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

[ingemann]

The problem with this proposal is that it is motivated only by right-wing resentment and not by scientific (or even anecdotal) facts.

I know quite a fair number of people who came to Germany at the age of 3-8 years and who speak better German than 90% of German native speakers. And guess what, their parents always spoke Russian with them. Always. So how comes they speak perfect German? Well, their parents usually are highly educated and the children went to good schools.

Serious educational policy deciders know this. Often children with a mother-tongue different from German are given extra-courses to learn their mother-tongue properly at elementary school.
Yes, proper Turkish (/Russian/Serbian/Croatian/Greek/Italian) is helpful for proper German. A degenerate 500-word version of German is not helpful.

Sadly many politicians that are criticizing the CSU only call the CSU proposal populist bogus, and of course they are right but they don't say why.

Yes it's clearly well educated Russian Germans they think off when they say this, and not barely educated middle easterns. I personal think this is a stupid and unnecessary suggestion, as the parents of children, who don't end up speaking German very well, will not hear this and even if they did, they would ignore it. Why I think it's unnecessary, is because it doesn't really take much to make a child fluent in the dominant language in a areas, send them to school and let them see half a hour of children TV everyday (German TV in this case), and you have children who can speak the language in question fluently. 

[ingemann]

I just like the idea that immigrants are encouraged to learn and talk the new language as often as they can. It only benefits them.

But that's at least two ideas:
1) "Immigrants are encouraged to learn the new language, it only benefits them."
Yes, of course it only benefits them. But it's not like if the immigrants couldn't come up with that idea themselves. I also don't get the sense of writing encouragements like this into political programs apart from pandering to resentments like "Immigrants don't want to integrate, they have to be told to do so".

Clearly there are some who don't get these idea themselves, the kind of immigrants CSU are talking about, is not new immigrants, but people who are born in the country and still have trouble with the native language.

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To speak several language is a good thing, the problem is that the kind of people who is born in Germany (or other west European country of your choice) and dosn't speak German (or other west... you know the drill) well, is unlikely to have any sophiphistication in their own native language, they speak the their equalant of some hill billy dialect, they're usual also having literacy problems, as they have been taught to read and write in a language they barely understand (German). 

Ther are little value in that kind of multi-linguality.

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Seriously?...

So you're okay with people beating their children, drinking while driving, not paying tax etc?

[ingemann]

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Seriously?...

So you're okay with people beating their children, drinking while driving, not paying tax etc?

Holy straw man Batman!

Yes it's a strawman (at least the last two, I do in fact think that not teaching ones child the local language is child abuse, at least if you plan for the children to stay), but only because the statement is utterly idiotic. The government force or tells us to do things all the time, if it mean it's for our own good or necessary for the state.

[ingemann]

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 ?

You know the right wing scoundrel wrap themselves in the flag, on the left on the other hand bringing up anti-semitism and nazism serve the same purpose for the the left wing scoundrel.

[ingemann]

If anyone ever tells me "BUT EUROPE IS MORE LEFT-WING THAN MERICA" ever again, I think I may simply print out this thread and staple it to their face.

Three things:

First; making any conclusion from one thread is ridiculous.

Second; this is not you fault, but talking about Europe as one cultural political construction is even more ridiculous.

Third; defining left and right out from opinion on immigration is really really weird, it would place some objectivists on the left and some socialists on the right. There are left wing, centrist and right wing argument in favour and against immigration and assimilation of minorities. Yes I know liberal mean left left wing in USA, but that doesn't necessary make left wingers liberal other places, and this is really more of communitarian/liberal debate than any kind of right/left debate.

[ingemann]

Very poor German. I.e., most of the stuff that foreigners hate (der, die, das, ein, einen, einem etc.) causes major headaches for them as well.

Is that really true for third generation immigrants as well?
I wouldn't be surprised that they had their own sociolect/slang - but not knowing basic grammar is a different matter. Something must really have gone wrong in Germany's integration policies.

I have meet plenty of second generation immigrants in Denmark, who don't know "en/et", so I wouldn't be surprised that if 2G in Germany have the same problem with gender in German. Gender in language rarely make sense and you really need close interaction with native speakers in your childhood to truly learn it.

[ingemann]

Well, the whole argument has been derailed a bit.

There are indeed some fears regarding a heterogenous society that cannot be entirely neglected: Conflicting loyalties, "parallel societies" with incompatible moral and political values etc.

But I think that children not learning their parents' mother tongue (that's what your approach is about, as far as I understand you) won't help in any regard. It might even harm them, because if their parents don't speak the local language properly, many children will only have come into contact with an inconsistent, reduced, expression-poor and grammar-poor language until they go into kindergarden.
I agree with you that immigrants should learn the local language and eventually adapt basic values compatible with the new environment. I just think that your proposal won't help.

In my opinion the language question is neither the problem nor part of the solution.
1) There is indeed a cultural problem with some immigrants. You see that it is not a linguistic problem because there are quite a lot immigrants that are culturally similar or assimilated but still bilingual.
2) There is a social and literacy problem not only with some immigrant communities, but also with parts of the growing non-immigrant lower class.

Basically this.

The problem is that in order to adapt the people to society in correct way, would need a extensive linguistic education for the theacher, in order to understand the difficulties of the learner. Tender's  laissez-faire approach is problematic in solving the problem.

Clearly someone is changing Tender's post to something other than what I read, when you people read it, or laize faire mean something completely else to you,  like "not throwing a complete hysterial hissy fit, when politicians suggest that it's a good idea that the parents help their children learning the official language of the land they live in".

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.