonder, by the way, whether ** Duffer ** has a clue about how difficult it is to learn a language, something that might twist his view about lazy foreigners who won’t try hard enough to suceed in what could appear to him as a relatively trivial task.
Well, if you’re going to say it that way, I may need to hire you as a PR guy.
First, by saying I’m letting it go was a bit nuanced, granted. It meant I was admitting it was a post spewed from frustration and anger. I knew even while writing it I’d be accused of hating people and the like. Even though I specifically said in the OP that I don’t have a problem with immigration, and praise those that work so hard their whole lives to do what they can to fit in to their new home. My frustration is what I experience daily. Not what is in the editorial pages. (Those editorials, by the way, work both ways in every issue.)
I don’t hate people because they’re “different” than me. I can work through an unbeleivably heavy accent. Hey, the person I’m talking to is at least making a cursory effort at learning to communicate. My problem is the seeming acceptance of those that refuse to make any effort and expect people like you to cater to their whims because they don’t “feel like” learning the language.
Overall, I don’t have any problem with the US being bilingual really. As I’ve stated, I want to learn Spanish. It’s going to be needed based on the cultural shifts of the last 2 decades. But Goddammit, I think I have a right to bitch about people that just flat out refuse to learn the dominant language and rather want me to cater to them.
But I guess that just proves how much I hate anyone not exactly like me, right?
Yes, I do. I’m not talking about lazy foreigners. Did you miss my admiration for the refugees from Sudan that have relocated here in North Dakota? Oh, wait, maybe you did. The mention of Sudan set of your “duffer hates him some darkies!” :rolleyes: All I was calling for was an effort among some. A heavy accent isn’t a concern to me. I’d just like to see some sort of expectation of people that actively choose to live here to make an effort at learning English. Not the expectation that they won’t learn English because the rest can just learn Spanish. See the difference?
Maybe I will move to France someday. I took a semester of French in 7th grade and can barely remember any of it. But that won’t matter. Much of France speaks English, and the rest can just learn it to accomidate me. Right?
I don’t think there’s been any lack of political rhetoric on this issue, though, and I think that this rhetoric does influence people - it influences everyone. Same with TV ads - those things wouldn’t be so damn ubiquitous if they didn’t work. I think it’s dangerous for anyone to assume they’re not affected by things like that.
You know, duffer, there really has been good evidence posted to suggest that this is simply not something that happens very often. And logically, it doesn’t make sense - most immigrants want to succeed, and no matter how many phone menus and bank tellers there are speaking Spanish, it’s impossible to imagine that they have the same opportunities as fluent English speakers.
And further, I really don’t think many people have been accusing you of being hateful. You really have not been persecuted for your political views in this thread - only for your ignorance about the realities of the linguistic situation. And given the relative paucity of honest attention to it that I’ve seen in the media, that’s not something you can be particularly blamed for. But it is something to be corrected, and I don’t think it’s fair for you to imply that people are accusing you of hatred when they’re just trying to offer you good information on the subject.
duffer, a huge percentage of French people do speak English. And absolutely no one suggested that you hate black people. No one even came close to implying anything like that. Get down off the cross, we need the firewood.
You were refering to a specific issue, customer support. The issue won’t be a strong accent, but the ability to express clearly your problem (hence of having a very good command of the language, which is unlikely for a recent immigrant)., and more importantly to understand the answers. I can see clearly why these people would prefer customer support in spanish. Why wouldn’t they prefer it, actually?
And if there are a large number of people more comfortable in spanish, I can understand easily why a company would want to provide customer support in their prefered language, and even more so why they would use already bilingual people for this purpose. Once again, training non-speakers doesn’t make much sense. Too costly, way too long, and finally the final result would be worst.
Not very relevant. Most immigrants to France came from former french colonies and spoke french. Others had various languages. So, there hasn’t been a similar issue of a massive immigrant population all speaking the same foreign language.
As for accomodating you… well… I assume it would be mostly your problem. You’re not forced to accomodate spanish speakers on your free time, nor to learn their language. It’s your company that decided to accomodate potential customers. Had it not done so, it would have been the hispanic customers’ problem. Similarily, if I worked for a company, that, for instance, did business with a lot of foreigners/foreign companies, I might well be denied jobs because I’m not a fluent english speaker. Your situation is quite similar IMO.
Your written English is outstanding. How well do you speak and understand it verbally?
And duffer is nuts if he believes (as he seems to) that the descendents of the current Spanish speaking immigrants will not speak English. My great-great-grandfather (from Quebec) never learned English, my great-grandfather spoke it with an accent, my grandfather never spoke French. Anybody with any brains at all knows that this is the pattern.
Nifty. When you can also admit it was wrong, incorrect, factually bankrupt, without foundation, a work of fantasy, a product of delusions fed on the need to blame an easily identifiable “other” for your problems, then you can “let it go” with some small assurance that it won’t be back, spewing venom, the next time you get frustrated and angry about who-knows-what.
But, in fact, you haven’t been. So there’s another form of self-diagnosed victimhood that’s not panning out in reality.
And it is just astonishing that, having said those magic words, any accusation you aim at recent Spanish-speaking immigrants isn’t taken as the dispassionate result of careful, unbiased research, huh?
No, you don’t. But, without justification, you are blaming them for your problems, providing yourself and others with an objectively neutral reason to hate them (even though *you * are too good a person to hate, not everyone is).
Ticktickticktickticktick…DING! Six and a half hours. That’s how long it took from “forget it…moving on” to a near-perfect reiteration of the original thesis, as if no discussion had taken place. And that’s why some of us aren’t real keen to grant the request to forget – we’ve learned that “moving on” is too often done in a very tight circle.
The other thing, Duffer, is that you seem to be clinging to your original beliefs despite the facts. You’re saying your only problem is how immigrants now don’t learn English as quickly as they did back in the good old days (presumedly back when the MacDuffers or the Dufferinskis came to America) . As I and others have pointed out, that’s untrue - immigrants now are in fact learning English sooner than they used too.
So at this point, the only honest response would be for you to have said, “Wow, I didn’t know that. But now that I do, I welcome our new Americans because the only problem I had with them has been resolved.” The fact that your beliefs appear to be unchanged, however, indicates to the rest of us that they are founded on prejudice not reason.
Maynard said it better.
"Get off your fuckin cross
We need the fuckin space to nail the next fool martyr "
Wow, two Tool lyrical references in two days, in the same thread.
Interesting, yet justified.
At least Ludovic got the first one. That was pleasing.
Imagine suddenly finding yourself in China, in someplace where most people don’t speak English. How long is it going to take you to learn Mandarin to the point where you can be sure and feel comfortable that when you call a company to haul away an old sofa that you don’t actually tell them you want to sell your daughter?
I’ve seen it over and over again; I live it, I work it, every day. Everybody wants to learn English, and I’ve never met a person who was “too lazy” to try. The kids (about 17 and under), will pick it up without much effort at all–peer pressure is the primary motivating factor. With adults, it depends upon how much time they have (outside of work) to study, and how much education (especially literacy) they have in general in their own language.
But a 45-year old, single mother of two or three kids, from Guatemala, who works in a sweatshop in downtown L.A., where the owner is Korean (and speaks to them in Spanish better than in English) and all the co-workers are also Guatemalan, is going to have a pretty hard time learning Enlglish, let alone going to classes. She’ll pick up enough to become a citizen (which isn’t much), and generally communicate, but still would choose a company that can explain things in Spanish when she finally has saved enough money to buy her 13-year-old a computer for Christmas–more so because she doesn’t know the first thing about computers.
But she’ll learn enough to understand your commands and communicate back, if you want to hire her to clean your house in Brentwood.
It’s not the end of the world, or your job. It’s pretty much the same as it was in the “good ol’” days, when your great grandmother came over from Europe.
This article might explain a company’s motivation for having a bilingual staff, and this article might explain why some people got very rich by accepting that bilingualism is not the end of the world.
I’ll bow to others’ deeper knowledge on the subject, but I will say that the Spanish speakers that I come across at work not only do not speak English, but also (for the most part) make no attempt to speak English. There can be 14 relatives in the room, and not a one speaks English (I’m a nurse). Sometimes, there is no one around who can speak Spanish. Oh, well. This becomes MY problem at this point-why? Oh, we deal with it–taking care of the pt is my job, but to say it doesn’t cause resentment among the staff would be false.
Time was when I felt badly about this and was concerned about it. No more. Either these folks are ALL illegal aliens-from ages 5 to 95-or these folks just aren’t learning English. <shrugs> It has been my experience (as a nurse) that even 20 something Hispanic pts do NOT speak English. I’m sure that there is alot of assimilation going on–perhaps it is just not at my hospital.
There is a dying off Serbian community here as well, and many of the pts (who are all 70+) don’t speak English, despite being in this country for over 50+ years. This bugs me as well. It’s one thing to speak broken English–I’ll meet anyone over half way that is trying–those who don’t-not so much.
If all this makes me racist, so be it. Whatever. My family’s been here since Rhode Island was a colony(and they came over already speaking English–so what?)–and I don’t see how the timing of the emigrating has anything to do with anything. :rolleyes:
LOL
Learn to swim! 
Eh-and this thread is a salient lesson in reading the entire thread being a superior notion.
I get the whole English in 3 generations and have seen it in action. But that doesn’t help me deal with the non-speakers right now…
Well, I agree that this shouldn’t be your problem, and I’m surprised that with 14 relatives not one of them can communicate. Usually in places like the Midwest there’s more urgent need for at least the younger people to be able to communicate. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to live in the Midwest until I’d learned some English. I wonder how often this happens, and of the 14 relatives, why there isn’t at least one who’s in middle school and has picked up enough to translate for the others. Were there really 14 people in one hospital room? That seems like a fire code violation more than a linguistic problem.
Keep in mind that the (formerly referred to as) INS (but I can’t be bother to learn the new administration’s term) waves the English language requirement for people older than 65, I believe. But you’re probably right, that someone in that sardine can of a hospital room was illegal. Anyway, don’t worry about the 5-year old. S/he will be quite fluent in a few years. Remember, too, that some may be afraid to talk, even though they do know some English, and that amongst themselves, they have no reason to speak English. Would you speak Spanish to your husband if you were in Mexico with him (not in jest)?
I don’t think your frustration is racist (necessarily, but I doubt it is, from your previous posts). It’s just that sometimes I think the people of the U.S. are a little spoiled in that we don’t have to think about other countries/cultures as almost any other country does. It can be a kind of noblesse oblige, if you get my drift. That, and the fact that I’ve grown up within and around Spanish-speaking communities, it’s hard for me to see it from your perspective.
That was exactly my point.
I envy you, as a nurse. You are one of most sought after employees in the country. You can go anywhere, and they’ll be begging you to work. They’ll pay your transportation and find you an apartment. To me, a few Spanish speakers without English would be a small inconvenience. I’d be in nursing school now, if there weren’t such a waiting line. Hell, I’d even learn Tagalog to be a nurse.
And there have been Spanish speaking people here, in what is now the United States, since well before then.
Yes, but it was probably three generations before anyone spoke passable Pequot.
Hey douchebag. I met you halfway and admitted it was posted out of frustration. I’ve stressed as much as I’m able that it was borne of no racism, intolerance, bigotry, hatred, refusal to accept immigrants, or any other niche group you have me in as a target of knee-jerk disagreement with anything I say. I’ve gone above and beyond any reasonable expectation to clarify I don’t resent people that don’t speak English well, nor those that just got off the boat but spen as much time as they can practicing using the language. I’m talking about people that just don’t want to bother trying and expect various groups to lobby for them to never have to learn it by trying to force the majority to cater to them.
Can you get that through your thick fucking skull? I’m talking about a very small minority, given a loud voice by those that just don’t see anything wrong with a person moving to a country and refusing to attempt to learn the common language. Again, it’s equivalent to the native English speakers on this board, no matter nationality, all moving to Mongolia and expecting the entire country to just adapt to us speaking English. With no effort on our part to learn the dominant language. (Linguists, go ahead and lay the smackdown, you know what I mean.)
I will not apologize for an opinion. I will not fall to a hollow challenge to “prove” an opinion with facts. That’s the beauty of an opinion. I can offer it and take rebukes from those with differing opinions. Nowhere does that put the onus on me to offer any facts or data. Nor does anyone with a differing opinion have to offer cites or proof to back up an opinion. You seem to have the Pit confused with GQ or GD.
The qouted part in this reply is as far as I got in the post. You haven’t read any posts without going into them knowing what I said to begin with. It doesn’t matter if I worked in that kittens are cute. It would all be wrong anyway. You may cite some studies and articles and statistics. You haven’t offered any proof of your “opinion” so it’s all moot.
Have a nice day.