CSU: Immigrants should speak German at home, CDU says LOLwhat ?

[ag]

While I support the idea behind it, it's practically non-enforcable.

If I'd emigrate to the US, I'm not speaking German either anymore - only English.

So should immigrants who come to Germany: If they start going to German language courses and start talking German at home and in public, it will be much easier for them to integrate and get a good job.

I spoke Russian at home when I lived in the US, and I speak English and Russian at home living in Mexico. My children speak Russian (and, at least in the case of the elder one, but, also, increasingly of the younger one, English) at home. I am more likely to use (very rudimentary) Yiddish with my kids than I am to speak Spanish to them, and I insist on them not addressing me in Spanish, unless people who do not understand any other language are present. Spanish is reserved for communication with the outside world: school, taxi drivers, nannies, salesmen and such.

BTW, I also speak almost exclusively English at work - I may speak Spanish to people inquiring about the program I direct and in some meetings, but I do not speak Spanish in class as a matter of principle (and only switch to Spanish in private with the students if they really do not understand me). I also insist that all important internal office mail has to be translated to English (not so much for my own sake, as for the sake of the colleagues who would find the Spanish-language environment intimidating) and insist on speaking English at lunch table with my colleagues.

And any fascist swine that does not like it may go the hell of their choice. Because I am not going to let anybody tell me which language I am supposed to be speaking at home. And, in any case, English is the language that educated people should be able to speak in a university (of course, I would never insist on an English-speaking workplace in an English-speaking country).

[ag]

While I support the idea behind it, it's practically non-enforcable.

If I'd emigrate to the US, I'm not speaking German either anymore - only English.

So should immigrants who come to Germany: If they start going to German language courses and start talking German at home and in public, it will be much easier for them to integrate and get a good job.

Even if you brought a German-speaking girlfriend/wife and German-speaking children? Would you suddenly start doing all the intra-family talk in a foreign language where you would not be able to express yourself as precise and immediate as in your mother tongue?

I'm all for strong incentives and demands for immigrants to learn the language of the country they're residing it, but politicians should of course not decide on which language people should speak at home, neither in practice nor as a good idea/principle.

Maybe not in the beginning, but certainly after a while. The children pretty easily will learn the new language in school, so it's easy to talk with them in the new language at home within a year. Of course there's a time to "phase it in", but at some point you should definitely start talking in the language of the local population and leave your own background behind.

Reminds me, why I would never talk to an Austrian. In any language.

[ag]

There is something sinister in the desire for uniformity that seems to survive in some people´s minds. Let us remember that for many centuries the one identifiable minority in many European countries were the Jews: they did not go to Church and they spoke languages between themselves others could not comprehend. Nor were they willing to assimilate and abandon their tongues and their generally foreign ways.  This "otherness" made people scared: and from a feeling of being scared there was always a short step to a pogrom.

Today, of course, my fellow-tribesmen are the "protected minority": post-Hitler a respectable person cannot be a publicly acknowledged antisemite.  In any case, at this point surviving European Jews have got to be, by and large, sufficiently domesticated: speaking local languages and dressing "normally". And the religious distinction is less important: now that many Europeans no longer go to church on Sundays they are willing to let the Jews not go to a synagogue on Saturdays. And the numbers of the ultra-Orthodox have gotten to be small enough (in Europe) that accommodating  them seems a small-enough price to atone for the Holocaust.

But the new minorities are less lucky. Their otherness is not protected by the memory of the Holocaust. But the fear of that otherness is that exact fear that led to the centuries of the antisemitic persecution. Something, we should always remember.

In any case, the society has no more to do in my kitchen or in my living room than it has to do in my bedroom. I do not want any concerned well-wisher to hold an opinion about my linguistic or dietary preferences than I want his opinion of my sexual preferences.

[ag]

The difference is that the Jews were generally alright financially.

You need a bit of a refresher on your European Jewish history, I am afraid.

[ag]

Germany is a nice country, it's harder to stay that way if it imports large chunks of Turkey (not a nice country). The end result is going to be somewhere between Germany and Turkey, ie, not as nice as before.

Yeah, Germans were a lot more proficient in organizing their Holocaust. I guess, that makes it a nicer country.

And if you think that is an awful thing to say - it is no way near as awful as what you did say.

[ag]

The difference is that the Jews were generally alright financially.

Haven't we learn absolutely nothing?

We have not.

[ag]

Yeah, brider yidn were not all Rothschilds ) 

[ag]

If anything, forcing people to speak the language they speak badly at home will make their children's speaking it worse. If a child constantly hears spoken language with a strong accent/incorrect grammar, etc., s/he may pick those up. If the "badly-spoken German" transmits across generations, it might be a sign of too much German being spoken at home: it might be a dialect emerging, perhaps, afrikaans-style. In that case, if you care that second-generation kids speak better German, you should, probably, discourage their parents from speaking German in front of them.

[ag]

How did this thread go from encouraging immigrants to speak German as often as they can (not unusual for a center-right big-tent party that polls 50% and wants to keep that level) to Jews ?

If you do not see how, and why any such thread would inevitably get to Jews, you should read up on Austrian history.

And, BTW, I now know why Czechs used to hate Germans so much.

[ag]

Naturally, children do not speak the same way their parents do. But being exposed on a consistent basis to a parent, who insists on speaking with the child in a heavily accented/ grammatically awkward English/German/Russian does help to transmit those features - not in an unchanged way, but noticeably (exactly what the Germans here complain about).

In Mexico speaking a foreign/European language has prestige. So, in most mixed Russian/Mexican families I know children (including by now grown-up children) do speak passable Russian. This Russian tends to be a lot better if either only one parent (usually the mother) speaks it, or if both parents are Russian. However, there are some families where the Mexican spouse can, actually, speak Russian as well (if, say, a guy studied in Russia and came back with a Russian wife) - and I have noticed that the children then have a much heavier accent in their Russian: they unconsciously copy their dads.

Admittedly, in this case we are dealing with the environment in which kids barely hear any Russian except that from their parents. But that, actually, allows us to isolate the effect of having a parent speak "bad Russian" to the child. It does nothing to improve how the child speaks the language - it, actually, hurts.

So, when the complaint comes that kids, who grew up in Germany, make typical "foreign" mistakes, I am pretty confident that they have picked up those mistakes, hearing their elders (parents, neighbors, etc.) making them. It would have been much better if the only German they were exposed to were that of the school/the TV/the German street. That would give them more than enough exposure to learn the language - correctly.

[ag]

Inevitably ? Not really, it was just 1 poster. There's no need to discuss Jewish people in a thread like this which is about encouraging integration and not the historic use of force or purging of a religious group. That's quite the difference. And there's no need to establish a knee-jerk connection to the Holocaust all the time, once a German-party brings up an immigration topic for debate. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong opponent of all Nazi-ism (as you know), but the CSU-debate here is not much different to the debate of other European (or other) center-right parties and they are not attacked with the Nazi-cudgel either. The CSU is a huge party that needs to appeal to a lot of different segments, so it's better to throw the Nazi-cudgel when it involves the parties that are actually the problem and could turn into a real problem: the NPD and the AfD.

My problem is not with the CSU. It is with you. Or, more generally, with the attitude, that people speaking a foreign language at home is somehow threatening - or, in any case, bad or prejudicial. This is exactly what underlay the anti-Jewish persecution over the centuries - I am not talking Nazis, I am, mostly, talking before Nazis. Not Adolf Hitler so much, as Karl Lueger (to make it even more Austrian - and Christian Social). Of course, that underlying antisemitism is what made Hitler possible - but I do not hate it merely because of Hitler.

Hitler, actually, made this attitude indecent in good society - when applied to my fellow tribesmen. But other minorities do not have that protection. Well, that makes me sick. Or, put it another way, you make me sick.

[ag]

In Mexico speaking a foreign/European language has prestige. So, in most mixed Russian/Mexican families I know children (including by now grown-up children) do speak passable Russian. This Russian tends to be a lot better if either only one parent (usually the mother) speaks it, or if both parents are Russian. However, there are some families where the Mexican spouse can, actually, speak Russian as well (if, say, a guy studied in Russia and came back with a Russian wife) - and I have noticed that the children then have a much heavier accent in their Russian: they unconsciously copy their dads.

I know this is a little off-topic, but I'm curious: How large is the Russian community in Mexico?  I remember finding it unusual when I found out you were a Russian living in Mexico.  I wouldn't think that there'd be very many of those.

Not many. But, if you are a Russian, you will wind up knowing a few

[ag]

Tender's post in this thread at worst have been moderate heroic, if we have to say something bad about his posts. But mostly I see a person, who try to set this in context and explain, when something have been translated wrong. While the other side mix strawmen, with rampant racism and bigoted verbal assaults on Tender based on his etnicity.

I do not find his "corrected" and "properly translated" version any less objectionable than the original. Especially given his comment about talking English at home if he immigrates to the US - that clarifies his meaning enough for me.

Once again, I do not object to CSU, I object to the position of Tender Branson in this thread.