Not sure if this is the right spot, but I’ll give it a go.
My wife and I moved to Europe for early retirement. Ultimately the language requirement to get citizenship after a few years is pretty light, A2 by the CEFR. I’ve been studying for a year or so and am pretty confident and my wife is on her way. A2 is basic ability.
We meet a lot of expats here and the discussion turned to language. I felt like A2 is barely enough to have a basic coversation, handle simple tasks and so on. And I’m surprised it’s not a bit more stringent.
One of the guys said that he didn’t think it was fair that they had a language requirement because as a person with ADHD, it makes it really hard to learn languages. So that effectively locks him out of citizenship.
So let’s assume I am totally ignorant on ADHD. I just don’t know how to even counter that. I don’t know if the guy has even tried to learn the language. I just find it really disrespectful to just decide that you’re going to conduct business in English. It’s certainly possible to do it. It’s just counter to everything that I believe about living abroad.
I don’t want to be a jerkoff if there is a legitimate disability. But if ADHD is the be-all/end-all of the issue, I guess have nothing else to say to this guy on this. Not even sure how to approach this the next time I hear it. But it also helps reinforce that stereotype of the American abroad which sucks.
Before I even get into a discussion of this, I’d like to know if any European countries don’t have a requirement that applicants for citizenship have a basic level of fluency/literacy in those countries official language(s).
I know that Canada requires applicants for citizenship to have a Level 4 fluency in speaking and listening in either French or English. Mexico requires applicants to pass a language exam. In the U.S. English is the standard.
Based on what I know about the U.S., Canada and Mexico, I don’t think it has anything to do disrespect, or American stereotypes, or doing business in English, or discrimination against people with ADHD. I think it’s just a requirement for citizenship, and I’ll bet it’s pretty universal.
I actually think the US waives the language requirement based on various factors. Not sure if ADHD would be one of them. But I know you can be naturalized without speaking English in some cases.
A universal requirement can still be discriminatory, though, if it adversely affects a protected group. It doesn’t matter that it’s not motivated by animus against that group. What matters is whether there’s an objective justification for the requirement.
On the face of it, it’s not hard to construct an objective justification for a language requirement in connection with naturalisation (or indeed residence). But if the authorities grant any exemptions to that requirement — e.g for people who are mute, or who have learning disabilities that impede the acquisition of language — then the question would arise as to whether ADHD sufferers are discriminated against by comparison with the groups who are afforded an exemption.
The answer to that question, I think, would depend on how significant an impediment ADHD is ot the acquistion of a language, by comparison with the kind of impedements that do qualify for an exemption. I don’t know the answer to that question.
Possibly, I suppose, if it’d be considered under the “medical disability exemption.” Age is the other possible exemption, but it requires having been a resident in the U.S. for an extended period of time (15 or 20 years).
Huh, I’m very ADD and I’m pretty good at learning languages.
Especially ones that follow logical rules of grammar (every once in a while we’ll travel somewhere where the verb tenses just don’t make sense… damn you, Ljubljana!).
I have never succeeded in learning any language other than English. I have been living in Montreal for 55 years and, god knows, I tried, but it never took. I can speak it to some extent (I once gave a short course of 16 lectures in Louvain-le-Neuve, all in French), I can read it and write it, but I never learned to hear it. I cannot separate the string of phonemes into words. I think it is a specific disability. I had good hearing; that was not it. I took a couple of French courses, but it didn’t help. So while I don’t have ADHD, I think a case could be made. Fortunately, Canadian citizenship requires fluency in only one official language.
There are certainly several possibilities regarding the guy in the OP, including:
He does have ADHD, and the nature of his particular learning disorder does, indeed, making learning a new language difficult for him.
He has ADHD, and though he has struggled to learn a foreign language in the past, it wasn’t specifically due to ADHD (i.e., he also has some other learning disorder or cognitive issue).
He’s convinced himself that, because he has ADHD, he won’t be able to learn a new language at his age.
He just doesn’t want to have to go through the hassle and time of gaining even a basic knowledge of another language (as the OP notes, A2 isn’t a deep fluency), and uses ADHD as his excuse for why he “can’t” do it.
It sounds like this is not someone the OP knows well, and I think his skepticism is at least somewhat justified – but it’s also possible that things are as the other guy says they are.