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  #21  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 7:59 PM
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Except everyone who immigrated here from Continental Europe came here with every intention of assimilating in their public lives..
Encouraging Mexicans or any other immigrant group to defiantly avoid the prevailing English dialect - indeed the gateway to professional employment - is self-sabotage.
Very true, both points.

Some "outsiders" will be given or have a hard time, nor matter how hard they try or want to assimilate. It's just human nature that people are assholes. I can't imagine there is anyone in the world that hasn't been made fun of or given a hard time for one reason or another, from being foreign, to having big ears or for being short, whatever the reason. Some more harshly than others obviously. Basically saying it's better to avoid some slight ridicule or discrimination from a few people at the expense of overall self (and financial) progress via some measure of assimilation is just silly.

Plus, there is the other side of the coin that people may want to assimilate and want to leave their past behind. No need to champion personal idealistic thoughts onto and for others.

Take for example my great grandmother. Came from a very small village in far northern Italy (basically on the Austrian border). Around the time of WW1 times were extremely tough. Germans had killed my great grandfather and occupied the village. They grew various crops but during this time they had nearly zero to eat. They eventually were able to immigrate after the war to America when my grandmother was about 4 years old. When they got here my great grandmother went through such hardships in Italy she didn't want anything to do with her Italian heritage. She learned English and refused to let anyone in the household continue to speak Italian. She eventually worked in basically sweatshops in LA as a seamstress and she (along with others) was able to provide for her family. My grandmother (the 4 year old at the time of immigration) remembered little of Italy but through the years kept in some contact with relatives. Now a days I still keep in contact with distant cousins and have been to the village where my Grandmother is from. It's absolutely beautiful and it's nice to imagine I partially come from a place like that. However, to my great grandmother it was basically hell and assimilation definitely helped her and the family from just disappearing.
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  #22  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:01 PM
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Some amount of assimilation is a good thing, I think. No one should be forced to lose who they are in order to blend in, but if you move to a foreign country, you should try to assimilate a bit. Imagine an American moving to Shanghai and refusing to learn Mandarin, only eating American foods, asking for forks at restaurants, only socializing with other Americans, etc. That would be someone refusing to assimilate to Chinese culture, and would fit in with your all caps rejection of assimilation, no? Would you look favorably on someone like that, or say they need to make an effort to adapt to the customs and culture of their new home?
Learning/becoming fluent in a language, learning what's considered polite/rude in a culture, etc., all of that, I don't necessarily equate with full assimilation. Full conformity, wanting to "pass," having no accent at all... what's the point of it?

My parents are Filipino immigrants. They never taught me or my sister to believe in Santa Claus. Why should they? They themselves were never raised believing in Santa Claus. Am I less of a person because of that? Hell no. In fact, I felt it made me a little more "in the know." I knew who/what Santa Claus was, I knew he was a "tradition," I knew he didn't give gifts to kids, my parents gave my sister and me presents on X-mas, I just didn't "believe" in him. My mom told me not to mention it to my classmates or friends that Santa Claus didn't exist (haha my mom also made sure to tell me not to mention the words "puto" or "mamon" to my Mexican classmates). It only came up once in class, during 2nd grade, and I got uncomfortable; it was like I was the only closet atheist in a room full of Evangelicals.

Classmates: "So, 'sopas,' did you write a letter to Santa?"
Me: "No."
Classmates: "No??"
Me: "Um, not yet."
Classmates: "Well Christmas is coming soon, you should write a letter to Santa..."
Me: "Can we change the subject??"

I'm actually glad I was never raised to believe in Santa Claus.
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  #23  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:14 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
I meant in terms of getting more visibility on demographic discussions. They were overlooked till 20 years ago. They were 3% of the population now it's 6% whereas immigration from Latin America and TFR of US Hispanics fell a lot frustrating forecasts. Big jump for a relative short time span. I'm very aware Chinese were present during California's Gold Rush, building railways and stuff.

About Spanish becoming more prominent, I never believed that. Officials languages, English in the US, Portuguese in Brazil, Spanish in Argentina are incredibly good on killing immigrant languages very quickly. They've been doing that for centuries. Immigrants come and are readily assimilated.
The United States does not have an official language at the federal level. Some individual states do have English as an official language. California has had English as an official language since 1986---but, the law was written so that if a certain percentage of a population area speaks another language or languages, then they have to be accommodated. That's why you see Los Angeles County voter ballots available in these languages:

Cambodian
Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin)
Korean
Spanish
Filipino (Tagalog)
Vietnamese
Armenian
Bengali
Burmese
Farsi
Gujarati
Hindi
Indonesian
Japanese
Khmer
Mongolian
Persian
Russian
Telugu
Thai

The California DMV can also offer the written test in various languages as well.

I actually find this to be very democratic, because it's non-exclusionary.
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Last edited by sopas ej; Jun 9, 2022 at 8:29 PM.
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  #24  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:23 PM
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Except everyone who immigrated here from Continental Europe came here with every intention of assimilating in their public lives (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, etc. religious deviations were maintained). Their family names were often chopped down. They quickly abandoned the use of German, Polish, Italian, etc., and adopted the English of the upper classes who reside near London.

Meanwhile, those who came to the United States from northern England, who mostly settled in the southern states, kept speaking their low-class English. By the 1900s, we ended up with a situation where the descendants of Continental Europeans spoke proper English in the United States but the descendants of the English peasantry largely did not.

What's more, much of the African-American vernacular came from Northern England, not Africa. Post-WWII immigrants, especially Indians and East Asians, are all learning proper English rather than low-class Northern English. White Southerners, Appalachians, and African-Americans are being left behind in large part because of their speech patterns make it much more difficult for them to understand contracts, complete complex paperwork, etc.

Encouraging Mexicans or any other immigrant group to defiantly avoid the prevailing English dialect - indeed the gateway to professional employment - is self-sabotage.
Actually, African-American speech patterns developed from Irish and other Celtic indentured servants, who all used to be housed together; that's how some of them started "mixing" (they started segregating them later). If a white person in the US has some African DNA, it could be because an ancestor was an indentured servant who got it on with an African slave. As an aside, my partner read a book about indentured servitude in the US (or what became the US). Terrible. Sometimes Irish children were basically kidnapped and sent to the colonies to be used for labor. You can be shipped off to the colonies to be used for labor if you stole a button---apparently, buttons, needles and threads were commonly stolen, because unlike today, hundreds of years ago, people made their own clothes, and often you only had one or two outfits that you had to maintain because that's all you could afford to wear. Cloth was expensive. So, you had to make sure you had needles/thread to do little fixes on your clothes.

And come on, it should be obvious to you why early European immigrants had to assimilate into WASP culture, because they otherwise were ridiculed or full-on discriminated against. There was even Catholic-bashing; that's where the whole anti-Pole and anti-Irish thing came about; English Catholics were already on the DL, because they faced persecution in the homeland, so their form of Catholicism was already subdued (no statue processions, no crucifixes everywhere in their home or whatever).

I guess you think it's still a good idea that someone should clean up their Mexican accent when speaking English?
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Last edited by sopas ej; Jun 9, 2022 at 8:35 PM.
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  #25  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:36 PM
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I believe it. It's already true where I live. I play ball with a lot of Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos, and other Latinos and Asians more so than guys who are African American or European American.

There isn't a lot of mixing yet between Asians and Latinos, as the article states. Still see a lot of white and Asian mixed couples. But it's possibly inevitable as more white middle class Californians leave the state. And Black Californians were never that big relatively population wise. So for the future of this state, it will be Latinos and Asians running things more and more.
I think it's even more pronounced in Northern California to be honest. We have a lot more integration simply because the balance between racial groups is a bit more even. I do notice a lot more interracial folks in NorCal than in SoCal, that's my observation. Especially in the East Bay, Solano County and Stockton Metro Area.
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  #26  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:37 PM
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Actually, African-American speech patterns developed from Irish and other Celtic indentured servants, who all used to be housed together; that's how some of them started "mixing" (they started segregating them later). If a white person in the US has some African DNA, it could be because an ancestor was an indentured servant who got it on with an African slave. As an aside, my partner read a book about indentured servitude in the US (or what became the US). Terrible. Sometimes Irish children were basically kidnapped and sent to the colonies to be used for labor. You can be shipped off to the colonies to be used for labor if you stole a button---apparently, buttons, needles and threads were commonly stolen, because unlike today, hundreds of years ago, people made their own clothes, and often you only had one or two outfits that you had to maintain because that's all you could afford to wear. Cloth was expensive. So, you had to make sure you had needles/thread to do little fixes on your clothes.

And come on, it should be obvious to you why early European immigrants had to pass assimilate into WASP culture, because they otherwise were ridiculed or full-on discriminated against. There was even Catholic-bashing; that's where the whole anti-Pole and anti-Irish thing came about; English Catholics were already on the DL, because they faced persecution in the homeland, so their form of Catholicism was already subdued (no statue processions, no crucifixes everywhere in their home or whatever).

I guess you think it's still a good idea that someone should clean up their Mexican accent when speaking English?
My step-father did that when he started his career. He was born to Mexican immigrants here in TX in a very Hispanic area but went to Texas A&M and became a bean counter for oil and gas. No hit of any Mexican/ Latino accent you often find with Hispanics even when born here.
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  #27  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:48 PM
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My step-father did that when he started his career. He was born to Mexican immigrants here in TX in a very Hispanic area but went to Texas A&M and became a bean counter for oil and gas. No hit of any Mexican/ Latino accent you often find with Hispanics even when born here.
And why did he think that was important? Was that the only way he felt he could get ahead?

I love hearing different accents and dialects; there's a definite Mexican-American/"East LA" accent. But I don't think anything of it. It's just an accent/dialect.

How boring it would be if everyone talked the same...
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  #28  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:48 PM
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Now a days I still keep in contact with distant cousins and have been to the village where my Grandmother is from. It's absolutely beautiful and it's nice to imagine I partially come from a place like that. However, to my great grandmother it was basically hell and assimilation definitely helped her and the family from just disappearing.

I've always thought that one of the great strengths of The Godfather was how it portrayed the crime family's activities in gray/brown and noisy NYC as appropriate for that environment, but somehow all of that darkness was hatched in idyllic Sicily. That physical (and sonic) switch between locations is one of the great moments in American film.

By contrast, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, perhaps the most American film of them all, celebrates with a wink young (but hearty) American myths like Texas, biker bars, and empty Western roads while lampooning the predictable ways in which Americans idealize Europe (the female character who leaves for Paris).

Last edited by jmecklenborg; Jun 9, 2022 at 8:59 PM.
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  #29  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:49 PM
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I think it's even more pronounced in Northern California to be honest. We have a lot more integration simply because the balance between racial groups is a bit more even. I do notice a lot more interracial folks in NorCal than in SoCal, that's my observation. Especially in the East Bay, Solano County and Stockton Metro Area.
SoCal is full of interracial groups. You probably just don't come down here often to notice.
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  #30  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:51 PM
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And why did he think that was important? Was that the only way he felt he could get ahead?

I love hearing different accents and dialects; there's a definite Mexican-American/"East LA" accent. But I don't think anything of it. It's just an accent/dialect.

How boring it would be if everyone talked the same...
It was the 70's and if he were to succeed (and he did) in a white dominated industry (oil and gas in Texas), he was going to fit in as much as possible.
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  #31  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 8:57 PM
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It was the 70's and if he were to succeed (and he did) in a white dominated industry (oil and gas in Texas), he was going to fit in as much as possible.
I guess because of my own experience, growing up when and where I did... I find it a little sad.

My parents totally have Filipino accents. And I think that's fine. I don't know if it's the case, but I don't think that that has hindered them in any way. They know how to speak English, they just have Filipino accents.

I know SoCal has a history of discrimination, racial covenants, etc., but at least when I grew up, and continuing to live here, I feel like LA isn't all about assimilating; assimilation doesn't seem to be a "requirement" here. And I'm thinking probably that's what pisses off some other people from other parts of the US who visit here.
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  #32  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:04 PM
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I guess because of my own experience, growing up when and where I did... I find it a little sad.

My parents totally have Filipino accents. And I think that's fine. I don't know if it's the case, but I don't think that that has hindered them in any way. They know how to speak English, they just have Filipino accents.

I know SoCal has a history of discrimination, racial covenants, etc., but at least when I grew up, and continuing to live here, I feel like LA isn't all about assimilating; assimilation doesn't seem to be a "requirement" here. And I'm thinking probably that's what pisses off some other people from other parts of the US who visit here.
Right before he passed away (he was only 48), he upped and moved to Venezuela to work oil and gas (right before Chavez) so at least got somewhat got back in touch with his Hispanic roots.
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  #33  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:17 PM
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Honestly this talk of rejecting assimilation is pretty silly. Every group, regardless of their background, eventually assimilates. Sure, you should keep cultural things alive but telling people they don't need to try and adopt their new lands culture is extremely narcissistic. No surprise though, narcissism extremely common nowadays as people tend to only care about themselves and their own interests.
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  #34  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:20 PM
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Actually, African-American speech patterns developed from Irish and other Celtic indentured servants, who all used to be housed together; that's how some of them started "mixing" (they started segregating them later

The English language had its beginnings in what is now southern England, which is physically very close to France. Various English monarchs over the past 1000+ years were French, and so characteristics of the French language jumped across the Channel and trickled from the royal family down to the upper classes and then down to ordinary citizens in that area. Meanwhile, the Scottish, Welch, and Irish, who were situated much further from London than Normandy, were still speaking completely unrelated languages. The bizarre and often unintelligible accents still spoken today by the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish are a relic of those largely lost non-romance languages.

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And come on, it should be obvious to you why early European immigrants had to assimilate into WASP culture, because they otherwise were ridiculed or full-on discriminated against. There was even Catholic-bashing;
Catholic-bashing is still a big thing in the American South, which is mostly English. It's leftover from a) England's push to convert its entire population to the Anglican church and b) justify the subjugation of Ireland, which stubbornly remained Catholic, with the obvious exception of Northern Ireland.

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I guess you think it's still a good idea that someone should clean up their Mexican accent when speaking English?
Americans are are overwhelmingly accommodating of accents, especially as compared to...France. We are very accepting of non-natives who are not fluent English speakers.

Unfortunately, it's not tough to see Mexican kids who are not learning English because they live in an all-Mexican environment. Their exposure to English in the schools isn't enough to pick it up.
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  #35  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:25 PM
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The United States does not have an official language at the federal level. Some individual states do have English as an official language. California has had English as an official language since 1986---but, the law was written so that if a certain percentage of a population area speaks another language or languages, then they have to be accommodated. That's why you see Los Angeles County voter ballots available in these languages:

Cambodian
Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin)
Korean
Spanish
Filipino (Tagalog)
Vietnamese
Armenian
Bengali
Burmese
Farsi
Gujarati
Hindi
Indonesian
Japanese
Khmer
Mongolian
Persian
Russian
Telugu
Thai

The California DMV can also offer the written test in various languages as well.

I actually find this to be very democratic, because it's non-exclusionary.
Yes, I should have said de facto official language or quasi-official language. I remember several states provide public services in dozens of languages. In Brazil, Portuguese is official and literally 99.9% of population uses it at daily basis.

On Southern Brazil, there are about a million that still speak Italian and German dialects, but mostly elderly and with no writting traditions. In big cities like São Paulo, Italians formed a large majority and Spanish were also very numerous, but Italian and Spanish were butchered right on the first generations. They were never passed out to their children.
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  #36  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:34 PM
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Except everyone who immigrated here from Continental Europe came here with every intention of assimilating in their public lives (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, etc. religious deviations were maintained). Their family names were often chopped down. They quickly abandoned the use of German, Polish, Italian, etc., and adopted the English of the upper classes who reside near London.
That seems a bit hyperbolic for first generation immigrants who often clustered together.

Quote:
Encouraging Mexicans or any other immigrant group to defiantly avoid the prevailing English dialect - indeed the gateway to professional employment - is self-sabotage.
It's a balance for sure.
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  #37  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2022, 9:46 PM
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I guess both sopas and JManc have good points. People definitely should be feel free to speak the way they want. A place that know how to embrace this difference is definitely a good one.

However society is more complex and sadly accents often got in the way of people's careers.
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  #38  
Old Posted Jun 10, 2022, 12:09 AM
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^^This is true across the board and especially magnified in certain fields.

I work in tech and you hear more foreign accents in the average tech company than a Southern American accent. Bias exists across all lines.

These days my accent is barely noticeable and I never faced any discrimination because of it in the work world.
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  #39  
Old Posted Jun 10, 2022, 12:12 AM
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Originally Posted by bossabreezes View Post
Honestly this talk of rejecting assimilation is pretty silly. Every group, regardless of their background, eventually assimilates. Sure, you should keep cultural things alive but telling people they don't need to try and adopt their new lands culture is extremely narcissistic. No surprise though, narcissism extremely common nowadays as people tend to only care about themselves and their own interests.
Basically true. I am a first generation immigrant and have had a lot of family and extended family immigrate to the US and the elders of the family who facilitated it were very traditional culturally in their ways, but they came to the US because of what it offered them and their children. We’ve seen the same thing happen with every immigrant group over time the following generations assimilate to a large degree.
I also see it with Mexican immigrants, one of my sons best friend from high school is first generation, his dad did some contracting work for me and you can already see the change from his dads generation to the son. It’s inevitable and it’s okay. Every country has to have things that bind us together.
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  #40  
Old Posted Jun 10, 2022, 12:40 AM
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^^This is true across the board and especially magnified in certain fields.

I work in tech and you hear more foreign accents in the average tech company than a Southern American accent. Bias exists across all lines.

These days my accent is barely noticeable and I never faced any discrimination because of it in the work world.
And there’s also physical appearance, social background and age. You’re young and well educated and that also might help.

My experience here is with regional accents and it’s definitely a big obstacle in São Paulo. The city can be incredibly open minded in some circles, but the upper class, for instance, not so much. And don’t get me started about race.
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