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Coming from Sweden and now a US citizen, I don't care what languages people speak around me. What I care about is that they are here legally. That's it.
I lived in The USA for 20 years, came here when I was 21, and my English has improved over the years. But everybody's situation is different.
This doesn't come as much of a surprise but it's troubling nonetheless. But time moves forward and whether everyone likes it or not, we will be living in an increasingly diverse society, regardless of whether or not everyone is comfortable with that.
I completely agree with the above, especially the bolded, and I have no problem with that, but what I do dislike is that in the not-too-distant past, people could not like something and that was usually okay (although an opinion might be rightfully thought to be stupid or racist or whatever), but now it seems to me that many people would like to force such liking upon them. That makes me uncomfortable.
As I said, I do agree with you, but my approach is to move very soon to a small rural town where it is okay with the majority of residents for someone to not be extremely politically correct and/or extremely liberal, and where the great majority were born in the U.S.* If I want diversity, there is a very large town just a little more than an hour away. As the saying goes, "If you don't like it, leave" -- so that is what I am doing. I certainly don't expect everyone else to abide by what I want -- and when I get to my new location, I am not going to expect the "old-timers" to change their ways to suit me.
*To clarify, I have nothing against immigrants as long as they are willing to respect traditional U.S. culture and at least try to learn and speak English.
Last edited by katharsis; 05-10-2019 at 08:20 AM..
See what I mean? Most Republicans are xenophobes. So why is this survey newsworthy?
What makes it newsworthy is that 18% of Democrats are bothered and an even larger group of Dems say they're somewhat bothered by people speaking foreign languages.
I had no idea the Dems had so many xenophobes among us!!
This doesn't come as much of a surprise but it's troubling nonetheless. But time moves forward and whether everyone likes it or not, we will be living in an increasingly diverse society, regardless of whether or not everyone is comfortable with that.
What's troubling is yet another survey that has creating some form of negative "ism" about white people and/or Republican as its only goal.
Why even conduct such a survey? Oh, I am conviced white Republicans are xenophobe racists, so lets call a bunch and see if I can get some to say yeah, I don't like people speaking fer'in gobbledygook and terking er jerbs!!!
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ASKING THAT QUESTION? So you have identified that some number of the people called (preselected for the hopeful propensity to be agreeable to that question) live up to your negative prejudice about them...OK, now what? Shame the entire population that resembles those few people among the small sample you called? I got one white person to say a bad thing, thus all white are people are bad?
Seriously, what is the f***ing point to this kind of crap?
I agree with those who say that hearing a variety of other languages being spoken means I'm in a place worth being. If I go to a Thai restaurant and I hear customers speaking Thai, that means those who are Thai (or who speak Thai, anyway) think the food is good. Same with a European-owned bakery or butcher we go to... when I hear the customers speaking Russian or German amongst themselves or to the staff, it means I've found a great place to purchase authentic-tasting food. In a museum in a city, if I hear a variety of languages, I've hit upon a spot where people in other countries know about it and maybe have gotten recommendations from their friends as a place to see/go.
Also, being linguistically curious, I love hearing how other languages sound. Not just the words they say, but also how quickly they speak, whether they raise their inflection at the end of sentences, how much silence they allow before answering their conversational partner. It's all very fascinating to me.
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