A foolish consistency

[pecunium]

As I was noodling around Blogshares (actually, I was moderating votes on the index) and I found a guy complaining about having to choose beween English and Spanish when he uses the ATM.

I asked him what the problem was, after all, it was capitalism in action.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

It's simple: Capitalism is supposed to work the way he wants it to.

And there should be a Department of Free Enterprise issuing (for example) English Only regulations for ATMs.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Put a credit card into an ATM over here and you get instructions in English, French, Spanish and German. I believe there are some in cities like Leicester and Birmingham where you're offered Urdu and Hindi as well. Soon it will be Chinese and Russian. Its a service. You don't have to use it if you don't need to - but it is invaluable when you do.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

I was really happy to see English as an option in Italy. I know enough Italian to order a meal and go to the bathroom. It really beat digging through a phrase book for ages.

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

What a jerk. I mean, who complains about having to "put up with" the tiny bumps that are the Braile dots on ATM buttons?

In Wales we had the choice of Welsh, English, and (if I recall correctly) French. Our English friend was trying to take money out and one of us hit the Welsh button before he could select English. :-) Fortunately the Cancel button will usually get you out of most messes.

Pour service en Anglais, appuyez le "deux"...

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*is gobsmacked* *also flabbergasted*

The ways of your people are strange to me, friend ...

Is the Spanish on US ATMs better than the "French" on the ones that purport to offer French? Cause that is some scary scary stuff, that is.

Re: Pour service en Anglais, appuyez le "deux"...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, my spanish is inadequate to the task.

On the other hand, if it's constructed by the same sorts of people who did the English, then it's going to be odd.

TK

[redbird]

My friends in Canada like it that their bank stores their preference, and the machine goes to the correct language as soon as they insert their card. Me, I like playing around and using Spanish sometimes; the choices are pretty simple, I'm expected to actually think of Spanish words on my own, so it's useful vocabulary practice.

I think I tried French once, last trip north. I do not select Chinese or Russian, when offered.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I can get Chinese, Hmong, Spanish, on occaision I see Tagalog or Japanese.

I never see Russian (which I'd try), though I suspect I can (so long as I use my bank) fake it in any of those, because the positions of the buttons don't change.

TK

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

As Redbird implies, it might be valid to complain that the ATM card does not store a language option and apply it automatically (perhaps, ideally, permitting manual overide at the point of use, just in case...). What the person you were dealing with really meant, I suppose, was that the very presence of a Spanish option encourages those horrible foreign immigrants who are causing all of our country's current problems... or at least most of them. It's one of the Doctrines of the modern version of The Ghost Dance Religion that is becoming frighteningly popular.

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

Yeah! How dare they try to withdraw and spend all that money they're making cutting our lawns and washing our dishes! God knows there are so many red-blooded Americans who have always dreamed of being landscapers for minimum wage who can't get those jobs now!

Eejit.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, landscapers shouldn't have much of a problem -- they're the upper-level people who decide what plants to put where, and generally need know only enough Spanish to tell the gardeners and other actual workers what to do. (I'm conservative enough to oppose degradation of the language, okay? Mind you, I also shudder when "gardener" is applied to unskilled workers who don't understand plants at all.)

As an Aside: Mrs. Arita, my landlady (grandmotherly type) in Berkeley c. 1954, frequently mentioned that when her late husband had migrated to the U.S. the only job he could obtain was as a gardener -- although he knew practically nothing about plants and had been a banker in Japan.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I know, it's part of why I twitted him. I find the sets of thinking there to be offensive. 1, no one who doesn't speak English ought to be allowed to do any business, and 2, that anyone who (for whatever reason) actually makes it possible for them to take part in everyday life is wrong and evil and "unamerican."

TK

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

...or even if you're bilingual, but it's more convenient for you to think in your native language.

I've selected French a couple of times for the reasons cited above, but as a general rule, I am more than happy to use my native tongue when making financial transactions.

[lexica510.livejournal.com]

My French has gotten so rusty I almost feel unqualified to join the discussion, but anyway... as I remember, even when I was at my most fluent, I still couldn't do math in French. Count, sure. Calculate, not a chance.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Numbers are funny. I still don't think in French numbers, but I do think in Russian ones. What I mean by that is when I read a numeral, in a French text, I appreciate it in English.

When it happens in a Russian one, I appreciate them in Russian, they are transparent to me.

But that's because I can really think in Russian, and only mostly think in French.

TK

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Geez, I wonder what this guy thinks of Sign Language? (Not completely applicable, but IMHO it relates.)

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

What I meant to say in the above is that I have a hard time with people who think we should be an "English Only" country 'cuz ASL ain't English.

So what're they saying about Deaf people, they should go eat hard cheese & die?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Not exactly.

When I was studying ASL, and spending a lot of time in the community, I learned a lot. First, I got to be a semi-visible minority. That was interesting.

But to people like this guy, the deaf are invisible, and when seen sort of romantic/cute. Because they aren't "foreign."

And they don't think ASL is a different language, and that English is the written language of the American deaf makes it easier to not see that they are a sub-culture, like, and in; but not wholly of, the greater group of the hearing.

TK

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

What a total idiot. Presumably he's one of those people who will, if ever travelling abroad, address people in slow and very loud English...

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Loud woud be bad, but slow & clear English often worked for me during 8 months spent in Japan c. 1950, when the conversation got beyond my meager knowledge of Japanese. Failing that, slow & clear French sometimes worked -- especially up north where a good many upper-class Russian refugees settled after the Revolution.

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

Slow and clear is good provided people speak English at all. However, trying it on someone who doesn't speak English at all (and I've seen that done)isn't going to work any better than slow and clear Xhosa will on me.