I work in a grocery store. Every day I encounter people who speak little or even no English. Not just Spanish-speakers - I have a regular customer who I believe is a Russian speaker but I can’t ask because we have no language in common. Several elderly Polish and Serbian speaker. Chinese exchange students who have poor English (although those frequently are accompanied by Chinese exchange students with much better English, thanks goodness). Pantomine comes into play at times. I was able to communicate with a couple of French-speaking customers - my spoken French is terrible, but sufficient for basic communications, and I understand more than I can speak.
About two or three people a day. We somehow make it work
They’re likely to choose the first word in the dictionary, though, which isn’t necessarily the correct one in context. For example, garden as the area with flowers is jardín, but as in store section would be jardinería (the activity of gardening).
During a typical visit to my local grocery store I’ll hear US English, Caribbean English, a couple flavors of Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. This time of year I’ll also hear Quebecois French.
This store is part of a major US regional chain. Most of the store signage is English only, but the meat labels are English + Spanish as are some, but not all, of the labels on produce.
Unsurprisingly, the “ethnic” section of the store is darn near the whole store. Rather than trying to segregate by ethnicity they just munge it all together. So the “canned veggies” section has ordinary US white-people veggies, US black-people veggies, Jamaican veggies, Brazilian veggies, Colombian veggies, etc. There’s a whole UN just in the canned veggie aisle and another in the canned beans. All with labels in the appropriate language and in English.
They wouldn’t be putting all that stuff on their shelves if it didn’t sell.
Obviously I live near the limit case of multi-cultural. Other parts of the country are far more homogenous.
The thing I hate about multilingual labelling is the reduction in information or font size required to fit multiple versions in the same space. With a single language, you’ll get product name, marketing phrases (i.e. compare to …, premium ingredients, high quality, etc.), and some factual information (e.g. materials, # pieces, performance, etc.) about the product. When you cram in a second language, the factual information gets tossed and you get only the name and some useless pitch lines. Or they reduce the font size down to be almost unreadable (unless you hold the item 2 inches from your face).
The lack of english language skills is most predominant in the American southwest, and California.
I work in a 9-1-1 centre. We have to serve all callers, regardless of language spoken. So we subscribe to a translation service which charges a not insubstantial sum and a by the minute rate.
The 9-1-1 industry has liability concerns if a staff member who is not native level fluent processes a call in a foreign language. But in many parts of the States centers are able to recruit staff with sufficient proficiency to be able to process calls in house. Those who don’t may pay up to about US$15 per minute, depending upon the language.
In Aus, most of the items we buy have multi-lingual instructions and safety information. Normally with English up front. But in the last 5 years sometimes the first language is Chinese (Simplified font). Clearly living standards are improving.
(Just to reiterate - in the example given of a private retailer store, the cost/benefit calculation has been made by the business owner and found worth it.)
Much of the multilingual labeling seen in the USA is NOT done to accommodate US language minorities, it’s done so the same product in the same packaging can be sold across borders of the NAFTA zone (Canada, USA, Mexico).
Also, about multilingual instruction manuals: we may want to consider that the manufacturer may want to be able to sell to as many markets as possible. You print the assembly instructions in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese to begin with and when orders come in you can ship it virtually anywhere in the Western Hemisphere w/o reopening the box.
Google says it’s “maderas” and Bing says it’s “madera” which are correct enough to be understood either way. On the other hand, Google says spanish for hardware is “el hardware”.
Store sections would be labeled Carpintería or Corte de Madera (also Maderas al Corte) depending on what exactly is being offered, though (Woodworking section and Wood cut to spec, respectively).
In general hardware is indeed ferretería, but that’s also the whole store. Tools are herramientas, powered tools is máquina herramienta, and small hardware is ferretería or tornillería.
Yah, sorry, I was just trying to point out that depending on context the best translation will vary; dialectal variations exist, but for this kind of field I see more variation by specific meaning.
> Are there people who think this is just another sign of Spanish speakers interfering with and diluting good ol’ fashioned English?
Remember that what is actually going on in the world is a gradual establishment of English as the standard global language everywhere. Far from English disappearing, it’s taking over everywhere. Although English is only the third most common language in the world as the native language of people, it’s by a long shot the most common second language of people and continues to increase in that respect. There have always been lots of native speakers of non-English languages in the U.S. By the third generation, the descendants of these immigrants don’t know the language of their ancestors and are now complaining about the failure of later immigrants to speak only English. This is all part of globalization. Everybody in the world is closer to everybody else, both in their exposure to world culture and their ability to easily travel around the world:
My aged MIL was born here to recent immigrants who sorta speaka-da-English. Or did when they were still alive.
She speaks English like the US native she is, and recalls a few phrases of her parent’s language. And she complains incessantly about the Spanish & Creole accented English she hears around her now. :rolleyes:
Separate thought:
The growth of English as a *lingua franca *in countries where English isn’t primary will be a huge change for how English evolves going forward.
When substantially all English speakers were living in English-speaking countries, the language evolved mostly along lines consistent with skilled daily users of English.
When part-time ESL speakers in e.g. China outnumber daily native English speakers in the US, UK, Commonwealth, etc., we’ll see English veering off in all sorts of new directions. And with lots of exciting new vocabulary. Just as a bunch of Indian vocabulary and a smidgen of grammar came in during the British Raj era.
Right now, in my very non-expert opinion, there’s not too much Mandarin or other Chinese influence on English. On present trends that won’t be true in 50 years.
:rolleyes: