My stance on this is, that if you live in this country, you had better be prepared to speak English. Maybe it isn't the government's place to force English, but it is in your best interests to learn it.

My last rotation at Stanford ER, we had a hispanic male come in, late 50's, clearly suffered a stroke. Didn't speak a word of English, and nobody in the ER spoke Spanish (which I thought was odd, but nobody fessed up to knowing Spanish). The Spanish interpreter on call was in another department and was going to be delayed. So the guy keeps trying to pull out the IV's, and we're trying to get him to stop, but none of us know how to tell him this and he's not responding to English commands. We ended up tieing him to the bed, and he put up a pretty good fight. Then his daughter (who also didn't speak any English) showed up. She managed to get him to calm down, but it wasn't until the translator showed up that we found out about conflicting drugs/medications he'd been taking and that he had some drug allergies.

Bottom line is, a lot of critical information needs to be passed in a timely manner with regard to patient history and condition. And, like it or not, most ER personnel in this country don't speak Spanish. So, it's in every immigrant's best interests to learn to communicate in English.

 

I think it's insanely ignorant of them to even think about coming here and expecting us to change and adapt for them.

 

werrrrrrrrrrrrrrd :werd:

many immigrants enclose themselves in communities surrounded by nothing but people from their home country. they barely try to communicate with english speaking people, and most of the time they don't need to. even in high school, groups of immigrant students would stick together like glue and never stray out of their group. their english was just good enough to get through school, but otherwise terrible.

there is also this concept of learning english before immigrating, which my parents did. my dad studied english so hard, he got the highest score on the TOEFL ever (in taiwan, at the time.. it's probably been broken by now), and didn't have the slighest hint of an accent. his english was better than mine, and i was born and raised here! and no, he wasn't rich, well off, privileged, or anything. both my parents were damned poor when they were growing up.

NightShade is totally right.. we make it far too easy for people to get away without learning english, and people take advantage of it.

 

I think everyone who live here should learn English. It is the way we communicate in America. Communication is key for A LOT of things. Now let me play the devils advocate. People are saying, yea if I move to another country I wouldnt expect them to adapt to my needs. But look at it like this, there is no other country even close to America in terms of diversity. Having a pamplet printed in Spanish is not done to cater the needs of a single person. Its to cater to uhhh how many Spanish speakers are there now? Same with other languages.

I dont see immigrant communities as a problem. Yes, it will keep someone from needing to learn English or assimilate to America, but thats their choice of whether they want to or not. America gives them that choice. Thats the beauty of it.

And what exactly are we having to do to adapt to them? There are a lot of services that cater to Spanish speakers, Chinese, or Vietnamese. There are signs that are in different languages now, even telephone operators. Uhh, I didnt have to do a thing to adapt to them. As long as I still get what I need in English, thats fine with me.

Learning English is needed to succeed around here. If you dont want to learn it, your loss.

 

will for president

 

:hi5: Will for prime minister h:

 

Will for...........













































dude... can I borrow 5 bucks? :exnbp:

 

I thought I said that I don't care about people that don't care to better themselves. My only point is that the language barrier can't be crossed overnight. I know people that have only been here 6 months that can already speak flunetly. Those kind of people are a good examples of people that are bettering themselves. If a person doesn't care to learn, I don't care to try and help them.

 

... that's because you're on the phone. :happysad:

 

Or because there is probably not a lot of Russian speakers in Cambodia. Or I could be mistakened....