Comment by bhpm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhpm | Hacker News Reader

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> Like WHY?

Did you grow up with formal education? Did you grow up in a place where girls were encouraged to learn? If either of these is true, your starting condition is miles ahead of the starting conditions for many, many immigrants who came to the US.

It sounds simple, but in order to learn something, you have to first believe you “can.” Can in the sense that you have the ability and that you’re permitted to.

My PhD is in second language acquisition. For my thesis I interviewed, through translators, 276 “non proficient speakers” of the dominant community language. The most common attitudes I encountered were:

(1) I’m too old to learn a new language. It’s just not possible.

(2) I don’t have the right to speak the dominant language because I’m not the same ethnicity / religion / other attribute.

(3) If I speak another language, I will lose who I am to the dominant culture, and be unable to communicate with people “back home.” This last attitude was expressed often, even when the person had no living relatives or friends anywhere else.

These 3 reasons ring closely, its what i see in my own family. They are Cuban and came here older and have never bothered to learn the language mostly out of fear of being too old or loosing their culture. They also have their own micro country were they can get Spanish speaking doctors, jobs and community to socialize. They can go months without hearing a word in English. Confidence is big to learn a language, my own kids are 5 and 6 and they can write / read and speak Spanish and English and speak in french but my son is less extroverted and fallsback more to English on front of people.

Those are some seemingly crazy reasons. I live around a lot of Guatemalans, none of them speak English. (I'm in the US.)I've been wondering why not just learn even a little? But also why go to another country and make no attempt to be part of it.

It is the opposite of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Which is to say, don't hesitate to attend the next scheduled public execution or gladiatorial combat exhibition.

> If I speak another language, I will lose who I am to the dominant culture

I find this reason very compelling.

Personally I see it as a huge positive to be able to communicate with people and to enjoy cultural benefits - but what about the harms? What about the negative or undesired cultural values that you might absorb and adopt? And what about losing or forgetting your original culture, values and sense of self, and becoming someone you no longer recognize?

It looks like you are a new user. Would be very fascinated to read about your research.

It's amazing that this is being studied, but it's some rather weird reasons. You have people who migrated to the US in the 1950 - 1980 from Europe, they didn't care about losing their ability to speak their native language. It's alway interesting to hear a Dane that moved to the US 50 - 70 years ago. Their language is frozen in time but still fairly good.

Both sets of my grandparents came to the US (New York) from Italy in the 1920's. They learned very broken English, and discouraged my young parents from speaking Italian. All four grandparents felt this way. My parents aren't sure of the reasons, they were just told not to speak Italian outside the house.

Your grandparents were trying to protect your parents from the racism they encountered as immigrants in the 1920s. It was vicious, inexcusable, and largely forgotten due to the success of Italian assimilation in the US.

Jacobson’s “Whiteness of a Different Color” goes into this in detail.

/smacks forehead/

Of course! Thanks for the book recommendation.

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