If you want to live in America, learn to speak English.
It's just something that has been progressively pissing me off for the longest time. Why is everything printed in both English and Spanish? Where did the French writing on my box of cereal come from?
If you're going to move to a country that doesn't speak your native language: at least make an effort to try and learn at least a small yet functional amount of it. I mean, if I were going to move to Germany, I'd sure as hell try to learn functional bits of German. I'm not saying that I'd try to make myself fluent in the language, but I'd try to learn just enough to make sure that I don't wind up in the red light district when I'm out shopping for cheese.
But I seriously cannot count the times in my experiences in retail that I've had to call over another employee just because "No speeek inglisch". For serious? For fucking serious? You learned just enough English to let people know that you do not speak English in a really fractured and grammatically incorrect stereotypical statement?
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| Mind: Blown |
I get the whole "This country was founded as a melting pot of cultures and this is just the next step of the whole integration into the world process" bullshit whatever blah blah blah: but still. I'm not saying "Drop your native language and speak English exclusively." No. Far from it. Go ahead and speak with your brethren in whatever language you chose whether that language be Spanish, French, Chinese, Elvish...whatever. I'm more so fed up with people going out into general society, not knowing a single word of the native language and expecting the world to cater to them.
And now I've said my piece.
I think there are some extreme exceptions to the rule, like the ones who you said give you lip, that are probably doing so with the mindset of, "This is America, land of many cultures, accept me 100% as I am without the need for change" and then there are other extremes that are like foreign language phobics and want English dominance, end of story.
ReplyDeleteIf the whole (or at least majority) of the world would *mutually* make identical efforts to instill other languages from early grammar school on (and prompted more regular use) then everyone would know at least some level of more than one language and there'd be less discomfort about the whole thing. You make decent points despite being frustrated, however, I still think, frankly, that the U.S. is the country that lacks in valuing bi or tri-linguistic skills, (even if it's not for absolute fluency) more so than a lot of other countries, which makes the outward expression of frustration about it seem less justified at times.