In America - Spanish, French, and other 'ese's or 'ish' es

I feel:

Languages are culture. We are one of the most mono-cultural nations on earth and we could use the diversification that immigration has brought us.

I agree with Craven... but there's a part of town where the stores and businesses have ONLY Korean on them. I'd love to shop around there and learn new things, but I feel they don't want me in their stores...

Exclusion is a big part of foreign language resentment.

So should I go in to the interesting shops anyhow? Would they resent me being there?

I doubt it. Ever see that episode of Seinfeld where the ladies cutting hair are laughing at the customers and discussing them in Korean (I think, cause Frank understood them)?

In my experience this is far more likely to be "projecting" than real.

Most people seem to have a constitutional objection to languages they don't understand, it makes them wary and the mere presence is considered rude. Most of the time I think this is unwarranted.

I have no idea if you will be resented, but I do think you are more likely to feel that way.

We just got a digital camera. The instruction booklet is in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portugese and Korean. I love it.
I was having more fun looking up how to say "Check that you have the following items:" that I forgot I was supposed to be learning how to use the twenty-two buttons on the damned thing.


Verificare di possedere i seguenti oggetti:
Verifique se possui os sequintes itens:
Check that you have the following items:
Compruebe que dispone de los sigguientes elementos:
Prufen Sie, ob Folgendes zutrifft:

Aren't humans fascinating? Isn't it amazing that we can get along at all?

Craven, thanks. Next time I'm up in that neighborhood, I'll poke my head into the little grocery. I have found some wonderful things in places like that, and I don't want to let my trepidation interfere any more.

Joe, I like to do that too! And I think the camera ought to be intuitive (but they never are, these days...).

A friend of mine came from a part of Minnesota in which Norwegian was spoken in the home and around town, and English was a big drag they had to learn in school.

Ya 'spose they resent the fact that there is no Norwegian translation of how to operate them there 22 buttons?

Well, the fact right now is that if immigrants want a good job in America, they'll have to learn English anyway to do it. If everyone here becomes more multilingual to fix this problem, people will bitch that we're babying them - but if we don't, than it excludes people from the job market - a bigger issue here than the sign one. I don't think there's anything wrong with learning multiple langauges for either side, personally - I'd actually prefer that. I find it pretty funny though that when Americans go to other countries, they expect everyone there to speak English to them.

I began to wonder when I saw the sign in the shop window that said English spoken here if by some miracle I had been transported to a foreign country.

thank you all. He takes lots of things much to seriously and he's more concerned with the 'babying' people that don't speak english I believe. I just wanted to some other opinions. thanks y'all (btw, he is from NYC and sometimes thinks my southern akkcent is a foreign language lol - maybe he's scared I'm going to put up signs all over the house with 'drawl-speak')

I was born in New York, but lived much of childhood in the South--all in all, about half my life North and half in the South. I am always at home in either the big appule, or in the South. And i am amused by the speech patterns of both.

I axe ya why din't youse people in da sout ever loyne to talk good english?

To busy fleecin' the Yankees . . .

By the by, if my source was correct, "don't take any wooden nickels" derives from a corruption of "don't take any wooden nutmegs," referring to an apparently notorious con of New England merchants trading in the South in the 1700's and 1800's.

I love instruction booklets with 20 languages
There's hardly ever a Dutch version but I like that, it's far more fun to try to understand how to use a camera with only french or italian or whatever instructions
Whenever I go on a holiday I have to speak a different language cuz absolutely no one speaks dutch, but I think that's an advantage.
I learned Dutch, English, French, German, Latin, a bit of ancient Greek and a little bit of Spanish in school.
What's that like in America??

Hmm, I'd always assumed that a big reason for those multi-language instruction manuals was so less localization would need to be done when products are sold overseas. E.g.: "Instead of doing 10 different printings for all the countries we'll be selling this in, why not just do one big printing so we can ship any package to any country, and at the same time we'll be helping people who don't speak their country's native language."

Mebbe that's not too accurate though.

I do believe you've got it, Monger; it's global marketing that's driving the trend, not so much a thought that there will be a lot of Portuguese speakers in Massachusetts buying a digital camera (although there are such speakers, and I'm sure some of them buy digi cams).

It always annoys me to see that many English speakers expect the world to speak English- basically a simplified jumble of other languages with chaotic spelling- and yet, 85% of people in some research I did across all sections of life in the UK could not use English properly themselves. It's so hypocritical. Whereas I would expect myself to perfection my French if I went to France, or learn Hungarian if I chose to live in Budapest (and thus understand the frustration of hundreds and thousands of people not knowing the language of the place in which they want to work) , cultural and lingüistic diversity is wonderful. Out of my whole VI form college (basically, the English equivalent of a High School), I was the only one to go on to University to study languages; everyone else thought them irrelevant because of mighty English. Not only is this attitude arrogant and somewhat naïve, but it shows people set in their ways. Many English-speaking people would, if they moved to Spain, go to an English-speaking area, never discovering the benefit of accepting another language or culture. I know I wouldn't do this, as I dislike the English be Supreme attitude that many people have; and, as the Spanish put it wonderfully, 'to speak another language is to have another soul.'