38 TX Drivers Ticketed for Being Non-English Speaking

[redmeli]

The first thing my German ancestors did upon entering this country was to learn English, and they didn't have to be TOLD to do so. We should insist these people learn the language. My friend's sister was killed by a tractor trailer driver who spoke nor read English, and proceeded to rear end her in a rest area where he was 1) going too fast on the off ramp and 2) couldn't read the sign that said TRUCKS TO THE RIGHT, PASSENGER VEHICLES LEFT. She was burned to death. The problem is now so widespread, where do we begin to fix it?

 

[Nova]

:sigh:

Here yet again we find Anglo-Americans--the least linguistically skilled people on the planet--complaining that others "refuse" to learn English.

Almost everyone on Earth wants to learn English because English skills are key to success in a global economy, but wanting and succeeding aren't the same thing. Some people have better aptitude than others. Learning a foreign language is universally more difficult after a certain age.

Nobody's "refusing," though some will say they "refuse" rather than admit they cannot. Like everything else in life, language aptitude and skills vary widely among individuals; pointing to those with poor skills and insisting they have a character flaw is silly and cruel.

***

As for Mexican-Americans celebrating "Mexican Independence Day," Irish-Americans rather widely continue to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and, at least in the Northeast, Italian-Americans make quite a fuss over the Festival of San Gennaro. Yes, these are nominally religious holidays, but all that drunken puking on Fifth Avenue in honor of St. Paddy is hardly religious devotion. Rather, these saint days have become celebrations of ethnic identity, and one could say the same of Thanksgiving for Anglo-Americans.

***

For the record, I live about 100 miles from the Mexican border and deal with Spanish-speaking individuals everyday. We get by on a mixture of their English and my Spanish, and a large measure of graciousness on everyone's part. Fortunately for me, they don't judge my Spanish as harshly as some of you would judge their English.

 

[Nova]

The first thing my German ancestors did upon entering this country was to learn English, and they didn't have to be TOLD to do so. We should insist these people learn the language. My friend's sister was killed by a tractor trailer driver who spoke nor read English, and proceeded to rear end her in a rest area where he was 1) going too fast on the off ramp and 2) couldn't read the sign that said TRUCKS TO THE RIGHT, PASSENGER VEHICLES LEFT. She was burned to death. The problem is now so widespread, where do we begin to fix it?

I'm very sorry about your sister, but I doubt speeding is caused by poor language skills.

And it's a myth that all of our ancestors learned perfect English within days or weeks of arriving on these shores. My husband's father never learned a word of English until he went to public school because Swedish was so commonly spoken in Northern Illinois in the early 1900s.

Our ancestors learned English much as immigrants learn it today: the first generation, who arrived as adults, learned it poorly, if at all; the second generation, consistently of individuals who were born here or arrived as children, was bilingual; and the third generation was fluent in English and probably spoke little or none of the original tongue.

You can see this today in my own family: my son-in-law and his family came from Russia about 25 years ago. His parents, though college professors and fluent in more than one Eastern-European language, speak and understand little English. My son-in-law and his sister are fluently bilingual because they have spoken English here since they were children. The grandkids only know a few Russian words and will probably forget those unless they choose to study Russian in high school and/or college.