Discussion for article #241223
You are correct. It is about ignorance, insecurity and pure undiluted bigotry.
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It is bigotry. And one of the great ironies is that many of the people demanding immigrants speak English (or, as they often call it, âAmericanâ) are the personification of illiteracy.
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A nice article and a salient point, but letâs not go too far.
The reality of foreign languages is a reality American conservatives canât deal with. I donât concede that America=what conservatives think.
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I like your essay but this is a complicated issue. The first words my professor uttered in a sociolinguistics class were âLanguage is powerâ. How you speak reflects: and to some measure determines, your social status. I agree that the Donald Trump inspired âEnglish onlyâ is mainly xenophobic. However, it is another thing to champion multiculturalism and then ignore people trapped in a permanent subclass because they donât speak English.
The people who make fun of your father are total jerks and idiots. I have great respect for any foreign born person who masters English: it is a great accomplishment. Americans should have a greater understanding and respect for other languages and cultures, but people deciding to live in the U.S. should definitely learn and use English if they can.
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The" English only" types arenât trumpeting how happy theyâd be if we had more immigrants from Barbados or Belize or Maoris from New Zealand or India.
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This is not all about âwhite peopleâ. Many Russian immigrants, especially during the Cold War period, were discriminated against big time, and it still happens. It also happens with Slovakians, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, etc. In fact, you will see many an ignorant person say "aha, you must be KGB!!â when they hear these people talk. So to think they have been embraced is nonsense.
Additionally, a lot of immigrants come from Ireland. They already speak English. Yet they still have their accents mocked all the time (and not in an endearing way by any means). This also happens for people from the UK and Australia. Here in NYC in the construction trade I always hear that they are âstealing our jobsâ. But itâs important to note that these people are a substantial amount of immigrants today, and English is already their first language. In fact, many of them get made fun of for speaking English properly, they need to âtone it downâ to communicate here.
One of the main âspeak English complaintsâ is that there are signs in Spanish everywhere, to which many complain that there were no signs for the ancestors. Again, just ignorance. If all of Europe spoke one language, you would have had all kinds of signs back in the period when mostly Euros were coming here. The reality is that virtually all of Central and South America speak one language (or at least understand Spanish quite good), so thatâs why there are Spanish signs. Big biz wants to sell them stuff, so they put up signs for them.
As to mocking Asian accents, first I would note most have a very positive view of Asian immigrants. Again itâs the same people who call anyone from eastern Europe âKGBâ that donât like the Asians. And letâs face it, probably Asianâs have the hardest time not âlearningâ English, but pronouncing words. Their native speech has an r/l mixup that can be difficult to distinguish. Ever hear an Asian try to say âworldâ. Not easy. So it does sound awkward. No reason to poke fun of course, but that is ignorance.
So itâs not just a âwhiteâ thing. Eastern Europeans and Irish get made fun of a lot as well by ignorant people. Is racism a âcomponentâ in all this? Of course. But to say itâs the only dynamic is just not true. Back in the 70âs and 80âs, Russians were probably the most hated immigrants of all (âcommie bastards!!â). And that was due to propaganda from the government, much like anti-Middle East propaganda has hurt perception of those immigrants.
I would also note that I have heard a lot of people, including ignorant ones, say they prefer an Indian doctor who actually worked to get their degree to some spoiled white guy who graduated because daddy gave money to the school. So there is a great deal of respect for many immigrants, and itâs no mistake that the most educated ones get the most respect, regardless of their race or ethnicity.
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Indeed. And whatâs really embarrassing is when immigrants who learned English overseas (itâs mandatory in a lot of countries) come here to find a lot of American who speak English much worse than themâŚ
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âbeefâŚitâs whatâs for dinnerâ. Remember that? It was put out by Americaâs beef producers. No surprise. âEnglish onlyââŚ? Put out by people that only speak English. And thatâs all there is to it.
Good comments. I agree that this is not a strictly racial phenomenon. Language and culture are closely associated. For example, we revere upper class British accents because we like upper class British culture. We associate it with elegance, refinement and sophistication. We like the culture so we like the language/accent. As you pointed out in your examples, we tend to dislike the language or accents of people from countries we view as our enemies or rivals.
By the way, I am something of an âAsia handâ, and the âr/lâ phenomenon you mention is largely confined to Chinese and Japanese speakers, in my experience. Korean people, for example, have very little trouble with English consonants.
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âthose people donât DRESS rightâ â âThose people donât WALK properâ â âThat stucco house has no place in this neighborhoodâ âŚAnd on and on ad nauseam â If the paranoids and bigots didnât have English to use as an issue, they would just grab another â
Those who choose to not HELP others to assimilate ⌠are FULL OF SHIT ! ! â
Hardly surprising, is it? I mean, is there anything here you didnât know already? Not to put the piece down, but how much did you learn from it?
I nodded, however, when he noted that Americans canât get enough of British accents. And yet we know nothing about them. I remember being taken to an exclusive club in Florida where the maitreâd was Britishâand noting to myself that with his accent he would never have been hired for that job in a similar establishment in Blighty. He just wasnât posh enough.
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Might be a good time to remember that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California, plus parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming, literally used to be Mexico.
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Is there really an âAmericanâ trend toward speaking English only? I donât think so, itâs just more paranoid and mean right wing, teabagging, Republican pandering crapola.
I say, stand a few immigrants of all stripes up next to some good old southern boys and let them have a speech contest. Hell, even a very popular VP candidate from 2008 has real problems with her native language and George the Lesser spit out malapropism after malapropism. Poorly spoken English is just as bad as poorly pronounced English and worse in fact because the native people literally ought to know better.
My Spanish attempted in Mexico varies from embarrassing to problem causing. But I always get by and learn a little more every time.
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I am always humbled when striking up a conversation with a cab driver and occasionally realize that his accented English - is his 3rd or 4th language ⌠and that he is driving the cab to make the $$ to take the necessary courses to gain US validation of his graduate level foreign credentials.
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I think itâs as much a class issue (and not in the Donald Trump, âIâm gonna make it unbelievably classyâ version of class) as a race issue. My father-in-law is an English immigrant - descended from a family of actors. Although a very bright man, he was not well educated thanks to being a child during WWII. His math education was halted at the 8th grade. Despite this when he came to America and was discharged from the Air Force, he was hired to work on the LUNAR LANDER in the 60âs because everyone assumed he was far more educated than he was - Oxford accent to the rescue. To his credit, he took several crash courses in advanced mathematics and no astronauts died in the LM. Because of how he spoke and carried himself physically, he was deemed A-OK.
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Very disappointed in Jindal. âImmigration without assimilation is invasionâ?? Does that mean the elderly Indian gentleman, a Mr. Patel, who was viciously attacked by a police officer in Alabama, had it coming? After all, he didnât speak much English. Is this really the kind of people we want to be? Is this Christian? Jindal ought to be ashamed of himself.
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Yes, and when Cockney accents are heard, there tends to be more disdain toward that person (âoh, a guttural working class stiffâ, etc.).
Yes, agreed on the Asian thing, but itâs still not fun even for a Korean to say âworldâ, âtwirlâ or âswirlâ. But yes, far easier for them than the Chinese or Japanese.
But then again, we have people here who say âaxeâ instead of âaskâ⌠Amerianâs who canât even pronounce a 3 letter word.
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Yes, education and intelligence donât always go together⌠I run a construction biz, and I have found that to be quite true, I have laborers with more common sense and initiative than kids out of college.
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Bull. The real reason Americans are mad about immigrants is because 20 Million of them have invaded our country, period. And a lot of them insist that Americans should learn Spanish just because of the large immigrant population. No other group of immigrants have ever called for their language over ours.