An extremely powerful and insightful post once again, Samhita.

I have many friends who's parents didn't teach them their native language upon immigrating to the United States with fear they would be discriminated against

I live near Philly. My familiy happens to know Joey Vento personally and very well, and he is a good man. He has NEVER turned someone away because they couldn't say 'cheesesteak'. Also, you can't even translate 'cheesesteak' to my knowladge, so no matter if you are Spanish, Polish, or Indian, the word will still be the same: 'cheesesteak'.

Also, Joey Vento has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the citizens of Philadelphia, including those citizens of different ethnic backgrounds, regardless of if they can speak English. As an example, the campaign that he launched after September 11 benifented many Americans, no matter what their background is, and he did that all out of his own pocket and his buisness. He took no profit out of that, there was no cut. 100% went.

Have you ever been to Geno's? I go there all the time. It's called a marketing ploy; everyone knows what Geno's is now. Not only is it the best cheessteak in Philly, but this whole sticker buisness (which is about the size of a bumper sticker) got him on the map even more.

So next time you're in Philly, stop down to Geno's and order in Polish. He'll still give you a cheesesteak.

That's total bullocks.

I was born in the States to ordinary "American" parents, but when my grandfather moved here he cut out all his ties to Italian unless he was talking to his aunt, and my father always regretted that he and his brother were never taught Italian.

I also work in a Chinese restaurant, and my boss and his family are pretty much like a second family to me--their children are being raised to call me "sister" in Chinese, for Christ's sake. There are *so* many people--especially teenage boys in this godawful Hickstown--who think it's terribly witty to prank call us and speak in mock-Chinese or ask about us serving cats. I usually tell them to fuck off. The worst part is that my boss is so worried about his daughter being made fun of that half of my job is now teaching his daughter to speak English so that she won't "be behind" when she gets to Kindergarten. Nevermind that she speaks very good Chinese and is, by academic standards, developmentally ahead of other three year olds in her native language. No one will take her seriously if she can't speak and count in English.

She's picking up English very quickly. I just hope she still retains her Chinese and that her "sister" doesn't override her previous cultural ties to the country she was born in.

Muki - you've obviously never been to France or Qebec. They will tell you in no uncertain terms that French is what you need to speak if you wish to speak to them. (Unless you're at an Irish pub.)

Interestingly, the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that does not have an official language. (Even though American English is now the lingua franca). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages.

But to suppose that people in an English speaking country are racist because they expect people who live here to speak Enlish is non-sense (or else it means that you don't know what the word racist means). Indeed, doesn't the failure of people to adequately learn their host country's language demonstrates its own xenophobia to the host culture as well as a disrespect. (When you travel, I trust you know at least how to say, please and thank you in the host countries language; and if you lived abroad in a non-English speaking country, I doubt you'd think it racist if the locals had trouble communicating with you because you didn't know the local language).

Now I have no idea what "other communication styles" could possibly mean, it if means anything at all. But I assume that references to things like "alternative forms of English" refers to such things like ebonics. Of course, why permitting youngsters to sound ignorant isn't itself racism is beyond me. (The soft-bigotry of low expectations, as we on the right like to say). And if the point of using English properly is -- as you say -- power, then not insisting that people learn to speak proper English, and educating them as such, disempowers and disenfranchises them.

Regards from NY,
Ed
(Have a great 4th!)

While I'm sure that Joey Vento has many wonderful qualities, he's still a racist. Similarly, my grandfather had many wonderful qualities while still being a racist. It's not inappropriate to point these sorts of things out.

(And does anybody believe for a second believe that Joey Vento has had a problem with people trying to use the Spanish, French, or Arabic word for "cheesesteak" and then getting angry when he couldn't understand them? Really?)

I think my favorite part of this whole story was that, last summer, the Associated Press had a photo of Geno's, complete with a sign that read "This is America: When Ordering 'Speak English' [sic]." That's right-- this defender of linguistic purity doesn't know how to use punctuation. I'm not normally a grammar snob, but if you're going to try to mask your own racism with some holier-than-thou attitude about the sanctity of the English language, you should damn well make sure you know the rules of usage.

Bradley-- This IS America. If you can't say the word 'cheesesteak', then there is a problem. If you live in France, speak French. If you live in Spain, speak Spanish. If you live in America, speak English.

You can speak whatever other language you want, but if you don't know English and you live in an English speaking country, then why blame the people who actually speak the language? When in Rome, do as the Romans.

OOOh, racism as publicity. Yeah, that's it. *eye roll*

What languages were people trying to order in, anyway? I've worked in customer service for a LONG time, and I really can't remember anyone trying to speak to me in a language other than English. I've been asked if I speak that language, I've been spoken to in broken English, and I've communicated through gestures, but I've never encountered someone who just stands there in talks to me in a language other than English. Does this really happen? How often?

Samhita, you're absolutely right - people see accents before they hear them. There was an experiment done where people looked at a picture of a face, one group looked at a white face and one at an Asian face. Both groups listened to the same recording and were told it was recorded by the person whose face they were looking at. The people looking at the Asian face said they couldn't understand, the people looking at the white face said they could understand. This is where the racism comes in, cracksmoker.

I also think it's interesting to note that the Native American languages have been or are in the process of being wiped out and replaced with English, French, and Spanish. Not exactly fair if you play by the rules of "speak the language of the land."

I understand that people do need to communicate effectively, though, and the lingua franca here is English. That's fine, but people should be more considerate about it. Many Americans get outraged at the idea of people having access to things in Spanish even when it won't make it any harder for people to have access to English. It's ridiculous. English is becoming a truly global language, and it's endangering a lot of other languages in the process. The least we can do as the privileged ones who speak English natively is to appreciate other languages and make room for them when it's practical to do so. Instead, people expect everyone here and abroad to speak English, requiring others to learn it as a foreign language but refusing to learn one themselves.

Finally, a word about Ebonics. I prefer to call it AAVE for African American Vernacular English, and there are other names for it as well. The problem with people speaking AAVE is not that they sound ignorant but that people who actually are ignorant about linguistics think that people who speak it are lazy and dumb. I assure you that any legitimate linguist would say that AAVE is as good of a language as Latin. The language that becomes standard and considered "proper" is the language that the people in power speak. It has nothing to do with the actual characteristics of the language or dialect. It does have something to do with racism, and classism as well. The people who speak AAVE shouldn't have to change, although, for now, they have to learn the standard in order to achieve a certain level of success. But what really ought to change is our perception of AAVE, as well as other languages/dialects/accents.

The very fear of being unable to assimilate is one reason why only a handful of my cousins on mom's side of the family are even conversant in Mandarin Chinese. While I was fortunate in having parents who insisted on speaking Mandarin at home, this fear and economic circumstances were such that I never learned to read or write Chinese until college.

During my college years, I have found myself confronted by White "Americans" who yelled at me for conversing in Mandarin with my classmates and demanding that we "learn the damn language". It was amusing to see them taken aback when I instantly switched into English and told them "It's a free country and I'll use whatever language I damn well please so f*&k off!!" That usually gets these "native" Americans off my back.

It's also laughable for so many Americans to lecture immigrants on learning the language when so many native-born "educated" Americans have atrociously poor English skills. I've lost count of native-born classmates I've encountered who could barely piece together a coherent paragraph, much less an entire essay. A decent number of those classmates went to "prestigious" private high schools such as Milton and Phillip Exeter.

In short, Americans should fix their own English education programs in their K-12 first before lecturing immigrants on their poor English skills.

Alannaknightess-- I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean in your first sentence. If I'm not mistaken, though, you're trying to claim that there are people who go to a cheesesteak place unable to say "cheesesteak." And I'm saying I find that hard to believe-- I think this sign is just an attempt to be snide to foreigners.

As far as people who don't speak English "blaming" English-speakers for things... Sorry. I've never seen that. I think it's far more common for racist Americans to complain about things like bilingual education or options like "Press Two for Spanish."

Samhita, thank you for once again saying such important things so eloquently.

In answer to the question, in all my travels (even to France and Quebec), I have never felt discrimination because of the language I speak, and I've certainly never been treated with the distain that English-learners in this country experience every day. I do understand that it's a great disadvantage not to speak English in the US, but I can't help but notice that those who are generally advocating English as a national language for all the arguments posted above tend to be the same people who say things like "I was on the bus today, and I didn't hear ONE WORD of English!" or "Why do they come to this country and fly their OWN flag???"

“Instead, people expect everyone here and abroad to speak English, requiring others to learn it as a foreign language but refusing to learn one themselves.�

I know. I have both seen and heard of American tourists in other countries who think people understand them if they just speak English really really loud.

I work at Dell Computers. Our tech support for home users is entirely based in India or South America. And every time I get a home user on the phone, before I hand them over to a technician, they say, "and I want someone who speaks ENGLISH!"

My response: All of Dell's technicians speak English. Sometimes, you just have to try to hear it. Please hold while I transfer you.

And alot of times, they just hang up.

I think the variety of ways English is spoken, including all the accents of English-as-a-second-language speakers, is one of it's amazing strengths. When I stayed with family friends in Switzerland, they were always asking me to "correct" their English grammar and pronunciation. When their daughter came to stay with us as an exchange student, she was always apologizing for her "poor" English . . . it was hard to explain that, with many English words, there is not a single "right" way to say them. English is always changing! This was hard for people used to learning languages in school for which there are extremely rigid rules (i.e. French, high German, Swiss German).

I work in retail, and sometimes when helping customers (some foreign-born, some not!) I have to ask people to repeat themselves several times before I understand what they are asking for. This can be embarrassing or frustrating for me, but I always think of it as my OWN failure as a listener, rather than the failure of the speaker to communicate. And always, with enough persistence, we are able to sort things out. I usually try to remember that humor and patience are the best tools in such situations. Anger and xenophobia are counter-productive (as well as simply mean-spirited).

In my experience, its not difficult to understand your own language, regardless of whether its spoken with an accent or not. One of my teachers at the College I go to has a thick accent, but I understand him perfectly. Mainly because he speaks so well, and I listen to what he says carefully. Id say that most of the time, problems occur because of prejudice, or simply a lack of listening skills, as its already been pointed out here nicely. However, I cant fathom why anyone would want to live in a country where they cant speak the language. Being bilingual and using it is fine by me, as long as you dont make it blatantly obvious your talking about someone close by, yet in a different language. But I certainly believe that not all problems surrounding different languages are caused by native speakers, at least from my own experiences.

It’s not simple to say “In America, speak English,� as if there is one thing called English. There are many Englishes, and those have different social value and meaning. It is something very akin to racism to insist that oppressed people should speak the language of the oppressor. Will that get them ahead? Maybe. Of course it’ll be “better� for the dominant culture if they would “just try� to be like them. Should they have access? 100 percent. But suggesting that this is a matter of standards, academic or otherwise, instead of dialects, is just ignorant and perhaps racist. People who say “I be� don’t speak English worse than you do, they speak a standard dialect (which is encoded just the same way in their mind, and has just the same level of internal structure and sense and “logic�) that doesn’t have the same social meaning. Suggesting that they are worse, less a part of American society, which is a message that they hear all the time in a million different ways? Way to join the culture of oppression.

An interesting note - of all the Indians I've met (and I've met more than a few) I have never met one who couldn't speak fluent English. In fact, I used to date a man from India who claimed to speak better English than Hindi. Since English is one of the major languages in India, I can't believe some people actually don't speak Indian professionals don't speak good English... since the overwhelming majority of these people have been speaking English their entire lives.

On the other hand, I've never encountered anyone who was "expected" to speak English other than in like, a retail transaction. I've never heard anyone butt in on casual conversations and tell people to speak English. I've never seen anyone try to order a meal in a language that wouldn't obviously be understood by the server. I guess I'm pretty much just wondering where all of these stubborn immigrants who refuse to speak English are, and I'm also wondering where all of these racist Americans who expect the world to speak English are, too.

as a sidenote - I think it's one thing to travel to a non-English speaking country and expect everyone to speak English, but I think it's quite another to be in the United States and expect to converse with strangers in English.

1.Commenters who use the terms "proper" or "correct" about language show their ignorance. There is standard and their are dialects in every language. Ignorance has little to do with your dialect.

2.The US policy of not teaching children foreign languages when they are young and can acquire rather than learn them is purposeful. Someone enlighten me as to its purporse.

3. When I was in Italy, the Italians spoke English to their customers because it made them money (and because they are better educated than Americans including foreign language). If people on the right believe in free markets, then they cannot also believe in English only. Sorry guys - it doesn't work.

Yes, Americans. Having to listen to others, care for others. God. What's the world coming to?

oops "their" should be "there"

How's that for performance of non-standard English?

You have a lot of very good points, Samhita, and as always it was a pleasure to read.

But the following statement, while probably true on a large scale, isn't at all what my case is.
"The "English-only" sentiment isn't so we can all get along and communicate. It is to let people know who is in charge."
Now, like I said, I don't doubt that for your average racist American, it IS about who's in charge. But I really do wish I could just communicate with people. Half the people I work with speak Spanish and broken or no English. I can't speak Spanish very well. It makes it extremely difficult to communicate about things that need to be done. Some of my co-workers are really very nice people, and we speak in broken English and broken Spanish back and forth, gesture, smile a lot, and try to laugh about it. I'll teach them new words and ask them how to say things in their language. Some of my other co-workers get ANNOYED at me when I try to use their language, even though they won't understand anything if I say it in English. Maybe I'm just catching some bitchy people at bad times or something.

Now, of COURSE I'm all for bilingual warnings, notices, etc. The more people who can understand those things, the better. And I'd never expect or want people to have impeccable English, and I really don't mind trying to figure things out--I really love language and how people learn it, and I think the guessing game can be fun and educational. But when you live in a country where MOST people speak the same certain language when you leave the house, it's not RIDICULOUS to think that they might try and learn a few phrases when they go shopping. Not only would it make life easier for customer service people, but it would make it easier for them too.

I mean, if I moved somewhere where everyone was speaking a language that wasn't the one I knew, you bet I would try my hardest to learn it and use it. It's just common sense.

[And in regards to other people being all grouchy when you can't speak their language, both my father (who minored in French literature) and myself have had French people be rude when we couldn't speak perfect French, even though we were attempting--and getting our words and sentences right, even if the pronunciation wasn't exact.]

mirm- as to why kids in the US (and other English-speaking countries, for that matter) aren't taught another language as aggressively as English is taught in non-English speaking countries, I have a few thoughts.

I've always thought that where English is taught in other countries, it's mostly seen as a language of opportunity rather than a luxury. English has (like it or not) become the de facto international language, since, on the international level, most business and political decisions are carried out in English. English is more likely to be used in their professional lives, simply because of English's status on the international level.

In Canada, French is learned because it's the primary language of an entire province. In the United States, English is (at least for now) the primary language of all fifty states.

Learning a foreign language in the United States is a luxury rather than a necessity because, unless we plan on spending time in a place that speaks a different language, we aren't as likely to use it. If I want to move to France someday, I'd learn French. But it's harder to pinpoint these things in the United States - we assume that most citizens will live their lives in the country (as most citizens of any country do) and the ones who choose to leave will make the necessary preparations by learning the language(s) of the nation they've chosen to live.

Comparing foreign language instruction in the United States and other English-speaking countries to that of non-English speaking countries is like comparing apples to oranges.

Strangely enough, in most other countries, the locals often don't speak your language, and expect you to communicate in theirs.

Which countries are you referring to, Lee? This can't be said for many European countries, where citizens are expected to know several "official languages."

Jeska - I would agree that Europeans learn other languages because they closely border countries with other languages. Of course, Europeans traditionally learned Latin and Greek to be thought educated.

Yet, this no teaching foreign language policy was in place long before the U.S. was a super-power, and we *do* have bordering countries, where other languages are spoken. Perhaps it is the natural fallout from British imperialism (and subsequent American imperialism).

In the 70s and 80s many business degrees required foreign language and culture classes. I also have friends teaching their young children Chinese.

A large part of my job is working with recent immigrants, and I've always wondered where all these hordes of non-English speakers are, because I sure don't encounter them. And of the few non-English speakers I work with, they're usually VERY newly arrived to the US (often refugees) and you can see their progress in learning English within just a month or two -- it's soooo exciting! Like Samhita, I kind of get the idea that the people who whine about how all these "damned immigrants" don't speak English are actually referring to the fact that, well, most immigrants have an accent when they speak English, and your average racist can't be bothered to listen to somebody with an accent.

Also, has anybody else noticed that the people who are the most militant about this whole "English only" thing are the ones who have never become proficient in a foreign language themselves? They expect people to speak English perfectly, right away and without an accent, because they have no idea what it's like to learn a foreign language. (Although interestingly enough, even though they seem to think learning another language is so bloody easy, you don't see them doing it themselves...Funny how that works.)

This seems like a fairly simple matter.

It is easier for everyone to learn one language than for one person to learn 5-15 languages. Encouraging everyone to learn one given language is desirable to facilitate communication.

Obviously in large cities there are pockets where some people never learn English. This harms their ability to communicate with the majority of individuals in the country.

Of course some people might view lack of english as undesirable simply because it is an ethnic marker. But there are real consequences to not being able to communicate with fellow Americans - the ability to communicate with your neighbor seems like one of the most critical skills to have.

Well, it's getting a lot better - I graduated from a high school in 2005, where you needed to take at least one year of a foreign language in order to graduate. (My school only offered French and Spanish, and the Spanish department was one of the largest in the entire school. Since I went to a public high school in rural Michigan, I expect that this is pretty much the norm nowadays.

My family (who don't speak a word of any language other than English) are pretty upset over my decision to study French and Hindi in college rather than Spanish, and they're your run-of-the-mill "racist" Americans.

As I said before, in the U.S., if you're preparing for a career where you're likely to speak another language, you are trained in said language. I'm in an international studies program right now for my B.A., and in order to get it I need (at least) sixteen credits of a single language. Since the need for me to use Spanish on a daily basis isn't likely for me to arise in the future, I don't really need to learn it right now. In the United States, it's much harder to determine which language will be a "language of opportunity", and Spanish isn't likely to become mine. (Mandarin, Japanese, or a Dravidian language is another story.)

It is the fallout from British imperialism - but unfortunately, that's the way history worked out. It's not hard to imagine an alternate history where France, or China, or any other country you can imagine would have become the "international superpower". Unfortunately, British imperialism did happen, and the widespread use of English on the international level is one of the side effects.

Well, it's getting a lot better - I graduated from a high school in 2005, where you needed to take at least one year of a foreign language in order to graduate. (My school only offered French and Spanish, and the Spanish department was one of the largest in the entire school. Since I went to a public high school in rural Michigan, I expect that this is pretty much the norm nowadays.

My family (who don't speak a word of any language other than English) are pretty upset over my decision to study French and Hindi in college rather than Spanish, and they're your run-of-the-mill "racist" Americans.

As I said before, in the U.S., if you're preparing for a career where you're likely to speak another language, you are trained in said language. I'm in an international studies program right now for my B.A., and in order to get it I need (at least) sixteen credits of a single language. Since the need for me to use Spanish on a daily basis isn't likely for me to arise in the future, I don't really need to learn it right now. In the United States, it's much harder to determine which language will be a "language of opportunity", and Spanish isn't likely to become mine. (Mandarin, Japanese, or a Dravidian language is another story.)

It is the fallout from British imperialism - but unfortunately, that's the way history worked out. It's not hard to imagine an alternate history where France, or China, or any other country you can imagine would have become the "international superpower". Unfortunately, British imperialism did happen, and the widespread use of English on the international level is one of the side effects.

also, regarding Greek and Latin - those languages previously held the same status as "languages of opportunity" as English holds today.

You could argue that in non-English speaking countries, you learn English in order to be thought educated. Just playing devil's advocate, of course.

This topic is so painful for me. My parents didn't even mean to come to America, Idi Amin just went on a killing spree and kicked the Indians out. My father's older brother was already settled in the midwest and my Swahili-Gujarati-Hindi-German-English speaking Dad just joined him simply because he was available.

They raised me to speak in Gujarati and expected I'd pick up on English in school. In 1990, when I was only 4 years old and in kindergarten, I was beaten up between classes, kicked on the playground, and actually slapped by a teacher for having a thick accent and slowly spoken English.

And yes, I did what all the snide comments and signs and thinly veiled racist moms in my neighborhood suggested I do: learn English. Then I went on to win literary awards in my area. I do respect the fact that you should learn the major language of the country, but I've often thought to myself it would be more respectful if I learned Cherokee.

All of this reminds me of a time when an American family friend came to India with my family. She blew up at a street vendor in *India* and demanded he speak *English* because she couldn't understand the prices on his tapestries rather than ask one of us to translate. What. The. Fuck.

I don't understand why people don't embrace diversity, especially in a country that tries so hard to emphasize how it "embraces" diversity. I think it's interesting that in most countries in Europe people are biligual, at least! Why are Americans so lazy and close minded and unable to try and learn even small pieces of another language!? English as America's official language isn't an excuse to limit your knowledge and be ignorant. It doens't hurt anyone to get off their ass and learn some other language. Those people are missing out. I speak French and some German, not fluently at all, but it's amazing when you recognize what people are saying when the language is actually spoken. I think expanding knowledge and embracing other cultures (especially languages) is an amazing thing, and it's those who choose not to expand their own knowledge who are at loss. But don't get me wrong, I believe people in America should learn English, but we as Americans should not make assumptions or act harsh by any means if someone here is not a native english speaker and/or has a thick accent.

“and I'm also wondering where all of these racist Americans who expect the world to speak English are, too.�

Jeska, I have certainly met those Americans. Though they are not necessarily always racist, they most definitely are ignorant. Here are a couple of example I recall:

1- My mother who does not live in this country, is a physician. Even though she can read in English and usually studies medical literature in English, speaking is a whole different matter. Anyone who has had to learn a foreign language can tell you that. My mom speaks very limited English. Some people here assume that she is not literate, because “How can she be doctor w/o speaking English�?

2- I was listening to a conversation between two women where one was describing to the other how she or someone had gotten in an accident with this East-Asian guy who turned out had an international driver’s license and didn’t speak English. The other woman asked “How can day be allowed to drive if they can’t speak English?�

3- One time entering the US on a visa, I met this woman on the plane who didn’t speak English beyond a few words and I was helping her when getting through customs and immigration. She was an elementary school teacher back home. The INS officer asked “What kind of teacher doesn’t speak English?�. I would’ve really liked to say “What other foreign language do you speak dickhead?� Of course I didn’t.

pizza, cheesesteak - same thing.

isn't this story a few months old, now?

I don't understand. Was Joe getting a lot of people demanding that he learn the Spanish word for cheesesteak? Were people actually leaving his business in a huff because he wouldn't say cheesesteak in Mandarin Chinese?

Because, I can't imagine that you'd have to tell someone in America that they have to order in English. I can't imagine that there are a whole lot of people walking around America thinking that they're going to get served at a Philly cheesesteak stand in Hindi.

I'm an English-speaker (Canadian) and I find a great majority of Americans have what I would call a discernable and sometimes difficult to understand accent when they speak English. Be that as it may, I've never felt compelled to tell Americans to pronounce their vowels correctly when they're in Canada. If they want to say 'ruf' instead of 'rOOf' and 'sary' instead of 'sOrry,' I'm willing to accomodate them.

Antahkarana - I'm very sorry for your experience. I can't imagine what that must have been like, and the expectations of your parents were perfectly reasonable. Many of my American-born Indian friends say that they wish their parents would've taught them Indian languages in addition to English. But really, there's no excuse for your treatment.

On a different note, Native American languages are vastly different, and Cherokee is similar to Hindi in the sense that it's not really a "native" language throughout the country. Where I'm from, in the Great Lakes region, native tribes spoke Anishinaabe. Cherokee wouldn't be understood by them, or most of the Native Americans in North America, for that matter.

Language is strongly tied to identity, both one's sense of self, and one's place within the wider culture. Having respect for other people's language backgrounds is just as important as respecting their cultures and religions. Creating an environment that is hostile toward people who express themselves in either a non-official language or non-standard variety of the official language is blatant discrimination.
Linguistic oppression, like religious persecution has been used throughout history to control and subjugate others. Linguistic imperialism erodes cultures, too. One langauge disappears every 2 weeks.

We use language with the intent to communicate. I doubt that anyone *expects* to be understood when they are speaking in a language that is not prevalent in a particular region (like trying to order a cheesesteak in Philly in Mandarin), but I also don't think that people should expect to be berated if they don't speak the dominant language (well). Arguably, and I got this sense from Samhita's post, the discrimination is less against people who don't speak English, and more against those who do, just poorly. After all, a person who doesn't speak English (or a European language) would have a pretty hard time reading Joey's sign. This reminds me of the hilarious "Fat Fighters" sketches in "Little Britain" where the group leader claims not to understand an Indian woman and keeps telling her, "in English, please," when the woman is clearly speaking English, and quite well, only with an Indian accent.

Yes, it's important to be able to communicate in the dominant language. Yes, it leads to better employment opportunities, etc. I don't think people don't know that. But ordering a cheesesteak is NOT the same as walking into a job interview or applying to a college. It's an every-day life situation where there's no need for formality. The buyer and vendor need only minimally understand each other in order to complete the transaction, and the buyer's language skills have no bearing on what they will do with the sandwich or how they will benefit from the sandwich. But I guess you just can't put up a sign that says "No blacks/spics/foreigners/etc. allowed" anymore, 'cause the PC Police will come and get you. Racism is racism. Period.

I left the US and currently live in a Spanish speaking country. When I am interacting with someone new, I always start off in Spanish as both a courtesy and the pragmatic acknowledgement that many people here simply do not speak English. If their English is better than my Spanish (not an uncommon situation) and they initiate a language switch, I am more than happy to follow, but only after at least making an effort to speak the language of the land. This seems to work pretty well for all involved. The problem in the US is that so few people bother to learn a second language.

Samhita - When I do speak Spanish and someone here cannot understand me, it is frustrating for everyone involved. I would never, however, scapegoat my shortcoming as racism on their part. [Does that make sense? My English can be pretty bad sometimes, too, even if it is my first language.]

soujourner - I see what you mean, but I think the underlying question is that, in the United States, people are expected to speak English. (I'm guessing that the accident in your second story was in the U.S.) Same goes with your mother. I have honestly never met anyone (and I've met quite a few racist and ignorant people) who expected people in non-English speaking countries to conduct their everyday lives in English.

And I believe pegging this as simply an American problem is pretty ignorant, too - France, Japan, the UK, and Australia all seem to have the same attitude as we do in the U.S.

To hell with Geno's anyway. Jim's on 4th and South has better steaks.

"“and I'm also wondering where all of these racist Americans who expect the world to speak English are, too.�"

Jeska,

I've spotted a few of them during my visit to China. They ranged from the time-worn "raise the volume so they can understand better" method to throwing a temper-tantrum at the flustered local person of the moment. Each time I witnessed such behaviors, I cringe in embarrassment that this "person" is a fellow American. I've heard more horrific stories of "Ugly American" behavior from my Chinese classmates and friends. Oh, if you could only hear the Mandarin-based conversations and jokes about how these American tourists expect everyone to "speak English" in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong.

But I don't think this a specifically American thing. I've had Japanese and German tourists get frustrated with me in New York City because I couldn't understand them. I think assholes are assholes, no matter where they're from, and I don't think any one nationality is any more inclined to be rude than another.

Jeska, It’s only idiotic to assume that someone who is a doctor/ teacher in another country should have to be fluent in English. Or that people should have to speak English to be allowed to drive. In the case of the accident the first woman responded with “well, we rent cars all the time when we travel in Europe and we don’t speak the languages�. No you shouldn’t be *expected* to speak English in the US. Presuming that you do and expecting it are two separate things. Do you *have* to learn Italian in order to go visit Italy?

I think you're misunderstanding me - I think having a basic vocabulary is necessary for visiting a foreign country, and no, I don't think you need known English in order to become a doctor or to teach is necessary. If you're teaching or practicing medicine in the U.S.? It's necessary, because our laws regarding licensing are conducted in English. Similarly, I wouldn't expect to be able to practice medicine in a non-English speaking country if my licensing was in a language I couldn't understand.

Fluency isn't necessary, and a vocabulary of about 30 words isn't hard at all when you're visiting a place that doesn't speak your primary language. So, to answer your question, yes - if I went to Italy, I would learn a few words in Italian. Similarly, if I went to Bangalore, I'd learn a bit of a Tamil, and if I went to Macau, I'd learn Cantonese. I think most travelers, regardless of nationality, would agree that speaking the language (even poorly) of the plurality isn't at all an unrealistic expectation.

Akkin Said:
..And every time I get a home user on the phone, before I hand them over to a technician, they say, "and I want someone who speaks ENGLISH!"

My response: All of Dell's technicians speak English. Sometimes, you just have to try to hear it. Please hold while I transfer you.
And alot of times, they just hang up.

I haven't read all the responses yet, but I would like to say that I do not think everyone requesting another CS person is racist. Saying it like THAT (above)is, but you're already on the phone, which makes it difficult to understand, plus accents you aren't familiar with..I signed up for a credit card and I honestly could not understand anything that man way saying. I honestly couldn't. He was a very polite Indian man..I just agreed to whatever he said because I felt it was rude to ask to speak to someone else. How do you politely say "I am sorry, I cannot understand you"?

I think we should be fair and note that sometimes is IS very difficult to understand people with very strong accents, and sometimes maybe over-the-cell-phone CS shouldn't be their department, especially when computers are involved. (Personally, if I have computer trouble, I need someone *right there* to help!) I do not feel this makes me racist.

However, I am certainly not defending rude people. I used to work with telephone surveys (we didn't sell anything) and there was a girl I worked with who is fluent in both Spanish and English. She has a *slight* Spanish accent but her (English) grammar was better than 90% of the people who worked there..she actually had some guy tell her "Put somebody on the phone who actually speaks ENGLISH!".
I am willing to bet that that bastard cannot speak more than 1 language, much less be fluent enough to fully converse with the number of people she can.

I am very glad that my family didn't deny me the right to speak Spanish and I learned as much Spanish as I learned English.
And that's the way it is in my family, all the children have to learn both languages because we see that having a second language is a priceless gift, even better if it's 3, 4, o5 even 5 languages.

I grew up in a place called Brawley California which is a small town and the main players are white farm owners. A lot of the Hispanic kids actually TRIED to blend in the white culture and DENIED knowing Spanish and DENIED their own culture.
I found it absurd and I was only a little kid.

Another case scenario is my boyfriend, from Brawley as well, whose parents immigrated to the US from Mexico when they were teenagers, about 15 years old or so.
Both his parents learned English and did the though tasks of working in the fields.
When they had their children, they spoke only English to them for the fear that they did not want them to lead the hard life they led, working backbreaking, low-paying jobs so teaching them Spanish was not an option.
So to this day, my boyrfriend and his siblings do not speak their native language and can't even communicate with their grandparents who speak Spanish only.
When I started dating him I was horrified for 2 reasons:

1) My bf's name is Jose Manuel Baeza and he didn't speak a word of spanish
and
2) How can he not communicate with his grandparents? Grandparents are ESSENTIAL! To a child's life!

But I guess we all have different traditions.
Right now the boyfriend is struggling to learn Spanish and I am teaching him.

...and of course my post has several grammatical errors! (it's too slow to do the preview and the post, sorry)

I also meant to not end the italics until after "they hang up".

Thank you for your compassion and the information, Jeska :)

And kannada is the more frequently used dialect in Bangalore...:D

Haha, goofy me - I was thinking of Chennai *sheepish*
I better get my languages straight before I head there next year!

have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?

As a white monolingual English-speaking Australian, I have never experienced this discrimination. However, I have been expected to be complicit in it.

I used to work in a store at the local mall, that employed staff of many different nationalities and races. It was a requirement that everyone employed at the store speak good, clear English, in order to communicate with customers. There were many accents among us, but everyone spoke, clear, comprehensible English.

Nonetheless, I would STILL get white Australian customers coming up to me, and saying "It's nice to be served by someone who speaks English for a change." ALL my colleagues spoke English-- those comments were a thinly vieled way of saying "I like to be served by white people." At the time, I didn't speak up, though I wish I had now. However, when you need that job to pay the rent, calling customers out on implicit racism isn't the easiest thing to do. So perhaps I was complicit in it... :(

Great insightfullness Samhita!

My descendants are German, so I got the whole blonde hair blue eye thing going and grew up in the midwest. I was surprised when I moved south to North Carolina the discrimination towards me because my northern accent. I was just shocked! The minute I began to talk people would just walk away or interupt and ask me where I was from. My roommate absolutely hated it, so around her co-workers she would give herself a fake southern accent just so she could get through the day. It was absolutely ridiculous.

Now as a mother, I understand the importance of teaching my own child foreign languages. She is quickly learning German and Spanish, however, I worry when she gets to school she may be scolded if she speaks these languages. For example: if she responds "azul" instead of "blue" and gets in trouble, you know I will be a thorn in that administrations side. Teaching kids while there young is so much more beneficial then waiting til high school and requiring them to pass in order to graduate.

Sorry for the rant and many tangents, but I can totally understand your point.

I only got as far as this comment before having to reply:

"Muki - you've obviously never been to France or Qebec. They will tell you in no uncertain terms that French is what you need to speak if you wish to speak to them. (Unless you're at an Irish pub.)"

You know what's funny? In France people will make an effort to speak with you in English if they can, or a mix if they can't: once they know you're not American or English. If you were not American and got to travel watching Americans and how people treat you respectively, you would realise many people have no time for Americans until they prove themselves not to be jerks

Sadly, NZers, Australians and Britons share this tendancy to whinge about accents, whilst refusing to teach their children a second language in primary school

Constantly I read about people saying "if I moved I'd make an effort to intergrate" - what a LIE.

We form our own enclaves when we emmigrate. There are whole communities of NZers and Australians clinging together in England - and they speak English!

English speakers often learn to say all of three sentances when travelling yet roll their eyes at tourists with less than perfect English in their own countries. We not only expect not to have to learn the language when travelling, but for people in other countries to speak OUR language

Anyone who thinks English speakers (and particularly Americans) aren't incredibly hypocritical isn't paying enough attention

Dammit, I just realised I responded to cracksmoker. Oops. Oh well, point's still there LOL

Thank you for this post. I am a white woman who after years and years of study speaks Spanish. I have not faced discrimination, but I am married to a Mexican who has.

His English is fine, but the comments he gets about being Mexican! Let me tell you, this is not about "language" as you have so eloquently pointed out. This is about fear of the other. Being married to him has been a great source of joy for me, but has brought me into contact with such deep ugliness that exists in peoples' hearts. It makes me sick. And the whole immigration debate has made it even worse. I have heard people not only complain about language, but also suggest a forced sterilization "program" for all incoming immigrants.

A burning cross would be the cherry on top. Everything else but the cross is present. And the people who say this is not about racism YOU ARE LIARS!

1. More than 100 years after my great-grandma came to the U.S. from Sicily, the women in my family (inc. me) are still trying to learn the Italian language she refused to teach her daughters.

2. Dammit, if English is "what it means" to come to this country--if English is the only useful thing we can manage to produce around here--then hell, let's pack the place up and move on.

3. The is America. Speak whatever language you want.

I am Latina and my parents came from a Spanish speaking country. Believe me, even my grandparents learned English and adapted - and that's that we live in a part of Miami where you NEED to know Spanish to get practically any job. We have people from all sorts of cultures here who speak English with all sorts and different levels of accents. I hate to say it but the only people I've ever heard complain that English should be the "official language" by law were "white Americans." Even us second-generation Americans whose first language is English don't understand the issue with providing documents in other languages to accommodate. Although I will say that we have many people in the city who only speak Spanish due to the large Hispanic/Latino community and I have had to translate for strangers a number of times - this I have an issue with but I guess that's why Miami is considered part of Latin America in many ways.

Also, I agree that there is a level of racism (in most cases) when it comes to understanding someone's accent. I've had professors who I've had a helluva time trying to understand but I've also seen people being unnecessarily difficult to someone with a slight accent. Here's an example: when my Jewish Ukrainian friend started working as a secretary for an attorney with a lot of Jewish clients, one client complained that he couldn't understand her Ukrainian accent and always asked to speak with the paralegal instead. Once the paralegal mentioned that my friend was Jewish too, the client magically was able to suddenly understand her accent. My friend jokes that he must have thought "Of course, it's a *Jewish*-Ukrainian accent, I understand clearly now!" Tell me that's not racism.

I live close enough to Geno's to see the lights. Vento is an out-and-out rightwing Republican racist. And no, for all you apologists on here, he's not faced with people who are speaking at him in a million languages. He's faced with Hispanic immigrants who can read English well enough to know what they want, and they point to the item on the menu. He refuses to serve them unless they can verbalize it. Why? Because he's a racist asshole who hates Hispanics.

But! If they're Italians - we still have a lot of Italians around here - no problem! And if they have some kind of medical condition that prevents them from speaking, no problem! But if they speak Spanish, the answer is no. Get it NOW?

Some people pride themselves on being ignorant. No matter what native language someone speaks, they can say CHEESESTEAK - even with an accent and there is not a group of immigrants who came here without an accent or where the first generation of immigrants spoke better English than their offspring.

The problem is that people are just ignorant. I remember someone telling me about a professor from the UK (who, naturally, had a British accent) who received a comment in one of his student evaluations to "learn to speak English."

Now isn't that a hoot?

I am a Russian American and speak both Russian and English fluently. I have experienced all kinds of things, from people shouting at me on the street to speak English while hearing me converse with my mother, to telling me that I have no right to correct others' grammar mistakes because I wasn't born in the States. So, yes, there are assholes out there.

However, my comment is more about the immigration bill. My family waited for 5 years to get an interview at the American embassy. We got the refugee status and left within months. We did everything by the books. Now, the new bill proposes that millions of people that did NOTHING by the books deserve the same treatment as someone who patiently waited while risking their lives. I think that is totally unfair. Illegal is illegal any way you look at it and simply changing the status shows a total disregard for the immigration policies, for every person who has gone through hell to enter this country the RIGHT way. United States is a country, not a free for all. There are rules and regulations and they should be followed. Now, I know a lot of people who live here illegally and I wouldn't want them to get kicked out. However, I don't think that simply legalizing everyone is the answer either.

I think, for me, the biggest problem with the "this is america, learn to speak english" argument is that it is almost implicit in the phrase that one can just take a few classes or read a book and can thereafter speak english. It is not that easy to learn another language, and it is impossible to tell if someone who is speaking to you has started classes or is studying english. Perhaps they are in the beginning stages? Or maybe they did learn a lot of English in their home country-- sitting in a high school classroom talking about cats on tables does not mean you can move to a country and automatically start giving eloquent speeches.

I have taken french courses for over 12 years and there are still situations wherein I do not feel comfortable with my french, because the vocabulary is difficult, or simply because it is something I haven't done before so I am not completely sure what to say.

Interestingly, the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that does not have an official language. (Even though American English is now the lingua franca). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages.

But to suppose that people in an English speaking country are racist because they expect people who live here to speak Enlish is non-sense (or else it means that you don't know what the word racist means). Indeed, doesn't the failure of people to adequately learn their host country's language demonstrates its own xenophobia to the host culture as well as a disrespect.

When other countries refer to their "official language", this is simply a legal term that refers to the language in which government business is conducted. In Germany, where the official language is German (apart from the Sorbian minority communities on the Polish border), even government forms and documents are not exclusively printed in German. Immigration forms, and other forms likely to be needed by foreigners, are often printed in English or Turkish as well.

The only thing worse than the xenophobia of the "English only" crowd is their historical ignorance. I find it hard to fathom how they could ever have got the idea that the US has ever been a monolinguistic country; it's simply not true. The US has been multilingual since its origins. Even apart from the indigenous languages, there has always been a great deal of linguistic diversity here. Seventy years ago, even in second-tier cities, the newsstands would be stocked with publications in at least two or three languages, and in larger cities such as New York, twenty or thirty languages was the norm. In Cincinnati, until the German-American population was driven out during the mass hysteria stoked by the Creel Commission, a knowledge of German was essential. Phone operators were required to know at least English and Hochdeutsch, prefeferably in addition to at least one German dialect. One might also mention the Gullah language and the French-speaking population that still exists in some parts of Louisiana.

(Not to mention the people who had been speaking Spanish in the western US for centuries before the US got the idea of taking the territory by force.)

This idea of the US being linguistically homogeneous seems to have coincided with the arrival of darker-complected immigrants. It certainly has no basis in US history or culture.

have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?

I haven't experienced outright discrimination of the "Order in English" sort. I grew up trilingual (German, Spanish, English), in addition to several other languages I taught myself, so there is no trace in my English of the fact that Spanish and German sometimes flow much better for me. However, when talking in public with friends of mine in languages other than english — Spanish, especially — I have definitely been given the evil eye by quite a few strangers whose lives were apparently not as interesting as eavesdropping on people's conversations in languages they don't understand.

Because of my lifelong fascination and facility with languages, I try to counteract that tendency in my own way. I've found that nothing seems to bring as much of a smile to the face of a person living in a country where no one can pronounce her name as hearing her language spoken by someone who has no immediately apparent reason to speak it.

I remember one particular instance, a few years ago, in the suburb of Cincinnati where the more bigoted, rednecky white people seem to move when they get the money. I was at the supermarket till, paying for whatever it was I bought. The guy bagging the groceries was fiftyish, with a look of utter dispair on his face and Rastislav or some other classic Slavonic name on his name tag (which explains the despair on two counts: nobody probably even made an effort to pronounce his name properly, and he was most likely highly educated with a degree that wasn't worth kindling in the US, a common situation). Based on the name on his nametag, I smiled and asked him: Здравейте, ви Ñ?те българÑ?ки? (Hi, are you Bulgarian in Bulgarian). I think I must have made his day, judging from the way his face lit up as he responded in the affirmative and wondered aloud how it happened that I knew his language.

I love this debate, and I've been arguing it for years.

What Geno's did is unconscionable, not leastways because this is America, and Americans don't speak English. They speak some bastard American dialect, generally. America is this great trove of idiolects, and people keep trying to stamp that out because it would mean that the self-righteous sons-of-immigrants somehow lost their right to look down on the new immigrants.

I've been denied languages on both sides of my family.

German, on Mom's, because her 3rd generation German American family couldn't speak it out in public during WWI, and therefore made an effort not to speak it at home, either. She never learned it, although her two oldest siblings did. Three generations the family had been bilingual, before they had to give it up.

Cherokee, on Dad's, because Native languages were forbidden to school children, so his parents didn't learn it; and his aunts weren't even entered onto the rolls for fear they wouldn't find husbands if people didn't know they weren't 100% White.

Since I learn languages fairly easily, I'd have picked either or both up if the families had used them; our family was close to both sides.

As it is, I've learned a couple of languages other than English and bits of still others. But neither Cherokee nor German. Maybe someday.

I think that regardless of race, people make so many assumptions based on language. I'm from the South, and I remember learning to carefully eliminate my Southern accent when I was still in high school because I knew that the most common impression in response to a Southern accent was the assumption of ignorance. Given that I was not ignorant, I did not want to be perceived that way.

Fenriswolf, I see you have clearly nailed the point about we English speakers being ignorant hypocrites. Now how about the arrogance you sometimes get from people who dont speak English, or are bilingual, and flaunt this fact over you? I have on one or two occasions experienced this. Oh but wait, they couldnt possibly be in the wrong, because they arent ignorant English speakers. Give it a rest, and accept that experiencing hostility because of language isnt something solely limited to non-English speaking people.

The English as National Language and anti-bilingual education movements are racist, plain and simple. It doesn't matter whether or not other countries are intolerant about other languages, it's wrong of the US to be intolerant of other languages.

Personally, as a native and resident of New Mexico, I have the opposite pet-peeve: if you're going to live here, at least make the effort to learn acceptable-for-an-anglo Spanish pronunciation of place-names and the like. I had the misfortune to live in Texas for a number of years and had my fill of egregiously and blithely mispronounced Spanish place names.

Incidentally, even though I'm a native New Mexican, I don't speak Spanish. Nevertheless, I've never encountered any of the hostility or racism that other anglos have complained of from Hispanics in the small northern New Mexican towns and villages where families go back for four hundred or more years. I know I'm an outsider, I don't expect people to conform to me and my comforts. Nevertheless, they generally do...possibly because I don't expect it of them.

And while some of these villagers may not speak the best English even though they've been Americans for seven generations, and they may go weeks going about their business and never speaking a word in English, they are no less American than I am, and often they're more patriotic than I am. For me, growing up in this cultural climate and this state where, until recently, anglos were the minority, the idea that to be a "real" American you have to be fluent in English and live like the Cleavers and perhaps bleach your skin is so offensive as to turn my stomach.

“My descendants are German, so I got the whole blonde hair blue eye thing going and grew up in the midwest.�

I think you meant "ancestors" and not "descendents". :)

"I have many friends who's parents didn't teach them their native language upon immigrating to the United States with fear they would be discriminated against"

That's why mom didn't teach me Farsi when I was a baby but waited until I was 11 or so to try to teach it to me with 2-hour lectures. She was afraid that if I babbled in Farsi in public people would instantly know we're Iranian (as if Farsi is so famous in the U.S. that most people recognize it when they hear it).

(as if Farsi is so famous in the U.S. that most people recognize it when they hear it).

I imagine plenty of people here would say "Hey, isn't that the language I heard at that Gogush concert I went to?" :)

"I imagine plenty of people here would say 'Hey, isn't that the language I heard at that Gogush concert I went to?' :)"

By "here" did you mean California? :) I was raised on the East Coast, way further from Tehrangeles.

Anyway, on a lighter note, has anyone else here seen
http://www.engrish.com/
and
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
?
The moral of the story seems to be, if you're going to suck at a foreign language than at least don't ink your mistake near-permanently into your skin.

What languages were denied to you from fear? Or have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?

Flip side: Learning sign language has been very interesting. A certain set of people find it fascinating. A sizeable proportion, however, sneer at the deaf for "isolating themselves."

But it's the only language I have found where I have two way communication! I'm not isolating myself, I'm finally using a completely accessible language for the first time.

All of this, my experience and the experiences detailed above point to one thing: how language is used and viewed as an indication of intelligence. If you can't speak or use the "right" one, you are a complete idiot. There is a very strong component of a "two way street" in communication: if you speak it, you are assumed to understand it, full stop. (And similar things happen, I see, with foreign speakers: sometimes they understand quite a bit but don't speak very well -- same rule violation as mine if you think about it.)

It's a very strong reaction, and I haven't figured a good way around it.

Thanks for the context, Mithras:

"And no, for all you apologists on here, he's not faced with people who are speaking at him in a million languages. He's faced with Hispanic immigrants who can read English well enough to know what they want, and they point to the item on the menu. He refuses to serve them unless they can verbalize it. Why? Because he's a racist asshole who hates Hispanics."

I was one of the people who asked if Joe was getting the UN of Cheesesteak Lovers demanding his product in every language in the world. I'm not an apologist; I thought Joe sounded like a jerk, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something.

Obviously, I wasn't.

“If you're teaching or practicing medicine in the U.S.? It's necessary, because our laws regarding licensing are conducted in English. Similarly, I wouldn't expect to be able to practice medicine in a non-English speaking country if my licensing was in a language I couldn't understand.�
Yeah, but that’s irrelevant. Did I say that teacher trying to teach in the US? No she was just visiting some friends. And my mother, she has never even visited the US, let alone wanting to practicve in the US. I have gotten that reaction when telling people that my mom speaks limited English and later made it known she is a doctor.

“and a vocabulary of about 30 words isn't hard at all when you're visiting a place that doesn't speak your primary language.� Uh, I don’t know, If I am visiting Poland and France and Spain and Morocco, am I expected to speak 30 words of each language? Moreover, 30 words is a very very limited vocabulary. I wouldn’t be surprised if that East-Asian guy whom the American woman was surprised was allowed to drive did actually know more than 30 words of English, none of which helped him in that particular situation, and most of which he couldn’t think of because he had panicked.

"...and most appear incapable of understanding that you will not ever be able to 'just' understand them. 'Try harder! Think about surgery (success not guaranteed)! Humiliate yourself! Just so I don't have to deal with you not understanding me!'"

WTF?! Am I the only hearing and sign-deprived person who would look for a pencil and paper in this situation?

"the UN of Cheesesteak Lovers"

That sounds like a lunchtime equivalent of gthe International House of Pancakes. Imagine if such a restaurant chain existed... :)

"'and a vocabulary of about 30 words isn't hard at all when you're visiting a place that doesn't speak your primary language.' Uh, I don’t know, If I am visiting Poland and France and Spain and Morocco, am I expected to speak 30 words of each language?"

Maybe looking up the translations of "please," "thank you," etc. ahead of time and writing them down in a small notebook could help?

Lonely Planet has small _Fast Talk_ phrasebooks good for short visits (so you don't have to go through lots of pages or long indexes) in French, Italian, Spanish, and now German but unfortunately no other languages yet.

http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/Primary/Product/Language_Guides/Fast_Talk.jsp

I guess I don't understand what the point of bringing your mother up was. She doesn't speak English, fine. She's a doctor, fine. She doesn't live in the US, fine. So her not speaking English is perfectly plausible.

And, I don't know - I guess when I travel I don't like to walk around like the stereotypical "ugly American". And yes, 30 words is a limited vocabulary, and it's not hard to memorize "please" and "thank you" and "how much" and what have you. No, you don't have to - but all this talk of Americans being ignorant and refusing to learn languages, well, it sounds a little like we're refusing to be culturally sensitive and polite now - I don't see how speaking Spanish in most areas of the United States is any different than speaking English in Poland or France or Spain or Morocco.

My family speaks Appalachian dialect, which the public schools are working very hard in that region to eradicate. The English that my family speaks is not the English meant by people who post stickers like that pizza shop owner.

Yeah, they really don't mean "speak English." They mean "pander to my worldview."

“I guess I don't understand what the point of bringing your mother up was. She doesn't speak English, fine. She's a doctor, fine. She doesn't live in the US, fine. So her not speaking English is perfectly plausible.�

The point of it Jeska is that, I have met people (Americans) who have expressed surprise that someone could be a doctor (in another country) and not speak English. I thought I had made that very clear.
You say there are assholes everywhere, but this hasn’t much to do with being an asshole. It has more to do with being ignorant. Compared to other nationalities that I have mingled with, in my experience Americans are less likely to be aware of things going on outside of their own world and are less likely to speak another language. You say that now one year of foreign language is required in high school, but one year is not nearly enough. I studied English for 8 years starting at an early age. I know my cousin who grew up in an English speaking country studied French throughout grade school. So yeah one year is merely a joke.

My experience is that if you go to Colombia, you will be pretty much treated as something the dog threw up if you don't speak fluent Spanish. (And if they find out you're American, you'll be treated as the rabid dog that needs to be killed before it eats more people but who no one is quite willing to get within range where it might bite them.)

I lived in Colombia twice, once for a summer and once an entire year when my dad was doing research there. (He's a political science professor.) I attended a bilingual Catholic school (All English in grades K-6 to instill English fluency in the upper class Colombian students who went to it, then the teachers decided in grades 7-12 whether or not to teach in English or Spanish, though most textbooks were in English even if everything was done in Spanish.)

At the school, most of the students were generally displeased their English was better than my Spanish and treated me like something the cat dragged in. (I have to say that the students at this school spoke English extremely well and most of them could have easily passed as native speakers of it. Given I grew up in rural Texas, some of them spoke English better than I did.) Several of my teachers were clearly hoping I'd catch fire and die. Most of the friends I did make there were people from other countries.

As for the average colombian, demonstrating a lack of spanish fluency either got you treated as retarded (if you were lucky) or as some sort of plaguebearing monster (if it came out you were American). It pretty much reached the point where, after a few months, I wouldn't leave the house except to go to school or the corner store where I could just take things to the counter and pay for them without having to speak at all.

So far as I could tell, most Colombians spoke no English and viewed it as the mark of the devil if you did know it.

And the French...if looks could kill non-French speakers, many non-French speakers would be rotting corpses in the street.

The US does not have a monopoly on people being angry if you can't speak their language. Not by a long-shot.

My own experiences give me some sympathy with non-English speakers struggling to get by in the US. But they also pretty much convinced me I'd rather dive into a pit of razorblades than live in a country where I didn't speak the native language.

Oh god, the language issue! I'm an anglophone living in Montreal so this issue never goes away. Language is THE issue in Quebec (tied up with seperation). English speakers are routinely discriminated against in this province. Hell, even in an Irish pub you'd better know how to speak French. We actually have "language police" that monitor the use of French vs. other languages (i.e. English) and you can get fined for using English. But you know, I get it. English IS taking over the world and the French have the right to protect their language and culture. If they didn't fight to preserve French, then this province would be English. My parents were smart enough to send me to French school so I speak it fluently and have no trouble functioning but I do sympathise with all the Anglos who are routinely treated like shit when they try to get servince in English. It does get annoying when you keep asking company X to send you information in bilingual and they keep insisting on sending it in French only.
There is sooo much racism here between the English and the French sometimes it is suffocating. It's an everyday struggle and the saddest thing is that you get used to it and expect it.

This just dawned on me-- I'm not sure if anyone else pointed it out in this conversation; I don't remember reading it before, and I didn't see it when I just skimmed the responses.

If I'm to believe that Joey Vento is not a racist, but that he simply thinks everyone should learn English in order to communicate more effectively in America, why would he hang a sign whose instructions are aimed at non-English speakers... written in English? You see what I mean? If he genuinely wanted to encourage Spanish speakers to learn English, wouldn't it make more sense to write the sign in Spanish? Otherwise, the target of his instruction (people who can't read or speak English) won't be able to recognize and understand the instruction.

So no. This is a sign for English speakers, a way of reassuring racists, "Hey, I'm with you." And that's his right, I suppose. But people who aren't racists probably shouldn't be patronizing Geno's; I know I'll be avoiding the place the next time I'm in Philadelphia (just as I avoided it the last time I was in Philadelphia).

I used to work in a semi-call center environment, and at lunch one of the older women there started talking about customers who would call in speaking in extrememly broken english, and then held forth for ten minutes about how disgusting it was that when she and her husband went on vacation to Mexico, many of the vendors didn't even speak English!

I asked her whether, you know, she was insane, but she swore up and down that "these Mexicans want American tourist money, so they should damn well learn our language."

The worst part was, she said it in front of our department's Spanish translator, a white american woman who had learned Spanish in order to communicate with the extended family of her immigrant husband, many of whom did not speak English.

For those who aren't aware of the history surrounding what BEG describes, and the implications, I highly recommend Oliver Sacks's book, Seeing Voices.

My aunt is deaf and, in the forties, doctors convinced my grandmother to send my aunt to a speaking-only school out-of-state. There, as I'm sure BEG also experienced, she was punished and even beaten if she was caught using Sign. (My grandmother eventually had a change of heart and brought my aunt home and enrolled her in a nearby signing school for the deaf.)

The rise of "oral" deaf education came at the end of the nineteenth century partly from the activism of Alexander Graham Bell. Oral teaching displaced signed teaching, which for about a hundred years had fantastic success educating the deaf—for the first time in history, I should add. Before this, the deaf were essentially ignored, uneducated, thought to be mentally deficient and uneducatable. France and US were where the birth of deaf education occurred and these two countries remained at its forefront. The breakthough happened when a French priest thought to try to teach Parisian deaf urchins via the "hand gestures" they were seen using.

Besides the fact that oral education is a cruelty, taking away from children the language they have and leaving them almost without the ability to communicate, and that a big part of the impetus in doing so is not so much to facilitate healthy integration with the rest of society but, rather and tellingly, to not be so alarmingly different—besides those two very good arguments against oral only deaf education, there is a compelling neuroscience argument that Sacks examines in detail.

Young children have a narrow "window" for native language acquisition, from about one year to five years old. The brain is primed for language acquisition at this age and there's strong evidence that a failure to acquire language at this age results in some language deficits ranging from mild to severe. BEG's writing is quite articulate. However, my aunt—the first deaf woman in the US to get an MBA—is not quite so articulate. This has nothing to do with whether Sign is one's first or second language, but rather a general language competency that relies upon language acquisition at the right, early age. However, as you can surmise, oral only deaf education significantly delays language acquisition to late or beyond that window. This is, in Dr. Sack's opinion, more than a tragedy, it's a travesty that these oral schools still exist.

Just in case there are people here who are not aware of the fundamentals of this discussion, any signed language is a fully developed, complete human language in every sense. It is not highly sophisticated gesturing; from a linguistics perspective, a signed language is a human language like any other, though unique in a few interesting respects. American Sign Language, ASL, is the signed language that native Deaf Americans speak. It has no relationship to English. In fact, it is very similar to French Sign Language while, in contrast, British Sign Language is unintelligible to an ASL speaker. There is a sort of pseudo-language called "Signed English" that is really just a simple transliteration between ASL and English.

BEG's comment and the issues surrounding the Deaf and integration into hearing culture are quite relevant to this discussion. Because of signed languages, being deaf isn't a disability like any other and, in fact, is arguably not a disability at all. Within a signing community, a deaf signer is completely enabled. And Deaf-with-a-capital-"D" really is a culture, for the same reasons that any linguistic group forms ethnic cultures. So here we have the classical conflicts between ethnic identity and assimilation and the bigotry against the "other". It's just that it's much worse in the case of the Deaf because the bigotry can hide behind the claims that deafness is a severe disability.

Finally, there are feminist issues deeply involved in what it's like to be a deaf woman. Children of a Lesser God explored some of these quite well, in my opinion.

Bradley, you beat me to it (and a lot of other people; I'm also surprised that this wasn't pointed out much earlier in the discussion). Vento's sign is clearly not aimed at immigrants who he believes would be well-served by learning the dominant language better; he's showing solidarity with the lowest common denominator of xenophobic American. The kind who'd be spectacularly stupid enough to believe that anyone is going to walk into a non-immigrant-owned American place of business and start ordering in a language other than English. Even if he is trying to reach non-native speakers, what Vento's really saying is "learn how to speak without an accent." Any way you parse that sign, it's racist and ignorant, and if it's just a "marketing ploy," as alannaknightess claims, then it's doubly gross: trying to capitalize on racism and ignorance by validating racists and ignoramuses.

By "here" did you mean California? :) I was raised on the East Coast, way further from Tehrangeles.

No, I meant my part of the country (midwest), where you can go from one year to another without hearing Farsi spoken, and where I'm about the only person I've ever met who would know that Gogush isn't a Hungarian noodle and meat dish. In fact, the only Farsi speaker I've known around here was a girl from Tehrun I knew in high school, who taught me the rudimentary Farsi that I know (which comes back to me at surprising moments, though I haven't had occasion to speak it since I lived in East Berlin).

"If I'm to believe that Joey Vento is not a racist, but that he simply thinks everyone should learn English in order to communicate more effectively in America, why would he hang a sign whose instructions are aimed at non-English speakers... written in English? You see what I mean?"

Weirdly enough, I've even seen ads for ESL schools posted entirely in English and wondered "if you can read the ad, wouldn't you not need the product?" Then I figured, maybe the intended audience is people who already know some english but want even better scores on the TOEFL or something?

"France and US were where the birth of deaf education occurred and these two countries remained at its forefront. The breakthough happened when a French priest thought to try to teach Parisian deaf urchins via the 'hand gestures' they were seen using."

Did you know about when this breakthrough was made again from scratch in Nicaragua?

http://www.indiana.edu/~langacq/E105/Nicaragua.html

"Because of signed languages, being deaf isn't a disability like any other and, in fact, is arguably not a disability at all. Within a signing community, a deaf signer is completely enabled."

OTOH, isn't the ability to hear sounds useful for things other than communication too?

Mina, what's really interesting about the Nicaragua deaf children's case is that it show us how language comes about. When you have deaf children isolated in a hearing culture (that is, they don't have access or exposure to any signed languages) they will spontaneously invent among themselves a proto-language that's a lot like a signed language, yet not a full language by linguistic standards. However, a second generation of deaf children, exposed to this proto-language, will develop it into a full-fledged language! This gives linguists deep insight into the interdependency between language, biology, and culture. The theory is that much, but not all, of language is biologically "available", but it takes a cultural environment for a true language to develop.

When I discussed the "breakthrough" of the French priest, Michel de l'Epée, in the 18th century, what I meant was that, prior to him, I don't think that there were ever any serious efforts to educate the deaf and they had always been assumed to be mentally deficient. They were left to fend for themselves and were often homeless and forgotten.

Michel de l'Epée noticed that the children he observed weren't entirely unable to communicate and he began to suspect that they weren't as dumb (it's not accident, that word) as had been thought. He attempted to learn their gestural language and use it to educate them. This gestural "language" wasn't a language, like the first generation Nicaraguan children, it was a proto-language. But once in the environment when l'Epee had somewhat educated the first generation, the second that was brought in used the gestural "language" and eventually a full language evolved on its own, the first signed language we are aware of.

“OTOH, isn't the ability to hear sounds useful for things other than communication too?�

Sure. And I don't think most Deaf activists would deny that not being able to hear can cause problems for them in some situations where a hearing person has none. However, a great many practical, non-language problems associated with not hearing are overcome with technology and just arranging things in a certain way. By far, the biggest disability a deaf person has is the language problem when in a hearing culture. But that's exactly the same problem as other people who don't speak the dominant language have. No one claims that those people are disabled.

There are many things similar between being Deaf and not having the language of the culture within which one lives. However, a difference is that a lot of deaf children are born into hearing culture and have to make their way to Deaf culture where they are no longer "disabled". And Deaf culture has long been fairly seperatist—more, I think, as a result of society's bigotry than from the deaf's own, initial, desire for seperatism. Whatever it's genesis, though, Deaf culture is insular and partly as a result, most hearing people aren't even aware that it exists. Most wouldn't even suspect it exists and many probably would deny the idea as some sort of PC silliness.

Nevertheless, the Deaf have their own culture and institutions, and within that context they are happy and not disabled. You can see either the bigoted or well-intentioned who want to rush in and "fix" them by turning them into hearing people (via cochlear implants) is, to them, a form of cultural imperialism. They're rightly pissed-off by it.

Oliver Sacks was originally asked to simply write a magazine article about the neurology of deafness. He had been largely ignorant of the topic and entirely ignorant of the existence of Deaf culture, or the history of deaf education. But the more he learned, the more fascinated he became, and the book, Seeing Voices, was the result. He makes a strong case for the "rightness" of Deaf culture, and how questionable is the assumption that deafness is a disability like any other. I highly recommend the book. Sadly—and this is a sorry reflection of what's common in hearing families of deaf individuals—I've not be able to persuade any of my family to read Seeing Voices. Not even my deaf aunt, actually, but that's because she has a hard time believing that any of us in her family either would have an interest about deafness, or would understand it if we did. This is an example of the sort of ways the deaf are alienated from hearing culture, even within their own families.

I usually find if you learn a small amount of basic phrases when visiting foreign countries such as hello, please, thank you, goodbye and do you speak english? (oh, and how much is this/that? ha) then the locals will generally appreciate you trying to speak the language rather than if you speak loudly and v.e.r.y slowly (as if doing that makes your english suddenly comprehensible to someone who doesn't know a word of it!)

I think ignorance is the key thing, which obviously in some cases (sadly) leads to racism. My Latvian relatives are over at the moment and two of the three cannot speak any english yet we can still communicate; its not all about spoken language. But then I think it's important to also encourage and praise other non-english speakers for their attempts. Not in a patronising way, but...well to give an example:

My italian teacher when I was at school always said that the English always expect you to speak english; the french won't even give you the time of day unless you at least TRY to speak to them in french; the germans will have better english than you do and the italians will fawn over your italian whatever you attempt!

When I went to italy on an exchange I tried to speak italian (i can understand it alot better than I can speak it) but all I really ended up saying was ciao. But my exchange partner's family were like 'you speak italian so well!' It was nice that they did that, and very warm and welcoming. I think we should be more like that with non-english speakers; not assume everyone should and can speak english, and realise learning a language is hard and so praise those who make the effort (as we should when we are in a guest country)

"Mina, what's really interesting about the Nicaragua deaf children's case is that it show us how language comes about."

Yeah, I read somewhere that those schools are now swarmed by linguists who take sign languages seriously enough to learn stuff about language in general from signers.

"Nevertheless, the Deaf have their own culture and institutions, and within that context they are happy and not disabled."

I thought it was a whole bunch of cultures (which people who assume there's only one sign language forget).

"You can see either the bigoted or well-intentioned who want to rush in and 'fix' them by turning them into hearing people (via cochlear implants) is, to them, a form of cultural imperialism. They're rightly pissed-off by it."

I can totally understand that. I can also understand how someone deafened by someone else might be rightly pissed-off by that, instead of feeling it's no loss, too.

I don't know; when I think of the disability aspects of deafness, I don't think of language, specifically because of the varieties of sign language, culture, etc. I don't even think of practical things, like, I guess, it's quite useful to be able to hear traffic and to be able to hear when it starts raining out. What I think of is just the experience of hearing: music, the sound of rain (yeah, I know, weird, but I happen to like it), that kind of thing. I suppose that may be no more of an issue to people born deaf than my inability to see infrared is to me. But would it be different if everybody else in my life could see infrared, and was constantly referring to the experience of seeing infrared and the beauty of infrared? I don't know. But if my baby was born deaf, that knowledge would definitely influence me in terms of considering treatments.

Wow, that was off-topic.

“But if my baby was born deaf, that knowledge would definitely influence me in terms of considering treatments.�

Oh, as a hearing parent, if I had a deaf child, I wouldn't think twice about a cochlear implant. I'd have it done. That does bother some Deaf Rights activists, I suppose.

But the real contentious issue is deaf children of Deaf parents. From their perspective, their child will grow up as a native Signer and will be fine. From outsiders' perspectives, their choosing not to have their children implanted is a form of child abuse.

I strongly disagree with them.

"Or have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?"

Honestly, no. And I have spent months in a lot of countries where English was not the primary language. During my first years in Japan I couldn't speak Japanese at all (I still can't really speak it fluently), but I never had any trouble ordering food through gestures or commonly used English terms. And in South Korea, Russian, Main Land China, and in Thailand I never had any trouble ordering food either. In fact a lot of times I would translate Japanese into English, so that the Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Russian restaurant staffs could figure out what the Japanese customers wanted.

America and Australia are probably the only countries in the world where it is commonly insisted that everyone speak only English (or only the native language) in open discussions or in business transactions.

Sorry if I offended any Australians, but that was how I saw Australia when I visited there.

Recently at a restaurant in America I saw a woman customer blast a couple at a separate table, because they were not speaking English, and she was certain that they were talking shit about her or someone else in the restaurant: Uncontrolled ego and paranoia to an extreme.

(Though one time I can remember talking shit in Japanese to my friends about a woman at the other side of a bar from us who had "fire cow" crudely tattooed in Kanji on her shoulder).

Moral of the story; never get a tattoo in Asian characters unless you know for certain what they mean. About a month ago I saw another woman with crudely written "cheap energy" on her back (my guess is she meant it to mean "calm power").

My mother was born in Germany and put up for adoption. She was adopted by an American Army Officer and brought back to the U.S. She never taught any of her four children German. Her native language was prejudiced in her own family and so she grew to despise her heritage. She believes any immigrants should be forced to learn english or be unable to communicate.

I live in a part of Chicago that is extremely ethnically and linguistically diverse, and where Spanish is the majority language and a very large percentage of the population is first-generation immigrants. I am the blond-headed, blue-eyed white American with very broken Spanish, and have only found people to be gracious to me when we had a hard time communicating. Mostly they congratulate me for trying and we use very slow Spanglish and gestures to figure it out. Yes, we're in the United States, but everything around here is in Spanish, so I feel like I should be the one learning a new language to communicate with the natives where I live.

English-only activism is not only racist, it's also ignorant. To expect an immigrant over the age of 40 to be able to speak any semblance of English within a few years is ridiculous (although some accomplish it), and anybody who thinks they're entitled to speak only to people with fluent, unaccented English has obviously never tried to learn a foreign language as an adult.

I don't understand why anyone in nation of immigrants would be
so adamant that everybody speak one language. Isn't this supposed to be one of our strengths, that Americans come from all over the world and are multicolored and multilingual?

This isn't England. Speak whatever language you want.

I really have no patience with these xenophobic sentiments about pigheaded Americans who get offended when they see signs, documents in languages other than English, or even get offended when someone is speaking a language other than English in public. Is it against the law?

Our governor (Schwarzenegger) made a comment to Spanish language media people about telling Hispanics to turn off the Spanish language programming in order to immerse themselves in English. How hypocritical, given that Ah-nold did a lot of Spanish language outreach to get Latinos to vote for him, and has a website en Espanol.

One of the best guilty pleasures about knowing several languages is that you can talk shit about someone in front of their face without them knowing it!

Constantly I read about people saying "if I moved I'd make an effort to intergrate" - what a LIE.

We form our own enclaves when we emmigrate. There are whole communities of NZers and Australians clinging together in England - and they speak English!

Oh, absolutely. I'm an American living in England, and I've experienced that firsthand. Though all of my American friends speak English, we definitely have our own little community. It has very little to do with language or accent; it's mostly about shared experiences. Ie: what food from back home we miss, what things were most difficult to get used to, etc. I do have more English friends than American friends, though, because I simply cannot relate to anyone who misses Velveeta! :P

I've not been on the receiving end of any discrimination because of how I speak. I have, however, witnessed more than I'd care to. One of the American women I know over here seriously pissed me off awhile ago. She is from southern California, and was bitching about how difficult it was for her teenage daughter to find a job in fast food when they lived there. According to her all of the positions were filled by adult Hispanic immigrants. She went on to say that her daughter deserved the job more than any of them because she was a US citizen, could speak the language, and was there legally (!!!). She added that when her order was wrong at a fast food place and someone with a Spanish accent (well, according to her someone who couldn't speak English, but I don't believe that for a second) had served her she complained to the manager and threatened to call immigration authorities (!!!).

I pointed out how incredibly sad it was that she still held that view since she's an immigrant herself, and she really should be ashamed of herself for treating people that way (and for being batshit insane, but I only thought that part). Her response: "But I make every effort to integrate here! I don't use American slang and expect people to understand me. For instance, I've started saying trousers instead of pants. And I came here legally. Most of them didn't."

I really wish that I was making this up.

I told her that learning a few slang words does not even REMOTELY compare to learning a whole new language, and she can't tell whether or not someone came into the country illegally just by looking at them, but I don't think any of it sunk in. She's too deep in her irrational hatred to listen to reason. She'll probably go on thinking that Hispanic immigrants don't learn English because they're lazy and society caters to them no matter how many statistics from studies that demonstrate otherwise I throw at her.

I don't understand how she can say all that crap and still not think that she's racist.

Whew, that ended up a very long-winded rant! Sorry about that. Her attitude is just far too common in my experience, and it really angers me.

Whoops, messed up the italics in my post. My commentary starts with "Oh, absolutely." Everything above that is a quote from someone else.

Meanwhile, speaking of accents, I just saw this in the FAQ for Yo La La ("Because the English-speaking world needed a French Rap podcast..."):

http://www.yolala.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Faq.Faq

"Thomas, I know you and your English isn't that bad... what's with the accent?"

"I was reminded that Anglophones love it when French people butcher their language. They think it sounds sexy or funny or gay but in any case interesting. See what I'll do to please my audience? Plus I was a big fan the show 'Eurotrash', hosted in heavily-accented English by Jean-Paul Gaultier and Antoine de Caunes, so think of it as a tribute to this two great Frenchies."

I don't know what to make of this.

Nice attempt by the Geno's apologist. Any defense of Geno's or the place across the street from it (Pat's?) has to rely on the person reading it having never been to that part of Philadelphia. The first thing you see is a large memorial to the cop that Mumia allegedly killed. Regardless of what you think about the Mumia case, the effect of that image on a population of people polarized by that case is obvious. Then, when you get closer, you see all manner of jingoistic brick-a-brack decorating the exterior. Having lived in various parts of middle-America for most o my life, I've seen a lot of blatantly, outwardly racist garbage... but I was appalled, and viscerally taken aback by what I saw when I visited that section of Philly.

The irony is that the regional Philly dialect is only tenuously recognizable to most American English speakers anyway... the fact that "I want mine whiz with" is readily understood grammar doesn't really speak well for this militant Anglophone cred that Geno's claims.

And a related question... why is it that the Italian neighborhood in every big city is always the most inhospitable to outsiders? Really, what is up with that? My cousin went to Case Western on the east side of Cleveland for a while, and rented a place in Little Italy, and whenever he went to shoot hoops at the basketball court with people he knew, if any of them were black they'd get harassed and run off by local 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation Italian-American thugs.

Plenty of urban white people grumble about, mistreat and discriminate against various minorities, but why is it so much more intense and blatant in the various Little Italys? (I'm basing this assertion on anec-data from Philly, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, so YMMV)

have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?

This should, perhaps, be written as

"have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language(s) that you DON'T SPEAK?"

Asking someone to speak English is in the second category, not the first.

So: No, I've never had anyone discriminate against me because I was speaking English, French, or a bit of Yiddish.

However, I've had plenty of people discriminate against me, both in and out of the U.S., because I wasn't speaking their language. Am I supposed to be surprised by this?

I have to agree with PamelaV. I do not think it's racist to want to talk on the phone to a CS rep who can speak in a way that you can understand. There are dialects of English, such as that spoken by a friend of mine in Wales, that I find very hard to understand. With my friend, I will make the effort because she's my friend. Why should I make the effort for a customer service rep in India? The whole reason he *has* that job is because he works cheaper than someone in Minnesota, not because he's better at it. In fact, because his signal is transmitted from across the world, even if he spoke the same American dialect I do there would be signal quality degradation. Add to that that he speaks a dialect I'm not familiar with, and that he doesn't necessarily understand *me* any better than I understand him... customer service is already hell on earth for both the rep and the person seeking service, and the dialect just makes it worse.

I am perfectly capable of communicating with people whose first language is Chinese or Japanese or who speak an Indian dialect or who have some flavor of Hispanic accent (Puerto Rican, Mexican, anywhere in South America but Brazil, Brazilian...) if I can *see* them. being able to see lips and facial expressions helps a lot. But I have a hard time understanding my *husband* or my *mom* on the phone sometimes. I am supposed to be grateful and polite that some company outsourced its customer service to people who don't speak a dialect I commonly hear, who I am pretty much guaranteed not to understand well, just so they can save money?

It's not about racism in a case like that. I want to understand a person I'm talking to. If I hadn't grown up in New York State and therefore have a lot of familiarity with the accents, I probably wouldn't want to talk to a CS rep who comes from Brooklyn. Strong, unfamiliar accents in a CS rep are a TERRIBLE idea. And then they further insult my intelligence by claiming that their names are Steve or Jennifer. No, they're *not*. Not likely, anyway. I know you're in India, you know you're in India, why don't you admit it? Because the corporation you work for has told you to lie about it because they think that people's legitimate concerns about being able to understand will disappear if we just think the person is an American. Uh, no.

While I agree that sometimes customer or technical support people who speak with an accent can show up racism in some people, I also dont think its fair to brand everyone a racist who would prefer a voice they can work better with on the phone at that time. Like AlaraJRogers said, some people, myself included, sometimes have trouble understanding people on the phone regardless of their accent. And also taking into account that if its customer or technical support, people ringing in might be impatient or distracted, trying to sort out or fix whatever problem has caused them to call in the first place. I think there is more to those situations than blatant racism, even if some people don’t have any kind of reasons bar their own prejudice.

Some anglophones shouldn't whinge that a customer service representative speaks a dialect with which they have difficulty understanding. Instead, they should be aware that they're privileged in that half the world is competent in their language.

Asserting that a CSR has an obligation to you as a customer to be easily understandable is exactly like the person mentioned in a previous comment who complained that all Mexicans in tourist towns have an obligation to speak English to the anglophones who are their frequent customers. This is a sense of entitlement that indicates a cultural imperialism.

Erm no Keith, I think thats taking it a little bit too far. Expecting residents of a different country to comply to your wishes to make things easier for you, is nowhere near the same as expecting a company to make sure you get the service you feel suits you best. That is their job isnt it, after purchasing one of their products, or whatever they provide? Different countries dont exist solely for tourism, despite some people thinking so, since people actually live there.

"Asserting that a CSR has an obligation to you as a customer to be easily understandable is exactly like the person mentioned in a previous comment who complained that all Mexicans in tourist towns have an obligation to speak English to the anglophones who are their frequent customers."

Really? So I guess if Dell starts outsourcing their customer service to, I don’t know, say Turkmenistan, and the reps didn’t even speak English we shouldn’t complain either, because that would be exactly lie if we went to a Turkmen village as tourists and started whining about the Turkmen shopkeepers not speaking English. I am sorry but if Dell is pretending to provide service to people in country X, their CS reps should be able to speak the language of country X in a way that is understandable to people in country X, whether country X is the US or Swaziland. We, as customers are most certainly entitled to that.

I remember discussing this in my Diversity lass. There was the usual talk about "Why Spanish, why not Asian, as a second language". My professor, merely said, "I really cannot teach people who know the language of ignorance".

What is the "correct" English, British, I would assume, why then do Americans laugh at that accent?

Interesting where this conversation has gone. Customer service, outsourced jobs to call centers in India. I agree that a CSR should speak the same language of the person calling, but who would argue against that? They don't connect you with a Spanish speaking rep unless you ask for it. The issue is an accent and I have never had problem with a CSR because their accent is too hard to understand. Never ever actually. They are usually quite clear and from what I know are usually way more eduated than some stupid ass CS job.

I still think that when *some* people hear an accent their brain shuts down and they are all "what? what? can you speak clearer?" And it is not always because the person is not speaking clear enough.

Furthermore, it is interesting how some people can't understand Indian accents, but LOVE French and British ones. Just a thought.

“The issue is an accent and I have never had problem with a CSR because their accent is too hard to understand.�
Just to make it clear I have never had that problem either. (I have had lots of other problems with CSRs but that’s another story). My point was mainly in response to Keith’s claim that “Asserting that a CSR has an obligation to you as a customer to be easily understandable is exactly like…�. It’s not *at all* like…
Oh, and I definitely do not *love* French accents.

Well, people misunderstand each other even when speaking the with exact same accent all the time, so I think its logical that sometimes a different accent that someone is unused to might be a little more problematic. However, I was thinking along the lines of something like, your home PC breaks after a long day at work where you finished late. You’re tired and frustrated, and need your PC working ASAP. When talking to the technician it helps that they speak loudly, clearly and intelligently, which I think is obviously in no way affected by someone’s accent. However, could it just speed things up even more if you’re talking to someone with an accent your very familiar with, like an accent that you always encounter on a day to day basis? I guess that’s for the individual to decide…

Now while this situation is somewhat different, I think there are some similarities. Same idea, but this person bilingual and doesn’t speak English as their native language. They speak English well and could in this situation, but to speed things up on this particular night, they would find it much easier to talk to someone in their native language. (And for this situation they are lucky in that the company will provide for this, which I cant say I know for certain will always happen) Is there such a major difference between the two? Were talking about a company that should care about its customer’s convenience, so its basically looking for a service that their particular customer would feel best working with. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see much prejudice in that?

I hope that has made my point a little clearer?

My italian teacher when I was at school always said that the English always expect you to speak english; the french won't even give you the time of day unless you at least TRY to speak to them in french; the germans will have better english than you do and the italians will fawn over your italian whatever you attempt!

This is so true, in every example above. But yeah, I think any visitor to any country with a commonly-spoken language should attempt to learn at least enough to get around for the duration. You're the guest, so it's up to you to make that attempt. If you plan to live there, I think you should have more of a grasp of the language. Whenever I travel to a different country I make sure I have my phrasebook on hand at all times, or enough committed to memory (and you can bet if I became a resident, I'd learn as much as possible). Also, a smile helps.

I've always been jealous of my Euro friends who are bi and tri lingual, and used to feel like an "Ugly American." However, I too had two grandmothers fluent in other languages (French, Czech), and they refused to teach me when I was a kid. The pressure from their parents not to pass this on is something that has stunted many potential but well-meaning "Ugly Americans." Also, look at the sheer size of our country in proportion to how much vacation time we have. Is it any surprise we don't have as much opportunity to travel abroad with land mass of our own to visit? What about all the days off eaten up by family vacations when you move across the country? Perhaps it would behoove some of you to try to understand where some people are coming from rather than dismissing them as a whole.

I also concur with some of the above posters about some CS reps, especially using the example of tech repair on a Dell (which is maddening enough with an American English accent). I'll supplement this with an example from last year; my mom and grandfather passed away within 3 weeks of each other, and there was travel to 2 different cities for a bunch of us in that amount of time. Bereavement fares are elusive to begin with, but when you have a CS rep with a heavy accent from the airlines quoting fares that are MORE than the ones on Expedia, it's really frustrating when you have to have the person repeat his or her comments 3 times, only to realize they're reading from a script anyway. Quite frankly, I don't care where the accent originates, and often you lose the subtleties needed to resolve a conflict quickly (as one mentioned above, this is easier if you can SEE the person).

I think there are very few accents I don't love from an aesthetic standpoint, but business transactions via phone are an entirely different matter.

The prejudice is in insisting on speaking to "someone who speaks ENGLISH!", as though accented English doesn't count. Sure, companies who are providing customer service should be thinking about said customers' convenience, but weeding out all your reps until you have the whitest sounding ones you can find is racist. Customers should resign themselves to the fact that they live in an increasingly global community, where they're going to encounter people who sound differently than they do. Being a customer in need does not entitle you to act like a jerk, and doesn't relieve you of the responsibility to contribute to clear communication by listening more carefully and asking for clarification if necessary.

but weeding out all your reps until you have the whitest sounding ones you can find is racist

I was actually thinking "British sounding", which in no way means "whitest sounding". The garage down the road from me that I frequent is run by a bilingual Asian man (he leant his parents/grandparents lanuguage), who also happens to have a distinct brummy accent (Birmingham). Does that mean he then sounds "white", or British?

I'm not British, I couldn't say. I do know that in America, race and accent/dialect are perceived to be very closely intertwined. So while I know that the newscaster intonations -- which are the so-called "proper" way to speak, the voice of the powerful and dominant (read: white) -- can be learned by anyone, I would speculate that the average American would assume that such a voice belonged to a white person. And I don't know enough about the Birmingham sound, but that plummy, posh Queen's English accent I seriously doubt would be attributed sight unseen to anyone other than a white Briton. At least by an American :)

the whitest sounding ones you can find

The intonation and cadence of Southern American accents give me a headache, and these are pretty "white" as well. I guess makes me a big jerk.

When I was 15 and moved to the South, I had an Algebra teacher who not only had a heavy small-town, Southern accent, but he stuttered as well. Needless to say, that was my first and only F, and had to repeat that class.

but that plummy, posh Queen's English accent I seriously doubt would be attributed sight unseen to anyone other than a white Briton.

ankathry, lots of us have visited the UK and/or have listen to enough BBC to assume it's just as likely coming from someone of Indian, Middle Eastern, or African descent.

my my there are lots of assumptions here! ;)

Eh, fair enough. I retract the 2nd post. Still think it's racist to insist that thicker regional and/or ethnic accents have no place in customer service, though.

yeh brummy is pretty different to the queen's english...but i like it. There's a stereotype in the UK that everyone hates the brummy accent (apparently they did some weird poll where they asked people their favourite and least favourite accents, brummy came out bottom...) but I sorta like it.

But nothing beats a geordie accent...swoon!

I think I'm just jealous because my accent is just classified as 'southern' :)

With the whole CS thing, I think its fair enough to talk to someone you can understand- whatever accent they have, sometimes the reception is bad or its just really hard over the phone. but its totally unfair if someone simply is speaking with an accent to ask to speak to someone who can 'speak english'. I bet whoever says that doesn't even attempt to speak the guest country's language when abroad...

I've dealt with people like this at work a few times. I work in an apartment building where most of the service techs are Indian or Hispanic. All speak English just fine.
One resident was complaining to me about a service tech, saying he "Couldn't speak English".
Now, the guy she was talking about is fluent in English. He's got an accent, sure, but he also taught himself English from watching TV. He's not going to sound like Tom Brokaw, and that's fine!
I think people can be just as ignorant about accents as language.

Just wanted to say what an interesting and, at times, educational thread this has turned into. Thanks to Samhita for kicking it off.

P.S. Emma2007 - the Geordie accent is probably my favorite British accent too! It's like the best of English and the best of Scottish accents combined. :-)

This is a beautifully written article. I wasn't born in America, but I'm American. I have similar experiences.

“Still think it's racist to insist that thicker regional and/or ethnic accents have no place in customer service, though.�

Yes, exactly. My point was that no particular dialect is privileged, nor should it be. Customers can reasonably expect (in the context we're describing) to be accommodated in their native language. They can't reasonably expect that they be accommodated in their regional dialect. I won't say that it's racist, necessarily, but I will say that these sorts of expectations by Americans are culturally imperialist, especially given the context that half the world speaks our native language as a second language anyway.

Part of the reason that Americans have a particularly hard time with other English dialects and the "accented" English of non-native English speakers is because we insulate ourselves from everything non-American. I recently watched Guy Ritchie's Snatch with some friends. They insisted on using subtitles for the entire film.

The general attitude that this thread is criticizing can be summed up as being comparable to the character in Being John Malkovich who was hard of hearing and so assumed that everyone else had a speech defect. Many people, especially Americans, have a sense of entitlement when it comes to being understood and understanding others in English.

I mentioned that I'm a native New Mexican anglo in a previous comment. I don't recall if I mentioned that I don't really speak any Spanish. But I've never had a problem with Hispanics in small towns where other anglos have felt "discriminated against". It has everything to do with attitude. I mildly disagree with the person in this thread who thinks it's necessary to learn 30 or so words in the language of any region one visits. I think it's a good idea, but I don't think a person is obligated to do so, not even to be a "respectful visitor". All one needs to do to be a respectful visitor is to be a respectful visitor. If I can't speak the language, that's my fault, not theirs.

In fact, the even-more-underlying problem here is the general human tendency to find fault in others and assign blame regarding any difficulties one has. Joey Vento is doing that, the customer who gets mad at Vento for not understanding his Spanish is doing that, Americans who are frustrated that Parisians don't speak English to them are doing that, and Parisians who are mad at Americans who don't speak French are doing that. The right attitude when facing communication difficulties is not to place blame, but to soothe the inevitable frustration of all parties as necessary, and then to find ways to improve the communication. Assigning blame on the other person is to start off on the wrong foot and it only gets worse from there.

This is really just a particular manifestation of a general social principle of etiquette and consideration. We all know and understand this general principle in other situations. I think that this is a sort of evidence that there's often a racial/bigoted undercurrent to these language collisions—some people are sort of going out of their way to ignore some basic principles of dealing with other people. That's because they see these others are "others", not the sort of people who are worthy of being treated according to those principles.

And I don't mean to be accusatory, but I think this applies to CSRs in India because when I listen to how people complain about outsourced CSR jobs or even non-Anglophone US university lecturers, I think I often hear a sort of resentment that there's some sort of fraudulence going on. That both are trying to "pass" but failing at it, and then making the in-group's lives more difficult as a result. There's echoes of the outsider! shriek of the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

That's not necessarily true in the case of anyone here, of course. But I feel certain I've detected this sort of ugliness elsewhere.

Finally, I think this is all relevant to feminism, too, especially in the recursive context that we're having this discussion in blog comments. I think there's a considerable amount of androcentric discursive style imperialism faced by women who participate in the blogosphere. "Either learn to discourse as 'serious' men discourse, or go away!"

(This pop-culture laden comment has been brought to you by Hollywood: The Wellspring of All the World's Entertainment!)

Perhaps I shouldn’t really be putting forward such an opinion, because I am unsure if there are differences that I’m not entirely aware of between Britain and America (Bar the Dell call centre point). I’m not at all suggesting I should have to only speak to people with a "British" accent on the phone, but unfortunately circumstances that I have to deal with in regards to phone calls have influenced my opinion somewhat, along with other people I know. This isn’t like some of the stories I’m hearing, where it’s a complaint about a Hispanic worker with an accent, it’s a little different. My negative experiences are not so much accents, but a general shaky command of English that I experience often when being called at my house.

What Im actually referring to is cold callers. As if someone ringing your house to sell you something isn’t bad enough, sometimes the person calling is simply reading off a card, and doesn’t have an extensive experience with English (although sometimes it’s a recording trying to get YOU to ring THEM to sell YOU stuff). It becomes extremely offensive when a cold caller asks for my step dad and I have to explain that he is deceased, only to get the response "Okay yeah, that’s great", and then a continuation of trying to flog something to me which I do not want it the least. (Which has happened on a fair amount of occasions).

Now I’m perfectly aware that it’s the actual companies responsible that I should direct my ire towards, but after so many times over the course of months its become something to expect. Foreign call centres are, at least in my experience, becoming a nuisance. So much so that now a few companies will proudly proclaim "All our call centres are UK based!"

I hope that explains a little of why I’m taking this particular view. Like I have said, I have no trouble with accents under the right circumstances, its just limited to phone calls.

Eh, fair enough. I retract the 2nd post. Still think it's racist to insist that thicker regional and/or ethnic accents have no place in customer service, though.

I would say they definitely have a place. I am reminded of something that happened about 12 years ago, when I was doing telephone marketing research.

Because of my early and sustained exposure to various different languages, I am something of a linguistic sponge. I absorb, often unconsciously, the speech patterns and languages around me.

On this particular day, we were doing polling in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. For the first few hours, I didn't get a single positive response (not exactly unusual). As the hangups continued, I more or less zoned out and went on autopilot.

Several hours later, I noticed that suddenly I consistently getting friendly, chatty, open responses from just about everyone I called. This meant I actually had to pay attention, which is when I realised that my speech had unconsciously taken on the accent of the region I was calling. In some fields, having a dialect can probably be just as useful, if not more, as eliminating one's regional accent.

I think this sign is just an attempt to be snide to foreigners.

Exactly.

While English is the dominant language in the United States, it's ridiculous to put up signs demanding or snidely requesting that people speak English when requesting service.

Because, here's the thing- the only people who can read you snotty little sign are people who already understand English (oh...I just noticed some other people already mentioned this). It's a way of making fun of and poking at people who haven't mastered the language yet. Yeah, I expect to be required to make an effort to speak the langauge of the land when I go abroad, but I don't expect to be mocked, derided, or insulted for not having total mastery over it, either.

But I have a hard time understanding my *husband* or my *mom* on the phone sometimes. I am supposed to be grateful and polite that some company outsourced its customer service to people who don't speak a dialect I commonly hear, who I am pretty much guaranteed not to understand well, just so they can save money?

Grateful? No.
Polite? Absolutely.

Look, you admit that you have a hard time even understanding your husband on the phone sometimes... so, yeah, I think it's unreasonable of you to be rude to someone on the phone just because you can't understand them. As you point out, accents can be difficult to understand even within the United States- what you think of as a "strong, unfamiliar accent" may not be to someone else. I grew up in suburban Michigan- my experience of what constitutes an accent is going to be vastly different from my cousin living in the far southern part of Georgia. And I'm sure that someone growing up in Texas is going to think that both of us sound funny. So, yeah, I think that it's sort of unreasonable to be rude to someone you're having a hard time understanding. It's fair to say "I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding you, may I be transfered to another service rep" if you're having a hard time, but that doesn't mean that the problem was necessarily with the other person- it could just be that you have a hard time understand that accent.

And then they further insult my intelligence by claiming that their names are Steve or Jennifer. No, they're *not*. Not likely, anyway. I know you're in India, you know you're in India, why don't you admit it? Because the corporation you work for has told you to lie about it because they think that people's legitimate concerns about being able to understand will disappear if we just think the person is an American. Uh, no.

See, that's misplaced anger.

1. You have no idea what that person's name is.
2. Even if you're right, and they're told to lie to you about their names, they're doing their jobs. Better that they should tell you their real names and get fired for it?

If you're going to be angry about something like that, be angry at the company, not the poor phone rep who is trying to do his/her job.

...expecting a company to make sure you get the service you feel suits you best. That is their job isnt it, after purchasing one of their products, or whatever they provide?

and

if Dell is pretending to provide service to people in country X, their CS reps should be able to speak the language of country X in a way that is understandable to people in country X, whether country X is the US or Swaziland. We, as customers are most certainly entitled to that.

The problem being that, again, the dialect of English that people speak within the borders of our nation vary wildly. If I have trouble understanding people from New York, am I right and reasonable to be pissed when I call a CSR and can't understand him because he's from New York, and his accent seems to thick to me?

You have every right to ask if there is someone else you can speak to, but this notion that a business has an obligation to provide you with someone that speaks your specific brand of English just because they do business with you? That's bullshit.

Or, in other words, what ankathry said.

I've had so many people of all nationalities and from all over the US giggle when I say, "y'all". I don't think anyone has the right to make fun of other people's English if they can understand them.

But most liberals think that making fun of Southerners is OK.

English needs a second-person plural pronoun. There's nothing wrong with y'all. Except when anyone claims it's a second-person singular pronoun. I don't know what the hell Kinky Friedman was thinking, but he was full of shit.

Class and regional discrimination against people on the basis of their dialect is a real problem everywhere, really. The US has a relative few discriminated-against dialects, but Southern US English is by far the most discriminated against, excepting what has been called “ebonics�. I can't think of any of my college peers from the South who have retained more than slight accents.

Central and northern New Mexico English dialect is pretty much the Rocky Mountain version, which is pretty much the lower-midwest version. Which, for whatever reason, has been the supposed "unaccented" English of national TV broadcast news and the other media that de facto determine in countries like the US what is the "unaccented" and "standard" version. Anyway, lucky for me. However, before my younger sister was born, my family moved to the eastern portion of the state, which is culturally Texan and the dialect is a mild west Texas. Despite the speech patterns at home, as soon as my sister began pre-school she began to pick up a strong Texas drawl. I have to admit that I—and, really, our parents, too—teased her mercilessly about it for the surprisingly short time it took her to eliminate at least the stronger aspects of it. She later grew up in Amarillo, and her accent got a bit stronger, though is nevertheless much less evident than that of her peers.

This kind of stuff is a real shame, really, because I don't doubt that it has a negative economic impact for people who move away from the South and don't modify their speech to conform to the dominant dialect. It's especially bad, I suspect, as it's the economic underclass that pays the biggest price for this kind of discrimination.

2. Even if you're right, and they're told to lie to you about their names, they're doing their jobs. Better that they should tell you their real names and get fired for it?

If you're going to be angry about something like that, be angry at the company, not the poor phone rep who is trying to do his/her job.

Sorry, but I really loathe this line of reasoning. The same can be said of telemarketers, and people who litter your apartment building stoops with piles of circulars.

While I'd never scream at a rep, he or she did sign up for a customer service job. Requesting another rep may seem like a good idea, but then you have to spend another 15 minutes going over your info with the other person (if you're not immediately disconnected).

And I really refuse to believe NONE of you has ever stifled a giggle when an outsourced rep in India has said, "My name is Bobby," or "Tiffany," especially if you imagine them halfway around the world saying this with a straight face.

On southern accents: whether or not my social tendencies make me more likely to make fun of certain American accents, many southern ones still hurt my head.

Hey, I know this is late, but check out today's "Bo Nanas" comic strip

http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/bon/2007/bon070707.gif

Hi, I'm the Thomas mentioned above, I found this site thanks to the my host's "audience tracker".

I wrote this FAQ because some friends were complaining about my accent on the show being too thick (I live in Switzerland in a very international milieu).

When I was living in the States, several people really liked my French accent (it's not as thick as the one one the show). It sort of made me "interesting", especially to women (that didn't work so well with dudes :)).

However, being French, I wanted to improve my pronunciation. In France it's very important to speak good French so I assumed it was the same everywhere in the world. However, it was very hard to get them to correct me. They just didn't think it was the polite thing to do, so I had to beg them for corrections.

My biggest problem was (and still is) putting the emphasis on the right part of the word. The only times people did not understand me and asked me to repeat was with umbrella, ceramics and spatula (I was stressing the wrong syllables). I'll never really get it but I was glad they did not understand me, otherwise I would've never learned the proper pronunciation.

Hi Sami. :)

I wish you had left out the "order in English" part of this post, because I think it confuses the issue for some people. The phenomenon you mentioned is absolutely real -- if your name sounds foreign, if you have dark skin, I can't possibly understand what you're saying even if it's perfect English with a slight accent. It is also something that would never even cross your mind, something that you might not even believe really happens, if you haven't seen or experienced it yourself.

I was amazed that everyday bits of racism I (and I think any minority in the U.S.) took for granted were completely invisible to my white husband until I pointed them out. I think this is one of those invisible things, and people reading this post might just lock on to the cheesesteak bit and ignore your realization about why people couldn't understand your father.

“If I have trouble understanding people from New York, am I right and reasonable to be pissed when I call a CSR and can't understand him because he's from New York, and his accent seems to thick to me?�
Why yes Roy, you do have a right to be pissed, if the CSR has any kind of thick accent whether it be a New York accent or a New Delhi accent. These are people whose job is to explain things to customers over the phone, so part of the selection criteria should be how clear they speak and how “standard� they sound. And I do believe that already is part of the hiring criteria because like I said I have never had to deal with a CSR whose accent was so thick I had difficulty to understand. You never see newscasters speak in any kind of thick accents do you? And what if the CSR habitually mumbles? Do we get to complain then?

“And I really refuse to believe NONE of you has ever stifled a giggle when an outsourced rep in India has said, "My name is Bobby," or "Tiffany," especially if you imagine them halfway around the world saying this with a straight face.�
I don’t think the point of picking American sounding names is to fool the customer into thinking that the CSR is in fact based in the US but rather because most Americans are going to be completely overwhelmed if you tell them your name is “Sriram� or “Priyanka� or some such. I know many Chinese who go by names like Tony or Jack or whatever just because Americans cannot learn to pronounce their real names.

"Or have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?"

Discrimination? I barely spoke any english when I came to US about 12 years ago. I naturally didn't expect anybody to understand me without learning/speaking english, so I did not see it as discrimination at all. To call it that is just patently strange to me.

I think I understand where guys like that pizza owner are coming from, if you read conservative sites like www.freerepublic.com , those people are genuinely scared of this country being gentriefied and colonized by non-english speaking foreigners, so they react in what they see as basic preservation of their culture. You may agree/disagree with that, but they are honestly terrified of losing their country to mexico, it's pretty fascinating actually. Kind of the same attitudes that some of the french-speaking candadians have towards english speakers. So this phenomenon really has nothing to do with english or america. There were some times when I was in parts of USA populated by latin or oriental people, and none of them spoke neither of the two languages that I speak, was I discriminated against then too?