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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| katilica Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5471 days ago 70 posts - 109 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: French, Catalan | Message 17 of 74 29 April 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Good point, I hadn't thought about that one. I believe that the worst ones here would be having to call 911 and trying to communicate with an injured person. As for the other scenario, everyone is entitled to a professional interpreter and would be assisted in filling out paperwork. Of course, even if it was English only, where does that leave individuals such as the Deaf? Even with a knowledge of English they wouldn't be able to call 911 since they can't hear the response and would have to wait for someone else to do so. OK, so maybe I got a little carried away there and started to look at every possible 'what if'. As for your suggestion on administering the exams in English and Spanish only, I think that the whole reason they're doing this is because of Spanish the others are just an added bonus. But hey, that's just my paranoid mind at work, haha. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5696 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 18 of 74 29 April 2010 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Just wanted to add, that these are the primaries, meaning he's only running against other Republicans (3 others in fact). In primaries, on both sides of the spectrum, politicians will take more radical positions in order to get their party's vote, i.e. to "out-republican", in this case, their opponents. This is of course a sad example of such. As for the comment on his syntax and diction, I hardly think it's reasonable to judge someone's intelligence by the complexity of a 30 second campaign spot—they are meant to be concise and to the point, if only for the sake of viewers. Edited by egill on 29 April 2010 at 11:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5922 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 19 of 74 29 April 2010 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am fascinated by immigrant enclaves in the United States where you can get by pretty
much by speaking a language like Spanish or French or German. I think that in a place like this, where being bilingual is the norm, tests should be given in the other language as well. I offer the example of my mother. My mother does not speak English well. She can say a few things and she'll talk to someone in English if she needs to, but it's difficult for her. She has tried to learn English. She has an okay passive understanding of English (spoken). However, she does not have the time to study English every day (and she seems to be at that point where she feels that even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to learn another language). There are a lot of people like my mom who have difficulty learning English. Should they not be allowed to drive? I disagree with the English-only movement. Especially the "If you come to America, learn English!" phrase. It's just so horribly ironic. I wonder what language the Indians in your area were speaking before they were thrown out of their own land and forced to speak another language (and in many cases, be severely penalized if they spoke their own?), Mr/Ms. American Who Wants People to Learn the Language of the Land. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 20 of 74 29 April 2010 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
An irrelevant observation whose only purpose is to pull a guilt trip on a bunch of English-speaking white guys in order to intimidate them into giving other groups what they want. This argument reeks of racism, if only in reverse. There must surely be a more intelligent way to discuss the language issue in the United States. Edited by frenkeld on 29 April 2010 at 5:16pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 21 of 74 29 April 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not to mention we are spending billions of dollars of tax payer's money on translated materials for these people... that don't pay taxes... It doesn't really make sense to me. I think the major problem that people learning English have is that they group themselves with people that speak their native language, so they learn next to nothing most of the time 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 22 of 74 29 April 2010 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, but if I were to move to a latin American country, where Spanish is quite obviously the native/official language, do I expect that country to make me a custom test? No. I'm there in their country, therefore I must learn their language. It applies to every country. If I went to China, I'd have to learn Mandarin. I wouldn't be able to rely on my English in another country. Edited by datsunking1 on 29 April 2010 at 5:22pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 23 of 74 29 April 2010 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Remember that Romania "inherited" a noticeable minority of Hungarians (including Csangos and Szeklers - about 1.3 million), and smaller ones of Ukrainians and Germans among other ethnic groups because of the Treaty of Trianon (related to the Treaty of Versailles). When I was in Transylvania recently where many of Romania's Hungarians live, I saw no signs (including driving/traffic ones) in Hungarian even in towns with sizeable Hungarian minorities (or even the odd communities which had a Hungarian majority). The most Hungarian that I encountered (semi-)officially in the area was in touristy places (e.g. signs or plaques at certain tourist attractions) or in businesses owned by Hungarians which would cater to Hungarians (usually a bookshop which carried mainly Hungarian inventory). Of course when I was attentive enough, I could also hear Hungarian among passengers on the bus, train etc. in certain towns. However all official documents of these Hungarians are issued in Romanian only (e.g. passport, driver's license) by virtue of their being Romanian citizens, and all of them had to interact with anything related to the government (including public education) in Romanian. None of them as far as I can remember took their licensing exams or anything related in Hungarian which only makes sense while in Romania - legal statues or not. However there are Hungarian schools, and my Hungarian contacts/friends (at least the ones who largely came of age after the fall of Ceacescu's nationalist-communist régime in 1989) were also allowed in varying degrees to undertake education in primary school or secondary school in Hungarian, but not to the exclusion of Romanian. A different example for comparison is Canada since it does things differently from the USA but shares a similar trait by consisting largely of people descended from immigrants who've entered the population throughout the past 2 centuries. English and French are official, but in practice it is pretty much a lie based on what I saw during my time in Canada. Outside Québec and properties of the Federal Government (e.g. airports) French is virtually unknown to any practical level (meeting some English-speaking Canadian who can say without a thick accent "bonjour" or "voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" doesn't count :-P). The official imposition of French is more a relic of history when the French and English were fighting for control for that part of North America rather than some high-minded policy of language tolerance. Indeed when you see Chinese-Canadians interact with Indian-Canadians, it's not as if the former have learned Hindustani or the latter have learned a Chinese language. This is even more logical/sensible/expected when considering the demographics of Canada. They can boost their respective native languages all they want but they effectively follow an English-only policy (more likely French-only in Québec) without legal or governmental involvement, and these are immigrants who would seemingly benefit from the lack of an "English-only" policy. Driver's licenses or health insurance cards are issued by provinces and the most accommodation that you can see is a bilingual English/French license/card and even then that's restricted to certain provinces that are beside Québec (e.g. Ontario). Driving exams (written or in the car) are offered in English (French in Québec or on request in a few areas outside Québec), but I don't recall the sizeable Mandarin-speaking or Hindustani-speaking communities raising a fuss at having to do these tests in languages that aren't their native ones (it's either because the immigrants already earned their driver's licenses in their countries of birth OR they actually have learned enough English (or in a few cases French) as a second language to handle these Canadian tests). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5790 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 24 of 74 29 April 2010 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes. After the 1996 welfare reform bill, the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers to file taxes. The same bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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