"If you come to my country, you should learn the language" and other immigration myths.

[torakiyoshi]

I've heard it all my life. I've even said it myself. This demand on immigrants that if they're in my country, they should learn my language. And then I became a teacher, and my perspective changed

Comments

[torakiyoshi]

1) Google's translate app text mode works all the time, though if I can't be logged in, the translations are word-based and not dynamic phrase-based, so it can get iffy. If I can log in to wifi and use VPN, then I can use the voice translation and that works brilliantly. I especially like conversation mode, so I don't have to hit the button back and forth.

2) 谢谢你！我普通话说的不很好，可是我学习！
Glad you appreciate this article! I worked hard on it over the course of a few days, including a very long train ride to Xi'an. I would like nothing better than to see this post reflected and go viral. Please feel free to share. And yes, travel certainly broadens the mind, but Americans would do well to learn other languages. It creates empathy for other cultures. Spanish should be compulsory from third grade, and one other European language from fifth or sixth grade, with strong encouragement for an Asian language added to the mix by high school. After all, you know what they say: 4 languages = polyglot, 3 languages = trilingual, 2 languages = bilingual, 1 language = American.

3) Well, sometimes God has plans that you don't expect! I think your brother-in-law was not supposed to go to France, for obvious reasons! I hope he gets to go someday, though, with his new wife! And how was the wedding? I don't think I heard a report.

[thewayne]

Sorry for the slow response to your message. My friend from Longmont got a job in the UK and came to stay for about a week before shipping off, and gave me a $2000 gaming laptop! He'd bought a new replacement and didn't need his old kit. And I had surgery for my sinus problem a week ago Friday and am slowly doing better, but it's pretty slow.

The laptop is wonderful, but now I'm having to be Mac/Win 10 fluent. Sometimes a little vexing. Meanwhile I've gotten one of the blown up laptops working partially with monochrome non-hi res graphics, but it won't go to sleep: it's boot & shut-down only. The other laptop has no WiFi and I finally got a USB WiFi adapter that speaks Mac and got that working last night, slowly getting lots of app and OS updates done. That one has blown power management and can't charge the battery when it's plugged in and booted, I'm not sure if when the battery is charged if it will maintain booted status if the cable is taken away. I'll try that tonight. Regardless, it's not trustworthy.

And I've started up a 2006ish laptop, but the OS is so old that it's of limited value. To make it worth more work-wise, I'd need to work with Google Drive as it's too old an OS for Dropbox or Apple Drive. And the version of Open Office (Neo or Libre) is acceptable, but I'm concerned about potential older bugs causing document problems.

I posted about the wedding back on May 20, so it was a while back. LOTS of fun. Didn't do much in Longmont except go to a new game store they now have. Sadly didn't get to go to the book store or the French bistro/cheese monger, but did get to Boulder and the Pearl Street Mall. Gorgeous cold rainy weather.

https://thewayne.dreamwidth.org/1064279.html

[torakiyoshi]

No worries about speed. As you can see, I tend to miss a lot from LJ these days.

Can you upgrade the 2006 laptop OS to a more current version, or will the hardware not support it? Is it Mac or PC?

When I was last in Longmont, my Aunt and Uncle took me to a nice brewery on Main Street that had some really nice food. I think it was called the Firehouse. Lots of Millennial appeal, but also very nice for normal people like you'n me, too. In Boulder, I was greatly distressed to learn that Juanita's Mexican Restaurant (about a block west of the Mall on Pearl) closed a few years ago. Such a tragedy! But Alexandro's on Arapaho and Broadway might still be open. I also introduced my nephew to Moe's Broadway Bagels. Sooooooo good! I miss Moe's.

[thewayne]

Good bagels are a wonderful thing, I won't even bother to look for them here. When I worked for the police dept back in the '90s in Phx, there was a Brueger's, which, granted, was a chain, but they did very good bagels. I stopped there quite frequently on my way in. They had an asagio cheese bagel, I'd get a salmon spread cream cheese....

The 2006 is a Mac "White Book" running a Core 2 Duo CPU, and the the OS will only go up to something like 10.7. It's pretty darn primitive. In fact, this was quite amusing - I couldn't open the Best Buy web site! It flat-out said that I had to upgrade to a newer browser! I was amused. My intent was to use it only for writing and minimal surfing, I guess the surfing will be VERY minimal!