posted
I'm offended by the snobbery of Hatrack's polyglots.
I'm just whining. Language is only one of the many devices employed on this board to make it so that only a few insiders understand. It's all part of the fun...I guess.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I would like to take a moment to apologize to all the unlucky-bastards-because-they-can't-read-Quixote-in-the-original Anglos, African-Americans-who-aren't-Latinos, Latinos-who-like-many-of-my-friends-can't-speak-Spanish-worth-a-damn and all the other sensitive souls whom I've offended with this thread. I would delete it, but I want it to stand as a testament to the number of people I can collectively piss off at with a single post. Please, I humbly ask you to accept my apologies for being so inconsiderate of your personal traumas and weaknesses.
Ah, who am I kidding. ¡Vayan a aprender español, pinches llorones! Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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Does that mean I'm lazy, or does it mean I'm a hen's egg, or does it mean I'm a scrotum? Are hispanic scrotums and eggs typically lazy?
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
David, you've stumped me. I get that you're trying to say something about bilingual, but I can't read the englicized (I know it's not a word) version of it....
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Skillery, he's obviously of Mexican descent, so he means "stupid lazy-ass." In other Latin-American countries, huevón implies "tough guy" (as in having a lot of "huevos").
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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I had a friend who was married to someone stationed in the U.S. embassy in Peru. She took a Spanish class before going, but always mixed up three words: jueves, meaning Thursday, huevos, meaning eggs, and huesos meaning bones.
"Huevos" is slang for testicles, and "gordo" means fat, but can be used for cute when referencing babies. She didn't know either of these usages.
Someone at the table at a formal dinner referred to her baby son as "gordo." She attempted to say, "He's not fat, he has big bones." But she used "huevos" instead of huesos.
Good reason for a kid to be overweight, I guess.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Target said, "By "we", are you referring to hispanics or Japanese/Nipponese?"
Given that I'm neither, that'd be a weird usage of that particular first personal plural personal pronoun, don't you think? I meant "we" as in "everybody who actually knows anything about Japanese, which would exclude people using Babel Fish."
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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Maybe that's why I couldn't figure out that strange Japanese. I even searched my dictionary of Japanese proverbs (kotowaza jiten) and couldn't find it. It would have made a cool proverb though: "assumption is to be guided in circles."
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Ahhh, busted. I admit that I do not speak Japanese. My one attempt ended badly, as one word can have seven different meanings based on context of both the sentence and the company present. All I can say is that my girlfriend's (at the time) grandmother was not impressed with my attempts... Now German...I can help you with. And I must say that I'm pretty good with a nice Irish brogue.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I was ordering breakfast in Mexico with a few friends of mine. Two of them were ordering and I was conversing on the other side of the table, not paying much attention until one of them asked loudly, "How do you say Friday?" "Viernes," I informed her politely, aturning my attention back to my conversation. Several minutes later, a very confused waitress brought my friend an approximation of what she thought she had been pointing to on the menu. "This isn't what I ordered," she said, vexed. "What did you order?" I asked. "Fried eggs." I paused, realizing that I had misheard. "Um, actually, you didn't. you ordered Friday. Sorry."
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:I think that there's already too much pressure on immigrants to learn the English language and the social consequences are too great for them to not at least try.
Oh, the poor immigrants. Pressured to learn the language of the bloody country they've moved to. Of course, why should they try to learn to communicate with people here? It's such an oppressive weight, being forced to be able to talk to the people in your community. Obviously it would be so much better if we all spoke our own languages and nobody could ever communicate.
Look, I don't care that the United States has not declared English the official language. Nevertheless, it is the language of the vast majority of people here. Government business is conducted in English. Road signs and newspapers and product packaging and television broadcasts are all done in English. A small bit of that is in Spanish, yes. But the vast majority is in English. English is the unofficial national language of the United States.
As this is the case, anyone who expects to take up residence here should have to learn it. Just as anyone who moves to Mexico should learn Spanish. And anyone who moves to Germany should learn German. And anyone who moves to Egypt should learn Arabic. I'm not saying English is superior to any language. Merely that it is the national language here, and that's a fact.
I'm also not saying you should forget your own native language when you come here and never use it again. I don't care how many languages you speak. I don't care if you speak Spanish to your spouse, Russian to your cat, French to God, and Burmese to your children. That's all fine and dandy as far as I'm concerned, as long as you can also speak the language of whatever country you've taken up permanent residence in.
Suppose I moved to Mexico and refused to learn Spanish. Suppose I spoke English to everyone I encountered and resisted all attempts to teach me Spanish. Sure, there are plenty of people in Mexico who know English and could communicate with me. Just as there are plenty of people in the United States who speak Spanish. But how much do you think my neighbors in Mexico would appreciate that? How much respect do you suppose I'd get? How well could I join the community I was living in?
I would never suggest that Mexicans in Mexico should be required to learn English. Cultural imperialism is not a trait I possess. But we're not talking about Mexicans in Mexico. We're talking about immigrants--from any country--who move to a country and refuse to learn its language. I don't care if you're a Mexican in America or a Turk in Germany or an Australian in Cambodia. Refusing to learn the language of the community you've chosen to live in is arrogant and contemptible.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I never said immigrants shouldn't try to learn English. I suggested, maybe poorly, that they do try to learn English. But it's not an overnight process and because they tend to live in enclaves, it's that much harder to learn it properly. So I think it's rather pathetic that you would find it funny to tease people who are trying to learn it and struggling at it just because some person is telling you to learn some Spanish. At least whoever started this thread is telling you, jokingly, to learn a language that won't affect your livelihood and treatment in larger society if you choose not to. That was my point.
Edit: And just to be clear, some people don't choose to immigrate because they love this country so much. Some are refugees who do it because of how dangerous their home countries are and others do it to take care of their families back home. I'm sure if their countries afforded them the same opportunities, they wouldn't have to choose to come to this arrogant country.
quote:So I think it's rather pathetic that you would find it funny to tease people who are trying to learn it and struggling at it just because some person is telling you to learn some Spanish.
My original point exactly. Even being as clear as I could be that the whole point would be to lampoon the cultural arrogance of this thread by using a false cultural arrogance of my own, you still got suckered into believing that I could actually have contempt for people who were trying to learn another language. I find that rather pathetic. No, in context, I find it very pathetic.
If I had dared start such a thread, the satire would have been of this thread, not of any actual Spanish-speakers. But I guess I was right to not make such a thread. The almost willful misunderstanding by people like you would have been overpowering, and my true point would have been lost completely.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:You're right. It's a good thing you didn't make it then.
Well, heaven forbid you could try to understand my point. You just assume that I'm a nasty little person who wanted to mock people. It doesn't occur to you that it is cultural arrogance itself that I am attacking. But of course you'd have a harder time being self-righteous about me if you allowed yourself to see that.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
No, I was actually going back and re-reading what you said to try to see where I misinterpreted and misunderstood. I'm honestly trying. I'm sorry if I came across as insincere.
Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Oh. Well, in that case, I'm sorry for my response. It's not always easy to interpret someone's meaning on a message board, and I was responding to what I thought was meant as nastiness. I apologize.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
It's okay. I could have been better about wording it. I just meant that you were right; had you started the thread, I more than likely would have taken it wrong and I would have gotten angry and attacked you. I'm going to re-read your posts and think about it overnight to make sure I don't make too haste a decision on how to react to it again.
Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
For my part, it will probably help if I restate and clarify my original point.
quote:Exactly. I've been wanting to make a parody thread about how Hispanics in America can't speak English properly, and how they must be clueless because they can't pronounce this or that English word correctly. I'd have pointed out some of the most common errors, such as saying J for Y, or placing a superfluous E in front of an S, and said that these were signs that these clueless Hispanics needed to learn better English.
The key word here is "parody". I included that very deliberately, and without it the entire paragraph changes its meaning.
The point was that I was irritated at the cultural arrogance of this thread, and I wanted to satirize it by turning it around. Instead of being about English-speakers who were bad at Spanish, it would be about Spanish-speakers who were bad at English. The point would be to try to deflate this thread by demonstrating that native English speakers do not have a monopoly on mispronouncing other people's languages.
But it was the cultural arrogance of saying that English speakers were somehow at fault for this while no one else is that I would have been lampooning. It would not have been my point to mock Spanish-speakers, though doing so would have been required to make the satire work. But again, the victim of the satire would have been this thread, not Spanish-speakers themselves.
quote:The reason I haven't made such a thread was the fear that it would not be understood as a parody of this thread, but that it would instead be mistaken for a racist attack against immigrants. Evidently no one is offended by the idea that Americans in America should be forced to learn someone else's language just to live in America. But the slightest suggestion that immigrants should learn our language to live in our country was just too dangerous to play with. That is why this thread is so offensive.
And this paragraph was just throwing my hands up in exasperation because I knew such a satire would be unsuccessful, precisely because I knew it would be misinterpreted by too many people. I was lamenting the massive negative reaction I knew any such thread would cause.
The last part of the paragraph addressed my irritation at the way people can simultaneously believe that A) nobody who moves to America should have to learn English because it takes away their individual rights, even when it keeps them unable to communicate with the people around them, and B) Americans are stupid/lazy/ignorant because they won't learn other people's languages, even when they are never around people who would use that language to communicate. Why should Americans who aren't leaving America be criticized for not learning other languages while people who move to America from elsewhere are exempt from criticism when they decide not to learn English? It doesn't make sense.
I'm all for people studying whatever languages they wish. I myself have studied five different languages in formal classroom settings (one of which was Spanish, by the way), and several others through informal personal study. (Not that I'm claiming to be a polyglot. The only language I am truly fluent in is English, but that's not for lack of effort, and I learned a lot by studying those other languages even if I can't have a decent conversation in any of them.) I think speaking, or at least being well-acquainted with, a variety of languages is good for a person.
So yes, I wish Americans as a people would make more of an effort to study other languages and get them right. But to demand that anyone learn a foreign language just to live in their own country is excessive. Of course, in come countries, that's a matter of policy. Many nations require their children to study English, even though English is not one of the primary languages of the nation. I don't think that's right. Nobody should be required to specifically learn English unless they're going to move to an English-speaking country, or take a job that requires high levels of interaction with native English speakers. Needless to say, anyone who wants to learn English, or Romanian, or Mongolian, or anything else, should be free to.
You could always point out, of course, that no one ever made these two simultaneous claims, and that I was making much ado about nothing in rising up so vehemently against arguments that no one had made. And you'd probably be right. But I've had these conversations before, and I just kind of saw it coming. Or at least, I figured it would have come up in the satirical thread I considered making. And it made me angry, because it was one of the things that I knew would make it completely unsafe to post such a thread. I knew it would come up and overwhelm any such thread until my original point was completely lost in the shuffle. I probably shouldn't have said anything at all--we certainly could have avoided this heated exchange if I hadn't--but honestly, this is just one of those topics that I truly am passionate about. So my rhetorical side got the better of my common sense, as usual.
Anyway, I hope this disambiguates my posts. I certainly never intended to cause an argument. I was instead lamenting an argument I knew would have occurred as the result of a satire that I had already decided not to make.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Sometimes that is true, but my friends across the street made a very smart choice when they chose to immerse themselves fully in the middle-class American suburban experience. Mom had to work three jobs to pull it off at first, but they're starting to reap the dividends. Their kids now speak perfect English and Spanish. They fit in; they know it, and everybody around them knows it. There are no limits to what their kids will be able to do.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Goddamnit, now you're going to force me to be serious about this topic... damn you.
I do *NOT* think adults should *have* to learn another language if they speak English. I *do* however believe that schools ought to switch to dual language programs, and our children ought to be made bilingual when they're young. As it stands, bilingualism is almost stigmatic in this country, and many children of immigrants lose this resource and right of theirs, the ability to speak their heritage language, because the paradigm in the US is to move them into English and never again teach them in their native language. As a result, the system breeds a certain negative view of languages other than English, especially of Spanish, as being non-functional, non-literary, and just generally inherently inferior to English. To eliminate this stigma, I think dual-language ought to be the norm, and monolingual English speakers, along with monolingual Spanish speakers, would be immersed in BOTH languages.
[ February 15, 2005, 09:28 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
"To eliminate this stigma, I think dual-language ought to be the norm, and monolingual English speakers, along with monolingual Spanish speakers, would be immersed in BOTH languages."
But why Spanish? There are far better languages out there, if we really want to make all our kids bilingual. Catering to the desires of only one specific immigrant population doesn't seem particularly useful.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
What do you mean by "better" languages, Tom? I didn't know there was an objective standard of quality. Living in this hemisphere, Spanish is by far the most useful and the easiest to learn by immersion.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Tom meant to say "by virtue of MY not sucking so much AT SPEAKING THEM."
I didn't mean just Spanish, but that is the sensible choice given where we live and the fact that the second largest cultural group in the US consists of Hispanics.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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quote: Goddamnit, now you're going to force me to be serious about this topic... damn you.
David, I've sort of joked around with this topic also, but if we're getting serious about this topic then I think you're missing an intrinsic point in your argument.
quote:As it stands, bilingualism is almost stigmatic in this country, and many children of immigrants lose this resource and right of theirs, the ability to speak their heritage language, because the paradigm in the US is to move them into English and never again teach them in their native language
Your argument is persuasive until you turn it around and look at it as a native english speaker. For the large part of this country, even non-native english speakers, english is the language of our culture. People want to pass their customs and culture on to their children, and that includes spoken languages. Same argument, different view point.
Why should we be required to teach multiple dialects, at the expense of our own language, just to avoid limiting the perceived erosion of your native language? How many children will bother native-spanish speaking children will learn english at all if they can survive by speaking spanish? And at what point does spanish overtake english, and the argument is flipped, so that english must be taught to spanish speaking children so as to not alienate english speaking children? How many languages should we even be required to teach? Who decides which cultures languages can be ignored, and which should be catered to?
The same fear of losing your cultural identity pervades both sides of the language argument and has been a source of discourse for the better part of 30 years. It's one thing to say "All children should be bilingual", and another to decide which languages they should speak. I'm sure that the French would disagree ,as they always do, about spanish being more important than French...Same for the Germans, Italians, and Chinese (not about French...I'm sure they could all agree that it's not terribly important), but you get my point.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Before you make bilingual education standard, you'd have to educate all the teachers. I was surprised when I learned that a foreign language is not a requirement for my education program - but it isn't.
So no one who graduates with a degree in elementary education has any college level coursework in a foreign language unless they took it as an elective.
And, when I was looking at getting my degree in English and a secondary education certificate, they did not recommend Spanish as the foreign language to study. The English department recommended that all English majors study either French or German as their foreign language. Not sure why.
[ February 15, 2005, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Belle ]
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Well, French and German have a more immediate connection, linguistically, to English than any other two extant languages, Belle.
HT: the undeniable fact is that this country is a nation of immigrants. That we should look to preserving the L1 (first language) of all minority linguistic groups is not an unreasonable goal. The slippery slope argument that you've presented has no basis in historical precedent at all: there is no reason to believe that wide-spread dual language instruction would do anything but IMPROVE our students' academic performance, which presently is abysmal, and it would foster the sorts of intercultural understandings that we are really lacking. I know due to logistical factors that a nation-wide bilingual initiative is not feasible, but I am convinced that in heavily immigrant areas districts MUST turn to dual language instruction to counteract the damage that is done when a student who has received very little if any academic instruction in his L1 are forced to learn another language while their academics are put on hold. Being able to learn content in both languages eases the acquisition of the L2 and has been proven time and again to be the most effective way of developing non-native speakers of English intellectually as well as linguistically.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
David, yeah. I guess I was looking at it more from a teaching perspective than the perspective of actually studying the English language. I would think to teach in certain areas, a knowledge of Spanish would serve you better. Around here, we have a fairly large Hispanic population and I know that ESL teachers are in great demand right now.
But for studying English itself, then yes, I can see French or German over Spanish.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Formal language classes have a remarkably poor record for creating fluent speakers. Unless all education majors at least minored in Spanish or, best, double-majored in it, they wouldn't emerge with the language skills necessary to teach in it.
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:...to learn content in both languages eases the acquisition of the L2 and has been proven time and again to be the most effective way of developing non-native speakers of English intellectually...
I agree that learning how to express a concept in more than one language enhances intellectual development. Wouldn't native English speakers benefit more intellectually by learning a non-Latin-based language as their second language?
I'm thinking Russian or Mandarin Chinese would give a native English-speaker the most conversational coverage worldwide, assuming that you could get by with English in India.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Hey, it'd work for me, but I think the point is to foster understanding within contiguous communities as well, so immersing the local Anglo kids in rural south Texas in Mandarin Chinese and English while their Spanish-speaking companions are immersed in English and Spanish would be, frankly, purdy stoopit.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
All this discussion of Spanish pronunciation reminds me of something that happened to me when I was in 4th grade.
My mom grew up in Texas, in a town near the Mexican border. She grew up eating Tex-Mex, knew some Mexicans and knew how to pronounce some basic Spanish words. Although we didn't grow up in Texas ourselves, enchiladas and tamales were in my mother's cooking repertoire.
I knew how to pronounce tortilla.
One day, we were reading aloud in a group, with the teacher listening. It was my turn, and the word "tortilla" came up. I pronounced the word correctly, "tor-tee-ya." My teacher corrected me and told me to read it as "tor-till-uh." Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Why should we be required to teach multiple dialects, at the expense of our own language
Since when is it at the expense of our own language? You haven't studied much pedagogy if you think being bilingual makes you worse at your native language.
And I also have to note that Spanish is by far one of the easiest languages to learn. It's extremely regular in construction and pronunciation and has a Latin base that makes the "big words" a snap for English speakers once they've mastered the sound of it. We could teach Chinese, but I don't think that (because of its complexity, lack of relation to anything vaguely English and fewer native speakers in our country) would be nearly as succesful.
Any substantial metropolitan area in the US has the resources for immersion study in Spanish and English. If we wanted to, we could very easily construct bilingual curricula.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote: Since when is it at the expense of our own language? You haven't studied much pedagogy if you think being bilingual makes you worse at your native language.
Annie, if the education system is capable of adequately teaching multiple languages then neither language suffers. Unfortunately, we can barely educate our children under the current system. Any attempt to add an immersive language to the curriculum without fixing the current system would be a waste of time and money.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Icarus our school isn't allowed to give homework for kindergarten!
And the other grades must give what is equivalent to ten minutes per grade, so a 1st grader gets 10 minutes worth of homework, a 2nd grader 20 minutes, etc.
My daughter has no homework, except to study for spelling tests, and the parents are asked to keep a reading log of books read either to the child by the parent or to the parent by the child. Emily and I are reading Despereaux right now, she reads the 1st page in each chapter to me and I finish it every night.
That's ridiculous for you to be spending so much time on homework for kids in kindergarten!
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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But what am I going to do, when the teachers assume that the kids get to them already knowing how to read and write?
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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None of my kids could read and write when they entered kindergarten and it hasn't ever been a problem. That's insane. I'm ticked off for your sake. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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It's important in our case to do it, too, because when we have the inevitable meetings and such over our kids' underperformance, our only saving grace is the perception that we are making every reasonable effort. I really wish they could both go to the program that Mango went to last year. Although they too had homework, they were more reasonable, and, frankly, Mango progressed more than Banana did. For all this school's airs, they are not doing a measurably better job. They just give us more work to do. My kids are early-to-bed types, who need a lot of sleep. (Seriously, they start to conk out if I don't let them go to be by seven or so.) I get little enough quality time with them each day, without having to spend so much of it on homework. :-\
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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All I can say is that my girlfriend's (at the time) grandmother was not impressed with my attempts... Now German...I can help you with. And I must say that I'm pretty good with a nice Irish brogue.
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