Learn the damn language!

[Noo_Noo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...back-down.html

See, now this guy stood his ground fantastically.
I can't find a link to the previous story, but basically he's the manager of a post office in Nottingham, UK, who banned people who couldn't speak english because they couldn't be understood and just wasted time and resources trying.

Oh, and he's an immigrant himself who came to the country and learned the language fluently. Good job, I say.
FIFO, for those who know what that stands for

[Record Store Tough Guy]

I have two friends that are fluent in German. (I live in Texas) We will are be sitting and talking and all the sudden the two of them will switch to German. After a moment they realize I have become quiet - they figure out what they did.

Some friends of mine once convinced a college buddy of theirs that German was easier to speak when drunk than English, so he spent an entire evening at a party speaking German.

[StarsAreFixed]

It's really annoying. Dublin is currently infested with about 9 million Spanish students whose sole purpose in life is to block every sort of entrance/path, steal from shops and shout realllyyyy loudly on every form of public transport. French and Italian students pass under the radar, they may be loud but they're not rude and ignorant.

They just keep coming up to me speaking Spanish! Admittedly, it is taught here, but not in very many schools and I studied the wayyy more mainstream French. It's extremely rude to presume I'll understand. There are also plenty of people who have 3 words of English and when I'm trying to puzzle out the english words they've spewed out randomly in really thick accents they somehow get the idea that *I* don't have any english either and immediately burst into their own language. The worst is the people who'll come up and say 'Do you speak Polish/German/Italian?' and let out a massive sigh when I say no. Ughh.

Irish (Gaeilge- not Gaelic which is related but different and refers to Scotland only) is taught atrociously here which helps it to die out that bit further. Everybody learns it for 14 years through our school system and not one of my friends would be able to string a sentence together that isn't 'The sun is shining/Can I go to the toilet?'. I, however, am totally fluent. I want SC's to speak it in front of me thinking I wouldn't know it either. I'd love that

[AdvancedFlea]

Oh, and he's an immigrant himself who came to the country and learned the language fluently. Good job, I say.
FIFO, for those who know what that stands for

There's a friend of mine who works for the immigration service. If she's giving an imigrant a test and she can't understand him, she fails him (or her)

I think the mods are right, we're a liiiiiittle bit of topic here, talking about immigrants in general and I do apologise,that was not my intention. I didn't expect this to be quite a sensitive issue for some people

A related one happend to a friend of mine in Aus. He works on the telephone support desk for SelecTV and he had a guy call up, speak very basic austrailian-english, but when my friend couldn't help him, he started talking to someone in the background,cussing my friend in german, I think. Problem is that Cody understood german. Not perfectly but enough to know when he was being insulted lol

[Digitalpotato]

Ode to joy....The "I learned your language...now learn mine" types. I don't have a problem but I wouldn't expect people to learn English if I lived in Poland.


Lemme refresh our memories with this story of an Israeli SC....

SC: *Speaking in Hebrew*
Manager: Excuse me?
SC: *hebrew*
Manager: I'm sorry I can't understand oyu
SC: in perfect english: WHy does no one out here speak hebrew?! Nazis.
Manager: How can I help? (She should have booted him...but he was a foreign orientation student and would have gotten bitched at by the people in charge)
SC: Is that HAM?! Don't you know that's not Kosher?!
Manager: You don't have to order it. I'll replace my gloves if oyu want.

[Diablo]

When I was in the USN, we would get a lot of people from around world working in Reactor Department. Funny thing is, getting the average US teenager a Secret security clearance can be a pain in the ass whereas it was usually easier for someone that immigrated into the US. We had a guy from Quebec, an Egypt fellow, guys from Singapore, etc. Well one day we get a slew of new guys. One guy I could not understand at all and it was obvious that he couldn't understand me...really heavy Spanish accent and he was struggling to understand me. No big deal as probably a third of the US military speaks spanish. So I call my buddy Sammy over who grew up in Mexico city. Sammy starts talking to the guy for about five minutes...
"So...whats the kid's name?" I ask.
"I have no fucking clue...the kid can't speak Spanish either".
Turns out, this kid was from Chicago, born and raised. Smart kid...ended up being one of my best workers...but thanks to the Chicago public school system, this kid could barely talk or read at all. I am rather proud to say that within two years of being on the boat, the kid was taking College Courses and really improving. We literally had guys teaching him how to read and write while on watch with him. How the fuck he got through life up to that point is beyond me and just shows how messed up our education system can be.

Had another great kid that was a Hmong refugee from Wisconsin. What little English he could say sounded like the Mom from "Bobby's World". Wicked smart kid though.

[Jester]

SC: in perfect english: WHy does no one out here speak hebrew?! Nazis.

SC: Is that HAM?! Don't you know that's not Kosher?!

I am Jewish. I speak no Hebrew (other than a very few words). I do not keep Kosher. No one in my immediate family does.

However, many of my relatives are Hebrew, some very religiously so, and many keep Kosher, some more strictly than others. I do not like all of my relatives all that much, but even the most strictly Kosher, the ones that are very religious, would NEVER expect non-Jews (or even other Jews that they didn't know, for that matter), to speak Hebrew. They would not assume that those who did not speak any Hebrew were Nazis. And they would never, EVER berate an employee at a non-Kosher restaurant for that (let me repeat this) non-Kosher restaurant having a non-Kosher food item such as ham or bacon.

I have gone out to eat here in Key West at a non-Kosher restaurant with two of my older cousins who keep so strictly Kosher that, in their travels, they always bring some of their own food with them, just in case they cannot find a Kosher place to eat. (There are, by the way, ZERO Kosher restaurants in Key West. Even our "Jewish" deli serves ham and bacon and other non-Kosher items.) When said strictly Kosher relatives dined with me at said restaurant, they actually did order something off the menu....a lovely salad with a lovely dressing, all of which met with their quite strict dietary needs. And I cannot emphasize how truly strict their particular dietary needs were, going beyond what I thought I knew about what food needed to be to be Kosher.

In the New York City area, which has one of the highest concentrations of Jews in all of the U.S. (if not THE highest), I cannot picture a Jewish resident expecting a non-Jew to speak Hebrew. Hell, I think that any non-Jew that did speak Hebrew would be considered a surprise to the Jewish population there, generally speaking.

In short? This Israeli exchange student was not in any way a representative of Jews in general, and was pretty much a walking butt plug.

[Arwyn Q]

My area has a large population of Middle Eastern and Indian people, many of whom speak decent English, but have such a heavy accent that it's difficult to communicate. They usually come to shop at night, which is when I tend to work. I don't really wish to be able to speak their language, but wish that I could understand accents better. It would cut down on the number of times people ask me where the bathroom is and I can't tell what they're saying - I've gotten more than my fair share of weird looks because of that. >.>

[Jay 2K Winger]

The story of the French girls brings to mind this little story from the wholesale club. I may have told it before, if so, I apologize.

I'm working on register, and this group of small Hispanic boys run up to me. The ringleader looks up at me with a shit-eating grin and says "Tu eres gordo!" and the way he said it implied that he didn't think I'd understand what he said, which is "You're fat!"

Now, I'm overweight, I admit it, but I'm not morbidly obese. But I took Spanish for four years in high school, and I can remember enough to respond in kind: "Y tu eres feo!" Basically, I told the kid, "And you're ugly!"

The lot of them looked SHOCKED, and ran away.

[Jester]

The ringleader looks up at me with a shit-eating grin and says "Tu eres gordo!"

I can remember enough to respond in kind: "Y tu eres feo!"

I would have probably looked down at the kid, smiled my evil smile, and said, "Callete, pinchy pendejo!" (For those who don't speak Spanish, that basically means, "Shut up, fucking asshole." Pretty much a damn rude thing to say.

[Digitalpotato]

In short? This Israeli exchange student was not in any way a representative of Jews in general, and was pretty much a walking butt plug.

And an EW who is going to learn a hard lesson when the school year starts and he loses the protection given to him by the person(s) in charge of the foreign exchange program so he can't go around calling people like my manager "Nazis" without getting booted. Had he not been part of a summer orientation program and thus given a small debit card that could be used in the student centre, the manager would have told him "Get OUT." Because obviously, the person(s) in charge of the program would have taken their side and got us yelled at.

[Jester]

Personally, I would have taken the yelling at. But then, being Jewish myself, I probably have more leeway in calling bullshit on this person, especially if they called me a "Nazi" for not speaking Hebrew.

My only real regret would be that the few words I do know in Hebrew are NOT curse words. 'Cause I don't think cussing this upright fecal stain in Spanish would have quite the same effect.....

[Jay 2K Winger]

I would have probably looked down at the kid, smiled my evil smile, and said, "Callete, pinchy pendejo!" (For those who don't speak Spanish, that basically means, "Shut up, fucking asshole." Pretty much a damn rude thing to say.

Yeah, see, they didn't cover rude language in my classes. Not to mention if my Spanish teacher those last two years (who called herself "La Bruja" -- the Witch) had heard such language being used, we would have very quickly deeply, deeply regretted it.

I just went with the first thing that came to mind.

[BusBus]

Me: (smiling at the girl who just insulted me thinking I couldn’t understand her) vous voulez dire deux filles non-laides et une limite qui regarde comme elle a été frappée dans le visage avec une cosse ? Numéro. Ne m'insultez pas jamais chient encore tête et obtiennent la baise hors de mon magasin (You mean 2 borderline not-ugly girls and one who looks like she’s been hit in the face with a spade? No. Don’t ever insult me again shit head and get the fuck out of my store )

Yes, that was a mouthful and yes, I did swear at them because I’d had it the second they started with that crap. My manager, standing behind them, could not believe I could speak French so well...but had NO idea what I just said to them

Je ne baisse pas ma mere chaque nuit-je ne suis pas francais[e].
J'espere que ton francais oral est plus bon que ton francais ecrit (oui, oui, je sais que ma grammaire n'est pas parfait....j'ai aucune idee comment faire les accents sur mon ordinateur).

Boo. Just...boo.

Meh, I laughed a little (the simple jokes amuse me greatly)

When I first moved to B.C. I lived in a small redneck town for awhile, and had these regular customers who had to get their young (6-ish) daughter to translate everything for them. I can't remember what language they spoke, but it was something pretty rare for this part of the world, and I very much doubt there was anyone else within 100 miles who could speak it. After a few months, I found out they'd been living there for over 20 years, and in that time hadn't picked up a single word of english.

In BC (at least in the Vancouver area) there is a significant southeast Asian Population (China, the SARs, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines etc etc). Some of these countries (i.e. the Philippines, Hong Kong), English is commonly taught. Some, not so much. It is quite normal in the southeast asian population to live in multi generational households (taking care of your parents, who look after your kids). So, there are families here who sponsor their elderly parents to come live here. Now, it would be pretty harsh to expect a 70 year old person to learn a language that is completely different than their native tongue. I would never expect that!! The one frustration that comes out of this, though, is when you cannot assist this 70 year old because the person who sponsored them in the first place does not accompany them to assist in translating when it might be needed. It is frustrating for me and for them because there is very little that can be done without communicating. I can speak other languages, but sadly none of them are incredibly useful in my workplace.

If my partner and I ever move to his country of origin (oh please oh please), I sure as hell am taking him everywhere until I get the hang of the language (still only know the bare basics...I'm not 70 years old, so I have no excuse).

[Crab]

French
I speak French very fluently. I can speak French as well as I can speak English and this has come in useful on a few occasions. Usually in France. I was dealing with a group of 3 French customers who spoke English pretty well. The thing is that they did not like the fact I would not exchange their 6 month old laptop because they had pulled off several keys. They started talking, unaware that I knew what they were saying. This is what happened (the translations are only rough)

FC: Cet idiot anglais est juste un abruti. Il baise probablement sa mère chaque nuit. Je vais le gifler dans une minute (This English idiot is just being an asshole. He probably fucks his mother every night. I’m going to slap him in a minute ) Are you sure you can’t exchange it? Even for 3 pretty girls like us?

Me: (smiling at the girl who just insulted me thinking I couldn’t understand her) vous voulez dire deux filles non-laides et une limite qui regarde comme elle a été frappée dans le visage avec une cosse ? Numéro. Ne m'insultez pas jamais chient encore tête et obtiennent la baise hors de mon magasin (You mean 2 borderline not-ugly girls and one who looks like she’s been hit in the face with a spade? No. Don’t ever insult me again shit head and get the fuck out of my store )

I very much doubt you could have responded to them in fluent French because you had to use a machine translator for this, as evidenced by the translation of "no." as "numéro", which is a machine mistake. Even if your french was poor, no human being would make this mistake.