Why should immigrants in America learn english?

Kauf means "buy" - and assuming you meant "Scheiße", you think he's a shit-buyer?


Kopf = head.

What I THINK you meant to call him was 'shit-head' or "Scheißekopf"

:)

Tschuess!


I'm a little rusty on the spelling...been awhile...however ya got the jist...:wine:
 
Karl Marx said:
This should not even be a question because the answer is obvious.

The answer to this question is emphatically YES. Every immigrant that I know feels the same way. In fact, I had to learn English as a young boy (you wouldn't know that loquacious, little ol' me couldn't speak a word of it at one time, either)

This is America, the language is English. If you want to become a citizen, learn English.

And, Kathianne is right, people who speak a separate language eventually will want to form their own country.

I disagree with you. We as a country have accepted immigrants for our entire history. Many of these immigrants didn't speak a word of English, and they didn't go off and try to form their own country. Instead they settled down, earned a living, raised their children, and helped build America. This wave isn't any different.
 
Are you serious?


C'mon he was being humorous with a sarcastic twist...scroll up and re-read some other comments...y'all are way to pleasing to Darrin et al get a sense of humor before ya lose all!:read:

Spell check me and him if it makes y'all feel better...lol:cof:
 
I disagree with you. We as a country have accepted immigrants for our entire history. Many of these immigrants didn't speak a word of English, and they didn't go off and try to form their own country. Instead they settled down, earned a living, raised their children, and helped build America. This wave isn't any different.

Actually, while new immigrants may or may not have learned the language, they most certainly made their children do so. They also encouraged the culture of America, while many also kept alive the old country traditions in home, church, and ethnic neighborhood. One would NOT find them flying a flag of another country in lieu or above the US flag. That is the difference. It was a 'melting pot', not a tossed salad.
 
C'mon he was being humorous with a sarcastic twist...scroll up and re-read some other comments...y'all are way to pleasing to Darrin et al get a sense of humor before ya lose all!:read:

Spell check me and him if it makes y'all feel better...lol:cof:

Spell check? What good will that do without a decoder ring? :D

DecoderRingPromo.jpg


Half the time I don't know WTF you're trying to say. :wtf:

Perhaps we should focus on making sure that our citizens can read and write english? Perhaps form a coherent thought?

attachment.php
 
  • Thanks
Reactions: dmp
Archangel seems NOW to get MY "G"ist! (Look up words in the dictionary bud. It's amazing, but it will help you spell!) Learn your own language bub!
And, if you're going to try to write in German, use a German dictionary. It will show that you tried to call me a Scheisskopf. But isn't that like the kettle calling the pot black? (By the way, I'll sound out kettle for you: k-e-t-t-e-l.)
 
Kathianne said:
Actually, while new immigrants may or may not have learned the language, they most certainly made their children do so. They also encouraged the culture of America, while many also kept alive the old country traditions in home, church, and ethnic neighborhood. One would NOT find them flying a flag of another country in lieu or above the US flag. That is the difference. It was a 'melting pot', not a tossed salad.
Many immigrants and their children learn English, even today. While their certainly is a segment of the immigrant population that has failed to learn the language, more often then not once you reach the third generation people can't even speak their ancestors native language. This fact holds true even for today's immigrants and their children.
 
Many immigrants and their children learn English, even today. While their certainly is a segment of the immigrant population that has failed to learn the language, more often then not once you reach the third generation people can't even speak their ancestors native language. This fact holds true even for today's immigrants and their children.



I'd like to see the stats on that. Seriously, anecdotal only, I teach kids whose primary home language is Spanish whose parents were born here. In many cases, I cannot communicat with those parents, without translator. They may understand me, but I cannot be sure due to their responses. Thus, we do it in Spanish.
 
Must hang must hang my head in shame...the spelling police Mr.Blue,DMP and Bush Lover have a great concept of checking the dictionary everytime they post...then again I draw and make comments based on 'Real Life' experience...damn the spelling full speed ahead...like y'all never mispell...only in your dreams children...just most adults in here don't make a big issue outta y'alls errors...lol:rolleyes:


Oh yeah I forgot to add there is not one person in here that spells correctly everytime...it's just that most are having fun and don't self edit everyword they write...thats for those who only want to play like they are smart...and play cop...or whatever it is that makes em' feel important....:bsflag:
 
Kathianne,
I'm finding an online source for those statistics (I originally found that fact in The Economist). However, I also happened to stumble across this interesting article.

Harvard Magazine said:
Latinos Nix Violence




First-generation immigrants are more likely to be law-abiding than third-generation Americans of similar socioeconomic status, reports Robert Sampson, Ford professor of the social sciences. These new findings run counter to conventional wisdom, which holds that immigration creates chaos. The prevailing “social disorganization theory” first gained traction in the 1920s and ’30s, after the last big wave of European immigrants poured into the United States. Scholars have maintained that the resulting heterogeneity harmed society. “They weren’t saying that this was caused by any trait of a particular group,” Sampson explains. “Rather, they were saying that lots of mixing would make communication accross groups difficult, make it hard to achieve consensus, and create more crime.”

Yet in Sampson’s recent study, first-generation Latino immigrants offer a particularly vivid counterexample to this common assumption. “They come into the country with low resources and high poverty, so you would expect a high propensity to violence,” Sampson says. But Latinos were less prone to such actions than either blacks or whites—providing the latest evidence that Latinos do better on a range of social indicators, a phenomenon sociologists call the “Latino paradox.”

With colleagues Jeffrey Morenoff of the University of Michigan and Stephen Raudenbush, now of the University of Chicago, Sampson followed 3,000 young people in 180 Chicago neighborhoods from 1995 to 2002. They ranged in age from eight to 25, and came from a full range of income levels and from neighborhoods with varying degrees of integration. Chicago was a deliberate choice: “We felt it was representative of where the country was going,” Sampson explains. The number of Mexican immigrants in the city skyrocketed in the 1990s, and immigration from Poland and Russia also increased, creating an almost equal three-way split in Chicago’s general population among whites, blacks, and Latinos.

During the course of their study, Sampson and his colleagues periodically interviewed the young people on a range of subjects, including asking whether they had been involved in such violent acts as fighting or robbery. The researchers supplemented this data with census, crime, and poverty statistics, and with a separate survey that asked 9,000 Chicago adults about the strength of social networks in their neighborhoods. The investigators then developed mathematical models to determine the probability that a given child would engage in a violent act, and to understand which factors raised or lowered his or her likelihood of violence.

Sampson was surprised to discover that a person’s immigrant status emerged as a stronger indicator of a dispropensity to violence than any other factor, including poverty, ethnic background, and IQ. “It’s just a whopping effect,” he says. Of people born in other countries, he notes, “First-generation immigrants are 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation immigrants, and second-generation immigrants are about 22 percent less likely [to do so] than the third generation.” Mexican Americans were the least violent among those studied, in large part because they were the most likely to be first-generation immigrants, Sampson adds. The study also revealed that neighborhoods matter. “Kids living in neighborhoods with a high concentration of first-generation immigrants have lower rates of violence,” he explains, “even if they aren’t immigrants themselves.”

What makes new arrivals more law-abiding? Sampson theorizes that people who relocate here for the sake of greater opportunity come with a strong work ethic: “They may have a certain motivation to work and not get arrested,” he says. The young Latinos in Sampson’s study were also more likely to live with married adults, which correlated with a lower risk of violence, and to hold conservative opinions regarding drug use and crime, all of which might deter them from breaking the law. Finally, living in a neighborhood with many first-generation immigrants—who appear to bond over their shared experience—generates a dense social network that may steer young people away from crime. It’s likely, Sampson adds, that many of these immigrants are in the country illegally, which may give them “extra incentive to keep a clean record and not commit crimes, in order to avoid deportation.” After a few generations here, however, America’s tradition of “frontier justice” may prompt greater violence, he speculates. “It’s that notion of reacting to insults and taking the law into your own hands,” he says. “You would expect more exposure to that over time.”

When immigration increases, “the culture of violence is diluted,” Sampson suggests. Indeed, he wonders if the last decade’s spike in immigration nationwide might explain the drop in crime in American cities around the same time, an idea he explored in an op-ed piece for the New York Times (“Open Doors Don’t Invite Criminals,” March 11, 2006) published as Congress began to debate immigration reform.

The column prompted a flood of e-mails and letters, including angry rebuttals from groups favoring strict immigration controls and hate mail from individuals. Sampson says he wasn’t surprised: another portion of this research indicates that preconceived notions about foreigners and minorities are tremendously difficult to shake. He and his colleagues found that the presence of Latinos and blacks in a neighborhood creates a perception of disorder, even when levels of crime and disorder are actually low. “People make inferences about neighborhoods very quickly,” he says.

Still, Sampson believes that America’s history as a nation of immigrants means that those who have arrived in the most recent wave will ultimately be accepted into the fold. “At the end of the day, I’m optimistic that this debate will resolve itself in a way that’s consistent with the past,” he says. “I think the data show that the country isn’t going to hell in a handbasket because of immigration.”

~Erin O ’Donnell
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090605.html
 
Kathianne,
I'm finding an online source for those statistics (I originally found that fact in The Economist). However, I also happened to stumble across this interesting article.

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090605.html

I do not disagree about the 'in the main' law abiding illegals being law abiding while here, (of course by being 'illegal' they are setting a precedence for their children). The problem with illegal chaos is from those that weren't law abiding there and of course they are not here. We are straying way off of English question btw.

It's the ending that jumps out though, we are not talking 'new immigration' here, as OCA keeps pointing out, for very different emphasis, they've been here 'forever...'
 
Many immigrants and their children learn English, even today. While their certainly is a segment of the immigrant population that has failed to learn the language, more often then not once you reach the third generation people can't even speak their ancestors native language. This fact holds true even for today's immigrants and their children.

Not true, I know many 3rd and 4th generation Greeks here who speak fluent Greek.

Lets face it, many immigrants who come here at an advanced age 30+ have a very hard time picking up the language, its just more difficult to do then when you are younger but i'm willing to bet that the majority of immigrants who come here know that they have to learn some English and try and have some success albeit broken.

This must learn English and English as the official language crap is a joke, its just red meat for the base that has zero effect on any perceived immigration problem.

Anyway i'd like to see some of you guys move to lets say, Russia, and be speaking decent even within 5 years. Wouldn't happen. Hell many Americans won't even bother to learn basic shit like hello and goodbye when on vacation in a foriegn country, we just expect everyboody should be able to speak English.
 
okay, here is one source from PBS
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/spanglish/threat/
PBS said:
The truth is that there will probably always be immigrants in the U.S., coming from a wide variety of countries, who cannot speak English but whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren will end up being native English speakers. The reason for this is, again, the fact that it is much easier for children to learn another language than it is for adults. Adults who immigrate to the U.S., especially later in life, may never really become fluent in English. It's not that they don't want to speak English; it's simply much more difficult for them to [earn it well. Their children, however, will be able to pick up English easily from their friends and the society around them. These second-generation immigrants, the children of the adult immigrants, are likely to be bilingual, speaking their parents' language at home and English at school and in the English-speaking community. When they grow up and have children of their own, those children - the third generation - will most likely speak only English, both at home with their bilingual parents and in the English-speaking community. This three-generation pattern has been repeating itself for many years, through wave after wave of immigrants.
It's found under "Does bilingualism in America threaten the English language?"
 
okay, here is one source from PBS
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/spanglish/threat/
It's found under "Does bilingualism in America threaten the English language?"

Bilingualism is not only fine, it's preferred. The problem is when English is not only 'second to be learned' but either not learned-thus not bilingual or is the minor language for children being raised and educated in this English speaking country.

Children who have another language as the primary language at home, (doesn't have to be Spanish), tend to think in their dominant language, thus having to 'translate' what they are reading, writing in English. It effects their ability not only on timed tests, but reading comprehension in general.

Personally I do not care what language one speaks in one's home, but then don't bitch about their test scores not being reflective. They are, for where they live and the path they are on.
 
Kathianne said:
Bilingualism is not only fine, it's preferred. The problem is when English is not only 'second to be learned' but either not learned-thus not bilingual or is the minor language for children being raised and educated in this English speaking country.

Children who have another language as the primary language at home, (doesn't have to be Spanish), tend to think in their dominant language, thus having to 'translate' what they are reading, writing in English. It effects their ability not only on timed tests, but reading comprehension in general.

Personally I do not care what language one speaks in one's home, but then don't bitch about their test scores not being reflective. They are, for where they live and the path they are on.
I totally agree with you there. I just don't think that the government should require people to speak any particular language.
 

Forum List

Back
Top