Reply #51: Not a bitch, but I couldn't disagree more. [View All]

[wickerwoman]

I currently live in a country where I can't speak the predominant language. I've been here five years. I can order food in restaurants, tell the taxi where to go, read about four or five hundred words but I'm a long, long way from fluent. I wouldn't be able to work a cash register in a fast food restaurant or take orders from customers in Chinese.

Yes, it's embarrassing to only speak pidgin Chinese after five years. On the other hand, I've been working 60 hours a week since literally the day after I arrived. I started studying when I was 27. Adults don't learn languages as quickly as kids do, especially when they are working lots of overtime. And I have a reasonably cushy office job. The guy on the other side of your drive-through window could be doing his other forty hours at a meat packing plant or picking asparagus. It takes four years of full-time study to become fluent in a foreign language. How many adults really have time to devote to that?

"People who come here should learn English." How do you know that they're not studying their asses off every night? I don't think there's a lot of people out there who don't want to learn English. Think about it. Does that make any sense to you? I think there's a lot of people who have a language ceiling, who started learning English when they were older and who work too hard to be able to devote enough time to really learning the language. It's not like you can flip a switch and poof, you speak English. Learning a foreign language is one of the hardest things you can do and English is one of the hardest languages. The plus side is that with a little patience and imagination, you can communicate anything you want to anyone you want. I've been doing it for five years. All that's missing is the will to try.

Meanwhile, I think it's just basic hospitality to put road signs and tax forms in several relevant languages, especially when thirty or forty percent of the population speaks that language. I'm really astonished and humbled by how easy it is to live in China and not speak Chinese. Most of the road signs have at least pinyin and often English so I can tell taxi drivers where to go. You can get most forms translated in English including bank statements, tax forms and the police certificate I just had to get from the notary public. Everywhere you go you meet someone who wants to practice their English and help you out. When was the last time you saw a random French-speaking local helping translate for a tourist in the US?

It's all about an attitude that embraces learning and hospitality. Something that been sorely missing in the US for far too long.