Speak English! Options

[radhikaeatsraman]

Okay, here's the deal. Hosing (known as Hosing Yu in chat) works in retail twice a week. He will sometimes get customers who don't know English or even bother trying to speak it. It gets him pretty annoyed, and I can see where he's coming from. Yen, on the other hand, believes we shouldn't be angry or irritated with these people and try to be understanding.

I believe that while in the United States, you should at least make the effort to speak English, even if it's not the best. If you don't want to do that, stick with someone who can speak it. Don't go up to people expecting them to speak whatever language. Yes, this is the US, and yes, there are many different cultures here, but there is one language that unites us; that language is ENGLISH. I wish some people would just realize that.

[radhikaeatsraman]

I'm talking about immigrants, Gigi.
I can understand if they're new in the country. But shouldn't they make the time to try and learn the language? If I were to emigrate to China, I'd do something beforehand to try and learn a little bit of Chinese.

[Gigi]

I'm talking about immigrants, Gigi.
I can understand if they're new in the country. But shouldn't they make the time to try and learn the language? If I were to emigrate to China, I'd do something beforehand to try and learn a little bit of Chinese.

Granted, your Chinese is good enough to converse with. Your efforts would be appreciated but it all comes down to the final execution of the language, no? What if you studied Chinese for months and months, and when it came time to talk to a native Chinese speaker, you froze? I don't think you'd appreciate it if your efforts went totally unnoticed.

Of course, this is all hypothetical.

The thing is, there is no way to know if someone's trying or not. How do you know if that one person who so-called, "refuses" to speak English didn't do something beforehand, too? Maybe they're just not confident enough yet. Also keep in mind that English is much harder to learn than most other languages, what with all the bizarre spellings, silent letters and exceptions to certain rules.

But yes, I do agree that long-time immigrants should learn the language. What's the purpose of moving to a whole new country and to live in the same culture as you did before? Why shut yourself off like that?

There's these guys in my Chem class, who I know have been living in North America for many years now and choose to speak Cantonese to each other all the time. Okay, so speaking Cantonese to one another isn't such a big deal. The problem? When they speak English, it's horribly grammatically incorrect and sometimes incoherent. That's the result of years spent ignoring English-speaking culture. That annoys me SO MUCH.

Wow, long post. Sorry about that.