Multiculturalism is dead

[Rhyfelwyr]

I have me doubts that there are really that many people as a percentage of any immigrant population who cannot speak whatever local language is required.

Well for some purely anecdotal evidence, even since I started my new job I've served a good few customers who could barely speak English. Doesn't bother me at all but it would surely help their own prospects a lot if they learned it.

[gaelic cowboy]

Minimum wage dead end jobs have a lot to do with it too the owners like hiring foreigners even when the people who frequent the service find it annoying having to explain what a plate of spuds is.

The service jobs in pubs clubs shops etc employ these people and we deal with them every day reinforcing the idea none of them can speak the lingo.

[gaelic cowboy]

Well for some purely anecdotal evidence, even since I started my new job I've served a good few customers who could barely speak English. Doesn't bother me at all but it would surely help their own prospects a lot if they learned it.

There is a new factor at play here too the world has got far too small nowadays technology and modern communications allow us to live our own life separate from the vast majority of the people we live beside.

Hence even in smallish size towns in Ireland now there can be what everyone calls Polish Shops in reality there selling more than Polish stuff. You can come from Warsaw work as a housekeeper in a hotel eat your own food read Polish newspapers speak to a lot of people from home in the local Polish bar and with the sat dish on the roof you can watch the news from home even.

I don't really mind it so much i mean everyone gets homesick but I do feel these people are missing out on an entire experience of living in a different country and that is kind of sad.

[Hax]

Anyway, Lemur, learning a language beyond the basics takes rather more than two years. Ten is nearer to the mark.

But don't you also agree that it kinda depends on the relationship between your native language and the language spoken in the country you're living in? I mean, German would be a lot easier for the English to learn than say Russian, Arabic or Farsi. Same with Japanese and French, for example (the horror..).

I'm with Idaho, although I do believe that learning the language of the country you've moved to is something the government should enforce. Either fining or subsidizing people that respectively don't and do try to actively learning the language is very important. It'll help to close the gap between immigrants and the native population.

On the other hand, especially with the immigrant laborours, who do not wish to stay very long, speaking your own language is a natural thing; the farther people get removed from their roots, the stronger their resolve will be to get back to those roots. Language, religion(!), food and such things are all parts of their culture they've taken with them and wish to cling to as well.

[gaelic cowboy]

I think the real death knell of multiculturalism is the backlash building over relativism between cultures and ideas even when one of the two is obviously moonbat crazy people try to draw an equivalence thats wrong.

[InsaneApache]

I think the real death knell of multiculturalism is the backlash building over relativism between cultures and ideas even when one of the two is obviously moonbat crazy people try to draw an equivalence thats wrong.

This.

[Tellos Athenaios]

But don't you also agree that it kinda depends on the relationship between your native language and the language spoken in the country you're living in? I mean, German would be a lot easier for the English to learn than say Russian, Arabic or Farsi. Same with Japanese and French, for example (the horror..).

That's mainly the initial learning curve being less steep as you pick up the basics.