The Immigrant Language Situation

I want to use my new found personal blog to address something I quickly mentioned in my last whereisjoey blog entry.

I recently had the opportunity to do something really cool. I studied Spanish, in Spain, for 6 weeks. Prior to doing that, I took a "summer camp" Spanish class just before 7th grade, a beginning Spanish class (in 7th grade which was a repeat of the summer), Spanish I in 8th grade (again mostly repeat) and a semester in 9th grade (Spanish II). Being that it was a long time ago, I really only remembered the basics (100 words) and little else.

After a week or so in Spain of being immersed, I felt like I got back all that I had forgotten. My vocabulary was growing incredibly quickly and so was my understanding. After two to three weeks, I felt like I was able to operate in most circumstances. In fact I even bought a Spanish cell phone and for those of you that have done that in your native language you know that can be somewhat complicated.

It takes work to learn a language. You have to be committed to buying newspapers, looking up what you don't understand in dictionaries, and being proactive in engaging others in conversation. I used Spanish almost exclusively (sometimes in touristy Marbella, the proprietors were all to eager to use English with foreigners) and I found it seldom led to misunderstandings or whatever excuse people like to use to not speak the language.

Whenever I heard students ask to speak English it enraged me. Not because they didn't speak it, but because they were capable of speaking enough Spanish to operate and chose not to, for whatever reason. That got me thinking. I am sure we have all witnessed the following situation. A person enters a McDonalds/Burger King/Subway/You Name It and asks if someone speaks Spanish. Being that this is Florida, that is not a problem, someone will. The question is, why?

For subtle and highly complex customer service issues, it is understandable why a person would want to use their native tongue. So when they say they want a hamburger, fries and a large coke, why in the hell do they need to speak Spanish? It is the height of laziness to not learn how to say "I want..." and "Thank You". Every person in Butte, Montana knows how to say that in Spanish thanks to the Taco Bell Chihuahua. I was guilty of cutting immigrants slack on that issue. I only speak English, so I argued/questioned how can they hope to learn a language without intensive study? With one exception, I never asked for someone to speak English while in Spain. Even in Germany, I was able to get food without using English most of the time.

We have been conditioned to always be sympathetic to the language situation with immigrants which probably stems from the liberal* advocates of multiculturalism. However, after being a foreigner "living" in another country I can say from experience that after two months (2 weeks longer than I was there) you should be able to get long in nearly any day to day situation. If the immigrant chooses to go to places that speak that language, read newspapers in their language, and avoid English TV, they are just being lazy. Fortunately, just as those immigrants represent the minority in the US, most fellow students took advantage of their time and tried to function in Spanish.

I would have made a lot more progress had I done that as a young child (I met a few Brit school children that had been in Spain for a few months and their Spanish was great), which further cements how ridiculous (and dangerous!) the idea of bilingual education is.

--Joey

*the hippy-drooling-PC-idiot sense, not the classical sense