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2007-07-23 Home Front: Culture Wars

Immigrant parents struggle to keep their children bilingual

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Posted by Steve White 2007-07-23 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 Important note: the ability of their children to speak English is directly proportional to the children's later financial and social success. Fully integrated children of Mexicans tend to rise very quickly up the social and economic ladder. However, those that do not integrate tend to both ghettoize and economically stagnate.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-07-23 00:26|| 2007-07-23 00:26|| Front Page Top

#2 My hands are now chapped from all the wringing.

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2007-07-23 00:32|| 2007-07-23 00:32|| Front Page Top

#3 The article reports this as a bad thing? WTF?

Posted by gromky 2007-07-23 02:07|| 2007-07-23 02:07|| Front Page Top

#4 Heh. Resistance is futile(tm). As long as we avoid getting swamped.

Too bad it dosn't work as well on islamonutz.

Posted by N Guard 2007-07-23 06:03|| 2007-07-23 06:03|| Front Page Top

#5 Do you have any reason to believe it doesn't work as well on Islamonutz? We don't seem to have near the problem the Brits do, though we might if we had the same proportion of Islamonutz as the Brits do. Nonetheless, we do a better job of integrating immigrants, unless they are ghettoized, and sometimes in spite of it.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-23 07:17|| 2007-07-23 07:17|| Front Page Top

#6 And yet even in England the next generation don't speak their parents' Urdu, but only English. That's why they're so susceptible to the jihadis, who preach and teach in English.

Separately, the hand wringing is absurd. With a solid passive understanding of the language, active learning is much easier later -- whether of the parents' language or any other -- because the brain is physically prepared for multiple languages in a way that is more primal than when a second language is learnt formally after one can read. I read up on the subject because the trailing daughters spent their first years abroad, and I was concerned about language acquisition issues.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-23 07:54|| 2007-07-23 07:54|| Front Page Top

#7 The article reports this as a bad thing? WTF?

Because it's the Boston Globe and threatens their vision of a multicultural utopia.
But, believe me, you'd learn to speak Klingon if it'd get you the fuck outta Lawrence. And I'd seriously doubt you'd ever find a Globe reporter that lived there. Too...ethnic.

Posted by tu3031 2007-07-23 09:10|| 2007-07-23 09:10|| Front Page Top

#8 "... The children themselves are losing a skill that could give them an edge in the job market."

Maybe, maybe not. I work for one of the largest globalized firms that is based in Germany.

A friend from the local office took a year long job at the HQ in Waldorf with the added benefit (he thought) of improving his German. When I saw him on a trip over there he said that everything was good EXCEPT he wasn't getting much chance to improve his Deutsch.

Seems like everyone at work speaks mostly English.

Because of globalization English is the universal second language. When you get a group of people together from all the disparate offices the only thing they have in common is ESL.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-07-23 09:45|| 2007-07-23 09:45|| Front Page Top

#9 I'd like to believe this, but I'm still ~~hip~~ neck deep in folks not able to speak English. Not just Spanish, alot of folks now from Ethiopia, Sudan among other far away places, speaking a multitude of languages and dialects.
I like that the youth are learning English, we need to all come together speaking English.

While I was visiting Ireland this summer, I heard that to keep the Gaelic language alive, Ireland was offering free or greatly reduced college if the student spoke Gaelic. Don't know how true this is, maybe just wishful thinking.

The article reports this as a bad thing? WTF? Agreed!

Posted by Jan 2007-07-23 09:56|| 2007-07-23 09:56|| Front Page Top

#10 Languages, like people, come and go. A tongue and people under attack and the resultant diaspora not commonly discussed is that of the Afrikaaner. In the not too distant future it is very likely that Afrikaans will no longer be spoken, except possibly in the outlands of Namibia, Bostwana, and SA which has no fewer than eleven official languages.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-07-23 10:20|| 2007-07-23 10:20|| Front Page Top

#11 While I feel it's important to keep one's own cultures alive in the home, with a sense of one's identity is a good thing. I do however feel it necessary to come together with one language to communicate.

While I was visiting family in Ireland, a mass was said in Gaelic in my cousins honor, and how I wished I knew the language. My cousins did, but also speak English.

Important note: the ability of their children to speak English is directly proportional to the children's later financial and social success. Fully integrated children of Mexicans tend to rise very quickly up the social and economic ladder. However, those that do not integrate tend to both ghettoize and economically stagnate. How True.

Posted by Jan 2007-07-23 10:55|| 2007-07-23 10:55|| Front Page Top

#12 Down here in Aztlan (Tucson) there doesn't seem to be much of a struggle...

Posted by borgboy2001 2007-07-23 12:39|| 2007-07-23 12:39|| Front Page Top

#13 The international company I know of in Waldorf uses English as its official language. Thus, if a German is talking to a Frenchman, the conversation should be in English; the memos certainly will. I believe this is even true for some French multinationals.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-23 13:58|| 2007-07-23 13:58|| Front Page Top

#14 NS Probably the same one since Waldorf ain't all that big. BUT, even the informal communication at work is often in English and there is no big deal made about it. The personnel wandering around is so multi-national that there needs to be some common form of communication.

Not to mention that when I was over there my boss, a true Kraut, and I went to a restaurant.

I asked him what that proper way to order a dark beer was......he turned to the waiter and said "Two dark beers, bitte." ( I was expecting some variant on twzei dunkels )

I'm just trying to make the point that fluent English only is not that big a problem due to the fact that virtually any situation in business can be met with it alone because it is the most common language now across the world.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-07-23 16:44|| 2007-07-23 16:44|| Front Page Top

#15 The pulse of this writing is familiar to me. It reminds me of an argument I have heard from a few of my Spanish-speaking students: if I do well in one thing, I can't-or shouldn't- do well in the other. If I did, I would be denigrating the first thing. Amazing.

If I say my son is a great baseball player, does that mean he won't be able to draw? Or shouldn't draw? The current thinking on this must evolve from either/or-it is possible to be good at both. And Berges, we are in America, querida, so yes, English is heard everywhere, every day.

Learning to speak English isn't eracing this child's Spanish-his mother still speaks to him in Spanish, and he understands her and presumably others in his community that choose to speak in Spanish. Does she somehow object to him speaking to her in English? "Growing accustomed" is an interesting choice of words. I thought she was "struggling to raise him to speak Spanish and English fluently"? Maybe she really meant Spanish first; he knows it and loves her and leaves it at that.

Posted by Jules 2007-07-23 19:45|| 2007-07-23 19:45|| Front Page Top

#16 Where that other language comes in handy is in listening to the sotto voce side conversations you weren't meant to understand... and charming the locals by speaking in their language for a little while before they start practicing their English on you. When we lived in Europe, Mr. Wife used his German mostly when dealing with factory workers and consumers in Eastern Europe who happened to speak German rather than English. In the company office, part of his job as an expat was to train his ESL reports to communicate effectively in both American English and the company dialect thereof. He mostly used his expensive Goethe Institut training to read the Frankfurt Algemeine Zeitung.

As a trailing spouse my experience was different. With increased language skills came increased connection with the locals, and a deeper experience. But in Germany the Spanish I'd studied was almost as useful as German, in the social circle that developed, and Korean and Czech or Serb would have been as useful as Spanish for conversing at our barbecues.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-23 20:09|| 2007-07-23 20:09|| Front Page Top

#17 AlanC

Agreed.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-23 20:20|| 2007-07-23 20:20|| Front Page Top

#18 It reminds me of an argument I have heard from a few of my Spanish-speaking students: if I do well in one thing, I can't-or shouldn't- do well in the other. If I did, I would be denigrating the first thing.

Good catch, and good point, Jules. Is this attitude a Hispanic cultural thing?

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-23 20:49|| 2007-07-23 20:49|| Front Page Top

#19 One of the reasons English has a leg up, so to speak, on being the international language is its flexibility. I've read several articles on international language that stress how much easier it is to add a new word or a new concept in English, compared to European, Asian, or African languages. That also makes it much harder to learn, especially with some of the arcane rules of language that exist in English. I always tried to learn as much of the local language as I could when I was travelling in Europe, as a courtesy. I also found that English was widespread, and made communications much easier.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2007-07-23 20:55|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2007-07-23 20:55|| Front Page Top

#20 There is definitely great love, I would say, tw, of their language of origin-which I get. On the other extreme, I have also seen instances of a kind of linguistic chauvinism in places like LA and NYC. Invasive, proprietary.

Posted by Jules 2007-07-23 21:58|| 2007-07-23 21:58|| Front Page Top

#21 75% of all computer data is stored in English

English it the de facto language for air traffic controllers

International banking depends upon the English language

The world's second language is almost unanimously English

Need I go on?

I grew up speaking English and Danish. Guess which tongue is my language of choice?

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-23 22:32|| 2007-07-23 22:32|| Front Page Top

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