LorenzoGuapo Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6435 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: French
| Message 1 of 3 15 May 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
I believe its well known that a good amount of people that immigrant to new countries choose places where they can fit in easily linguistically for example, lusophones to Portugal, francaphones to Quebec and France, hispanaphones to Spain and so on. Yes, their are exceptions no doubt, however taking the United States into consideration many people can come here and find a language community if they don't speak English, for example the Spanish speaking community, certain big cities have huge communities of people who speak Asian languages, Indian languages, European languages etc. Even in Germany their are plenty of people who speak Turkish, I am sure a Turkish speaking person would feel more comfortable in Germany than in South Korea or Japan, because of communication. I understand in drastic cases people will immigrant anywhere to escape war or famine. However my question to you all is would you or do you know of anyone or think anyone would be willing to immigrant somewhere where there is no one of their language community present? Do you think that person would have a tough or hard time assimilating easily or quickly into the new culture?
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 2 of 3 15 May 2012 at 6:21pm | IP Logged |
There are huge numbers of people who immigrate to places where they don't speak the language. Surely, there are lots around where you live too.
Would I do it? Sure. I suppose I would start learning the language right away, but that doesn't mean I would expect anyone to be equally eager to do so, especially if their most immediate concern is acquiring a minimal sense of normalcy after having fled atrocities or famine.
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eilis91 Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie France Joined 4567 days ago 28 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, French, Italian Studies: German, Yoruba
| Message 3 of 3 15 May 2012 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
There are huge numbers of people who immigrate to places where they don't speak the
language. Surely, there are lots around where you live too. |
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Definitely agree with this. I know many people who have moved to a new country for work or study with little to
no grasp of the language. Some fared better than others. Personally, I learn languages based around my future
plans. I plan to move to Germany to study after I am finished my undergrad degree, thus I am learning German.
Having said that, I'm also learning Yoruba, and have no plans to emigrate to Nigeria...
So basically, while I think language is a major consideration for people emigrating, it is by no means the be all
and end all and there can be many excellent reasons to emigrate even if you cannot yet speak the local language.
A close friend of mine who speaks only English has just been offered an excellent job in Finland, which she is due
to start in two months. So far, she can count to twenty and say a few work-related phrases, but she is determined
to learn!
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