Look. I know you came to this country because it’s a melting pot, and you wanted a better life, yada yada yada. However, because you live here now, there are now certain rules that you must live by. SPEAK THE LANGUAGE!!! If you want to speak Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, Yiddish, Klingon or whatever in your own home, fine. But don’t expect me to A) Learn your language, or B) Get an interpreter just because you want to have a conversation. I’m quite sure that if I went to your country of origin, and strolled into a hotel, fast food joint, or wherever, and demanded to speak to someone that spoke English, that I probably wouldn’t be extended the same courtesy that is extended to you. It’s very simple. If you come to America, have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the spoken language. Broken English is okay. At least you’re making the attempt. If you’re puzzled as to how to learn to speak English, do what millions of children in this land did: Turn on “Sesame Street.” I’m all for respecting the values of your nation of origin (I’m Native American myself, so I figure I’m probably better qualified to make this rant than most people). But you’re not in that country now. You’re in mine. And I expect you to act like it. Also, do not follow the driving laws of your individual nation of origin anymore. Drive OUR way. If you want to drive in the left hand-lane, and still do the speed limit, go back to England (for the record, it’s called the “passing lane” so that people can pass YOU. It’s not called that so that you can pass the time in it). Just because you flew, boated, tunnelled, smuggled, airlifted, or beamed yourself into this great land doesn’t give you the automatic freedom of having to have me cater to you. If you want to worship, do it in your respective places of worship, or in your own home. Do not attempt to force me to recognize your theological beliefs. Likewise, your children DO belong in school. But we are wasting valuable resources having classes devoted to teaching in Chinese, or Hebrew, or whatever. Plus, your children are not going to get the chance to learn how to be an American citizen if they never get to meet any. So, once again. If you want to resist the impulses of your great new home, and stick to your homeland values and cultures and language, then go back to where you came from.
[sub]oh, yeah. This is the Pit. Fuck. Cocksucker. Sonofabitch. Ass. Cuntfunnel.[/sub]
Good heavens! Where the hell do you live? I live in what is arguably the most immigrant-influenced city in the history of the world, and I’ve never had a single problem of the sort you describe.
What the hell are you guys doing out there in flyover country that stuff like this happens?
The shouldn’t you be ranting that people should be talking Cherokee or Apachee or whatever?
Fucking whiner.
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Zette
Your biggest fan!!!
Don’t know where he is, but it happens in Oklahoma too. I had a class my first semester in college with two girls from India and one of them didn’t understand a word the professor said. It wasn’t that her English wasn’t good, she just didn’t speak it at all! Her freiend translated everything by writing her notes in their native language.
This was after they both went through the English as a second language course, though God knows how.
She didn’t last long. The first exam came along and it was painfully obvious she couldn’t read English.
Don’t get me started on immigrants that have come to work in the sawmill in the town my parents live in down in Arkansas.
This is obviously not the case everywhere but it does happen and I can understand the OP’s … annoyance.
Yeah, I should. But that would do even less good than complaining about the present. And I never claimed that I wasn’t a fucking whiner. [sub]Fucking bitch[/sub]
Yeah, I know. And you wouldn’t figure that living in southern Indiana would inspire this sort of venom. I used to work for various insurance companies, and it would never fail that I’d always get some ::wally:: on the phone that expected me to get a Spanish interpreter on the line because he was either too fucking lazy or stupid to learn how to speak English.
Wow. Cool beaners. Can I add that line to my sig?
Then I don’t suppose anyone will mind if I bitch about people who live in Quebec without speaking any French…?
Coming from southern Indiana myself I’d figure that post would have been alot more venmous. I’ve moved since then to a college campus and wow let me tell you it ain’t much different. I’m a troubleshooter for the computer lab in my college and when foreign students come in and try to have me help and I cannot understand a word what they are saying it’s difficult. Usually I have to slow them down because they start throwing some of their native speech into it. I don’t get too frustrated I just realize they are having just as hard a time as I am trying to understand them.
Eh, calm down, Superdude. Last time I checked, the USA did not have an officially recognized language.
But yeah, people who come here should make a little bit of an effort to get on with the folks already here, and that includes at least a little English. I understand your annoyance.
This has probably been addressed before, Tiki, but where in Indiana ya from? Ever hear of New Albany?
Wait a sec, I thought you said you were an Anglophone Keynsian, not a Quebecois communist? 
Yes, since Quebec is a French-speaking province, it would be asinine to try get around without being able to say “ribbit” and “Brekkekek -koax.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
Re: the OP. I agree, learn the damn language. I learned Korean when I lived in Seoul. I speak Spanish when I travel in Mexico (and a lot here in DC, too), so why shouldn’t Americans expect new arrivals to speak our language?
Are these foreigners forcing you to go to their churches/mosques/temples/teepees of worship? That’s kidnapping. You should speak to the authorities.
ARDEN RANGER: If the immigrants that work in the sawmill are such a fucking problem, why don’t you complain to the mill owners? Or, maybe they won’t listen because they don’t mind exploiting someone to the tune of $4.25 an hour. It is this same backwards fucking thinking of blaming the lowest man on the totem pole that got Proposition 187 passen in California. It must fucking suck that these lame, mute and ignorant immigrant contribute to the so-called economy of your white trash piece of crap trailor town.
Have some corn mash on me.
Superdude—If it makes you feel any better, those immigrants who refuse to learn English will always be stuck in poorly paying, dead-end jobs and will be socially and culturally ghettoized.
Me, I always get slightly annoyed when my ATM asks me, “do you want to continue in Spanish or English?” If I wanted to continue in Spanish, ATM, I would fucking live in SPAIN. I am on Madison Avenue and 39th Street, I would like to continue in ENGLISH.
Yup I’ve heard of New Albany. It’s a little while aways from where I used to live in Milan*. It’s right by Ohio and Kentucky if you didn’t know. Now I live in Muncie.
[sub]Milan is the town that the movie Hooisers was based on. It sucks cause the only thing we have to celebrate is our 1954 state basketball championship.[/sub]
Excuse me? Since you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, bite me.
White trash town? Hardly. Last time I was there, there wasn’t a trailor in sight and it happens to be a very nice, if tiny little town with the sawmill outside of it. So, fuck you.
4.25 an hour? Nope. Last I heard, the mill pays a minumum of $7.00 an hour, which is not bad considering the cost of living down there. They don’t contribute much to the economy, they send the majority of the money back home. Again, fuck you.
What I’m “blaming” them for is not bothering to learn the damned language well enough that they don’t need someone explaining what they’re trying to say.
Oh, yeah, and fuck you.
First pit post: That was fun.
Hey Arden just for the hell of it could you please do another fuck you for me?
I graduated from Jeffersonville High School and we used to play New Albany, so fuck you! 
Here in northern DE, we’ve got a burgeoning Chinese-American community, and let me tell you, they’re doing everything they can to isolate themselves from the surrounding community. It looks really weird, too, because the demographics and structure of the comunity won’t permit them to create a “chinatown”, so they’ve created geographicly isolated clusters, and have a handfull of meeting places. The first Montessori school we looked at was mostly Chinese-American, and we were told straight-out that our daughter would not be permitted in that school (of course, a 43" three-year-old might have been a bit alarming). I’ve about 6 ethnic chinese families living near me, and only one family will talk to me, and none of them will let their children play with my daughter. They seem scared of my family, if you can believe that.
That’s gonna cost you.
Oops, too late.
Yeah, I used to feel the same way as the OP. Then I grew up and started paying attention to the world around me. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that the vast majority of immigrants are doing the best they can. Have a little compassion, for cryin’ out loud.
I have met many, and seen evidence of a vast many more, immigrants who come from absolutely horrific conditions. Political persecution of all sorts, ethnic & religious persecution, living conditions unfit for a rat, no access to medical care, education, running water, what have you. The ones who are flocking to the U.S. (or Canada) without the ability to speak English are probably not the ones who could afford a good education. As the true language of Manifest Destiny, English is taught all over the damn world, but only to those who can afford it. There are also many spouses and children who had little to no influence on the decision to come here with their family. If my only options were to move with my family or survive alone, I’d sure as hell move.
So, you have entire families who have spent their life savings to come here. They arrive with little to no money, and have to find housing and then a job to maintain that housing. Somewhere during the time they spend keeping body and soul together, they most likely do their level best to learn the language. And then it’s another battle to become literate in that language.
I doubt very much that the cab drivers and toll booth operators, fruit pickers and custodians are really inconveniencing your day that much. They’re not taking the high-paying jobs. They’re taking anything that pays a wage. I suggest instead of going off on some self-centered, inexcusable little rant you take some time to let these people practice what English they do know on you. I’ve learned some amazing stories doing that. Most recently I talked with a Somali cab driver and heard about how he was saving up to bring his mother, sister and brother here. His father was taken from his house in the middle of the night and imprisoned, and they don’t know if he’s alive or dead. While not every immigrant comes from such extreme situations or disadvantages, every one of them is a normal human being struggling to acclimate to an entirely new and often hostile place. Have some fucking compassion.
Two summers ago my housemate and I housed a family from Bulgaria. The father was the only one who spoke any English when they arrived, but within 3 months the two daughters were comfortable with English, if a little shy. The mother was terror-stricken at the idea of even being here, but by the time they moved out she had found a job at the library and got ever her shyness enough to make small talk. Learning a new language takes a looong damn time, and tremendous effort, and the older you are, the more difficult it becomes.
Yay for you for being a Native American, and I’m happy for the other folks who learned a new language before arriving in a new country. But Christ, people, you’re lucky (and only lucky) to be where you are. Don’t expect others to come with the advantages you obviously take for granted.