Quote:
|
Originally Posted by DanaC
Unless of course you are British. British people have no right to make that argument as we are almost uniformly unwilling to learn anybody else's language. Our usual strategy if moving to a foreign land, is to find out where all the other British people live and set up camp as near to where we can reasonably expect to purchase a cooked English breakfast as we possibly can. The next stage in our assimilation is to learn how to pronounce a couple of necessary words to allow us to travel between british enclaves within that country, avoid any real contact with the locals other than in a service capacity, get homesick after about eight years and move back home.
|
Is this your personal experience or your armchair perception of the British experience? It definitely is not my family's experience. They emigrated from Britain to another country (not the U.S.) and integrated, refusing to remain self-consciously British. Why? Because life was too hard in Britain and they had to leave, and they were grateful for another chance in a new country. Life was very hard for them for a long time, but still better than before.
You can't make generalizations about people, even if they're your own people.
If you're so down on the British not learning a new language after eight years, I hope you're at least as critical of the many immigrants to Canada and the U.S. who live in their new country forty or fifty years and never learn a new language.
I agree with the principle that if you move to my country, you learn my language; if I move to your country, I learn yours.