Re: (OT:) I'm voting for Hillary...


"JoeSpareBedroom" ...
"Wickeddoll®" ...

"Scott in Florida"
wrote:

We attended some festivals when we lived in New England, and
since we plan
to retire there, will probably see more of them.

Natalie

Retire to COLD country?

You still have time to re think that....LOL

--
Scott in Florida

Let me tell you in a way you can understand:

Read...my...lips...NO HOT CLIMATES.

Got it?

Good.

Natalie, a shiverer, not a perspirer



I'm a firm proponent of the Pemberton-Wilkins Ice Diving law:

I refuse to dive in water that's had ice on it in the last 10,000
years.

And the Pemberton Corolary:

If water is below 72 degrees, it's had ice on it sometime in the
last 10,000 years.

So, I guess you're not a "Polar Bear" huh? Those people are nuts.

I hope to be able to retire to Florida someday. The good part,
not the FloriDUH part.

--
Charles the Curmugeon

There's a *good* part? Where is it, and why wasn't I told?!

Natalie, Floridian "expatriate"


I thought anywhere there weren't Cubans and Dimocrats was OK. I saw
some of the good parts on my trip in 1994 to north of Gainsville.

--
Charles the Curmugeon

OK, I'm just going to distance myself from that highly bigoted
remark...

Natalie


I don't like places where any of the Hispanic groups are trying to
'reconquista' the rest of us. I'm tired of having to press 1 to
continue in English. And Chicago never was Spanish. French, yes.
English, yes. But the Spanish only got the WEST side of the
Mississippi River in 1763. I'm also sick and tired of ethnic groups
that want to speak something other than English and don't want to
learn English, and expect me to learn their language instead HERE in
AMERICA. It's bad enough with all the tech support people that I have
to deal with to have to deal with so many Indians that speak English
in such a way that I have to have them repeat things twice and three
times. My ancestors had to learn English when they came over. (A
couple of them had to learn English when the English came over, but
that's a horse of a different color.)

--
Charles the Curmugeon

You cannot blame Hispanics for the bilingual menu thing. That's a
business decision, to reach as many customers as possible. In New
Hampshire, we had English/French menus, since many of them are Canadian
émigrés. Nobody is trying to "force" anything; businesses just choose
to make themselves more accessible. You, and many others are under the
incorrect impression that Hispanics *demanded* bilingual media. I have
never, ever seen that among their political agenda. Ever. There are
many Hispanics who speak perfectly good English, but prefer to speak
their native language. I see nothing wrong with that (personally, I
think it's a gorgeous language, and plan to learn it someday), but I
agree that anyone who emigrates to *any* other country should learn the
language, as my Polish-born in-laws did.

Blanket statements, which you unfortunately make regularly, are rarely
accurate, Charles; it may speak for a segment of whatever group you're
commenting on, but it's not fair to lump *everyone* of that group into
any pigeonholes.

Natalie


Unforunately, I rarely get to see the ones that seem to be the
exceptions. Just the ones that give their groups a bad name.

For instance I know people that are from the Subcontinent that speak
English quite clearly and understandably, but I never ever seem to run
into one on tech support lines, which I'm on a lot.

The whole idea of communication is to be understood by the party that's
hearing you. That's part of the reason my ancestors and your husband's
ancestors learned English when they got here. The landlord and his wife
at the place I grew up in Chicago were from Germany, they came over
after the hyperinflation of 1923. But they said, We are Americans now,
we speak English. The only time I ever heard them use German was when
some of their relatives came over from Germany to visit.

How did the others survive before we had bilingual iron maidens? It's
not like we have a huge state the size of Quebec in the middle of the
country that speaks another language dividing the East from the West, or
that we have Language Nazis just like the Canadians do. Why does
Californication have drivers tests in 27 different languages?

--
Charles the Curmugeon

As I said, I believe anyone coming to this country should learn the
language. There are all sorts of free courses available, so there really
is no excuse. I never heard of a driver's license test being in more
than two languages. That's just dumb, since our signs are in English.


No excuse? Natalie, call your nearest primary school and spend 5 minutes
on the phone with the speech therapist. He/she will explain the science
behind learning language. It doesn't include excuses. It's a matter of
brain development.

Of course I didn't mean people with speech delays, Joe - come on, you're
just being facetious. A person of average ability and IQ can learn a new
language at any age. I'm not buying what you're selling here.

Fact: Language is easily learned by kids under 8 or 10 years old. In the
adult years, it's usually a real bitch to learn a second language. Not
everyone coming to this country is under 8 or 10 years old.

I'd like to see Bill Cosby try olympic pole vaulting, but he's a bit old
for that. In the same vein, you can expect to hear foreign languages
spoken in all immigrant families until the little kids grow up and the old
folks are dead. We have lots of Puerto Ricans here. I'll try Spanish with
them, and many say "I don't speak it. My parents were the last in my
family to use it around the house." That's how it works.

You're just repeating what I said - that sometimes they prefer to speak
their native country's language, and pass that language on to their
children. I also said I think that's just fine; why should their heritage
be eliminated?

You'll have to come up with a much better reason for people not learning a
new language, than speech pathology in some.

Natalie


.

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