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

[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