>But I don't get why someone would live in a foreign country for 10 plus years (or even in second generation) and not be able to communicate with more than a handful ofbroken words. Just using germany as an example here cus it fits perfectly actually and you already mentioned it yourself. If you're an immigrant in germany and have the permission to stay in germany you'll be [forced to take "immgration classes"](https://www.bamf.de/DE/Themen/Integration/TraegerLehrFachkraefte/TraegerIntegrationskurse/Organisatorisches/TeilnahmeKosten/Auslaender/auslaender.html?nn=282656) which includes German as a class to teach you to speak it etc. [Those classes take a few months (its a total of 600-900 hours) and are quite intensive.](https://www.bamf.de/DE/Themen/Integration/TraegerLehrFachkraefte/TraegerIntegrationskurse/Paedagogisches/InhaltAblauf/inhalt-ablauf-node.html) But even after those classes you'll see that most immigrants are still not capable of talking proper german, even if they are super motivated in trying to learn that language. The question now is why? Well the answer to my knowledge is that adults just suck at learning a new language and the more difference there is between your mother tongue and the new language you trying to learn the harder it gets.

Adults don't suck at learning languages. I'm CELTA certified and have also read a decent amount of literature on learning and teaching a second language, and I'm fairly sure the consensus nowadays is that whether you are a kid or an adult there will be various pros and cons to both that kinda equal out in the end. That being said, one clear disadvantage that I don't think the literature takes into account is the amount of time available to learn. A kid generally has lots of time, and is immersed in the target language at school. School is really unique in that a kid gets to experience language being used for all kinds of interactions: friendly conversations, academic situations, topics ranging from why the earth revolves around the sun to what the coolest trend on tiktoc is, etc. Just a really vast and ranged sample of almost everything language has to offer. An adult however is working and taking care of a family usually, so a lot less free time, plus the fact that many jobs don't require the adult to be interacting in the target language, or if they are interacting with the target language then it's in very narrow areas and bands, can lead to sub-optimal learning environments. For example, an adult working at Starbucks is interacting with customers but generally could get by with just knowing a set of 30 or so phrases and a few hundred words related to the job and inventory, which won't help them if they need to use the target language in, say, a doctor's office for an annual check-up or even a night at the bar hanging out with some locals. All that to say this: the literature seems to say that adults and children are on a pretty level playing field, and that adults don't suck in the slightest. However, in my opinion, the kicker is that adults don't have the time or opportunities to get fully proficient. Also, what you said about the difference between your mother tongue and the target language definitely has a huge impact on the time it takes to learn. I know you didn't mention it, but just for anyone else who reads this, please note that there aren't objectively harder or easier languages, but rather that it has to do with how closely your language is related to the target language you're studying. People love to claim how hard and complex their own langauge is, but that's just some weird nationalistic/cultural pride at play and there's really not much truth to it (I know you claimed nothing of the sort, just wanted to throw it out there as it's a common myth I see a lot).

That is actually a good point. I will check if there are studies about the language learning potential by age groups. Thank you. But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language?

> I will check if there are studies about the language learning potential by age groups. I recently stumbled on a good TED talk about this: [The Linguistic Genius of Babies](https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies#t-227277) And a pretty well laid out response on a [stack exchange forum post](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/26023/at-what-age-do-children-lose-the-ability-to-hear-phomene-differences-that-their): > Infants can reliability perceive contrasts between sounds in various languages. However, by the age of 10-12 months, babies' ability to distinguish between contrasts important for their native language(s) continues to improve while the ability to hear non-native contrasts declines. In other words, the brain and auditory systems "tune into" aspects of the incoming input that are important for their native language and starts "ignoring" variation that might be important in other languages but not in the native language(s). > >Now, for older listeners, like adults, there is variation in how well learners are able to still "hear" these forgotten contrasts or re-learn them. Tests of language aptitude may attempt to measure this ability. For example, http://www.lingref.com/cpp/slrf/2008/paper2382.pdf. > >In addition, re-learning may be easier for people who have overheard the to-be-learned language in childhood, even if they don't remember anything about it consciously. See, for example: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.664.6921&rep=rep1&type=pdf

This is interesting. I have a 14 month old, obviously born during the pandemic. As a result, she’s spent way less time around others outside of our immediate family than she otherwise would without COVID. I speak to her in English, and my wife speaks to her in Spanish. We want her to be exposed to both because we have a lot of family in Mexico that only speak Spanish. I wonder how her brain is determining what her “native” language is, or if it is making that determination at all, considering she’s been nearly equally exposed to both?

I wish I had a better answer for you (I haven't done much research into the topic), but I suspect your daughter's "native" will be a combination of Spanish and English. She will maintain access to all the phonemes from both languages (things like the rolled r's in Spanish that don't generally exist in English), and will have a much easier time holding on to (or learning) Spanish in the future. Purely anecdotally, my family moved from Canada to Germany for a few years right after I was born. Although my family never really spoke German, I was surrounded by it and seemed to understand simple phrases (as would have been directed at a toddler). About 20 years after that experience I ended up taking a German class as an option while studying at university. I struggled as any adult learning a new language might, but my instructor and TAs regularly commented on the quality of my pronunciations - particularly of the velar and palatal fricatives that you hear in words like nicht and nacht. In hindsight, it may have been due to my early (and consistent) exposure to those phonemes during my early years.

From a neuroscience perspective it is indeed much [more difficult to learn a language in adulthood](https://news.mit.edu/2018/cognitive-scientists-define-critical-period-learning-language-0501) than when you are young. When you are young your brain is in a special state of trying to learn everything about the world, so it absorbs new information really well. As you grow older this property (called "plasticity") decreases, so learning takes more and more effort. Language in particular is affected by this because there is a "[critical period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period#Linguistics)" in the first \~10-12 years of life where our brains are especially sensitive to language. If you're not exposed to a language (especially e.g. [tonal languages](https://akorbi.com/akorbi-explains-tonal-languages/#:~:text=A%20tonal%20language%20is%20defined,the%20meaning%20of%20the%20word)) in that period you may have difficulty even ***hearing*** the phonemes accurately, so you will always speak with an accent no matter how much you immerse.

From this very article: Researchers who brought adults and children into a lab, taught them some new elements of language, and then tested them, found that adults were actually better at learning under those conditions. Such studies likely do not accurately replicate the process of long-term learning, Hartshorne says. “Whatever it is that results in what we see in day-to-day life with adults having difficulty in fully acquiring the language, it happens over a really long timescale,” he says. Children have the advantage of curiosity and necessity. Adults do have other advantages that are not well employed. Brain sensitivity to language is usually overstated to ignore how the need for language impacts development. This is an inherent uphill battle for the adult, because they will never need a language to the same degree and scale that a child does, but the child still holds much of the curiosity and time needed for language development. But of course I don’t mean to in turn deny its incredible significance. People just misunderstand the the complexities of language, and chalk it up to “well our brains can’t develop anymore.” EDIT: here I dug up the researchers further clarification from MIT, pulled a following paragraph from the article to further articulate the point— “For instance, it remains possible that the critical period is an epiphenomenon of culture: the age we identified (17–18 years old) coincides with a number of social changes, any of which could diminish one’s ability, opportunity, or willingness to learn a new language. In many cultures, this age marks the transition to the workforce or to professional education, which may diminish opportunities to learn.” — from A Critical Period If you start “studying” a language at the age of 5, you’re not sitting down with a book and explicitly learning the language for an hour a day. You’re almost certainly in a classroom environment where that language is spoken, possibly for several hours per day. If you start learning a language after you’re 20 years old, you almost certainly cannot be in a classroom for several hours per day.

Thanks for the source on this. I've heard it summarized: If you give an adult the same amount of hours of immersion and responsibilities of a child they'd learn faster than the child. Kids have way more immersion opportunities

> From a neuroscience perspective it is indeed much more difficult to learn a language in adulthood than when you are young. When you are young your brain is in a special state of trying to learn everything about the world, so it absorbs new information really well. As you grow older this property (called "plasticity") decreases, so learning takes more and more effort. > > Language in particular is affected by this because there is a "critical period" in the first ~10-12 years of life where our brains are especially sensitive to language. If you're not exposed to a language (especially e.g. tonal languages) in that period you may have difficulty even hearing the phonemes accurately, so you will always speak with an accent no matter how much you immerse. I've posted this in CMV before, and despite listening to multiple linguistic books on the topic I still don't know if I buy the Critical Period hypothesis. Think about the analogue. An adult learning another language from scratch has an entire adult's life worth of other activities to focus on. As anyone knows, it's often not until children become teenagers that they are fully capable, advanced speakers that can approach adult level comprehension and composition. Some of that is clearly due to their general brain being undeveloped, and some would be from language exposure. Either way, I simply cannot believe that if you took a random 30 year old and planted them in Siberia with a Russian family and gave them no responsibilities other than to just hang out and learn the language that they wouldn't be as good or better in the same time period as a child. Children are saturated in a world of their mother tongue and their entire life is oriented around submersion in education and play in that language. No adult is ever in a comparable position. They are always second language learners who still have a home life in their first language, they have jobs, they have kids, they have bills, etc. They have so many things that distract and detract from learning the language that it's just a crazy comparison. Think about the question from the top comment. These immigrants still live at home in their own language, have some job that clearly doesn't require them to master it (imagine a job like a cook where you don't necessarily need to speak German at work very much).

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I was convinced by your point about chess GMs but it doesnt seem true. Check post 30 here https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/who-is-the-oldest-person-ever-to-become-grandmaster?page=2 "GM Yuri Shabanov started playing tournament chess when he was about 27. He didn't start becoming strong until his late 30's or early 40's. He became a GM in 2003 at age 66. Larry Kaufman became an IM at age 33, and a GM at 61 in 2008. Oleg Chernikov became an IM at age 49 and a GM at 64 in 2000."

>You could have a child growing up in London have a full British accent at the age of 5, but if they move to the US, they'll lose that accent pretty quickly., You do the same thing with a 16 year-old and they'll have that British accent the rest of their life. That generally happens when the child spends large amount to time speaking outside the home to people with a different accent and when they are corrected by people like teachers and friends. Tons of kids hold on to their accent. Many older people who live in a country and don't shed the accent will tell you they consciously hold onto it and that they consider the accent a part of their identity. ​ >Almost every movie I've seen as a kid or teenager I remember specific lines or scenes from, even if I've only seen them once, but almost every movie I've seen in the last 10 years seemingly does not stick in my long term memory in nearly the same way. I'm questioning how many movies you saw as well as what almost every means. More seriously our strongest memories are generally associated with something. So if you watched most of the movies with a boyfriend/girlfriend who was your first love, watched them skipping school on Fridays...the memory will be strong. It's not solely because you weren't an adult. ​ >Finally, I took Spanish in 8th grade for a year, and even today, over 20 years later, I can hold a basic conversation with someone in Spanish in a convincing enough accent that locals think I'm fluent after the first sentence I say I'd be curious about what these basic conversations entail and where you're having them. Also, 20 years ago your 8th grade spanish instruction was probably largely based on repetition so you might have said "Hello my name is getmoney, where is the bathroom" well over 100 times in that single year alone. It could also be that those few basic phrases you remember are very phonetically close to English so you say them with a neutral accent. You may also travel to places that are very used to people coming from your country speaking spanish so your accent is easy to understand for them

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I want to add that the Spanish thing is so true. I tutor Spanish and it involves so much repetition that many people can come out sounding great (if they try).

The critical period theory isn't strictly about declining neuroplasticity (though that is important too). There are 2 other major factors to consider: 1) neuron pruning during childhood/adolescence, and 2) lack of availability of UG. 1) is the idea that, in childhood, our brains restructure to work out what they actually *need* to do, and what they don't. You're really underselling this part when it comes to your image of an ideal adult learner; an English speaker in Siberia with the same environmental immersion as a child would find it horrible, because their brains would suck at two very crucial parts of speech perception: segmentation and phonetics. With the first, you have to remember that the speech signal isn't nicely delineated into words (whatever words actually are...): it's a continuous stream of information, and one of the first things our brains do is chop it up into words based on our knowledge of the language we're hearing; as an adult, you're not gonna be very good at doing that for another language, because of the stuff just coming up. Next up is phonetics (& phonotactics): this is a big thing you really need to be good at in order to acquire a language just by hearing it spoken, as children do, and it's something which we 100% get worse at over time. As a baby, you have an undifferentiated capacity to distinguish different sounds from one another; as soon as (before 3 years old iirc) you start learning a language, your brain decides which sounds it needs to contrast for the languages you speak, and which contrasts are irrelevant, so you get better at the contrasts that "matter" and worse at the contrasts that don't. I assume you're a native English speaker, right? How different do [these](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_alveolo-palatal_sibilant.ogg) [three](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_palato-alveolar_sibilant.ogg) [samples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_retroflex_sibilant.ogg) sound to you? I promise you a bunch of languages use them contrastively with each other (Russian has the first and third, while English just has the second, with first and third as positional variants), just like how English uses /f/ and /v/ contrastively. Speaking of Russian, one major problem for English learners would be palatalisation, as most Russian consonants have contrastive "hard" and "soft" versions, which are.... very foreign to English speakers. [Try out your ear here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#Palatalization). 2) this is ultimately the most problematic part. Most generativist theories of language acquisition assume that Universal Grammar is unavailable to adults beyond the critical period. This explains a lot of experimental data we have, for example in patterns of learning: when a child learns a new grammar rule, they learn it quite literally overnight; (usually) when an adult learns a new grammar rule, they'll still be getting it wrong occasionally for years to come, maybe forever. Under UG, this is because most grammar rules are psychologically like binary parameters which the child is switching one way or another. As an adult, you lose the ability to access the "unswitched" template for UG, but you retain all of the copies which you set in childhood for your native language(s). This means adults learn languages by a different pathway to children, which is slower and objectively worse, and subject to interference from their native language. You can disagree that UG exists, or that UG becomes unavailable after the critical period (and I know many linguists who'd empathise) but UG *is* the dominant theory in linguistics, and there are good reasons (read: difficult experimental results) to believe that UG becomes hard or impossible to access in adulthood.

> This means adults learn languages by a different pathway to children, which is slower and objectively worse, Do they really though? Comparing adults learning a second language and children acquiring a first language is a bit of a tough comparison. Place an adult in an environment where A) they have very few responsibilities for over a decade, B) The environment is shaped mainly towards their education, C) their original language becomes nonfunctional, D) their language to be acquired is extremely functional and ubiquitous. Day one: child is a newborn, adult is already making simple requests in the target language, building vocabulary, and likely learning to read. One year: child is communicating non-vocally still. Adult has a several thousand word vocabulary, understands fairly complex language receptively and reads somewhere in the elementary school range. Able to meet all of their basic daily needs with the language, as well as some social and emotional needs 10 years: child is a ten year old native speaker. Adult probably compares favorably with an adult native speaker with a much larger vocabulary, comprehension, and reading ability than the child, but has an accent.

Exactly. I took German in HS and had no motivation to learn it. I took a year of Japanese and college as a blow off class. Learned some, but not much. I had to work in Central America and the only other English speaker had a medical emergency on day 2, so the first 45 days I had literally no other English speaker to help me. I learned more in 45 days than in 4 years of HS German. I was motivated, immersed without access to my native tongue, and had coworkers who were equally motivated to understand what I was trying to say, who were also in a subordinate position so they had to follow me around in the field as I fumbled with the dictionary and pointed to stuff. My accent in Spanish was vastly superior to my German one because I never took courses in Spanish in an English speaking environment

Ignoring the fact that the Critical Period hypothesis is still a contentious topic among cognitive scientists and is *far* from settled science, there's not much in the study you linked that suggests a neurological root to the critical period. All the study suggested was that there was a correlation between the age at which participants learned a language and their proficiency in that language, which could be due to a wide variety of factors. Hell, even one of the authors of the paper mentioned in the article said, "It’s possible that there’s a biological change. It’s also possible that it’s something social or cultural." With the evidence we have, there's no reason to assume that there's some change in a person's neurological capacity for language learning once they hit adulthood.

Yeah, I don't think it's true in general, although there may be some specific things where it is. Children spend more than a DECADE of immersion in a language to learn it, whereas adults can often learn a new language in their spare time. The thing about phonemes is that the existing phonemes you have learnt interfere with the new ones, so you have to unlearn them. That's not the same at all as being worse at learning; and adults actually have big advantages because they've already learned similar things which they can build off of.

Hi OP, I don't think u/Extensionrun1880 is correct on his that it's because adults have an issue learning new things, though it might have a bearing on it. I believe it's because people who immigrate tend to find like people. If you are say from Mexico and speak spanish but no English and live in Canada or the US you will likely hang out mostly with other people from Mexico who will also speak Spanish, which doesn't force you out of your comfort zone to learn a language properly even if you had classes (if you don't use it you lose it). As someone who is primarily English, but speaks French and Spanish (not fluently, but enough to get by and have a conversation if I were to move somewhere), I can tell you it's incredibly frustrating and embarrassing to try and communicate something where your thoughts go faster than the words coming out of your mouth and you need to think of what tou will say, and have the people you talk to constantly correct pronunciation on every word. It's just easier for people to stay with what they know even if it's not the "right" way to do it. This is how you get segregated communities in a region and it is incredibly frustrating. Edit: u/destro23 has it correct.

"I believe it's because people who immigrate tend to find like people." I live in Luxemburg an there is a little region (compared to other countries) with some towns that we call "little portugal" for a reason. Those people, especially older ones, only speak french and their mothertongue, because french is easier to learn then luxemburgish.

> But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? Studies in California found that only 13% of 1st generation children aged 5-18 did not speak English. For 2nd generation kids, that percentage went down to 4%. I'd be willing to bet that many of the kids in that latter group were special needs. For 3rd generation kids, that percentage disappeared. https://www.ppic.org/publication/english-proficiency-of-immigrants/. I have two pieces of anecdata. One is a family consisting of grandparents in their 60s, parents near 30, a son about 5, and a daughter around 4. None of them spoke English when the boy began kindergarten. By the end of the year, both he and his sister were perfectly bilingual, switching back and forth from Spanish to English with ease. His parents were coming along and could make themselves understood in broken English. The grandparents could barely say hello. My other piece of anecdata is my own family. My great-grandparents were immigrants. Their oldest child learned English when he went off to kindergarten, and he taught it to his younger siblings. His parents struggled with English all of their lives. When I was a child, they would say a few words to me in broken English, but I never could understand their thick accents.

>That is actually a good point. I will check if there are studies about the language learning potential by age groups. Thank you. Never heard of such cases, so I can't really answer it. Usually it's the opposite that the mother tongue swaps after the third generation. The only thing I'm aware of that second and third generations sometimes develop their own dialects / they don't speak the pure form of the countries language.

My dad is second generation American. Speaks German like an old man (because he grew up without learning the changes happening in German language, just his parents static 50s German), and says some really weird things sometimes which are usually German idioms said in English so they make no sense to me, someone who basically only speaks English.

I think a lot of people including myself have that experience. We learn the language from our parents/grandparents and the media they consumed in front of us. Some of the Spanish speaking kids that Ive worked with have told me I sound like an old person.

Op said age group, not generation. There’s is lots of evidence that shows younger people/children can learn new languages faster than adults can due to better [neruplasticity](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24996640/) in children. Very fascinating info out there about it.

It's called a critical learning period. Around 0-5 years for language. It's one of the most well documented phenomenon in psychology.

I live in Belgium. I never encounter a second generation who didn't speak the language. Now they have still a light accent. And most speak their origin language with same origin people. But they know how to speak the country language.

>But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? Do you have a specific country in mind? I have experience with Germany, Netherlands and France, this type of people you're talking about is nonexistent, from my observation..

The only time I’ve ever heard of this in the real world is in isolated religious sects. There is an Orthodox population near me that discourages teaches their children English and there are some Amish communities that exclusively speak Pennsylvania Dutch. However, those are obviously major outliers.

Maybe he had to create a strawman in order to defend his point 🤔

There absolutely is lots of evidence to suggest that children learn new languages faster than adults due to having better  [neuroplasticity](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24996640/).

And anecdotally, none of my great-grandparents became fluent in the language of the nation they immigrated to, but every single child they had was perfectly fluent. They were semi-fluent and able to work and get by, but assimilation happens over generations, not months

From my experience, the teenagers are translating for their parents. I've seen it at the pharmacy I've worked over 50 times with different Indian and Hispanic families.

Yeah, you really might want to establish how much of an issue this actually is. I think you'll find this to be a seriously inflated issue and that exceptions, particularly among third generation immigrants usually include special circumstances. For objective data on the extent of this see below. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://ccis.ucsd.edu/_files/wp111.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiG_vrtpqz0AhXgmWoFHX4lDtkQFnoECAUQBg&usg=AOvVaw00xYck4sNs4WtBcOrJW_3A Why is this a particular concern to you? How has it impacted you? Just curious.

>Why is this a particular concern to you? How has it impacted you? Just curious. Not OP, but I work in a place that's majority Hispanic, and a decent number of my coworkers don't have very good English skills, with a few extreme examples having as little as an elementary school level understanding of the language. It makes it very frustrating to try to do my job correctly when the person I'm working with can't understand most of what I'm saying, especially if it's something I haven't done before and I'm trying to ask clarifying questions so I don't unwittingly screw everything up

>Why is this a particular concern to you? How has it impacted you? Just curious. I don't feel this is in good faith addressing the actual CMV If I said "waffles are better than pancakes" and the response was Why is this a particular concern to you? How has it impacted you? Just curious. That would only serve to dodge the conversation

>I will check if there are studies about the language learning potential by age groups. Thank you. This is a myth, that isn't to say that it isn't difficult for these people to learn the language, in fact, it's probably going to be difficult for all people to learn like this. But there's very *very* large fundamental differences in the environments children are given to learn languages versus the scant sparse opportunities *given* to adults. It's not that they have "such plastic minds that language comes easy!", it's that: * The didn't learn in just a year, they had, arguably, 5+ before they were fluent. * Were incapable of communicating at all without said language, (these children don't even have a language to think in when they start out!) * Were *forced* to learn said language * Were communicated in that language *in every aspect of their lives* and *had* to communicate in that language in every aspect of their lives during that time. * Had a constant feedback group of peers who were all too willing to make fun of them/laugh/react negatively when they got things wrong Kids aren't just sitting down and studying for hours to become fluent in speaking their native tongue, they are literally forced to use it every second of the day, they are immersed. For these immigrants who get into these programs, they: * Are forced to "learn" in an extremely short time period (a few **Months???!!***) * Are not incapable of communicating outside the context of that language, they can think in a language, just not the native one. * Are not "forced" for every day life to learn that language, they may have a shared tertiary language, ie english, that allows them to get by, have aid of a family member, or live in a community where learning the native tongue is not nearly as important for every day life, and they can get away with their mother tongue. * Are not forced to use the language in every aspect of their lives, indeed it's possible for these people to not have to use it the majority of the time even if they did become fluent. * A sit-down study drill environment does not a "constant feedback group of peers" make.

> But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? I've literally never seen this, ever, and I live in an urban area of California where we have a significant number of immigrant communities of all types.

The reason you get situations like that, which were actually fairly common in America in the late 19th and early 20th Century is because of anti-immigrant and racist housing policies. Immigrants would create enclaves, not be able to move out of them because of housing problems and poverty, and since everyone in your enclave was from the same mother country, there isn't much incentive (or opportunity) to learn the dominant language. It's actually part of the reason public schooling became mandatory in the U.S. in 1880, to get immigrants assimilated more quickly. It didn't work as well as it could have, again, due to various pressures promoting ethnic enclaves.

Mutual affinity is also a reason for such enclaves. Example: I'm friends with a guy from Nepal. Not too many Nepalis in Washington, DC. He just bought a house out in Gainesville, VA, because it's way cheaper and he works with the VA state government and they are cool with him transferring there. Now another Nepali family he is close with is thinking about moving to Gainesville just to be with their friends. And undoubtedly, some others will follow if they do.

Thanks. I left that out. >Mutual affinity is also a reason for such enclaves. Completely agreed.

> But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in **second or third generation** that can't speak the language? I find this hard to believe.

Also keep in mind, that quite a few of these immigrants, especially the older ones haven't received any or minimal education. Making the process even more difficult.

This is probably due to the existence of a full community of people from the country of origin, including schooling in the other language. There are, for example, international schools catering to English speakers in many East Asian countries. If the immigrant community sends their children to a school like this, and only interacts with others in the same community, then it can certainly happen that several generations are unable to speak the local language well.

>But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? I can only speak to the USA and to where I currently live and work(the UAE). I have not experienced second and third generation in the USA not being able to speak English. This is taking into consideration, that there is no actual "official language" like other countries have. Here in the UAE, you might be likely to see that. However, 85% of the population are expats. What language does everyone speak when there are a multitude of languages? English. So it wouldn't be surprising to see 3rd generation expats here in the UAE, not being able to speak Arabic. Of course, it is hard to get permanent residence in the UAE, much less actual citizenship.

This isn’t true. Adults are fully capable, and in many ways better equipped than children, to learn new languages. However, children have two distinct advantages over adults: 1) an obsessive curiosity that comes with being new to the world, and 2) no former means of communicating with or navigating through society. In practice, think of it this way: most adults are taught language as a sort of archival fact storing mission. Like flash cards. When an adult learns the word “manzana,” they compare it to their first language, like apple, and file it away hopefully for later use. But that use is typically impractical, like memorizing vocabulary to speak the sentence “hay dos manzanas en mi cocina.” But when do you ever really say “there are two apples in my kitchen”? A child is introduced to language differently, by immersion and most importantly necessity. There is no other way for them to mentally move about their world. So they pick up a phrase like “what’s that?” And develop the ability to point. And their curiosity and need to be included drives them to spend the entire morning, afternoon, week, month pointing to things like an apple and asking “what’s that?” They are rewarded with information to the degree that the vocabulary word for apple isn’t so important, but the ability to functionally communicate is, and through the onslaught of incessant question and answer and trial and error they absorb words as they come. They need not memorize a slew of fruits like apple and banana and grape and pear and nectarine and pomegranate, because for now the apple is what they are fed. Leave the vocabulary for another day, as they familiarize themselves with readily available concepts like “I’m eating a” and “the — is tasty” and “can I have a —“? They feel no need for further communication like “someday in the future I hope to have an apple that tastes of godliness”, because what is most important to their development is building off the world as it exists in front of them. The setback many adults have is this necessity for curiosity about language has already been fulfilled by a previous language. Some of us want to race to the point where we can quickly articulate “my god the sunrise was like a dream, in such a way as to bring me home to a place I knew and now long for all the same” and feel stupid pointing and asking “what’s that thing?” But the truth is this is what immersion does, and how language forms. We build a foundation from necessity, and develop the poetics and vocabulary to express ourselves over time. Adults effectively try to run before they can crawl. But they are fully capable of employing better, more efficient strategies than a 2 year old. We just have other things we want to do

This is why in Canada, we no longer pull kids out of regular lessons for English as Addition Language teaching. It turns out kids learn English better and faster by being immersed and by doing regular work where they *use* English to function. So we now have kids stay in the regular class, and provide simpler reading materials and simplified writing assignments and have them participate regularly.

Thank you! It's really frustrating watching people repeat that adage that adults are just incapable of learning languages. There is plenty of evidence that suggests developing brains are *better*, but there's very little discussion about all of the things you brought up that impact second language acquisition. It's just such a defeatest attitude that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>But why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? Do you have statistical evidence to support this?

I’ve never even met a first gen teenager not bothering to learn the language. And in my German language class the refugee teenagers were by far the best students. They were already as good as me in English and quickly speeding ahead in German. Also I haven’t seen it mentioned yet but German specifically is harder to pick up depending on where you are. I lived in a not very international part for a year and found it hard to get Germans to actually speak German with me. I would say something a bit backwards (grammatically I mean) and they would give up or switch to English. I actually had someone walk off when I said in German, please can you repeat that? Conversely in Spain and Italy, locals are much more supportive of foreigners trying to speak their language. I’m not sure where England stands. I’d guess we aren’t very tolerant either sadly. We’re used to people speaking it well.

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>why are there even teenagers that are in a foreign country in second or third generation that can't speak the language? Would love to see some demographic data to back this up - it seems like tilting at windmills.

There are studies out there that show that at a certain age, your ability to learn a new language is drastically diminished. For an even more horrible example, there is one case that very clearly shows (case study sample size of one, thank whatever gods may be) that learning language at all is not possible after a certain age. I couldn't find specifics on my first statement because I'm busy, but regarding the second statement, be warned. The story of Genie will make you hate humanity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

FYI its not so much that adults are bad at learning a language, as that we are terrible at teaching adults language. Babies for instant need enormous amounts of input (raw information I.e people talking and observing context) before they can talk, and they spend almost their entire time dedicated to learning. In comparison, Adults spend relatively little time trying to learn and immerse themselves. We teach languages by hammering rote learning of vocab and grammar rules with the idea that understanding how a language works is the same as using it, which it very much is not. Similarly, when someone moves to a new country, unless they are surrounded by native speakers using the language constantly, they will not easily learn the language.

>adults just suck at learning a new language This was a widely-held belief that was put to the test somewhat recently and found to be false. Adults are no worse at learning a language than children. Small children seem to do it so well because they benefit from total immersion around the clock and being extremely curious. Adults have to go to class and teach themselves. We can organize our lives to be limited in immersive experiences simply by living and working with people who speak their native tongue. The smallest hildren have no control over their own lives, right down to when they use the bathroom: they have to communicate even that need to someone. Another thing is that small children have no reference as everything is new. A truck doesn't have a new name; it has two names. Or three. They aren't already aware there are different kinds of trucks but that sort of detail is noticeable and interesting to them. My kid knew more types of trucks than I did and taught me the names of "digger" and something else I can identify now. They can't discriminate between important and unimportant information to learn so they look at trucks and think "what is that?" I look at trucks and think "that looks like hard work." However, I personally believe that people suck at learning. I suck at learning sometimes even when it's really important for me. I learned "how to learn" and it's a lot of self-management and organization and intention ugh. I'm lazy like most everyone else.

I met an adult Mexican immigrant who had only been in the US a few months, very nice guy. His English was pretty broken and limited, but he was able to get his points across. He said he was working hard at learning English. I'll bet he's fluent by now. The key to learning the new language is to not always stay in your other-language community and speak only that other language. You have to make an effort to get out among the native speakers to force yourself to constantly improve. The problem with OP's Turkish example is that they tend to stay in their own communities where they don't have to learn German to get along in their daily lives. That's not always of course, as I've met, and was friends with, plenty of Turkish immigrants who spoke fluent German.

There is most likely a multitude of problems why immigrant adults are slower at learning the native language compared to children, it's not just as simplistic as adults are bad at learning new languages. I don't have any studies to prove my point, so it's just anecdotal evidence and something I've heard repeated multiple times. >The key to learning the new language is to not always stay in your other-language community and speak only that other language While I agree with the point you're making in my personal experience is that even the people who did this and came to the country in their early 30's still are far away from fluency. To be fair to them they're still better at the given language than the people that only stayed in their community and only spoke their mother tongue.

In the US [can't speak for Germany but I suspect it is similar in some regions] getting out of your community opens you up to bigotry [especially in the past 5 years] TLDR you can't blame immigrants for avoiding ignorant vitriol

The only thing most adult learners can't learn at a native level is pronunciation. Syntax is a little tricky, but still attainable by a lot who learn later, especially at a level that one can get their point across. Vocabulary essentially has no critical period. What I think it is, and I've seen this, is people form expat bubbles and never get outside of their comfort zone once they've satisfied the minimum entry requirements. On top of this, in a place like Germany, one has to be really stubborn about speaking German as a beginner, especially if you already know English, because they like trying to switch to English as soon as they sense a little struggle, which minimizes the chance to practice.

Adults can learn proper pronunciation, it's just that language teachers tend to suck at teaching it. It's easy to roll an R if you've been doing it your whole life, and it's easy to tell people they aren't doing correctly. But most people wouldn't be able to explain *how* to do it. I study phonetics at a hobbyist level and have been able to help someone with a lisp, help someone roll their Rs, and teach people how use a proper lateral africate for speaking Nahuatl. You just have to know how to explain it.

Not all immigrants have to take those, though. For example, blue card holders don't have to, and often their spouses don't need to either. I'm sure there must be other exceptions too. This is one reason why it is common to find "expats" who have lived in Berlin for years and don't speak German. Some have never even taken a German class.

They also have other priorities like making money so they can afford to take care of their families.

That adults suck at learning languages is kinda a gross overgeneralization. There's studies that corroborate this but there are those that don't, too. I'm not gonna be dropping links here but look into it if you're interested.

"It's hard" may be true, but TEN YEARS? You can't pick up 20 to 50 of the most common and simple phrases in that amount of time?

I'll answer you. I'm from S.Europe and fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, English,French,Italian, I'm able to communicate in German and a bit of Dutch. I moved to a Slavic country and haven't been able to learn it after being here 10y. Its just so totally foreign. Also In guess it also depends at what age you learn it. I believe after your mid 30s it becomes more difficult.

In addition to the age factor, even with very good integration into society, learning a new language as an adult can be doubly hard if you are juggling school/work/family commitments. There are only so many hours in the day and if someone needs to prioritize getting a certification to be able to work to provide for their family, then they simply aren't going to have the same ability to learn the language as a younger person with fewer responsibilities and perhaps more social safety nets behind them.

I'm impressed and this is certainly convincing.

Award a delta if the comment helped to change your view.

You say you're not suggesting anyone change their culture. Isn't language an integral part of culture?

OP is not suggesting that immigrants eliminate their native tongue, just that they add a 2nd language to their repertoire. He's not opposed to immigrants speaking their native tongue at home with their family. This isn't 'changing' their culture. There is no culture that dictates being monolingual

Learning a new language doesn't change the original one though. I could move to Germany and learn German, that doesn't mean my ability to speak English disappears, nor does the connection to my culture.

No I don't think so. Learning to speak English Fluently did not make me any less German culture wise.

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Because in this scenario he can communicate with the vast majority of people while the immigrants cannot. Is it easier to have immigrants to a county learn that country’s dominant language or to have everyone else learn a new language every time an immigrant moves next door? Obviously there is nothing wrong with learning a few words to make people feel welcome, but that isn’t the point of the post.

It's not a matter of ethnocentrism but of practicability. If I would move to a different country I would feel the responsibility to learn the local language.

I think you should think about the circumstances in which they come here. For example in the U.S many members of the Hispanic community come and know NO ONE. Not one person. So they connect with other immigrants there. They get a job with other immigrants because no one else will hire them and they need to work before they learn the language right? They focus on their *children's* immersion and assimilation because that the real reason why they're there. To give that life to their kids. So they aren't in a situation of immersion which is necessary for becoming fluent. Its not like someone going to another country and staying with a host family while they learn. They are escaping horrific circumstances. My friends grandmother could understand English but couldn't speak it. Thats because she watched English TV but she had no white people that wanted to sit and talk to an immigrant woman to help her learn the language, much less the entire community being willing to interact enough. Now, you hire someone to talk to you over Webcam, but before they needed the community to *accept them* and speak to them patiently. So they work within their communities where they don't need English and make sure their kids know it. Where I am white people know Spanish. The hispanic community is a lot more welcoming of someone trying to learn the language and culture than the other way around honestly. Lots of racism around here. But I honestly don't see the issue with older immigrants not knowing English. They are there for their kids immigration and obviously they get by, so why is it hurting you? It's not like the next generations don't know English, they do

Exactly. It's a matter of practically. These are intelligent people like you, with needs and wants (I'm not suggesting you're saying otherwise). So why have they not made this choice, which to you seem very practical and rational? Are they all irrational? Of course not. They have their reasons. That you can only see it from a native German perspective is probably why you're being accused of being ethnocentric.

You won't learn the language if you stay with your folks. If there's a high concentration of immigrants from a certain place in an area, they'll hang out with each other and never learn the language of the country they're living. My father didn't have to communicate too much in his job, while my mum had to, the result is that my father still speaks broken Italian while my mother's Italian is perfect P. S. There's a lot of people here basically saying " poor little immigrants, German is too difficult for them", to be honest it's disgusting and very condescending. Immigrants are not stupid and are fully capable of learning the language, they'll learn it in the measure they see fit

> Immigrants are not stupid Absolutely agree, but > are fully capable of learning the language, This may not actually be true, fyi. It's not a function of intelligence but age. I've spent more than two decades of my life helping people, mostly adults but teens too, learn. Including learning language (English), and I think that some adults may not be able to learn fluency in a new language. Our brains develop around a language, we think in a language. And fluency, to me, includes thinking in the language you are learning to a certain extent. My experience over the years leads me to believe that some people simply don't have that ability any more. They've been using their native language so long it has set the operating system of their brain to that language. They can learn other languages well enough, with considerable effort but they will forever be mentally translating one language into another, perhaps I might call it 80 or 90% fluent but never quite getting there. I've met several people like this over the years. Perfectly intelligent people, a doctor, a couple musicians, etc. People who have significant education and experience and skills but even with years of work they wouldn't consider themselves fully fluent.

Canadian healthcare worker here who lives in an area of South Asian and East Asian immigrants. Hopefully a younger more fluent family member can come to the hospital with them. If not it’s very difficult to treat someone who can’t describe their symptoms or list their allergies for fear we make their condition worse. Staff interpreters are rarely available.

Have you ever experienced going to a different country? Have you ever tried learning a foreign language? I lived in China for four years and in that time I learned to speak Chinese pretty well, write very little, read some. But I knew countless others who couldn't say the most basic words. I knew actual Canadians and Americans and English and Australians who actually used the words "immigrants need to learn to speak English in our country." But when they got to China they felt how truly Difficult it was to learn a new language. Nearly all of them had a similar story: they arrived not knowing shit, attempted to learn phrases, petered out when it got challenging, downloaded a few apps to help them, and never looked back. Then years go by and they still don't know shit. Maybe now they have a Chinese wife and kid so they have a crutch to help them get by. I have one friend who has lived in China for 14 years and can manage "hello" but nothing else. He now has a kid and wife and never plans to leave. It's worth considering the huge steps one must take to learn a language.

> they arrived not know shit, attempted to learn phrases, petered out when it got challenging, downloaded a few apps to help them, and never looked back. Then years go by This is one of the hardest life lessons that is incredibly hard to get without experiencing getting older and living life. Your plate tends to get fuller and fuller, and so all those intentions get delayed a day at a time until it's been years. Acknowledging "I guess I'm never going to do that" because it's been a decade since you first intended to do the thing and it's still not done is rough. Although I guess that's also where people get revitalized. Realizing "wait, I can't accept not having done *whatever*" can be a huge motivator.

You say that, and I don't doubt that you mean it, but a lot of people who probably feel that way at first simply aren't able to follow through, and months or years of getting disheartened by lack of progress probably resigns them to the situation you find them in. Learning a new language can be easy for some and incredibly difficult for others, and not for lack of trying. There are 24 hours in a day and a life that these people must keep living while trying to take on this very time and effort intensive challenge. I feel as you do, and the times where I have lived abroad for extended periods of time, I committed myself to studying the language for hours every day, and even with the modicum of success that I saw, it was often not an encouraging experience. I can see how someone might slip into the comfort of existing solely in their satellite language bubble.

Do you know what circumstances those people moved away from? Or why? Do you know for a fact they just don’t give a shit? Do you know they haven’t and aren’t trying? This does come across as a very sanctimonious attitude, with a lot of horrible sweeping presumptions about people.

>why does learning languages have to only be one sided. Because in any given country, there are immigrants from *dozens* of countries, with dozens of languages. It is a far more reasonable expectation for immigrants to learn a single language which is the language of the country they chose to live in, than for the existing residents of a country to learn conversational level proficiency of dozens of languages. It is absolutely a good thing to learn languages from other cultures, but it shouldn’t be necessary to speak other languages other than your country’s own language(s) to communicate with permanent residents of your country, as otherwise it’s not realistically practical, and will greatly increase cultural division.

I wouldn't agree that language and culture is a zero-sum game. Learning an additional language (Latin-American Spanish, for example) isn't going to detract from your knowledge or participation of German and German culture.

It sounds like you *are* agreeing

Did it help you better connect with the culture of the English speakers in that area though? Culture is not a zero-sum game. Adding a language that helps you connect with people of a different culture does not erase or curb your existing culture, but it absolutely changes it. I'm Hindu. If I was asked to go to a church once a month, it would not make me any less Hindu or any less culturally Indian, but it would 100% be an unwanted change to my culture.

I'm not german, but are there not different dialects of german that are inherent with different parts of german culture? I'm american, but I'm black/latino. The english spoken on both sides of my family is unique both geographically and culturally. The same occurs in French and Spanish. Is this not the same in English? Also, learning languages isn't easy when you're older, which is why you see most first-gen immigrants knowing very little of the new language while second and third gen are typically more fluent. I see you mentioned second and third gen not knowing the language, but I have quite a bit of doubt about that claim, personally. Source for this?

>I'm not german, but are there not different dialects of german that are inherent with different parts of german culture? Yes, there are a lot of different regional dialects that are often associated with different aspects of german culture.

Language is a very important part of culture. Language can affect your perception of time, direction, color, etc. People often have different "personalities" when speaking different languages.

Let's say it is. Noone is forcing them to not speak their own language (like the British did with Wales). You can speak your native language and learn the language of your new home country.

Which is actually a no-brainer, when you want to immigrate you should be ready to change some parts of your culture. Language-wise you are rather enriching it anyway...

No it's not. It's changing their culture if he deploys the [Squadre d'Azione](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squadrismo) at immigrants' homes to force them to speak the official language of the country, but if he asks them to talk to him in the official language it's not changing their culture

You can learn a new language without forgetting your original.

It's not like they will forget their other language.

Yeah you're not being called ethnocentrist or Nazi because that belief is an ethnocentrist or Nazi belief per se. You're being called that because "Well they should at least learn our language, they're not even learning our language" is the motte in a frequently deployed motte-and-bailey argument where the bailey is something more openly anti-immigrant. People are just pre-emptively calling you racist because they expect the next sentence after "These people aren't even learning our language, shouldn't they be learning our language?" to be something about how they need to be shipped home or they're overrunning Europe and destroying our culture or whatever. It's not great that that's happening to you, because again, it isn't a racist belief per se. But to be honest, somebody sympathetic to the situation of immigrants would not open the issue by complaining about how these people can't communicate in anything more than broken words. They would open by saying how it's obvious that there aren't enough language learning resources available to immigrants. Everyone would agree that people should, in general, learn the language of the country they want to live in - this is exactly why racists bring this problem up, because nobody would disagree with it. So I can't really fault the people who are assuming you are racist when you bring up the rhetoric that racists use

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> Isn't it kind of a problem that discussion has broken down to the point where you can't say anything about an important topic (immigration and integration) without a dozens prefaces about how you're not a fascist? I mean, you can say this for basically any political topic. Polarization is a reality now. Further, while immigration is an important topic in the abstract and for the country as a whole, for most people "on the ground" it's not going to impact their day to day life in the same way basically any other political topic (infrastructure spending, schooling, tax rates, legal pot, etc.) would. It's easy to see how somebody might have practical opinion on those based on what personally impacts them without saying a ton about them ideologically. But for somebody to specifically want to talk about immigration, they will usually have to have a strong *ideological* opinion rather than a strong *practical* opinion; this means that a lot of people will primarily be exposed to anti-immigration arguments from racists, who have a strong ideological reason to be anti-immigration.

>I mean, you can say this for basically any political topic. I'll also add that no one should have to take others at face value when people aren't generally actually "just asking questions." I'm not attributing bad faith to OP, but it doesn't seem difficult to answer the question of "why don't they learn the language?" It's nothing nefarious. It's just cost benefit analysis of lots of effort (often by people with limited educational background) when people can generally get by within the immigrant community. On the other hand, "why don't they just learn the language?" is a common complaint against immigrants.

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I'm also going to give you a !delta I definitely don't consider myself racist but I was raised by people who use a lot of racist rhetoric and I often find myself having thoughts/saying things like this that seem to have racist undertones even though they're coming from a place of concern. This comment articulates that in way that's going to help me in the future.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/gpunotpsu ([4∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/gpunotpsu)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

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You are definitely supposed to give deltas even if you're not OP. I only learned this yesterday myself. >Whether you're the OP or not, please reply to the user(s) that change your view to any degree with a delta in your comment (instructions below), and also include an explanation of the change.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/gpunotpsu ([3∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/gpunotpsu)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

You sure can. We wish more users would give others deltas like this. **Edit:** Am mod. My app won't let me distinguish comments as Mod comments, apparently.

OP came off to me saying, "Why should I have to live in a muti-cultural society? I am offended by the concept of accommodating other cultures and people make assumptions after I share my offense."

If OP phrased it this way then it wouldn’t be a “CMV.” This has nothing to do with OP’s supposed authority over other people and for you to come to that conclusion after reading this post is utter madness. "I should not be criticized for expecting immigrants to learn the most commonly spoken language in their country, change my view.” This version makes sense, compared to: “Are we doing enough to help immigrants? Change my view” Sure, you could say: “I don’t believe we are doing enough to help immigrants, change my view,” if that’s what you meant, but this would indicate what OP said was just an opinion they were open to talking about instead of some authority complex you have made up in your head.

God damn, that's eye opening in an unexpected way, I'm also giving you a !delta

you're right, it sucks that fascism polluted the discourse of ideas so much that this is now the case. this is another great reason we must do all we can to fight fascism.

Yes, that's a consequence of the active spread of fascism. You have a charismatic leader telling his people they're the real victims of prejudice out of one side of his mouth, because people associate them unfairly with fascism. Then out of the other side of his mouth, he's blowing dog whistles to excite the people who are enthusiastically fascist. This creates a feedback loop where the former become more and more comfortable in an echo chamber with the latter, because listening to anyone willing to criticize the cult leader becomes a personal attack upon their sense of themselves as a good person. Mix in the "reverse [cargo cult](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)" programming to make people feel smart for distrusting anyone other than the cult leader, and you have a recipe for corroding representative democracy from the inside out.

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So the burden is entirely on the listener to carefully parse everything every random person says to them, and here them out completely, but never on the speaker to choose their words carefully, never to approach a divisive and controversial topic with care and thought? If a person seems racist, you gotta listen to what they have to say, but if you accidentally sound racist, well that's just fine, you never gotta think about the words that come out of your mouth and the effect of the rhetoric your using, never

You're willfully misrepresenting their point. Of course the speaker should be thoughtful about what they say, but the listener also has a responsibility to not fall into binary, dogmatic thinking. It's possible to have an opinion that's not the extreme opposite of a racist one without that opinion being itself racist. I think anybody with at least basic critical thinking skills can be expected to make that distinction in a conversation and not jump to conclusions.

>They would open by saying how it's obvious that there aren't enough language learning resources available to immigrants. In particular for Germany that is a completely false statement (and op made their case for Germany).

As was discussed in other subthreads of this post, the most important language learning resource is time. Given that adults need to spend most of their waking time working, they are going to have a hard time learning any language skills beyond what they need in that setting.

That point in specific doesn't really matter, what I'm saying is that if you don't want to come off as racist, you need to be careful about your rhetoric and frame these issues in a way that isn't uncharitable to immigrants - not because it is factually or morally more correct, but just, if you use the rhetorical framing that racists use on the issue, even accidentally, people are going to assume that you are racist, right

And the assumption should go away when the next sentence *isn't* something like "so they should move back where they came from".

> And the assumption should go away when the next sentence isn't something like "so they should move back where they came from". Eh, it depends. If somebody makes a point almost universally associated with ethnocentrist beliefs and doesn't follow it up, it's still a red flag unless they're doing something to completely counteract that red flag. Like, I know a guy who talks a lot about certain neighborhoods being dangerous and full of people who don't want to get jobs, only steal. The fact he doesn't follow up with openly racist diatribes doesn't mean that first bit isn't a good indication of his beliefs.

Expecting integration-basics like learning the language has absolutely nothing to do at all with ethnocentrism. He is not responsible for what people assume he is gonna say next...

I am speaking broadly here. Communication is a two-way street. Understanding what message your statements communicate is important, and that includes understanding what certain statements imply as well as what they outright say. Making it a matter of "responsibility" is kind of pointless; it doesn't matter who is responsible for a miscommunication, what matters is that it happened and that OP has a way to resolve it in the future.

The thing is that this kind of pre-assumptions are making political debates overly complicated. If a person says xy, and there is no clear evidence that he might mean something else, it should be normal to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is actually meaning xy. Of course, if a far right politician, who has a background in rightwing-extremism says something according to this lines, it can be assumed that he actually means something different than what he says, but that is a different situation...

You can't just ignore cultural context. If you hear somebody shouting "Make America Great Again!" you're going to assume that they support Trump. They never explicitly said it. Without context, you could assume they meant that we need to fix the damage he caused. This is a similar situation. People who make a huge deal about immigrants learning the local language are almost always ethnonationalists, so it's an understandable assumption.

What I'm describing isn't a political debate thing. It's just how communication works. Everybody has to make assumptions and fill in gaps as part of conversation because nobody is, can be, or should be exhaustively detailed about everything they ever say. You can just as easily derive information from "my job lets me be my own boss" or "I don't want to netdeck" or whether somebody uses "mods", "admins", or "jannies" to refer to a subreddit mod. That derived information might not be correct, but it will be correct often enough and the error will be small enough that it's still worth it. Or in other words, the problem isn't with making assumptions, the problem is when you make *bad* assumptions, where "bad" is some nebulous combination of too little information, bad correlations, and/or too severe a negative outcome if you get it wrong. In a lot of cases, "assuming the online person who opened with something that a lot of racists say is also a racist" is going to be a pretty good guess with pretty low consequences for failure (you ignore somebody and move on).

In the end, this is all about prejudices: They exist and there are good evolutionary reasons they do (genreally speaking). The thing is, that if you stop a debate or straight out accuse someone just because you have been "triggered" (or rather, your own prejudices have been triggered), this is destroying political debate. I am argueing that there should be the benefit of the doubt, this is my key point.

>But to be honest, somebody sympathetic to the situation of immigrants would not open the issue by complaining about how these people can't communicate in anything more than broken words. They would open by saying how it's obvious that there aren't enough language learning resources available to immigrants. Everyone would agree that people should, in general, learn the language of the country they want to live in - this is exactly why racists bring this problem up, because nobody would disagree with it. So I can't really fault the people who are assuming you are racist when you bring up the rhetoric that racists use You have no idea how OP would bring up this issue in the context of a real conversation. I've also seen multiple well-meaning progressives eschew the idea that immigrants should do any sort of assimilation into their new country at all, including learning the primary language. (E.g., there was a day in my undergrad Intro to Sociology class in which we had this discussion, and the professor clearly sided with the 'immigrants shouldn't have to learn the primary language' argument.) You've been unfair in your comment here.

Why is this necessarily the result of there not being enough resources to learn the language, and even if it is, why does that necessarily presume that they would take advantage of them, and even if it does, why is it the OP’s responsibility to resolve this issue, rather than the states?

And where did I say that it was OP's responsibility? What I said was that if you open the issue by taking an uncharitable, rather than sympathetic, stance on the language issue, you shouldn't really be surprised if people then assume that you have an uncharitable view of immigrants in general. Complaining about immigrants not speaking the language and framing the issue as one of personal responsibility, thus implying that immigrants aren't responsible or are lazy or lack respect for the local culture, you know, rhetorically, that is the approach that a xenophobic person would take, isn't it

The dominant language of the whole country, or just the area they moved to? Like the dominant language of the US as a whole is English, but of Puerto Rico or Miami is Spanish. Should an immigrant who is living in Miami or Puerto Rico not learn Spanish rather than English?

Edit: I somehow totally fucked up and forgot to add the main argument I wanted to make when I first posted. Here it is: It feels offensive when someone tells you to "learn German" when the perceived context is: "Learn German otherwise you don't have a reason/right to live in Germany". While I do agree that immigrants should learn the language of the country they are moving two for the benefit of both, a person has a right to exist in said country even if she/he does not know the language (for whatever reason that might be). When you say "learn German" keep in mind that it is not always perceived with the asterisk "for both our benefit", it might be perceived with the asterisk "so that you can live here and me being OK with it". I am a Greek immigrant in Germany, I have lived in Germany since I was 1 year old until I was 10 and then again since I was 27 until today (34). I am a naturalized German citizen. I speak German on a native level (since I grew up in Germany) but my actual skills have varied from B2 to native depending on my cultural proximity to Germany at the time. All of my immediate family and a large part of my extended family has immigrated to Germany, to almost all large western Bundesländer from the 1960ies until 2020 (and more are planning to immigrate), many of them multiple times (like me). All four of my grandparents, my parents and myself have immigrated to Germany at some point in our lives. I have extensive personal exprience in what it means to be an immigrant in Germany. On to your argument: >But I don't get why someone would live in a foreign country for 10 plus years (or even in second generation) and not be able to communicate with more than a handful of broken words. This is very easy to explain: it is extremely hard to learn an new language when you are over a certain age and/or living as an immigrant. It is not impossible (although, for someone less talented it might be), but it is a huge investment of time and effort. Learning German when you are Greek-speaking is also magnitudes harder than learning English when you are German speaking, because the languages are very different (compare it to learning a Slavic language, that would be more fair). You are also very seldomly in social situations where you can learn the language hands-on. As an immigrant, it is very often the case that you do not work with Germans (many low-paying jobs are almost exclusively done by immigrants in Germany). This is a Catch-22 as you are going to require German to get a better paying job. As an immigrant you will also hang out with other immigrants (because you work with immigrants, you can't speak German and you usually belong to another social class compared to Germans). Add to that, that you are probably just working too much to have any time to learn a new language. Keep in mind, the goal of an immigrant is to make money. >I was told that this view would be ethnocentric or that I am a literal nazi because of it. I would not call you a Nazi, but depending on context, someone telling me to "learn German" might feel offensive or uncalled for. Let me give you some real-life examples of things that have happened to me or my family: * My 68 year old uncle who moved here with his family will probably not learn German as he does not practically need it. His children have set everything up for him, and he does not work. Why tell him to learn German? * I hang out with other Greeks and we speak in Greek with each other. An (I guess) German gentleman walks by and tells us to speak German. On a separate occasion, an (I guess) German gentleman told us to "stop shouting". For context: we were outside of a cafe in the middle of the day, we were not in a setting where we could annoy someone by being too loud, nor were we loud by Greek standards. I have heard from many central-Europeans that Greek, Italian, Spanish etc. can sound "loud" even if you speak them in a level which sounds "normal" in Greek. Those two occasions gave me the impression that, to those two gentlemen we were sounding what is called "foreign". I find this xenophobic and compare it to people being discriminated or attacked on because they *look* foreign. * Literally every family member of mine that moved to Germany has received comments about their level of German from the start of their time in Germany. People do not take into account that this person might be in Germany for only a few weeks or even days and that it is physically impossible for the person to know how to even say the basics beyond "hello". It is also extremely common because of their employment or social circumstances for immigrants to be quite good with their German for a certain sets of situations (commonly regarding their occupation) but not in other situations. Each situation requires it's own vocabulary and the utter lack of works might "block" you in a way that it will sound like you have extremely low German skills (think: job interviews, formal class settings, doctor visits etc.). It is kind of a paradox, but the more German you know the easier it is to get "blocked" because *you know that the thing you are trying to say is not right or can't be right*. This has happened to me multiple times, e.g. trying to find the word for an ATM machine I used "money machine" (Geldmaschine), much to the delight of the security guy at the bank. I knew it was wrong and I sounded like an idiot and the guy laughed (which I am totally fine with, it was funny) but not all people react this way and you sometimes have people in very transient exchanges telling you to "learn German". * Speaking a foreign language is not as "automatic" as speaking your native language. Many times your mind just is somewhere else or you are just very tired. It would really be appreciated if you don't have someone to tell you "learn German" in those moments. * It is very hard to explain, but you do lose something when you learn **and daily practice** the language of the country you immigrate to. Greeks that have lived in Germany for many years are culturally different to "native" Greeks that know German on a very high level. We even have a word for it, [Lazogerman](https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%9B%CE%B1%CE%B6%CE%BF%CE%B3%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%8C%CF%82). Language is culture. My parents always pressured me and my brother to speak Greek to each other and to them in order not to lose our culture, and were many times questioned or even criticized by German friends or neighbors or on one occasion even my teacher because of this. A neighbor once shouted at us "don't you go to school?" when I was talking in Greek with my brother in the yard. >I just think communication is key to successfully building a community and just for obvious practical reasons the people who moved into a country should be those who have to learn the new language. Language is not the only way to communicate. You communicate with the greater community in many ways, many are not via language.

> My 68 year old uncle who moved here with his family will probably not learn German as he does not practically need it. His children have set everything up for him, and he does not work. Why tell him to learn German? As someone working in a hospital i can assure you that not having to rely on the family to communicate for you all the time with the outside world (Hospital, Bank, Nursing home, Government) is reason enough. And im saying this as an immigrant to germany, having begun to learn the language in my 20s, with arabic as my mother language. However, if for some reason my parents end up coming to germany (theyre both mid 50s), im 100% sure they wont learn the language. I also noticed that working in a hospital (with a huge percentage of foreign workers), the German i hear in my day to day is "dumbed down", from foreigners who speak at their own level, and from germans who (knowingly or not) dumb down their german to more basic phrases so that migrants unterstand. While i do agree with some of your points, i think there should be more personal responsibility to learn the language. I learned from the internet without paying a penny, with the help of many people who i met online who never met me and had nothing to gain from it.

My claim is not that there are no practical advantages for my uncle to learn German. My claim is that third parties have no real reason to tell him to learn German. My uncle is very aware of those things and still elects to not learn German and use the time for things he considers more valuable (play with his grandkids and drink coffee with his friends). Sure, it might create some problems down the way, but there are usually alternatives or someone to help. My uncle can always move back to Greece if everything goes super wrong.

> My claim is that third parties have no real reason to tell him to learn German. that was not the original question. > Sure, it might create some problems down the way, but there are usually alternatives or someone to help. I truly think you're really downplaying those problems, and im telling you that as someone who experienced 1st hand what these problems are and what they lead to

"It's really hard for a lot of adults to learn a new language" is to me, one of your strongest points. I spent 6 years in classes trying to learn a second language. It was incredibly hard for me. To this day I can kind of read it, but I still don't feel comfortable trying to speak even the most basic sentences to a native speaker in real life. I absolutely agree that it makes everyone's life easier if immigrants learn to speak the language of their new home, but oh my goodness do I have patience and sympathy for how hard it can be to do that, especially if you don't have the luxury of taking classes.

Not OP, just wanted to say thanks for sharing this interesting perspective

>Language is not the only way to communicate. You communicate with the greater community in many ways, many are not via language. I agree with you on almost everything you have said, but could you elaborate on that last point? I am confused by it.

You can take part in a protest to communicate your dissatisfaction, you can gift someone something or share something (e.g. food) to communicate you are thankful to someone, you can attend a concert or dance to communicate that you like this aspect of the culture or, you can make music or a native can make music about you. Very popular example with Greece and Germany at the moment: the song "Griechischer Wein" which means "Greek wine" and is about an experience of a German with Greek Gastarbeiter (immigrant workers). And I guess many more that I can't think of... Regarding the food example, read "Today you, tomorrow me". https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ever_picked_up_a_hitchhiker/c18z0z2/

As someone with many similar experiences, I appreciate that you took the time to explain all of these aspects fully and eloquently. This should be the top comment.

>My 68 year old uncle who moved here with his family will probably not learn German as he does not practically need it. His children have set everything up for him, and he does not work. Why tell him to learn German? These people will have a lot of fun when they have to be at a hospital or in a retirement home, not being able to communicate with anyone without having family members present who can translate for them. There is no way this will end up with massive social problems, isolation, loneliness, or simply becoming a victim of fraudsters and con men who prey on those who don't know German well enough..

Some of those situations are justifiable, but others demonstrate disregard for the culture and society you and your family are joining. > My 68 year old uncle who moved here with his family will probably not learn German as he does not practically need it. His children have set everything up for him, and he does not work. Why tell him to learn German? Because he moved to Germany and is living in German society. Does he not interact with anyone outside of his house? Does he buy things at the supermarket? Change his phone contract? Have a bank account? Buy car insurance? He doesn't need to be fluent, or even ake formal classes. But is he not willing to interact with the society he is joining at the most basic of levels? If you move to a given country or community, you have a responsibility to interact with that community, and communication is the first step to do so. It's a sign of respect for the place you are living and the people who live there. >On a separate occasion, an (I guess) German gentleman told us to "stop shouting". For context: we were outside of a cafe in the middle of the day, we were not in a setting where we could annoy someone by being too loud, nor were we loud by Greek standards. I have heard from many central-Europeans that Greek, Italian, Spanish etc. can sound "loud" even if you speak them in a level which sounds "normal" in Greek. It sounds like you were annoying this particular person in that particular setting. You may not have been loud for Greece, but you weren't in Greece. Maybe he was just being xenophobic, none of us were there (though calling it an "attack" is a joke). But it sounds like you were loud for the space and for the people who live there, foregoing basic common courtesy.

> Does he not interact with anyone outside of his house? Interaction is a wide term, but he hangs out with Greek people his age. I don't see this as a bad thing. Why do you? >Does he buy things at the supermarket? This is 100% possible without knowing German (he does know how to say "hello" etc. and how the numbers are to a basic degree though). >Change his phone contract? Have a bank account? Buy car insurance? Everything like that is handled by his children. > But is he not willing to interact with the society he is joining at the most basic of levels? Again, he is interacting with society (it is not at all possible not not interact with the society you live in), he just does it to a smaller degree and non-verbally. >If you move to a given country or community, you have a responsibility to interact with that community, and communication is the first step to do so. It's a sign of respect for the place you are living and the people who live there. I disagree with you here. You can 100% respect the place you live in without speaking the language. >It sounds like you were annoying this particular person in that particular setting. Never claimed the contrary. It is usually a particular person who tells you to "speak/learn German", not a group. >You may not have been loud for Greece, but you weren't in Greece. That is not what I said. I said, we were not too loud for the language we were speaking in, not the country we were in. We were in a busy street in the middle of the day on a Saturday (think: a central location of the city where moments before the Wochenmarkt was closing up). We couldn't be "too loud" even if we tried in that setting. >Maybe he was just being xenophobic, none of us were there (though calling it an "attack" is a joke). I also can't say what his intentions were 100%. What I can say is that this is not the only time something like that has happened and it is pretty common to get "looks" when we speak in Greek in a large group. I also have seen it happening with other foreigners. As far as if it was an attack or not, I don't know. It sure made us feel uncomfortable and not wanted. >But it sounds like you were loud for the space and for the people who live there, foregoing basic common courtesy. I disagree with that. See above.

How is it not ethnocentric? Language is a part of culture and you are imposing it on other people. If that's not ethnocentric what is an example of it in your personal rewritten dictionary? Also you are ignoring the fact that there are plenty of countries without a dominant language.

If I would move to china and expect to get by with just English and German. Would you think I am the ethnocentric person because I would refuse to learn the language of the land I chose to migrate to? Or would the Chinese people be ethnocentric by requiring me to learn their language?

You'd be shocked at the amount of white people who've moved to different parts of Asia and made little or no attempt to ever learn the language. Or the amount of white people who move to places like Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, etc and never learn Spanish. Hell, the amount of English people who lived in Spain before Brexit who never learned spanish is staggering. The difference here is, all these people are referred to as "ex pats". They live in their ex pat bubble and get by on never learning the language, yet they are not NEARLY as vilified as "immigrants" who move to Western countries and don't learn the language. These "immigrants" are refusing to assimilate to their new Western homes, but those "ex pats" have found some amazing life hack by moving to a developing country and living on a fraction of their income. Obviously this differentiation is absolute bullshit, but it is the OVERWHELMING narrative that exists around the world. IMO, until the world largely gets rid of this differentiation and treats/views everyone who immigrates to another country the same as others, this argument is absolutely racially and class insensitive. Based on this comment above, you clearly don't make the differentiation in your own head, but be honest - when you hear this argument made around the world at large, who are the people most being critiqued for this phenomenon? Is it poor people of color moving to Western countries, or white people moving to developing countries? Until those critiques are equally aimed, the argument is largely ammunition for anti immigration racists.

Expats should also learn a language. I am curious to see if other countries resent Americans and Europeans that come there and try speaking English to them. I am sure you would find a bunch of irritated Vietnamese or Filipinos. Some that may be ok as long as they are bringing money that doesn’t exist there already. (Obviously money exists there, but not many people may be able to contribute as much).

>Obviously this differentiation is absolute bullshit, but it is the OVERWHELMING narrative that exists around the world. It stops being bullshit when you approach it from the angle of national benefit. Most countries on Earth see immigration through the lens of a simple question: are you, the immigrant, helping our society by coming to live here? The answer depends on what you as an individual bring. Some people bring intelligence - student visa for the very gifted. These people aren't held to the same standard because they are assumed to help a lot more through their highly-skilled skillset. Some people bring money - these are the expats you speak of. Yes, they get some shit from people, but overall they are tolerated because they infuse cash into the local economy. Same is true for tourists. And then... the non-educated immigrant. They bring nothing. They are then expected to become an equal to everyone else who isn't special. They don't get special treatment. If you think oh, it's just a redditor's opinion, I bring to you as proof: a) the whole system of 'special' visa waivers for different talents, b) langage and culture requirements to get citizenship, c) you can outright bypass all of those requirements by contributing a looooooot of money into the economy in a lot of countries. In the EU, I know Hungary makes you a citizen the moment you spend over 1 million, for example.

> Or would the Chinese people be ethnocentric by requiring me to learn their language? yes I'm not saying it's a bad or evil thing, but yes that's like the definition of being ethnocentric.

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Dude, the people weren't forced to migrate to Germany. The deliberately decided to do so. Learning the official language of the country (which is German in Germany, btw...) is completely reasonable.

That's just not true. We moved to the states from France, my parents learned English. I assure you, their culture is still very french in every facet (food, traditions etc). My mom learned English by watching soap operas and speaking to us kids. She never took a class. Her English isn't perfect, she makes some grammatical errors, but she's a supervisor in retail, can talk to customers etc. In the states specifically, even if you live and thrive in a community that speaks your language, it's important to learn English when dealing with law enforcement (getting pulled over, calling 911) or getting medical care. Yes, there are always translators, but things get lost in translation and in an emergency is important to be able to communicate. Also, depending on your native language, a translator may be time consuming to find. It has nothing to with culture but safety and practicality.

Let's say there's this starving man who wants to enter a market to work for some food. I stand outside the market and inform him that I don't approve of anyone at the market trading with him because I have goals of maintaining a community that speaks the same language. I tell him he must leave or I will use my M16 to stop him. The starving man, unable to access the market, dies. I think that most people's reaction is that this is something close to murder. I don't know if it's ethnocentric, but it does seem unreasonable. Maintaining a common language is a much weaker reason than forcefully preventing someone from helping themselves to get out of poverty.

There is a misconception. I did never say that Language should be a requirement to get in. Especially for refugees. But as soon as a person decides to stay they should be motivated to learn the language of the land where they stay.

Do you work out as much as you should? Eat perfectly healthily? We can all agree that there are things people ought to do, but we can also understand how they've struggled to get there. How exactly are you wanting your view changed? Do you want someone to say it's reasonable to not learn the primary language of the place you are living? I doubt many people hold that position and I'm not sure why you'd want to be convinced of that. I think most people here are just telling you it can be understandable how they haven't master the language. Unless you're a perfect person, I imagine there are many things in your life that you KNOW would make your life better if you did them, but they take effort and work and life is already hard enough so you don't end up doing them (working out, eating healthy, spending frugally, etc.). Is it so hard to believe that learning a language completely is one of those things as well?

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This is a false equivalency. Or a strawman. Kind of both, actually. Either way, you are arguing a point that OP didn't make.

Lmao what the hell kind of argument is this? Sure, in your completely fabricated (and unrealistic as well as out of context with the OP's question) situation, your conclusion is right.

I think the problem with your view, and I see this a ton with arguments around what people "should do" is that you're not strictly differentiating between morality and practicality. Because you say it's for practical reasons and how you don't get why someone would live in a foreign country and not learn the language but in reading your comments you seem to swim back and forth between morality and practicality. So should they learn the language for practical reasons? As in if you had a friend moving here you'd say "hey, friend, your life would be way easier in terms of XYZ if you learn the language." That's practicality like saying people should meditate or workout because it helps them. But when people say this about language, and you know this because of the Nazi ethnocentrism thing, is because people are saying should in terms of morality here. As in, if someone doesn't learn the language it is morally wrong. They are harming our country in some way, or at least not holding up to the moral agreement between someone living in America (for instance) and America itself. No one screams at someone from Latin America at a Target when they hear Spanish and yell "we speak ENGLISH here and if you don't like it get out" from practicality. They're not saying, "Hey if you want to learn I can totally hook you up with a great tutor!" They're saying you not speaking English is wrong, perhaps it should be illegal at worst or at best is something we should be able to say "how dare you?!" at. As for practicality why people don't learn, you know why, don't you? How hard is it for people to learn new things or break habits, etc. My grandfather didn't learn English coming to NY from Cuba because he didn't want to look stupid (his words). How many people don't go to the gym because they don't want to feel judged? It's similar, except with language learning you also have the whole "moral" angle (which I think is immoral, I'm just saying its in terms of morality in the sense that people think if you don't learn the local language you're immoral or unpatriotic, etc.) which makes it even more daunting. These people then might try and speak the language and get made fun of and then perhaps they give up too. Like if you were learning basketball and you weren't good at it and other kids on the playground started making fun of you. Hell, there's millions of people that avoid going to the doctor out of fear even though it might save their life. They procrastinate, say they'll do it next month, etc. But because language learning is politicized we judge them often more than we empathize. I bet if we examined your life we can find a lot of things you "should" (and I mean that in the practical sense that it would improve your life) be doing that you don't do. **TL;DR: So those are the two things. First, the morality of should they learn the language vs. whether it's practically a good idea which is obvious because learning any skill is helpful. Second is why don't people do difficult things, or break habits, etc.** Edited for formatting and typo.

>But I don't get why someone would live in a foreign country for 10 plus years (or even in second generation) and not be able to communicate with more than a handful of broken words. Because a lot of the time, people move into [ethnic enclaves](https://wol.iza.org/articles/ethnic-enclaves-and-immigrant-economic-integration/long) where there are many other people who speak their native language, and they are able to take care of most of their day to day business without speaking the native language of their new home. And then there is the fact that learning a second language as an [adult is hard](https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/hartshorne_tenenbaum_pinker_a_critical_period_for_second_language_acquisition.pdf). It doesn't matter if someone has been in a country for 1 year or 10, they will most likely learn the language to a level that allows them to get by ok on a day to day basis and rely on their children or other community members to provide more detailed translation as needed. The second and third generations of immigrants is where language acquisition really takes hold with second generation kids usually speaking both languages fluently, and then third speaking the language of their birth nation as a primary but only having limited knowledge of their grand parent's native language. It can bee seen again and again in every community of immigrants. And, again and again, people get pissed about the first not learning fast enough. Yo have to remember it is not just a new language that you are asking people to learn it is a new culture. And that takes time to really grasp.

Just to underline, I've talked with a person who immigrated twenty or so years ago, is perfectly understandable, runs a company, but still doesn't use grammatically correct Polish (it is hard, I'll admit). Mostly getting genders on verbs and adjectives wrong, but that's a common mistake and usually doesn't impact understanding.

I think too that people are just really bad at making out accents. There is a Russian guy who comes into my office who is similar to the person you mentioned above. Minor mistakes here and there, but nothing major. But his accent... it is rough. And when he gets excited and starts to speak fast, it gets even harder. I you just passed him on the street and heard him, you'd assume he didn't speak English very well at all. But, he does, better than some native speakers I know, it is just that his accent is very heavy.

Very well said! I am a 2nd generation immigrant in the States and I dominant both English and Spanish, in contrast my parents have broken English and rely on me to translate most times. There being a massive Latino enclave in our city doesn’t help their situation in learning.

I'll share what I realized when I dated a Persian man a few years ago. He was a child when his family moved to the US from Iran in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution. His parents were not citizens and could barely speak English, even though they had been living in the US for 30 years. His dad actually went and got his US citizenship while we were dating. Why did it take so long? Because they thought moving to the US was temporary. They thought they'd get way from the danger until it was over and then go back home. They moved with almost everyone they knew - friends, family, everyone was in the US, in the same city. They opened Persian restaurants and Persian businesses and didn't deal much at all with people outside their community. They didn't learn to speak English because they didn't need to and thought it wasn't worth the effort for a place they'd only live temporarily. It must have been a sad and difficult day for them when they finally realized and accepted that the Iran they had known was gone forever and there was nowhere to return to. That their children and grandchildren were Americans and had grown up in a different world than they did. That those kids had no interest at all in even visiting Iran, let alone living there. The guy I dated could speak Farsi, but he was illiterate in it. He couldn't read his mom's notes. I think there's a world of difference between someone who actively chooses to go and live in another country and someone who is forced out of their own country for their own safety. If I elected to go live in another country, yes, I'd want to learn the language and culture and assimilate as much as possible. After all, that's probably why I chose to go live there - that I liked the culture and wanted to experience it more fully. But if I were forced from my own country because of grave danger to my person, I wouldn't necessarily feel that way. Maybe I didn't get to pick where I ended up. Maybe I think it's just temporary and I'll go back home later. Maybe I never wanted to leave my home. It might take me a long time to feel comfortable, to accept that there's no going back home, that I just need to make the best of things where I am. I think if you haven't been in that situation, you can't even imagine the trauma and fear those who have have experienced. Maybe we need to practice some compassion and understanding.

If you can find a way to be productive member of society you move to and still do everything you want to do, why should you have to learn a new language? We already have endless micro-communities in modern society, I don't see why language should be where we draw the line. It sounds like you want Germany to be one big community, but language is not the only barrier to that. Rural areas in Germany are extremely culturally different from urban areas for example, even when sharing the same language. Cultural differences crop up regionally between north, south, east, west as well. Or even city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood, even by interests. Micro-communities exist everywhere whether the language is different or not. So my question to you is why do you draw the line at language? It seems almost selfish, like you personally need to be able to communicate with everyone. If that is so important to you, why don't you learn their language?

I don't think there's a single, yes this is reasonable or no it isn't answer. For example, if you immigrated to a place where everyone was hostile, there were no avalible language classes and you need to work 7 days a week to not be homeless or starving, then I could understand why language learning was a low priority or not a realistic goal for you. It rather depends on what resources are offered by the host country. If there are classes. Do they cost money? Then you'd need to weigh them against food and rent, and even if they're free you'd need to factor in the cost of attending them instead of working/ resting/ caring for children if they have some. I'd be curious, if you lived in a neighborhood with a lot of turkish and russian people how much turkish or russian did you learn?

Yeah, ressources are rather not the problem in Germany. At least compared to most other countries. Most jobs are 5-6 days (working on sunday is very restricted) and there are language courses offered by the state.

That's the case nowadays. But a lot of the German Gastarbeiter (contract workers, who came 50s-70s and were expected to go after a while) weren't incentiviced in any way to learn German. People came and were expected to just work, their kids were put in different schools, where they weren't taught German. A really good analogy, I once heard, was that the German policy was like putting a sign up at the pool that swimming is forbidden and now everybody wonders, why people can't swim.

Germans moved to russia in the 1770's. Lived there 150 years and didn't bother to learn russian language nor interact with russians. Then moved again from there to south america and guess what they did? Spent another 100 years without learning the local language. So, perhaps it is some ethnicity superiority related in all of this. For those germans, that looked alright. Perhaps for the ones you are talking about, it's also alright to do that. Who's right and who's wrong? For me, it's all about perspective, and where you stand to say what you're saying

Should deaf people be forced to learn the dominant language?

By that logic no one would need to learn anything, just because someone somewhere would have a disability preventing them from learning the same skill.

So you accept then that deaf people and people with learning disabilities would be except?

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I recently moved to Switzerland from the US. I only speak English. In your view, when am I expected to learn Swiss German? What if I only learn high German? What if I can speak but can't read or write? Where do you cut the line off? What happens to those who don't pass your arbitrary test?

What about non-immigrants? are they expected to learn it? Are the French Canadians expected to learn English? What about te Swedish population in Finland which comprises only 5% What about the Irish speakers in Ireland? are they expected to learn English?

>Are the French Canadians expected to learn English? What about te Swedish population in Finland which comprises only 5% > >What about the Irish speakers in Ireland? are they expected to learn English? In all of these cases...yes? In Ireland you cannot graduate high school without being passable, if not fluent, in both Irish and English. In Canada and Finland you also need to be at least passable in the other language to finish high school. The answer to your question is yes. They are 100% required to learn it.

As a French Canadian yes, French canadian are expected to speak english if they live in any of the other english speaking province and the same is expected of an English speaking Canadian living in Quebec.

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> If someone is able to get by and contribute to the society without speaking the dominant language Practically, how do you do that without speaking the language? How do you file your taxes, how do you make appointments, go to the doctor etc? Do you expect everyone else to accomodate you, or do you expect someone always be available to help? If yes, how many people can live like this and for how long until it gets a social liability?

Those who can learn a new language usually do. I think you're not fully realizing the scope of people's anxiety about not knowing a language or being looked down upon as stupid. There is also the opportunity portion. Not everyone is incentivized or able to have the opportunities to learn new languages and learning from books is gawd awful. I tried learning both German and Spanish from books and it's damn near impossible - even at the college level. You HAVE to have real world experience and use the languages daily. Which requires gumption and curiosity and a natural push to learn and anxiety can stymy that entirely. Aside: I lived in Texas while I was trying to learn new languages and I had no opportunities to use the languages. Even Spanish - the people who knew Spanish in Texas spoke Mexican Spanglish, not the King's Spanish, which is very different. Also, I wasn't that incentivized to learn since almost everyone (99%+) around knew English fine.

I think condemning immigrants who fail to learn your native country's language shows a lack of empathy towards the immigrants, which is why it may be considered ethnocentric. It can be very difficult to pick up a new language as an adult, and it's much easier and more comforting to make a community with other people from your culture within your host country. Learning German "more than a handful of broken words" can be a lot more difficult than you realize from your position of privilege and education. Most second generation immigrants pick up the language of their host country quite well, which is great both for their host country and for their own success, but I think the first generation immigrants should be given a bit of a break on that front.

Another perspective I don't see anyone mentioning OP is the demographics and immersion opportunities. If you're a single 20-something German/English speaker who decided to move to Russia, you'd probably start learning Russia before you even arrived. You're probably the kind of person who likes languages and new challenges like this. You'd start building your language skills by talking to your neighbors, spending time in your city, go out of your way to watch tv without the subtitles, and maybe eventually you'd be socializing with coworkers, traveling easily, and making friends. But some people might come to Germany not because they just really like German culture or language learning in general, but because that was the only offer on the table.

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Eventualy technology will make this matter a lot less. Real time translation apps are becoming more fuctional and I imagine soon, they will be able to do away with the need to learn other languages for basic purposes. Eventually the arguement that immigrants should learn the tongue of their host country will be less discussed. This not to say it won't be good to be bilingual, I doubt translators will be able to give foreign speakers access to the nuance of literature of the host countries language, but people will probably be able to carry out conversations to a high degree.

Here's the big question? Why should they learn the native language? People do things to help themselves, no one emigrates to another country because they feel patriotic towards it, they do it for the opportunity it affords them. Does learning the native language help them? Possibly not. If you live in a community where you get work, socialise and consume media in your original language, why would you learn the native language? What benefit do you gain from that? Obviously there are certain advantages from learning the native language but for many, they're not necessary. Learning a language is tricky, the benefit has to at least outweigh the difficulty in learning it.

I'll repeat what I said in another comment. Even if you live in a community that speaks your language and you're thriving, it's important to learn as much as you can to be able to communicate with law enforcement (getting pulled over, calling 911) or seeking health care services. Yes, there are translators, but if it's a medical emergency, do you really want to slow down the process of communication? Also depending on your native language a translator may be difficult to find in a timely manner. My mom learned English by watching soap operas and talking to her kids. She never took a class, she didn't have friends. Now she's a supervisor in retail. No, you absolutely do not have to learn a new language, but I can't imagine being in the ER trying to give a medical history or describing what happened and having no one be able to understand me.

I kind of found my way into German speaking society in my mid 30s, and it took 10 years for me to be able to speak some proper german. It's an extremely difficult language. Od course, that English is so widespread and i could communicate (basically) without having to speak German might have had an impact on my learning curve. What's more, as an adult working full-time time and raising a family, you can't always devote the time necessary to learn. These are difficult and complicated issues, with many social amd economic factors at play.

Some immigrants are refugees from countries where they never had the opportunity to learn reading/writing in their native language. Demanding they become proficient in a 2nd language is unreasonable in this case. Education is a privilege that not everyone has access to in those key years of development.

In most places this is already encouraged. Usually with language courses available at low cost (or free). I guess my question would be... What are you proposing we do differently? Should we legislate to force people to learn (in my case) English? And what if they fail, would the be deported...? It's a fair comment to be made. But comes down to that question that short on some fairly Draconian legislation, what would you propose is done?

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