How is it that unschooled refugees can learn to speak English and

Americans find it so difficult to learn another language? And many Americans can't speak English as well as many of the refugees I am seeing on CNN. Intriguing.

Although compelling refugess have a compelling reason to learn.

Americans don't have to and don't want to learn another language. It's all in the attitude.

You don't get that with people who are just learning English.

who vomit continuously about english as the official language. many of them cannot even speak proper english.

what is even more funny is seeing anti-immigration types making elementary spelling and grammar errors in their posts:

- your and you're

- its and it's

and so on.

fucking hilarious.

Well, I just have to congratulate them on their tremendous accomplishment of being born a US Citizen and being raised to speak English

I think you need both -- desire more than immersion (my great-grandmother lived here almost 80 years and never quite got the hang of English. On the other hand, I knew a guy who taught himself Portuguese and became fluent, just for the hell of it.)

I wish our schools were better at teaching languages. In most schools, it's an afterthought.

1. You have to work harder to get a good grade in a language class - harder than anything outside of math and physical sciences. Why beat your brains for an "A" in French when you could more easily get an "A" in art history. Students tend to take the easiest non-required classes they can get away with.

2. We grade on the curve, which means students who grew up in the language (and take the class for an easy "A")in effect make it harder on students whose native language is only English.

People suddenly thrust into another language with few opportunities to use their own begin to think in terms of how to communicate, rather than how to translate the language in their head then speak it out loud. Language is thus learned at a more natural, intuitive pace.

Americans are isolated from immersion. Even in places like Texas or California, we don't HAVE to learn another language to get by, so we don't bother.

I struggled through four years of high school German and two years of college German ... and learned more French in 3.5 months of living in France (even though I was in an English-speaking context) than I ever learned German in school.

My grandparents were Norwegian immigrants ... and my grandfather learned to speak English without an accent and better than his American-born children. Much of his "motivation" was escaping the negative of being called a "filthy Scandahoovian" but it was a remarkable accomplishment for a guy with only a 4th grade education.

This was supposedly said by a Texas legislator during a debate on English as the official language. But I've also heard it attributed to others. May be apocryphal.

My husband and I were leading a Dance based on the first line of the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. One person refused, because "the Bible is wrote in English." She danced a Krishna dance with no problem.

They call someone who speaks two languages bilingual.
They call someone who only speaks one language American.

Part of the issue is necessity. If you absolutely have to learn something you will learn it. I struggled with learning Spanish in school. It wasn't until I was in an environment where I had to speak it daily did I learn it. If you are a refugee here and are suddenly thrust into a english only situation then you absolutely have to learn it. How well you learn a language has to do a lot with your age. The younger you learn it the more likely you will sound native. I speak spanish as close to a native as possible but a native speaker can tell I have a slight accent because I learned it later in life. Learning a second language well, is hard, it requires you at one point to think of every word that passes through your mind before you speak.

In many countries on every continent but South America, English is the national language. The people learn it in school better than Americans do, and then speak and write it more correctly throughout their lives.

http://www.members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/esc.html

Although it's not necessarily official in all of the countries listed, particularly the Asian and Middle Eastern ones.

and one or two other languages. I worked hard at a number of them and became pretty good at a couple. I even taught foreign language classes! However, today I can hold only the most rudimentary conversation in any -- because I hate to travel and have been lazy about keeping up. Sigh!

Americans are so linguistically isolated.

My spelling in German is schlechtich (awful), but I can still speak enough to converse.

I also know a smattering of Arabic and Spanish. I think it is important to be at least bi-lingual.

nevermind, sorry.

Don't look at me, lildreamer did it.

unless you HAVE to for survival sake. I knew a guy who was about 18 at the time, who could pick up a language within hours on some and weeks on others. He was amazing. He never finished high school, but he could speak somewhere close to 20 languages and understand many more. I tried to get him to go back to school and see about working for the UN, but I doubt if anything came of it, because he just liked to hang out.

Me, you'd have to put me in the middle of a country that didn't speak any english and it would take me quite a while to pick up words. And that was when I was younger, now, with my partial hearing loss, it would be even more difficult.

zalinda

Thanks!