What’s your answer? – IOTW Report

What’s your answer?

Wednesday, 29 December 2021, 12:30 MJA Uncategorized 29

What’s your answer to ‘This is America, speak English’? Here’s mine.

American Thinker:

By Oleg Atbashian

I’m signed up with a worldwide questions-and-answers board named Quora, which sends me daily digests of its content in the categories I’ve chosen: history, culture, and languages.  Most of the time, the posts are informative and a pleasure to read, but once in a while, they seem to be designed by trolls with an agenda to sow discord in society, just like what the active measures were designed to do in the pre-internet era.  That pretty much describes today’s social media anyway — one has to take it or leave it.

Today’s digest contained just such a leading question with over a hundred answers that read like a smug, virtue-signaling hate-fest.  As an immigrant in this country, I just had to answer it, if not the way the author had intended.  I thought the readers of the American Thinker would like to see it as well.

The following is the question and my answer to it.

Q: You are sitting in an American restaurant speaking with a friend in Spanish. Somebody at the next table takes offense and shouts “This is America, speak English!”  What is the best way of dealing with this situation?

This is a loaded and dishonest question.  In my almost 30 years in America (and I’ve traveled almost everywhere from New York to California), I’ve never seen this happen.  I speak three different languages fluently, and when I’m with people whose first language is Russian or Ukrainian, it’s only natural that we communicate in their mother tongue.  If we have an English-speaker at our table, we naturally switch to English.  No one has ever been stressed about this very normal behavior.  The only memory that comes to mind is the opposite of what the question implies, but more on that later. more

29 Comments on What’s your answer?

  2. Dear Penthouse Forum,

    I am a person of hispanic descent in a large American city, I was at a restaurant recently with another hispanic friend, and we were speaking in Spanish. A strawman was seated nearby. What happened next is the stuff of wild fantasy…

    25

  5. ^^^ thirdtwin – yup, total strawman. I am a 5th generation American (at least, depends which branch you take). I could care less what language you speak in your personal dialogs. I do know 3 languages. If you are a tourist and speak to me in one of those, I will gladly try to answer.

    When I travel to distant lands, I try to learn a little of the language or at least take a translator or phrasebook. When I am there, I do not expect them to speak English.

    11

  6. On the other hand, common language has always been the common thread that has held Americans together, which is why progressives have tried so hard to divide us with bilingual everything. Just look how divided Canada is, thanks to their bilingual country.

    13

  7. “Since it was Spanish, no one was talking to you.
    Mind your own business.”
    The last coming out of my mouth more often these days.
    People need to get a life & stay outta mine unless invited.

    4

  11. Quora is full of Trolls now. I also publish there with millions of views. I also have loaded divisive questions thrown at me. You click on the fake question and can see it’s a Troll by the blank history .

  15. the only time I get uppity about someone not speaking English is if
    *they are clearly living and working here in ‘Murica
    *couldnt be bothered to learn English
    *and I’m in line at the C-store and the illegal aliens in front of me are yelling at the Middle Eastern or Indian store owner in Espanol that they want their fucking phone cards so they can call back to their mother country.

    Any time I go to a foreign country on vacation, I always bring a phrase book of common words so that I won’t be The Ugly American. I’ve learned “Restaurant Spanish, German and French” that way. AND I’M JUST VISITING, NOT WORKING THERE!

    Hey furriners, have some common sense, common decency and common courtesy to not disrespect my country or me. Now buy your goddam Goya Malted Soda and get the fuck outta my way!

    8

  20. If someone speaks to me in broken English and apologizes for not grasping it fully I ask them what their native language is. When they tell me I compliment them by saying their grasp of English is far better than my grasp of their native language.
    I have been in many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Almost everywhere you go there is someone nearby who knows English. They are almost always gracious to help with a communication problem and will act as interpreters.
    I look at it this way – they came here so they need to learn the common language, which is English. If they can’t communicate to me in that language I ignore them.

    7

  21. I am a legal immigrant, son of a legal immigrant. My father brought us here from a war zone.
    Now that I got that explained. Here is what I think.
    If you are having a private conversation, then it is no one’s business.
    Otherwise, yes, speak English. No one should be forced to learn a new language because you refuse to learn the language of the country you chose to immigrate to.

    8

  24. The reality is that no one but a complete asshole would but into a conversation at the next table spoken in any language. This is just another poll question whose real purpose is to insert an anti-white optic in people’s heads based on images already inserted there by Hollywood films going back decades.

    5

  28. “A frustrated request to speak English may still happen if one is trying to get a service and everybody around speaks another language.”
    That’s my pet peeve. English is a universal language. Most foreign nationals know how to speak English to some degree.

    Otherwise, if it’s a private conversation – not a problem. Yet, English is the official language in the United States. It should be respected, understood and spoken as much as possible in this country.

    1

  29. My friend Rajhi from Credit Card Company has a cousin, Harjeet, that called the other day to give me something. Not sure what it was, because I could not understand him.
    He gave me a spiel that went on for at least ten minutes, after which I said that I didn’t understand a thing he said, and could he please say it again, only slower, which he did, which took at least fifteen minutes.
    When he was done, I said that I had been distracted and could he repeat it again, to which he replied, “OH SHIT”, to which I replied, I understood that Harjeet, and then hung up.
    I have a diverse network of friends that call me once, twice, sometimes three times a day.

    2

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