Postmaster Refuses to Serve Non-English Speaking Patrons
by Special Correspondent Nadra Kareem
The Daily Mail has published an article about a British postmaster’s controversial move: He’s refusing to serve customers who don’t speak English. Complicating matters is that the postmaster, who works in a culturally diverse section of Nottingham, is of Sri Lankan decent. He became a naturalized British citizen 17 years ago.
“I tell them if they don’t speak the language and they can’t be bothered to learn, then don’t bother coming here,” the Daily Mail quoted Deva Kumarasiri as saying.
In making this statement, Kumarasiri ignores his background of privilege. For instance, later in the article, we discover that he learned English in school in his native Sri Lanka. This is an opportunity that scores of immigrants never receive.
The author of the article doesn’t say what age Kumarasiri was when he began to learn English, but studies have shown that the younger a person is when introduced to a language, the better chance the person has of mastering it. So, if Kumarasiri was a minor when he learned English, he has an additional edge over the immigrants he accuses of not “bothering to learn” the language. And is it fair to say that the immigrants in his area haven’t bothered to learn? I could argue that Kumarasiri didn’t bother to learn English either. He had to speak English by virtue of being a student in a school that instructed him in the language.
Throughout the article, Kumarasiri continues to make arguments that are downright shoddy. He resorts to using offensive clichés when he says, “If you don’t want to be British, go home.” Even when he puts more thought into his explanations for banning non-English speakers from his shop, his points are flawed. For example, Kumarasiri argues, “The fabric of the nation begins to unravel if we don’t all speak the same language.”
Really? Well, how does he explain Canada, an officially bilingual country? It hasn’t unraveled because some of its citizens speak French and others speak English? I’m not denying that there has been much tension in Canada over this issue. There’s even been talk at certain points of time that the country would split over the language issue, but ultimately that didn’t happen. Canada remains intact. And in early 20th century America, Western and Eastern Europeans did business in their native languages and sent children to schools where they could be taught in those languages. There’s also Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. A former British colony, English is spoken throughout the country but so are about 400 other dialects. If a country were to unravel because not everyone spoke the same language, Nigeria would certainly be at the top of the list.
Despite the holes in his argument, Kumarasiri has received overwhelming praise from Daily Mail readers, with many arguing that a white person would have been called racist for taking such a stand.
“Thankfully he has been allowed to make his point without fear of being branded as a bigot!” one reader wrote. That reader also remarked. “If all immigrants [who] came to this country were like this marvelous man, would anyone ever have a problem with them? I think not. Unfortunately too many seem determined not to embrace this country in any way, shape or form.”
With the last point, the reader strikes the subtext of the article and of Kumarasiri’s claims. The argument here isn’t simply about language but about assimilation and the “threat” posed by Britain’s immigrants from the Indian subcontinent’s Muslim countries. Kumarasiri has to be a Union Jack waving, English-speaking immigrant to show that he is “safe,” much in the same way that Barack Obama cannot express anger without fear of alienating white America.
“When I left Sri Lanka I left behind that country’s culture, customs and language,” Kumarasiri explained. “I have done my utmost ever since to be part of this country’s culture.”
I feel empathy for Kumarasiri if I view him as a brown man who is attempting to “belong” in a white imperialist nation that may consider him a threat if he doesn’t assimilate. Moreover, as Britain increasingly becomes the home to the natives of countries it once colonized, it is suffering from an identity crisis that has made Brits increasingly resentful of immigrants. Hence, Kumarasiri’s very public declaration of his allegiance to English customs and language can be taken as a plea for Brits not to resent him as they do other brown immigrants. “I’m not like them,” he seems to be saying with this move.
While I can empathize with Kumarasiri, I take issue with his characterization of immigrants who don’t speak English. Yet, I’m aware that many Americans have the same views of non-English speakers in the U.S. My perspective on language politics was forever changed when, a decade ago, I accepted a teaching position with the Los Angeles Unified School District straight out of college. My task? To help 30 fourth graders at an elementary school in South L.A. become fluent English speakers.
Most of my students’ parents, who came from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, spoke even less English than their children did but routinely implored me to turn their kids into fluent English speakers. That said, the idea that some immigrants are willfully determined not to learn English is ridiculous to me. These parents knew that having their children master English would create countless opportunities. If given the chance to learn English themselves, I have no doubt that the parents would have seized the opportunity to do so. However, most parents were working class or poor and could not pay to take an English class or be tutored in English. The work schedules of parents often impeded them from taking English classes as well, which suggests to me that more businesses which employ non-English speakers should create opportunities for such workers to learn the language.
The other obstacle to learning English is fear. Even the nine and 10-year-olds I taught feared that they would be ridiculed for making mistakes when speaking English. It is a fear that I shared when trying to converse entirely in Spanish with their parents. Wondering if I was rolling my R’s properly or if I was using the subjunctive when I should have been the using the preterite or another tense could all too often trip me up when speaking Spanish. And for Spanish speakers, using words in English that contain the “th” sound or begin with the letter S were just as daunting. The problem is that many of the fears my students had about speaking English were valid.
People in U.S. who speak English with a foreign accent are often dismissed, ridiculed, rudely received or told amazingly that they are not speaking English. These blows to the psyche make it easy for an English language learner to simply withdraw and give up on speaking English.
Because of the chilly reception English language learners receive in the States, I was surprised to visit Spain and Italy several years ago and encounter people who didn’t care if I spoke Spanish and Italian imperfectly. They just wanted to communicate with me because I was a fellow human being. Italians, in particular, went on and on while speaking with me, despite the fact that I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying. But a funny thing began to happen. The more they spoke to me, the more I was able to comprehend and the less self-conscious I felt about attempting to respond to them in Italian. If English speakers want to facilitate a growth in the amount of English being spoken in their communities, they need to embrace non-native speakers of the language rather than shun them.
(Thanks to reader Ama for sending this in!)
(Photo Credit: The Daily Mail, via Raymonds Press)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:
Pathetic. Let me guess, he also wishes that the Indian subcontinent would still be under colonial British rule as well?
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:31 am ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:
People in U.S. who speak English with a foreign accent are often dismissed, ridiculed, rudely received or told amazingly that they are not speaking English. These blows to the psyche make it easy for an English language learner to simply withdraw and give up on speaking English.
ye the irony is that they can speak at least 2 languages, while most (white) Americans can’t even speak English properly, let alone know a 2nd language! LOL.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:32 am ¶
Sobia wrote:
Honestly, I am not surprised at all. All communities, including South Asian ones, have a Kumarasiri unfortunately. I have come across them, many in academia. Some call them sell outs, others call them native informants. But the basic idea is that there is some attempt, whether conscious or not, to gain power in a society in which we are denied power. Even though I agree with your point
“I feel empathy for Kumarasiri if I view him as a brown man who is attempting to “belong” in a white imperialist nation that may consider him a threat if he doesn’t assimilate.”
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people like Kumarasiri. Empathy perhaps. Not sympathy. The problem with the things that people like Kumarasiri say or do is that they make things harder for the rest of us. And I’m not taking about those inconvenienced by his racist (and it is racist even though its coming from a brown man) demands. The real problems arise when others, (non-ingroup members) as was pointed out by the comments, assume this type of behaviour displayed by Kumarasiri is appropriate, and, “damn it, if a brown man says these people are stubborn for not learning English then they must really be stubborn.” What he says becomes legitimate in the eyes of others because he is an “insider.”
The insider in this case is painting his own people as a threat to British society thus legitimizing their fear of the “other.” And this to me is extremely dangerous.
We have a similar problem in Canada with Muslim native informants, or “sell outs” as I lovingly call them. They argue that Muslims need to assimilate to Canadian values because Canadian values are superior to any other values. (They truly believe that Western/Northern values are superior to Eastern/Southern ones.) They will then demonize those Muslims who refuse to assimilate* by stating that because they are not accepting Canadian values they may do things like chop people’s heads off or stone women. (Because we’re barbaric like that unless the enlightened non-Muslim, White person guides us.) They are constantly warning people about the threat of Islamists in Canada who are trying to impose shariah law on the country. The call themselves “progressive” Muslims, very purposely, to seem more attractive and less threatening to non-Muslims. Then they make the rest of us out to be scary Islamists. They paint themselves as the “good Muslim” and the rest of us as “bad Muslims.” This then legitimizes people’s fear of Muslim Canadians, unless they are like the “progressives” who will say and do what the White, non-Muslim man in power wants him to. Many of these native informants regularly write in right-wing papers or appear on right wing shows both here in Canada and the US. One of them, Tarek Fatah, even appeared on Fox News. You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Anyhow, they make life hard for Muslims in Canada, hence my little rant.
Kumarasiri is doing something similar. He is the “good immigrant” whereas the rest of them are the “bad immigrants.” And this is very dangerous dichotomy which has to be challenged rigorously and quickly.
*Just to clarify – I use the psychological acculturation term of assimilate to mean leaving one’s “ethnic culture” completely and associate only with one’s contact, or mainstream, culture. Integrate, which is what most Muslims I think would rather do, is to keep a balance of both. Many will “separate,” or associate only with their ethnic culture, but this is usually acts as a form of protection from discrimination and loss of one’s culture, both of which can be very traumatic. Sorry…my MA thesis and PhD dissertation work are on psychological acculturation. Right now I eat, sleep, and dream acculturation.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:41 am ¶
Sobia wrote:
Oops..I meant to say “eat, sleep and *breathe* acculturation.” I couldn’t remember the saying. I guess I need to learn some English.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:46 am ¶
nat wrote:
Can I make a correction. It’s the Daily Mail not the London Daily Mail. Its a national newspaper and the most right-wing, homophobic, racist, poor people hating, women hating and anti-immigrant paper in the UK after The Express and followed closely by The Telegraph. It’s also the only paper in the UK with a higher female readership than male despite the fact they publish female bashing stories everyday.
This is the same paper that published an article last month declaring that you cannot be considered English if your ancestry in England goes back less than 5 generations. Any less and you’re still an immigrant.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:47 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@nat –
Thanks for the background. I adjusted the title.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 10:56 am ¶
ElleDee wrote:
I feel like anyone who goes on and on about how “those people” just need to learn English has never sincerely tried to master another language, especially as an adult. It’s not something that takes a small amount of initiative. It’s difficult and totally exhausting to grapple with all the time. My ex is Costa Rican and his mother spoke great English (as did his whole family since they moved back and forth between CR and the US), but it wore her out using it all day and she is a smart, smart woman and with a lot of privilege compared to other foreign people. I experienced the same thing personally when I lived in Japan.
Also I want to throw up at the idea that one should chuck their own culture in a waste basket at the border.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 11:02 am ¶
Jaya wrote:
Fuck it, this is so much worse than the bigots in the US who get angry when new Hispanic immigrants do not learn English right away; this is WORSE, because England has a colonial history in South Asia. They systematically appropriated our own culture for their own use, and made our language, religion, and customs second-best to their pucca British way of life. This Sri Lankan guy is your classic self-hating South Asian; you find them all over the world, in India, the UK, America, Canada, wherever upper-class/caste South Asians reside. It stems from a deep inferiority complex, from not being as good or clean as their former white masters. Suddenly, you have the self-hating South Asian, who tries to differentiate himself from “those other” kinds of people, who speak his language, have the same embarrassing accent, have the same swarthy skintone as he does.
Those Daily Mail commenters (and they are known to be an especially dense crowd) have no memory and absolutely no shame.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 11:06 am ¶
Lola wrote:
I mostly want to dismiss this person as a sell out or Uncle Tom but my intellectual side knows it is important to understand their motivations. It seems that the main issue is that he has not acknowledged his own privilege in being from the middle or upper class that could afford to learn English in school. It is really hard to know how to react to this sort of nativist white supremacist ideology coming from a non white immigrant. I encountered something similar this weekend with a Chinese international student complaining about NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) and Affirmative Action. He was saying the usual “you’re black and a woman so it will be easy for you to get a job”. And how it wrong for the black students to separate themselves in a professional society. When I discussed the incident with my Mom she pointed out that he may have felt more comfortable discussing his views because he was talking to 2 black women. The irony is that we were at a potluck for international students who attend the same church. The Church is 97% white yet 90% of those invited to the potluck were non white international students. I guess he had no problem with them segregating themselves.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 11:23 am ¶
sejw wrote:
This situation reminds me of an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days,” in which a member of the Minuteman vigilante group that patrols the United States/Mexico border lives with a family of illegal immigrants in order to understand their situation. The thing is, he’s a Cuban immigrant himself. More info here: http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/07/27/30-days-immigration-season-premiere/
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 12:23 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
Switzerland and Belgium also have longstanding populations that speak different languages. And even English as spoken by people in Birmingam or Leeds would have been only barely intelligible to people from London ca. 1400.
And most immigrants do want to learn English. cosign with that.
The whole paranoia about people “not wanting to learn English” is based on a couple of faulty premises anyway.
First, that other waves of immigrants all pulled up by their bootstraps and picked up English because they were forced to do so — only partly true.
The second is the idea that if people are non-English speaking at home their kids would automatically be so also and have lesser English skills. This is plainly wrong. People don’t live in hermetically sealed ethnic neighborhoods for one, and kids learn language as much from their friends as their parents. This is why kids raised here in the US from a young age lose their accents — if they have one at all — very, very quickly, while their parents retain them longer. (Usually in sounds where the difference between English and the original language is subtle, like the R sound or how long you hold a vowel).
I wil say it again: there is not one example — not one — of an ethnic group immigrating to the UK or the US ad retaining their original language — whatever it is — as L1 among the second generation and the original usually disappears completely by the third generation born in whatever country.
Even in cases where Herculean efforts have been made to teach the language, as in Chinese communities, the Chinese kids form Brooklyn speak English as their first language, not Chinese.
Even the Amish speak English a lot of the time as L1.
(L1 is shorthand for first language, the one in which you tend to think and write and speak in when relaxed — it’s your go-to language. Truly bilingual people are actually rather uncommon, though it can sometimes be a phase as your L2 replaces your L1 over time, though that can take decades. More often you just have people who are really, really good L2 speakers. That said, the definition of “bilingual” is dicey, and depends on whether you are a linguist or education specialist).
What a jerk. But it’s the Mail.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 12:28 pm ¶
Kavita wrote:
That man is pathetic. “When I left Sri Lanka I left behind that country’s culture, customs and language.” Wow, really? So I guess Brits need to give up their “national dish,” chicken tikka masala. Or is it ok for culture to be imported as long as colonizers are doing the importing?
I think Mutabaruka said it best: “It no good to stay in a white man’s country too long.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhpXZZJnvY4
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 1:41 pm ¶
Gafr Ddwyfol wrote:
I’d like to point out that a few miles to the west, over the border, all our signposts, official paperwork and notices are in two languages – English and Welsh.
Haven’t noticed any unraveling of society yet…
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 1:41 pm ¶
Mammith wrote:
I definatly don’t agree with this man and he does seem like one of those annoying poster-children for the right in this country to prove when they don’t like ‘imigrunts’ it’s not because of racism, but because they ‘hate our culture’.
In most cases people do want to learn the language and integrate, though you must admit sometimes a small minority seem to be willfully ignorant. My own grandmother as an example came to the UK 40 or so years ago and still doesn’t have a working knowledge of English. My father came at 14 years of age and managed to teach himself so why couldn’t she?
People like her are a lot more uncommon than the right-wing press would have us believe though and I don’t *blame* her or anything, I just think it’s strange as knowing the language of the country your in is nothing but an advantage.
My mother works in a school that provides lessons in English for recent immigrants which are having their funding consistently cut by the government in order to cut public spending and appease the daily mail set, than at the same time they turn around and complain it takes too long for people to learn English, which is kinda ridiculous.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 1:46 pm ¶
Mimi wrote:
This is absurd… there are many countries in which the peoples speak many languages. Spain, for example, is dominantly Castilian, sure, but they also have large portions of the population that speak Catalan, Basque, and Galician. They are still Spain. The Philippines are similar, they have Filipino/Pinoy, English, and about 8 other MAJOR dialects spoken… hmmm. What on earth are these people talking about? I KNOW I have an advantage being able to speak more languages, and usually with better proficiency, than the assholes that insult me for speaking Spanish at a grocery store with a friend.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 2:10 pm ¶
Ike wrote:
I’ll say it…….. “Uncle Tom” (lol).
But seriously… I don’t mind people ignoring or pretending not to hear/understand others if they can’t speak english (or the common language). If it’s his personal business and tax dollars aren’t supporting it, let him be.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 2:33 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@Mammith–
what kind of family was your grandma in?
I ask b/c I was thinking back to my own family’s experience. They came already speaking several tongues — Russian, Hungarian, Yiddish and Polish, and in one case Japanese. (They also had some German as well I am told because the Germans were in charge in many of their home countries).
But in the former cases, the language acquisition was fastest among the young children, followed by the men who were working and interacting with other people (in this case, outside the Lower East Side), and the women picked it up last because in Jewish homes at that time you’d probably only see other Jewish women, even at the grocery store given the time of day you’d be out and what work patterns were like at the time in New York.
So the people who had to interact with the wider world the most would pick up language faster — and that makes perfect sense.
The pattern will differ, of course, among different ethnic groups, depending on ow work/family/social mores are set up from the get-go.
Was your grandma in a pattern like that? Then it would make sense that she might never get comfortable with English. My great grandma, I am told, never got really happy with it either. She could speak, but didn’t like it. She preferred Hungarian. And one set of greats would use Russian to confuse the kids. (Any “adult” conversation was in Russian).
And all of that multi-lingual ability was gone in a generation or two, by the way.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 2:36 pm ¶
Somedude wrote:
Mr Kumarasiri has been fired/let go from his post according to this post http://social.moldova.org/news/postmaster-fired-over-english-stance-192412-eng.html
Apparently he discourages his daughters from speaking their mother tongue at home (or as the Daily Mail asked him, does he speak Sri Lankan at home with his family. Reporter couldn’t even be bothered to google it.)
I wonder if all the people congratulating him will practise what they preach and learn the language of whatever country they visit for a holiday.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 3:34 pm ¶
Mammith wrote:
@Jess – My backgrounds Turkish. In my grandmothers case it’s a bit strange as she worked for 20 years in a sewing factory with various other immigrants (mainly Italian) and English women as well.
In that sort of environment you’d expect her to pick it up, but she just… didn’t. It isn’t that she doesn’t like speaking it, it’s just that she can’t other than a few basic phrases.
She does just socialize with other Turkish people though so I suppose that’s probably it. Oh and I can’t speak nearly any Turkish, though I understand it (everyone else in my family can so I have no idea why I can’t)
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 3:52 pm ¶
Somedude wrote:
Just to further add to Gafr Ddwyfol’s point:
Sign in Scottish Gaelic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WelcomeToQueenStreetFailteGuSraidNaBanrighinn_Glasgow.jpg
Sign in Welsh:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Wales.cardiff.slow.jpg
Sign in Irish Gaelic
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Aire-leanai.jpg
Last time I checked English wasn’t the only official language in Britain.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 4:05 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@Mammith — the socializing may explain it. Also, not everybody is good at picking up another language, just like not everybody is good at throwing three-point shots in basketball or playing chess.
In your case, it would depend on your innate ability, how exposed you were to Turkish media and such as well as people speaking, and who you hung out with. If you hung out with non-turkish people (or 3d+ generation ones) most of the time, you wouldn’t retain it as much, even if everyone in your family spoke it.
If you are one of the younger kids in the family, that’s another reason — younger kids tend to have less language ability in the original language (whatever it is) especially if they are born in the country, in your case the UK (right?) since by definition they spend more time in the new country’s culture and language environment. I’ve noticed that younger siblings will learn the original family language if they are interested, but they are not always. (Hey, not everyone is into the same things, you know?)
Then there’s whether you were taken back to TUrkey, and how comfortable you are when you go if you do, all that socialization stuff which can be all over the map even within families.
Then there’s the final test: who you rooted for in the last World Cup.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 4:29 pm ¶
Rchoudh wrote:
Right wingers who complain about immigrants not learning English really are ignorant about the tremendouse time and effort it takes to learn a new language, since most of them are only proficient in English. I’m in the process of trying to learn Arabic as an adult. Even though I’ve finally learned how to read and write in Arabic, as well as grammar and sentence structure, I’m having trouble conversing with native Arabic speakers because my vocabulary is lacking and I often forget the words I learned before to describe things.
This inability can be due to my age and to having limited access to more native Arabic speakers (the ones I speak to now know English so I haven’t been forced to speak completely in Arabic) as well as inability to quickly understand the rapid fire utterings in Arabic language media that contain no English subtitles. My experience with trying to learn Arabic is pretty much the experience of all individuals trying to learn a new language. I’m having trouble learning a new language even with all the money and free time I have available to learn it. I can only imagine how much harder it would be to learn it if I was working full time and couldn’t financially afford it.
I do realize also that while I have the time to learn how to read and write in a new language, those who work outside have a greater opportunity to become conversant in it even if they don’t have time to learn how to read and write in it. So the bottom line is that it’s hard to learn a new language as an adult.
As for Mr. Kumarasiri, people like him are thankfully only a minority within immigrant communities, who only wind up looking like nothing more than self-haters who try to project their insecurities onto others.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 5:36 pm ¶
Jha wrote:
When I went to China I learnt that in many schools today the children learn both the official Mandarin and the local dialect of their region. That way they can still get around the country and be understood, while maintaining their cultural, regional roots.
Yes, I got very irritated by non-English-speaking students in university who weren’t making an effort, but hating on others just because they have trouble with English when they’re trying to learn the language is stupid and hateful.
I can’t speak anything other than English, and I come from a former British colony. That’s not admirable, that’s a shame.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 5:52 pm ¶
Daniel Jiménez wrote:
“People in U.S. who speak English with a foreign accent are often dismissed, ridiculed, rudely received or told amazingly that they are not speaking English. These blows to the psyche make it easy for an English language learner to simply withdraw and give up on speaking English”.
Oh, yes. As a white person from Spain with English as a second language, I get a lot of this.
The “funny” thing is that I could pass for German, and therefore I am considered as a white american by everybody until I open my mouth. Nevertheless, when my strong Spanish accents is revealed, I get nasty looks and unpleasant comments. As if I were mocking or betraying whiteness by displaying an accent that white americans tend to associate with brown people.
It’s an interesting situation, because people here seem to associate English with white and Spanish with brown, so they have a hard time deciding where to place me.
Just a disclaimer: I am not trying to compare my situation with real racial discrimination, not by any means. I just think that it is interesting because the looks and comments that I use to get sound like “how you dare to be white and speak with such an accent”. Like “you look white, but are you really white?”.
People sometimes don’t realize that learning English pronuntiation can be very difficult. If you can read a word in Spanish, you know how to pronounce it. Same thing in Japanese, for example. Nevertheless, that’s not always the case with English, you have to learn the pronuntiaton of every single word, because there isn’t a fix pattern on how to pronounce the vocals. For example, the word “insight”, you have two “i”, but both have a different pronuntiation.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 7:06 pm ¶
Giuseppina wrote:
this is a great article, especially the end part about the attitudes of people who speak English with an accent or not well in America. This reminds me of the occasional situation that happens here, in Québec. 87% of our population speaks French at home and though the farther you stray from Montréal, the fewer English speakers you will find, in Montréal many people speak both languages. Maybe they speak one with more proficiency than the other but it is very common to be practically bilingual.
However, there are consistently incidents where Anglos will be ignored in stores or mocked because of their level of French. The government in our province is constantly promoting French cultural as they firstly remember that we are a minority in Canada, yet they forget that we are a majority in Quebec. In the metro there are often posters that claim that “you have the right and the privilege to be greeted in French when you walk into a store” or “Ici, on dit Bonjour” which emphasizes how they wish us to speak French and not english.
It’s a complicated situation because the french that we speak (the average working class Québecois) is full of english words. In French schools, English is often not taught and if so only once a week or 1/10 days. The only reason I speak english is because I attended an English elementary school before I was forced into a French High School because my parents hadn’t attended school in English (they immigrated from Italy).
All in all, our conflicts really aren’t so different from each other and it seems there is great conflict in both America and Québec as two languages fight for the upper hand.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 8:41 pm ¶
Lxy wrote:
Beyond all the finer points of linguistics in this issue, Kumarasiri at base is pandering to Anglo nationalism and anti-immigrant nativism of course.
This type of xenophobia is also displayed by the USA with the English-only movement and the ethnic cleansing of (predominantly) Latino immigrants by US government entities like the ICE and Homeland Security.
Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 8:42 pm ¶
Nate wrote:
Point for the mod – does the uncomfortableness with ‘uncle tom’/’sellout’ labelling also apply to non US-centric posts?
Again (as a couple of people hvbe previously pointed out in other posts) there seems to be more tolerance of labelling/name calling over non-US POC.
I think this needs to addressed in the mediation/post guidelines, especially when non-US media is posted here.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 4:53 am ¶
Alex Case wrote:
Could it be partly feeling jealous of and therefore irritated by people who he thinks have not put in the time and effort to learn the language and assimilate like he has? As someone who is supposed to be learning his 7th foreign language in the 7th foreign country he has lived in and for the first time has decided it’s too much of a pain, I can recognise that kind of irritation in my own reaction to “Oy Pedro, dos beers over here mate” English tourists when I was living in Spain. That was the country where I most tried to be like a local, and it is quite frankly exhausting and so only too likely to lead to rage against any targets you can find
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 5:26 am ¶
Ike wrote:
Here’s my thing. I beleive that immigrants entering any new nation should be able to (or make attempts to) speak the local language. It’s not an issue of “right wing” or “left wing” it’s just common sense, in my opinion. It’s like an American going down to Mexico or Japan and expecting everybody to speak to them in English.
I personally wouldn’t mind if it was a requirement for getting a visa/etc. Can’t speak any English (except for the elderly and kids), then “no enter”.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 6:23 am ¶
Jess wrote:
@Ike–
Then you wouldn’t be allowed into a load of countries, I bet, if that were applied to Americans.
The thing is, language becomes this issue because it is a marker of other-ness, and a group identifier. Not the only one or even the most important one, but it is a strong one — think of how closely people in countries where different groups are basically ethnically indistinguishable but speak different languages. (Like Switzerland, or the Balkans. There really isnt any big obvious physical difference between a Serb, a Croat, and a Bosnian, especially given the histories of intermarriage).
The basic issue here is that immigrants historically want to learn English and take great pains and effort to do it. There are adverts all over New York City for English classes and they are full. All of them.
And I already pointed out that you will find not one example of an ethnic group that speaks X language as their first, primary tongue after a generation or two. Even Spanish speakers (Latin Americans), who have their own media in a big way, follow this pattern.
People like Kumarasiri are present in every group of immigrants. “I did it why can’t you” is a stupid premise. Since it’s the Daily Mail I can understand why they tried to find this guy and people like him — this is the same paper that got all in a huff over whether stores should use kilos or pounds.
Yes, it’s dumb for an American to go to Japan and expect people to speak English. But if you wanted to live there and learn Japanese you would hope that people would try to make it easier, not harder. Have you noticed that most big cities everywhere — except the US – tend to have things like multilingual signage? Even in Japan, they don’t expect people to fumble around reading street signs in Kanji (at least in big cities like Tokyo and Kyoto).
Bilingual education is part of that. Done right, you get someone literate in two languages, with the ability to learn many more. (It’s a lot easier to learn a third tongue if you learned a second early). If you don’t do that you usually end up with somebody with truncated skills in both languages, and that’s no help.
There will always be a few immigrants who don’t for whatever reason pick up English well. But it isn’t like they don’t want to learn or don’t want their kids to learn.
Part of the issue is that in the US and UK, some people make English the sole identifier for being American (or British) when it is much more than that. The US and UK are two countries that are relatively open in who gets to be a citizen, and that’s the issue that many right wing people have a tough time with, largely because citizenship (or residency) is granted to people who aren’t like them. It forces a lot of questions about what it is to be British or American to the surface.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 8:06 am ¶
Louise wrote:
mmmmmmnnnn!! I’m actually english (black caribbean ethnic orhins). well this really is more complex than what it appears to be. I live in the racially mixed and usually tolerant south east. Everyone makes the effort to speak the language as far as i am aware. However ther are a minority of people who are simply too old to try and don’t attempt to.
I can understand that, however this whole not knowing the language of the country in which you live is often an obstacle.
I have done volentary work with a group that works with women who are from south east asia or the sub-continent who suffer domestic abuse.
Some of these women known in thier communities as pendu (think thats the spelling i could be wrong) are brides brought from the sub-continent to be brides for english born sons. If they are from rural areas and do not know the language and they suffer at the hands of their husbands they are often trapped and lonely in a foreign country. Along with all the issues that surround domestic violence they have the added problems of language, this can happen to any community, i do not want to use a broad stroke to tarnish this community who are in the whole loving and very nice (if a little conservate).
One woman left the punjab to marry her groom, she was not educated and knew little english beyond order commands, come here, do this etc. she was being beaten up every weekend and unbeknownst to her she was passing a group for women like her because she could not understand what one of the outreach workers was saying in the street and she could not read the flyers. fortunately a woman who knew her language was working with the outreach workers the next week and finally she joined and started learning the language. which helped her a great deal. she is studying now and is separated. If she did not have the power of speech she could not study or apply for social housing she could be alone.
But all in all we have to be carefull with scare mongering from the daily mail they are very xenophobic and racist.
it’s all very complicated and i feel that oversimplifing is dangerous.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 8:17 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Mod Note -
This warning should have been on this thread:
@Ike/Kavita -
Slow your roll. I don’t really like the labeling of people as pathetic or Uncle Toms or what have you.
This is sliding way too much into a “who they are” discussion where as what we are looking for here is a “what they did discussion.”
Do I need to break out the Jay Smooth primer?
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 8:41 am ¶
CVT wrote:
Wow. All these references to immigrants “making an effort” to learn English (or “NOT making an effort”).
These must be by people who have fluently spoken whatever languages they know from the very beginning, of course. Because, as we all know – if we speak multiple languages (which so few Americans do, at all) – if you just “make the effort,” you sound like a native speaker in no time.
Or not.
Not everybody learns language quickly or easily (in fact, few do). Adults won’t lose their accents. Even when you “know” a language, you sound halting and confused when you speak it (to a native speaker). Even fluent speakers are going to have thick accents a lot of the time, will still have awkward pauses, etc.
So who is the official registrar of “those who are making an effort”? What are the tell-tale signs of “making an effort” to learn a language? From what I can tell – it’s folks who have never been a foreigner (or who are unaware of when they have been), do not speak another language (never made the effort), or who are unaware of how they REALLY sound to a native speaker when they speak their foreign language(s).
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 9:51 am ¶
Kavita wrote:
Fair enough Latoya. Let me try to say it better. I find Kumarasiri’s attacks on South Asian immigrants’ language skills and their choice to retain their national/ethnic culture offensive, because it smells to me of someone trying to assimilate into white society by throwing the rest of us under the bus. And to me, that attempt to assimilate at the expense of the rest his community is pathetic, because in the end, all he is doing is giving fuel to a fire that will come back and burn him.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 10:18 am ¶
Heqit wrote:
“When I left Sri Lanka I left behind that country’s culture, customs and language,” Kumarasiri explained.
The hell? Sri Lanka, if I recall correctly, is itself a multilingual country — majority Sinhalese-speaking, substantial minority Tamil-speaking, and of course lots of people learn English (yay legacy of colonialism) if they can afford the schooling. For whatever reasons (and I think the people who are diagnosing Kumarasiri with “I’m one of the good ones” syndrome are right), he’s ignoring the reality of both his original and his adopted countries. Among other things.
Does the article mention what Kumarasiri’s mother tongue was? (I’m pretty sure “Sri Lankan” is not a language.) If he thinks all immigrants to the UK should speak (perfect!) English and doesn’t want his daughters speaking anything else, I would guess he’s also in favor of forcing Sri Lankan Tamils to speak only Sinhalese and discriminating against them (in their own country) if they don’t. I could be wrong, but…gee, what a great guy.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 11:11 am ¶
Ed wrote:
@ mimi:
The number of languages in the Philippines is actually much more staggering – it’s over 100, according to the SIL Ethnologue:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=PH
And I presume that the vast majority of people there are at least bilingual (usually regional language + Tagalog, but other combinations are possible).
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 1:05 pm ¶
Ike wrote:
@ Jess:
I think the same should be extended Westerners/Americans in other countries as well. All I’m saying is that any immigrant from a foreign nation coming to another country to live shouldn’t complain about not being able to communicate or receive “proper service” from businesses/etc becuz they don’t have nobody there who speaks their language. It’s not their duty to provide you with a interpreter.
Also, if u can’t speak the main language, don’t expect businesses to wait on you, especially if they have other customers.
**** Btw… have you guys seen his website?? Lmao!
http://www.britishnessforever.co.uk/
@ Latoya:
Was it really sooo wrong of me to call him an “uncle tom”?
Mod Note – Yes. Because that’s when a conversation goes to shit. Between this and your comment on Ciara, you’re on comment time out today. Take a break, re-read our comment moderation policy, and I am not approving any of your comments until tomorrow. – LDP
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 1:30 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
No Ike, as a business it is precisely your job to provide service, as best you can. But more importantly, the post office or the police or whatever aren’t like businesses that can refuse customers and it’s no big deal.
Imagine if the cops said “We won’t serve anyone who doesn’t speak English.” That’s pretty stupid, right?
The post office is the same. You serve everybody, period. If it’s tough to do because someone doesn’t speak English well, tough. Deal with it. It isn’t like you have to have a long and deep conversation, you just have to spend an extra what, five minutes?
If you went to Japan and didn’t speak Japanese, would you say it is correct for everyone to refuse to serve you if you didn’t speak Japanese? How the hell would you learn it anyway? Magic? Osmosis? Mind-Meld? Or might you hav to you know, interact with folks? A little? I never learned any language I know by simply studying in isolation, I had to talk to people, and I had to start somewhere. For all you know the guy on the other end wants nothing more in the world than to learn English, but you got him on the first day.
Maybe you have this magical ability to see subtitles?
Sheesh.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 2:17 pm ¶
ambi wrote:
I agree with quite a lot of what he says. There are South Asian women originally from Pakistan and Bangladesh in Britain who are ghettoised and oppressed because their husbands don’t allow them to learn English and access their rights as British citizens. Studies have shown that the inability of parents to speak English puts children at a handicap at school. It is the responsibility of immigrants to speak English and not depend on the state to spend hundreds of millions of pounds a year on translation services.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 2:41 pm ¶
Gareth wrote:
“Moreover, as Britain increasingly becomes the home to the natives of countries it once colonized, it is suffering from an identity crisis that has made Brits increasingly resentful of immigrants”
Isn’t this a rather sweeping statement? Given the nature of your site I would have thought you would be trying to set a good example of fairness and appropriate language. Do you really mean to include all immigrants and all Brits or do I need to read through your comment to see that you are being fair in the subtext?
You have done well but can do better!
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 3:15 pm ¶
Rchoudh wrote:
@ ambi
You shouldn’t make such sweeping generalizations about immigrants like that. First of all you can’t say that all South Asian women are “ghettoised” by their husbands and thus prevented from learning English. You’re just stereotyping these husbands as being oppressive and domineering and these women as weak and oppressed. While there may be some families where this “ghettoization” takes place, there are many others where English is picked up in various ways (through children, the media, neighbors, shopping, etc.) but the ability to comprehensively learn the language is not availiable due to time constraints, costs, etc especially for working class immigrant families.
While the state is not obligated to provide translation services, I do think it make an effort to provide poor and working class immigrants opportunities to learn the language, such as free or low cost classes taught at libraries or schools for example. And it should encourage new English language speakers to converse with anyone and everyone. This is where native English speakers should realize that they can’t treat new English speakers with disrespect just because they’re not conversant in the language yet as Nadra rightfully pointed out. One way to teach native English speakers not to do that would be at schools with ESL programs. Native English speaking children should be taught to be helpful and encouraging towards immigrant children who are trying hard to learn English. If these children aren’t taught these basic forms of respect they will most likely grow up harboring these sinister attitudes towards immigrants.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 6:29 pm ¶
Mark wrote:
If this guy thinks that by taking this “stand”, that he’ll become a hero of the UK, he’s sadly mistaken. If he thinks it will magically make all immigrants speak perfect english, he’s egotistical and mistaken. If he thinks its the right thing to do, he’s mistaken.
My mother is an immigrant. Her english is actually pretty good – it’s not perfect, but she was taught english in Malaysia by her teachers, who english was even more broken. She has made a very strong effort to learn more english, and her writing has improved a lot – but as with most second language learners, it’s virtually impossible to learn to speak a second language perfectly, unless you started learning from a very young age.
However, when she speaks to someone not in her family, her english gets worse. Again, like it was pointed out in the Article, she is afraid of messing up when speaking to people she doesn’t know, so she starts to hesitate and use words slowly.
I’ve never understood why so many people on the Right feel like they can demand perfect language from immigrants, yet feel like they don’t have to speak the native language when they go sightseeing.
I wonder – is the same sort of thing seen in France? The French are even more paranoid and fixated on “preserving” their language – I wonder if hostility to other langauges is worse over there.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 6:45 pm ¶
G.K. wrote:
This British ex-postmaster has definitely bought into the whole assimilation myth, hook, line and sinker—apparently it’s never occurred to him that these non-English speakers maybe haven’t gotten a change to learn English yet, or simply don’t have the same access to the resources he had to learn English himself. Like one poster said, some non-English speakers might not be able to attend English classes due to their work schedules, or lack of money to pay for such classes—they don’t come for free, you know.
I also find it ironic that he’s pledging allegiance to a country that colonized his former homeland and forced the English language on their populace without even asking them whether they wanted to learn it or not. Someone should have told him a long time ago that he could retain pride in his own culture and be a good British citizen without feeling that he had to give up everything about his former culture to fit into his newly adopted home.
I do feel, however, that if you can’t speak the main language of whatever country you’re in, at least bring someone with you who can translate in English for you—interestingly enough, I attended a union meeting last night with some members of the organizing group I’m in where one of the main speakers, a Mexican man spoke only in Spanish and had a translator with him to relate everything in said in English.
I also studied Spanish for a year in college about a decade ago, and I can tell you,even though it was fun, it was also hard and difficult as hell to learn, no matter how many times I listened over and over again to Spanish-only learning tapes and listened to my teacher speak only in Spanish to class. Basically, if I’d lived in southwest Detroit (which has a large Spanish-speaking Latino population) and known some Spanish speakers, I’d have been able to pick up on how to speak it better, as opposed to reading it (which I felt I could do better) but that wasn’t the case. I’ve retained a little bit of it, but have forgotten over half of it to the point where I can recognize certain words but can’t remember what they mean. Believe me, learning any language is NOT something you can do overnight, and anybody who thinks it’s easy obviously has never even tried to do it to begin with.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 7:48 pm ¶
G.K. wrote:
I don’t think it was fair that the postmaster got fired—he should hav just gotten reprimanded and told that it was his job to serve customers, no matter what. Also, I find it ironic that Britain has the nerve to be mad about immigrants whose countries it formally colonized coming there when it had no qualms about invading THEIR countries and using up all of their resources to become one of the world’s biggest empires. What comes around goes around, that ’s all I’ve got to say.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 7:53 pm ¶
Chris wrote:
For me this article doesn’t demonstrate any great level of knowledge about British culture. You don’t know the name of one of the most popular papers, you conflate England and Britain, and you say Britain is still a “white imperialist” country. It involves rather racist assumptions about how British people react to newcomers and is breathtakingly patronising- you “feel empathy” for the guy indeed! I agree he might be trying too hard, what with the Union Jack outside his window and all, but please leave the uninformed, knee-jerk reactions to the “London Daily Mail.”
The arguments are pretty lousy too, I think. You can’t compare the experience of immigration in the US and the UK because in the former it is largely from Spanish-speaking countries whereas at least until the advent of intra-EU freedom of labour the main immigration flows were from countries that had once been part of the Empire and where English is very widely spoken. Speaking English in those countries does not necessarily denote a life of privilege.
Also, the bloke talked about the ‘fabric’ of the nation, not whether its very existence is at stake. In Canada, as you note, there is friction. Nigeria is not most people’s idea of an ideal state. It makes things more difficult if there is no shared language. Not impossible- look at Switzerland. But Switzerland has developed a unique system of direct democracy, in part to overcome such divisions. Britain does not have a similar institutional structure, and you can’t just magic one out of thin air.
Britain might be experiencing an identity crisis, and indeed immigration may well be a cause of this in that the rate of churn of immigrants and emigrants, whatever their racial composition, makes it difficult to lay down the sedimentary layers that have traditionally generated British, and particularly English culture. But the main cause is that Britain has long been defined by class, and in the last 40 years both the ‘English Gentleman’ elites and the trade unions have seen their power shattered and the consequent withering of their cultural ideals. People don’t know what the culture of a ‘classless Britain’ should look like. That’s the root of the ‘identity crisis.’
P.S. Some people have triumphantly flourished the national languages of Wales and Scotland. Are you really saying that there are lots of people who speak Welsh, say, but not English? Welsh was made an official language in order to stop it dying out altogether.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 9:03 pm ¶
pete wrote:
The guy was entirely wrong to do what he did. The Post Office is a state institution and a vital service, so should be available to all. Its not his job to decide who is worthy of service. He does seem to be trying to prove how ‘British’ he is.
The UK does, however, spend huge amounts of money on translation services, far more than the Italy and Spain praised in the article do. When I last voted the voting instructions were in 30 different languages.
I do think there should be more effort put into helping immigrants to learn English (including providing free lessons, something which would pay for itself in the long run).
@jess
It is perfectly true that subsequent generations tend to learn English, I’ve known many South Asian Brits who translate for their parents, but one issue is ongoing chain-migration. When there is a continuing flow of non-English speakers entering the country via arranged marriage, the language is in fact ‘retained’ even when the native born offspring speak English. The South Asian community in parts of northern England almost exclusively marry partners from ‘back home’, generation after generation (often cousins, usually from the same few villages).
With other languages its simply that there’s an ongoing inflow from many different countries (e.g. suddenly there are signs in Polish all over the place)
(Sri Lanka has long had by far the highest literacy rate of any South Asian country, incidentally and I think English is more widely spoken there than in rural Pakistan, say, so this guy’s advantages may not just be about class)
Also the last point of the article seemed a bit odd . You can hardly compare the reaction of Italians to an English speaking tourist from a rich country to the reaction a Latin American immigrant with poor English gets in the US. English itself has certain associations for European countries.
A better comparison would be, say, the reaction to an Albanian speaking immigrant in Italy, surely?
@Jaya
No argument from me about Britain’s history in South Asia, but are you really suggesting the US has no history of imperialism in relation to Latin America? Where exactly did the South Western US states come from?
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 9:36 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
Well, that’s the Daily Mail for you – it’s somewhat like the Daily Post, for you New Yorkers.
How much English do you need to buy stamps? The postmaster is an idiot. He’s there to provide a service and make money, not poke his nose into things that aren’t his business.
Posted 01 Apr 2009 at 2:25 am ¶
little mixed girl wrote:
Reading the original article, it seems that he’s talking about people who are coming to the post office to place orders in a foreign language.
I can’t agree with anyone that gets upset at someone for speaking a foreign language around them or speaking with a foreign accent, but this is slightly more sticky.
I say it’s sticky because if he were monolingual, he of course wouldn’t be able to serve them; and I don’t think it’s too much to expect someone to be able to say a simple phrase in the local language (more complicated orders would obviously have that person needing support).
On the other hand, at my post office, signs are written in Japanese with English underneath. I’m sure that some non-Japanese speaking Westerners have gone in and sent off mail without speaking Japanese. And with this guy being an immigrant just like some of his customers, they may have put a certain amount of trust in him, and were looking for a place where they could relax.
If he were smart, he would have used his language abilities to his advantage, and could have increased his customer base.
As to the English level of people from Sri Lanka, my workplace often needs to call offices there and whoever is answering the phones definitely does not speak English.
Either way it was a pretty a-hole move on his part.
Posted 01 Apr 2009 at 8:36 am ¶
Nadra wrote:
Chris, you’re right. There’s a lot I don’t know about Britain. On the other hand, I have visited the country on three different occasions and lived there for a half-year as an exchange student at the University of Sussex, so I’d argue I’m more familiar than the U.K. than your average American is. I called the paper the London Daily Mail to denote to American readers that we were talking about a foreign publication. I don’t think that’s the same as not knowing the name of the paper. However, there are American newspapers I don’t know the names of. Does that make me ignorant of American culture, despite the fact that I was born and raised here? Lastly, I don’t see how empathizing with someone is patronizing.
Posted 01 Apr 2009 at 4:29 pm ¶
Chris wrote:
Nadra, I am at a loss to see how you studied at the University of Sussex, near Brighton, and still have the stereotype of Britain as a nation hellbent on conquering the world. Brighton is perhaps the most liberal, multicultural city in Britain. It seems a little like someone saying “I studied at Berkeley for a while. Americans still long for the ‘good ol’ days’ of slavery.”
No, not knowing the names of some American newspapers doesn’t make you ignorant of American culture, because American newspapers are mostly local affairs. British newspaper culture is dominated by national newspapers, each with their own admitted slant on politics and culture. A person’s choice of newspaper says a great deal about them. If you don’t know the kinds of reader each paper celebrates and is aiming for within this national market then it is difficult to understand British media culture.
I thought in using ‘empathising’ you were being patronising because of the general tone of disdain that suffused the article. It seemed to me to be a bit like watching a video of some toad mating and saying ‘well, if I looked as hideous as that I *guess* I would maybe find her attractive too.’ Partially, I’ll admit, I just find the word ‘empathise’ grating as it is too ‘touchy-feely’ for me.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 9:28 am ¶
Jess wrote:
@pete–
even with continued in-migration and marriage within the group, I defy you to find a kid born in the UK who doesn’t speak some English at least by the age of five, and whose L1 isn’t English once they are in school. Their skills in English might be less, but they are still native speakers of English. Just like a guy who is from West Virginia’s mountains and has a 6th-grade education has lesser English skills than a graduate student who is a product of private boarding schools. They are both native speakers, though.
There’s a lot of continued immigration to the US from Spanish-speaking countries, and even to the point where California will have a Latino majority soon. (New Mexico had one and lost it as more white people moved there but will get it back soon too).
In neither state is there a population of people who were born in the US but never learned English. It just does not happen. Probably the only part of the US where you find true L1 Spanish speakers who were born there is Puerto Rico. And even there English is widely used.
If Spanish speakers lived in hermetically sealed neighborhoods and cities, maybe, but that isn’t the case in the US, nor is it so in Britain for South Asians.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 9:58 am ¶
ambi wrote:
rchoude:
++++
“You shouldn’t make such sweeping generalizations about immigrants like that. First of all you can’t say that all South Asian women are “ghettoised” by their husbands and thus prevented from learning English.”
++++
As a South Asian woman living in England, married to a South Asian man, I can remind you that nowhere in my original post post did I say that all South Asian women are ghettoised by their husbands.
However, I know that many women from South Asia are married to British South Asian men and experience horrific levels of ghettoisation and dismemberment from their rights and from wider society because they are not permitted and are discouraged from learning English.
I also know first hand about how the millions of pounds spent by the state on translation rather than insisting by law that all new immigrants learn English, and attend classes to do so, or do so at their own expense, is inhibiting integration between ethnic communities in the UK.
He may say it in a harsh way, but Mr Kumarasiri has touched on a very simple truth. For a society to function and for races to integrate there needs to be a common platform and culture and there needs to be communication across ethnic boundaries. This can only be achieved fully when everyone speaks the same language. People can teach their kids Urdu or Bengali or Yoruba in their spare time. Nobody has a problem with that.
English has to be paramount though, and this is an urgent issue given how some sections of society are effectively oppressed by the lack of English, unable to access their rights or make friends with people of a different race, and contribute to a level of low academic and social achievment for their children when they are sent to school at the age of three or four speaking poor English because their parents have only communicated in other languages at home before them until then.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 10:22 am ¶
pm wrote:
@Jess
I didn’t actually say there were children born in the UK who didn’t speak English. I didn’t, and don’t, disagree with you about that, so I think you are going off on a tangent slightly. Perhaps I gave the impression I was disagreeing, but that wasn’t my intention.
My point is merely that the need for translation services, and the need for promoting English lessons, stems to a significant degree from the ongoing influx of non-English speaking spouses.
As Ambi says, the inability to speak English can isolate women in particular from wider society.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 11:50 am ¶
pm wrote:
@Jess (again, sorry)
“Have you noticed that most big cities everywhere — except the US – tend to have things like multilingual signage?”
But that’s a lot easier when there are just two language communities or you only need to use one alternative language for all who don’t speak the local language i.e. English.
Perhaps in parts of the US you can use Spanish. But, for example, within a few miles of where I live are substantial communities of Poles, Gujuratis, Tamils, and Arabic-speaking North Africans. What languages should the street signs be in, other than English? All four?
I think its pefectly possible for a society to be bilingual, but when the number of languages exceeds 300 (as it does in London) with none really predominating except English, you just can’t equally recognise all of them. It just becomes massively inefficient and expensive.
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
pm — sorry if i misread you. I’m just pointing out that even with substantial migration from original ethnic communities, the idea that there will be this permanent class of non-English speakers is simply silly, but that is what Kumarasi buys into.
And nobody is saying you need some kind of official recognition for every single subgroup. Or that people should not learn English. Or that 300 languages should be on the signs — but in New York, the informational signs in the subway are in Russian, Chinese, English, Spanish, French and Korean (depending on the neighborhood). The system is fine and nobody cares. Most folks are covered and it probably doesn’t hurt foreign tourists either.
There’s making it easier for people to do it and making it harder, and our friendly postmaster is making it harder. How does what he did help anyone learn better English?
That’s why in New York, we have all six UN languages or the forms at the DMV. It covers most people and makes it just a little quicker and easier for everyone involved. Not having to struggle through every daily transaction makes it easier for people to learn another language, no mater what it is. You can relax a bit, you know? Better to practice the polite interaction with the clerk at the DMV than have to struggle through the darned form for an hour and learn English legalese. Besides, the line moves faster.
(Unlike the Brits, we Americans are less inclined to queue up and stay calm.
)
Posted 02 Apr 2009 at 2:26 pm ¶
TeakLipstickFiend wrote:
There was also this “shock” article in the British newspaper The Sun recently, stating that “one in seven young pupils does not speak English as their first language” http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2325292.ece
On the message board, this quickly deteriorated to “1 in 7 Brit kids can’t speak English!” and the usual comments flowed.
I’m a white anglophone living in France. My French is quite good, but far from fluent. I could certainly work harder at it. However, I have the privilege of working for an international organisation, where I can speak English most of the day, most of my friends speak English. It can be a bit scary going out into the French world and I get different reactions: sometimes I am treated badly because I have an accent or stumble in my speech, sometimes it’s thought to be charming and interesting and leads to further conversation. However, I do feel that, being white, I get given leeway I wouldn’t get as a person of colour.
As others have mentioned, learning another language is an effort and you may never lose your accent. I have an American friend here who has lived here for years, is married to a French man, speaks wonderful French and has an incredible knowledge of French popular culture and yet who still retains a strong American accent when she speaks French. I sometimes wonder if what anglophones complain about when they say someone “doesn’t speak English” is actually just someone having a strong accent? It can sometimes need real effort to understand a non-native speaker of your language (and I sometimes have to speak to non-native speakers of French, a challenge for me with my imperfect grasp of the language!). But the effort is worth it.
Of course it’s sensible and an advantage to learn the language of the country you move to, but how well you learn a language not only depends on your effort, but also on your opportunities and at what age you learnt it. My mother, a Finnish immigrant to Australia when she was about 16, has learnt English very well, but maintains her Finnish. My grandmother, did not do as well, and her English is now deteriorating as she gets older. (I myself have tried to learn Finnish as an adult and do reasonably well in terms of pronunciation, but the grammar is pretty hellish!)
I would be interested to know what “being British” means. I don’t see how a whole population can be exactly the same, even if they did all happen to be born in one place and speak the same language. Who, after all, speaks the same language even when you’re speaking the same language?
Posted 04 Apr 2009 at 7:29 am ¶
Ruchama wrote:
About immigrants who “don’t want” to learn English — I have actually only known one immigrant who didn’t want to learn English. My great-grandmother came to the US from Germany in 1939, at age 60, and said that she was an old woman, she was going to die soon, and she wasn’t going to waste the last few years of her life learning a language that she’d barely get to use. She ended up living to 100, never learning English. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law, my grandparents, and both of them learned English, and their son, my father, speaks only English. (Well, he can understand German, but can’t speak it. If he hears someone speaking German, he can follow the basic idea of what they’re saying, but if he needs to produce a German sentence on his own, he’s totally lost.)
Posted 04 Apr 2009 at 10:58 am ¶