Post-class blog 11/10

The discussion of language barriers and ideology in class reminded much of my experience as a multilingual person. My parents are very intelligent people, but sometimes it doesn’t necessarily come through when they are speaking English. In America, how well someone speaks English is one of the most important factors when judging their intelligence, even if they speak another language. This makes many people speak down to them and treat them like children, because the assumption is that their accents mean that they can’t understand anything. Nevermind that they have advanced degrees and work as nurses in a hospital, the only thing that matters is their English language ability.

Traveling to other countries with tour groups shows how deep this assumption of English as an inherently superior, more intelligent language runs. About 4 years ago, I went in a group of exchange students to Japan. While there were a few people in my Japanese class with me, most of the group had almost no knowledge of the language. When we arrived, we stayed with host families in order to immerse ourselves more fully in the culture. The most common complaint I heard from the group was that their host families hardly knew any English, and that they would’ve rather stayed in a hotel. The lack of knowing English seemed to overshadow anything else that their families would do for them, like cook them meals, wash their clothes, provide them with baths, drive them to places, and a place to sleep. I suppose I have a biased view of this because I was able to speak Japanese with my family and the mother had quite good English as well, but it seems like they were ungrateful for how lucky they were to be in Japan. Most people would not be able to have the same experience they had, and the most important thing to them was that the citizens of a foreign country accommodate them and their linguistic shortcomings, rather than make an effort themselves.