If you’re going to take the trouble to mind-read and claim to know what someone else thinks, could you also take the trouble to make sure you comprehend the question? (emphasis added)
Or, maybe, allow the person to answer for themselves? Just a thought.
who cares? I have to laugh at this–I have already said I don’t speak Spanish and don’t care to learn.
But thank you for correcting my spelling.
I don’t see how frustration with the inability to communicate or the resistance to learning makes someone guilty of poor character or moral fiber or whatever is being bandied about. If I moved to Quebec and refused to speak French–I would deserve some impatience and even mild contempt. I doubt that anyone here is saying that those folks who haven’t learned English or even refuse to do so should be shot at dawn or put away or whatever. Get a grip, folks–it’s just a vent.
Maybe I’m just too crabby today, but it seems to me that feelings are feelings and nothing else. Feelings don’t equate to actions or deplorable morals or characters etc–they’re just feelings.
There is a difference between the old Serbian women I see and the Hispanics. Serbian women(I haven’t seen a Serbian male pt in about 6 years) usually have a family member with them who does speak English.
I don’t mean to make it sound like I have never had a translator available for the Spanish speakers–about 40% of the time, there is someone who does speak English. The problem is that that person cannot stay 24/7 with the pt. All I’m saying is that having someone there who does speak English is not a sure thing and, at best, is spotty. It’s quite a problem.
Mind read? No, I think that was more on the order of a word read. That is, I read the words he wrote, and there by was able to intuit what he was saying. You seemed to be having difficulty in this area, so I thought I’d help you out.
As for your question itself, I’m not sure where you got that from. Seems entirely out of left field. I mean, if Holocaust deniers were right about there never being a Holocaust, then they of course ought to be listened to. But since they aren’t, they shouldn’t. Do you have any evidence that the claims in the OP do have some factual evidence behind them? Otherwise, I don’t really see the point to your question.
Jeez, mags, why so pissy?
Roughly half the inhabitants of the Western hemisphere?
Then why did you bother trying to answer it? First of all, nothing was asked of you. I asked a specific poster—who was not you—to clarify his thoughts on a specific paragraph he wrote. It was not a question seeking a fact, where anyone who had the answer could be helpful and provide it. On top of that you didn’t even understand the question (which I really don’t give a shit about because it wasn’t directed to you), yet you felt the need to “clarify” things. :rolleyes:
I was trying to show why it didn’t need to be answered, because it was irrelevant to what he had written.
In that case: world’s smallest violin. :rolleyes:
Just curious-- do you make your patients call you “Milady”?
In my personal opinion, in these threads you sound considerably more hostile to non-English speakers than is really warranted, or than is typical for you.
Well, partially because - as has been noted already - criticizing things like this is quite often used as a pretext to air negative opinions about immigrants and unwanted ethnic groups; in addition, there are people who seem to have a tremendous sense of entitlement about the whole thing. People like, well, you, in your dismissal of the fact that the entire southwest has a very long history of speaking Spanish. People were speaking Spanish there before it was a part of this country - at what point should they have given up their language? When Mexico lost a war with the United States? Why? Because they owe it to the rest of their now-fellow citizens to conform to some American ideal that tacitly includes speaking English?
Besides - it’s a clearly irrational argument. Do you believe that people don’t want to be able to talk to medical practitioners - or any of the hundred other people you have to speak to in a day? Are those elderly Serbian women gloating to themselves about how they can’t understand what you’re saying about their diabetes medication? It’s hard to learn a foreign language as an adult. Some people cannot achieve real fluency in a language they learn as an adult, despite serious effort. And when discussing medicine - with lots of obscure terminology that a poorly educated person might not understand in their own language - whatever language barrier exists will be magnified a hundred times.
I don’t blame you for your frustration. It sounds like it must be a real frustrating situation. But it really seems like you could be a bit more compassionate. It’s the sort of thing I would expect in a nurse under any circumstances. Frankly, I kind of wonder how you treat other patients you blame for their own misfortune. I smoke, and a couple years ago I contracted pneumonia (thankfully not severe enough to need anything beyond oral antibiotics). Would you hold that against me and rail about how I shouldn’t smoke? Or would you care for me to the best of your ability and put compassion over deciding who’s right and who’s wrong?
But yeah, eleanorigby. It matters. It matters because people are using this as a pretext to call for tighter regulations on immigration - changing the status of a country that for decades and decades has welcomed new people as best it could. Did you know that Ellis Island employed translators for dozens of languages? The United States has a very long history of opening its borders to the tired, weary, huddled masses of the world, and just as long a history of groups of “nativists” mistreating newcomers. I cherish my conception of the United States as the sort of place that accepts “undesirables” - like my own Polish ancestors. Who lived in something of a Polish enclave in northern Michigan; I’m not familiar with the history of that part of the family, but I know they hung on to their native language far longer than immigrants do today.
These arguments about immigrants needing to assimilate to American culture implicate a lot of the ancestors of people like me whose ancestors didn’t immediately do so. And they tend to go along with the idea of a single, unitary “American culture” - and the idea of one American culture with one set of American values brings up sensitivity in a lot of us who have had those values used against us. It ignores a lot of history, and it serves as a legitimizing cover for people whose motives are a lot less pure than yours or duffer’s - I don’t see how you can blame the rest of us for pricking up our ears, any more than you’d blame us for wondering about the motives of someone who liked to talk about the Jew-owned media.
I agree that there’s inconvenience posed by linguistic barriers between people. But I see a problem with people who would try to fix the problem, since the solutions generally strike me as much worse than the original issue.
The veracity of the claims has been demolished so thoroughly that it’s not even worth discussing - you can stop your hinting. And clearly I shouldn’t have said “the real problem”. I phrased that badly. Congratulations. You’ve proven . . . well, nothing.
You obviously read my statement in a hyperliteral manner. I’m wondering if that represents poor reading ability or if it’s just an effort to play gotcha. Well, you got me! I phrased something badly! Now I’m going to go drown my shame in bourbon and Haagen-Dasz and self-mutilation.
I realize this isn’t an inference to me. (I think. I’ve learned to give you the benefit of the doubt in some cases.) I just have to say this has nothing to do with my OP. (Piss-poorly written as usual. Don’t you people learn?) Again and again, I praise immigration for making America what it is today. And that’s the last I’ll say on the matter.
BTW.
The same time we can prove Navajo and Apache and Ute are descendent languages of Spanish.
Oh wait.
Giving me “the benefit of the doubt”? Didn’t I refer to your motives as being “pure”? What “benefit of the doubt” do you need to give me? Haven’t I pointed out, over and over, that no one is accusing you of anything except ignorance surrounding this issue? I guess only hinting that you’re being accused of racism is a bit of an improvement on “Oh, wait, maybe you did. The mention of Sudan set of your ‘duffer hates him some darkies!’” but I still would like to see you stop crying and martyring yourself at some point here.
Did that make sense to you when you wrote it? Because it seems to have lost something in transmission.
Obviously, no, we never learn.
Maybe in the future you could do us the favor of not hitting the submit button on your piss-poorly written OPs?
You know, save us from ourselves.
CMC fnord!
This is a bit more focused on what I’m talking about.
Man, I guess I really am way off base. Thanks for correcting my insensitivity.
Man, I think maybe I should change my sig to “No one is accusing you of racism, duffer.” He seems to need a lot of reassurance on that front.
Moving on to the article, that doesn’t actually prove your point, either. There’s noting in there to indicate these men are refusing to learn English. Oregon needs a lot of firefighters. Bad enough, it sounds like, that they’ve had to relax their requirements for speaking English. I agree, that’s bad news. Ideally, you want everyone on a fire team to be able to communicate with each other. But it doesn’t sound like they can afford to hold out for the ideal up in Oregon. They need a lot of young men who are in good physical shape and willing to do a dangerous job. As it has been throughout our nations history, that particular labor pool is predominantly made up of recent immigrants. Immigrants who have not yet had time to learn English. But Oregon can’t wait for them to finish their ESL classes. They need them on the line now. It sucks that some monolingual fire bosses are getting demoted because of that. (The line you quoted is misleading, incidentally, as they’re not getting laid off, they’re just being pushed back to “regular” firemen. It’s not like they’re on welfare now.) But what else can they do? I can guarantee you that there is going to be no group of immigrants on Earth that is more motivated to learn English than these new firefighters. I’m willing to bet that a year from now, there won’t be a single one of these guys left whom you could have a conversation with in English.
So, again, the problem of immigrants not speaking English is a problem, but it’s one that is entirely self-correcting, at least to the extent that it is correctable at all. Mexican immigrants are learning English. They’re learning it faster than any other immigrant group in history. They just haven’t all learned it yet. And some of them, through no fault of their own, will never be able to speak fluent English: it’s hard to learn a new language late in life, and not everyone can do it. But immigrants who will deliberately refuse to learn English? For all intents and purposes, they simply don’t exist.
Again, I have to clarify the obviously horrid way I tried to rant about something.
This is not about immigration.
There are Lead firefighters in Oregon that are going to be demoted for not knowing Spanish, because the crew doesn’t want to, or can’t, learn English. This is what the OP is about. I’ve shown concrete proof with just that one link that the onus is on people to learn Spanish with no requirement of anyone to learn English. And if you refuse or don’t want to learn Spanish? You suffer serious carreer setbacks.
And if you refuse to learn English? I guess there are plenty that will say you shouldn’t be forced to. Or expected to. And you shouldn’t suffer any negative consequences for it. Hell, there’s a few dozen lobbying groups I can put you in touch with. Maybe we can get some English speakers demoted because of it.
Maybe I’m out of touch. Maybe it’s my responsibility to learn Spanish. And I expect to be able to attend a local high school to learn it at no additional cost to me other than my property taxes. It’s apparent that it’s my responsibility to learn Spanish, so I’ll play the game. I wasn’t aware of this the first go-around in school. And I don’t give a shit about teachers being overtaxed. I need to learn Spanish, society can pay for it.
Drain the public funds through learning a foreign language (heh), or by losing a job for lack of being bilingual. Same thing, I guess.
Of course, then I’d expect Spanish speakers to be bilingual. And I’m sure I can tell how that rant would go.
Excuse me for paying attention to the words you wrote. Excuse me for asking you to clarify what you meant and not simply attacking what I thought was an extremist position. I’ll try not to make those mistakes with you in the future.
As far as me “hinting”. About what? And the game of “gotcha” exists in your mind. I took your post to possibly be saying that the PC line on immigrants had to be followed even at the expense of inconvenient truths (whatever they might be). You say now that you worded things badly, but cop an attitude with me? :rolleyes:
I posted this earlier, but it didn’t go through.*
So we have a question not posed to you about a post not by you asking about the thoughts which were not yours that caused the words that were not yours to be written by a person other than you, yet, you chose to:
And now you:
3) deem this question (not to you—which you did not understand—about a post not by you concerning thoughts not belonging to you) to be undeserving of an answer.
:rolleyes:
But just for the heck of it, since you’re so interested in matters that don’t concern you, try focusing on the first few words of the post I originally cited. In the meantime I will wait for an answer to my legitimate question from the only poster that is able to answer it.
*Which he now has.
Where in that link does it say that anyone is refusing to learn English?
“concrete proof” my ass :rolleyes:.
That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?
You want somebody else to pay so you can learn Spanish.
CMC fnord!
Hooray for duffer! He’s uncovered the secret that seasonal labor contractors in the western U.S. use a lot of primarily Spanish-speaking workers. How his eyes must have lit up when that article hit the internet just a few hours ago. It’s a pity that it contains not a particle’s worth of proof for his original defamations and slanders.
First off, these guys are contract labor, hired because they’re needed. If the contractor isn’t supplying workers with whom his crew chiefs can communicate, it’s probably because he can’t, not because he’s hoping to make the natural disaster episode of America’s Funniest Bloopers and Practical Jokes. The reason he can’t is probably that English-proficient applicants are not there. Therefore, were it not for the Spanish-speaking workers, there would be no crews at all, and no jobs for the bosses. Oh, and lots of unchecked fires.
Second, these workers join fire-suppression work gangs because they can’t get $11/hour picking produce. They’re willing to take that wage and live and work outdoors with few amenities and a fair chance of being hurt or killed in order to save somebody’s 4/2.5 McMansion, and it’s probably not because they are lazy or coddled or demanding of others. There is no indication anywhere, either in the article linked or in a bunch of others duffer didn’t read either, that these workers refuse to learn English and are demanding special accommodations because of it.
The accommodation they’re getting, by the way, is to get orders they can understand, and it’s being imposed in order to reduce the likelihood of them and others getting killed, and for wildfires to be fought more effectively, not to further anyone’s agenda of bilingualism. I know duffer would prefer to take the job of crew boss just so he could shout at them in English and German and see how long it took them to assimilate, but that’s a little harsh, I think. So far as can be seen, these guys are no threat whatever to duffer’s job putting out metaphorical fires in the customer tech support department, which (I know he hates to be reminded) is what he was originally whining about.
So the idea of Spanish-speaking immigrants with an outsized sense of entitlement who refuse to learn English, and the lobbyists and multi-culti communists who love them, is still a complete fabrication. I feel a bit sorry for duffer, though, so I’ll give him a little pointer to a hot lead he can use to build his case. Back a few years, there was a guy in my town who got fired from a job, and his separation notice said the reason was, I kid you not, “inability to speak and understand Spanish.” Nothing else: he was fired for that and that alone.
He was the high school Spanish teacher. But, duff, go ahead and use it! It’s better than anything you’ve come up with so far.
duffer, you’re not only off base, you were tagged out a long time ago. It’s perfectly clear you’re not a bigot: you’ve said it so many times it has to be true. But the satisfaction you’re getting from blaming your troubles on immigrants, falsely and persistently, obviously outweighs any commitment you have to truth or fairness or decency. I won’t call you a bigot, or anything else for that matter. But, still. You made an accusation. You took your shot at proving it, and it was pathetic. The best time to retract it was a long time ago. The second best time is right now.
Uh, the point is that those that haven’t learned English are negatively affecting the livelihood and careers of those that haven’t learned Spanish. You know, the Oregonians that are at risk of demotions? Did you read the article and digest it? Or just see that it was me that posted it and decided because of that it was just fantasy? Without reading it. One or the other is going to pay a price. It happens to be the ones that don’t know Spanish.
Have we really gotten to a point where you’re punished for not learning Spanish because someone doesn’t learn English? Is that really where we are?
Nice use of “fnord”, BTW. That was really clever. :rolleyes:
I still think it’s ridiculous to be hostile to Mexicans because they speak Spanish. There’s a lot more serious issues to condemn them on. Like the way they’re always out in our fields and orchards grabbing up all the best fruits and vegetables. As native-born Americans, we should be getting first dibs on our agricultural products.