Quote:
Originally posted by AliCat:
If I immigrated to another country, I would learn that country's language in less than a year, for my own safety as well as courtesy. My German ancestors certainly all had to do so. Yes, my job is made difficult. But I think it is ridiculous for various states or the country to contemplate making another language our secondary language, as first of all, we have waves of immigration from a variety of countries and should we just change the second language every fifty years or so, and second, why the heck should we make it easier on people who are too lazy to learn English? And yes, that's what I think we're doing, if people in this country can spend their entire lives not needing to learn any English.
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I don't think it's possible for all people to learn a language in a year. And that doesn't make them lazy. I don't know what the situation is over there, but I moved to Sweden about a year ago so I'll just talk from my experience.
Here they have special Swedish courses for foreigners with a residential visa, and it's all free, so I went there after I moved. Andy yes, I managed to 'learn' the language quite well in a year, but I had an advantage from other people in my class. As first I am fresh out of uni (though not finished yet
) where I studied English. So I had knowledge in grammar, and learning a language was not strange to me. And I also had more time to learn... Most of other people had families, so they had to go to work to support them. Then there's also the factor that they were all about 20 years older than me, which meant that it was a long time since they were last in school, and that they also forgot lots of things. I don't know how many of 'older' Swedes know what a noun or a verb is, but I bet not all of them, so it's not strange they didn't know either. I don't even know how many of them went to highschool... Most of them also came from Iraq and Iran, so when they came here they didn't even know the alphabet. And then there's also the whole cultural difference which made it even harder on them... I moved from Slovenia so the differences were tiny and I didn't have problems adjusting. Then it's also harder for them to learn Swedish, since lots of them live in the same neighbourhoods and they don't have as much contact with Swedes. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I don't think it's fair calling people lazy because they can't learn a language as quickly. Though I don't think you meant those who can't learn it in a couple of years, but those that have been living there for decades.
But anyway, maybe these people don't have to learn English because they can get by by speaking their mother tongue? Or maybe they can't learn the language because there's no course where they would get help, or because they don't have much contact with people that do speak English.
(Sorry if this post doesn't make much sense.) [img]tongue.gif[/img]
[Edit - typos.]
[ 11-04-2002, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: Spelca ]