Tobberoth Wrote:If you don't know Swedish, you can't work in Sweden. If you can't work in Sweden, you can't contribute.

I'm not personally offended, but you appear to be making a lot of sweeping generalizations and possibly false statements like the ones above.

I've had several jobs that allow me to work in English no matter where my physical location happens to be.

How do you figure that a self-employed person needs to know Swedish in order to work? If Swedish laws are even remotely similar to U.S. laws, I can virtually guarantee you I could make a living in Sweden without knowing the language.

Dragg Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:If you don't know Swedish, you can't work in Sweden. If you can't work in Sweden, you can't contribute.

I'm not personally offended, but you appear to be making a lot of sweeping generalizations and possibly false statements like the ones above.

I've had several jobs that allow me to work in English no matter where my physical location happens to be.

How do figure that a self-employed person needs to know Swedish in order to work? If Swedish laws are even remotely similar to U.S. laws, I can virtually guarantee you I could make a living in Sweden without knowing the language.

I really can't imagine that happening in Sweden. Most Swedes understand English, but you're still required to speak fluent Swedish to work in any work where you're expected to have conversations with people. The only exception I can think of is teaching on university level or possibly language studies... but most Swedes demand a teacher who knows Swedish for class.

As for being self-employed, that's great but I don't see why you would move to Sweden if you're self-employed and don't expect to work with a lot of Swedish companies where you would benefit greatly from knowing Swedish regardless, the taxes are extremely high here so that would simply be foolish.

(And even this is only applicable to people who speak English, what about all the immigrants who speak neither Swedish nor English? They don't stand a chance.)

Tobberoth Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:Wait, why do foreigners get social security in Sweden? Shouldn't those befefits be for for citizens and permanent residents only? If its like most countries then a foreigner with nothing to support himself with wouldn't be able to gain residence there, except maybe as a refugee.

For me, in USA I pay for Social Security, but if I were to lose my job I couldn't get any welfare, I'd get "Bye Bye, move your family out of the country in 2 weeks".

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. It works like this: If you live in Sweden, you're allowed to "import" your whole family. That's right, ONE arab guy makes a living in Sweden and 20-30 family members join in, all of them working in one convienience store. There's also the people who marry into Sweden, they're allowed here. Refugees. People who studied here.

Getting a visa in Sweden isn't hard, it isn't even close to comparable to Japan and USA where people basically aren't allowed in unless there's a miracle. You need to prove that you have intentions to stay in Sweden permanently etc, but things change, the visas don't.

Why are all your analogies about arab people?
From what I read you sound like you have some sort of vendetta against them.

askayscha Wrote:Why are all your analogies about arab people?
From what I read you sound like you have some sort of vendetta against them.

Because arabs make up the HUGE majority of immigrants here? Check out Rosengård in malmö etc, there are whole towns where more than 50% of the people living there are arabs.

I could bring up black people in my examples, but it wouldn't be fair since I don't know a single black person well and they pretty much never make the news (and since there are so few of them, generalizations wouldn't really be possible). If 90% of the immigrants are arabs, it makes sense to use them in my comparisions.

EDIT: I found an interesting statistic on the previous subject. Turns out 51% of all visa are given to family-related immigration. Only 1,2% of all visas are giving because of work-related immigration.

I can see people who come to Japan for some fun. A couple of years teaching English, and then they're on their way back home. Why bother to learn much of the language? All their friends speak English. Their Japanese girlfriends speak English. They watch all their movies and TV in English. Why take the time to learn such a complex language?

On the other hand, I personally know people who claim to love this country. They plan to live here their entire lives. They enjoy the food, the culture, the history. They've bought houses here, married Japanese women and otherwise set up a long-term life for themselves here - and still can only hold rudimentary conversations in Japanese.

Not to mention the fact that they can barely read.

My question to you, then, is - why?

To me, that just seems inexcusable.

EnjukuBlack Wrote:To me, that just seems inexcusable.

Why? The fact that they love their life and live it as they like isn't enough, they should also conform to some ideal you've created in your head?

Be careful with throwing around insults at people you don't know.

i think there are a lot of well intended people that would love to learn Japanese but are being misguided. personally, i've never seen a forum as dedicated as they are to learning Japanese like kanji.koohii.com...

Hashiriya Wrote:i think there are a lot of well intended people that would love to learn Japanese but are being misguided. personally, i've never seen a forum as dedicated as they are to learning Japanese like kanji.koohii.com...

This is best forum ever. I especially enjoy seeing the collaborative projects that NukeMarine takes charge of: The recent iKnow/Kanji Oddysey project, the KO 2001, etc.

There's just a whole lot of love going on up in here...I mean we all have the same goal and don't argue about how "My way is the best" but instead offers and take suggestions.

By the way, comparing my horrible Japanese abililty when I first came here to my current somewhat mediocre ability, it makes life so much more fun.

Students of Japanese who commit to finishing something like Heisig are usually going to continue following through with their studies in the future. So pretty much everyone here is serious about learning the language.

Its nice. I check the forums every day.

Tobberoth Wrote:

askayscha Wrote:Why are all your analogies about arab people?
From what I read you sound like you have some sort of vendetta against them.

Because arabs make up the HUGE majority of immigrants here? Check out Rosengård in malmö etc, there are whole towns where more than 50% of the people living there are arabs.

I could bring up black people in my examples, but it wouldn't be fair since I don't know a single black person well and they pretty much never make the news (and since there are so few of them, generalizations wouldn't really be possible). If 90% of the immigrants are arabs, it makes sense to use them in my comparisions.

EDIT: I found an interesting statistic on the previous subject. Turns out 51% of all visa are given to family-related immigration. Only 1,2% of all visas are giving because of work-related immigration.

All of this talk about Sweden leads me to conclude that all of your arguments about the overall, inherent disrespectfulness of living in another country without learning the language are stemming from your frustrations at home. I would argue that these frustrations, legitimate though they may be, are not directly connected with the issue of language learning itself.

Why is it especially rude to be unable to talk to someone in the store? Some people are unfriendly, stupid, purposefully mischievious, etc. - communication can fall flat for any number of reasons, and I don't feel that people have any particular obligation to be able to communicate flawlessly with anyone else they might encounter in their country. It's arbitrary and unrealistic. I don't owe it to anyone else to be able to talk about any particular thing, and I don't have to be able to talk about any and everything in order to contribute meaningfully to society.

Most Japanese people can't understand all the different dialects, right? So does that mean an Aomori person is being rude if he goes into a Kagoshima store and doesn't understand the shopkeeper's extremely local way of speaking? Of course, they can resort to standard Japanese in all likelihood, but so can non-Japanese-speaking foreigners resort to gestures, etc. If there's one thing I've learned as an English teacher, it's that almost anything can be communicated without using words at all. It all depends on the willingness of the people involved.

Which brings me to my main point: there are many things that people who can't speak Japanese *might* do, such as demand unreasonable English accommodation, make no effort to understand warnings, etc., but this should not be conflated with the act of not learning Japanese. Plenty of Japanese speakers also do these things - some are bitchy and selfish, and all have imperfect language skills that sometimes fall flat. On the other hand, some non-speakers never do these things - they always bring a Japanese buddy to stores, make a good faith effort to acknowledge the attempts of Japanese speakers to communicate, etc.

Don't conflate the action with the actor. Learn the language if you so please, but don't get your panties all in a bunch because someone else doesn't want to, for whatever reason.

wccrawford Wrote:

EnjukuBlack Wrote:To me, that just seems inexcusable.

Why? The fact that they love their life and live it as they like isn't enough, they should also conform to some ideal you've created in your head?

Be careful with throwing around insults at people you don't know.

What else is free speech for?

skellyfish Wrote:All of this talk about Sweden leads me to conclude that all of your arguments about the overall, inherent disrespectfulness of living in another country without learning the language are stemming from your frustrations at home. I would argue that these frustrations, legitimate though they may be, are not directly connected with the issue of language learning itself.

Directly? No. What is the difference between an arab person not speaking Swedish in Sweden and an American not speaking Japanese in Japan however? It's the exact same thing, no?

skellyfish Wrote:Why is it especially rude to be unable to talk to someone in the store? Some people are unfriendly, stupid, purposefully mischievious, etc. - communication can fall flat for any number of reasons, and I don't feel that people have any particular obligation to be able to communicate flawlessly with anyone else they might encounter in their country. It's arbitrary and unrealistic. I don't owe it to anyone else to be able to talk about any particular thing, and I don't have to be able to talk about any and everything in order to contribute meaningfully to society.

Most Japanese people can't understand all the different dialects, right? So does that mean an Aomori person is being rude if he goes into a Kagoshima store and doesn't understand the shopkeeper's extremely local way of speaking? Of course, they can resort to standard Japanese in all likelihood, but so can non-Japanese-speaking foreigners resort to gestures, etc. If there's one thing I've learned as an English teacher, it's that almost anything can be communicated without using words at all. It all depends on the willingness of the people involved.

Which brings me to my main point: there are many things that people who can't speak Japanese *might* do, such as demand unreasonable English accommodation, make no effort to understand warnings, etc., but this should not be conflated with the act of not learning Japanese. Plenty of Japanese speakers also do these things - some are bitchy and selfish, and all have imperfect language skills that sometimes fall flat. On the other hand, some non-speakers never do these things - they always bring a Japanese buddy to stores, make a good faith effort to acknowledge the attempts of Japanese speakers to communicate, etc.

Don't conflate the action with the actor. Learn the language if you so please, but don't get your panties all in a bunch because someone else doesn't want to, for whatever reason.

It's rude because it makes no sense. If you decide yourself to live somewhere for a long time, why would you NOT make an effort to learn the language? You would make it easier for yourself, easier for the natives around you. You would show respect for their ways and their culture. If I'm working as a waiter at a restaurant and a foreigner comes in talking English, I'm like "Oh, a tourist. How nice." However, if the same guy comes in every week for years I'm eventually going to go "Couldn't he have bothered to learn the language? Is our language so horrible that he can't even put in an hour a week or so to learn the basics? Come on!". I'd certainly call it rude. The same is true for people of obscure dialects, if a person from Aomori is going to live in Tokyo for several years, I'd be surprised if he made no attempt to learn the "proper" dialect.

Can one person have reasons not to learn a language in a country where they are living BY CHOICE? Yeah, maybe. The obvious ones are laziness and ignorance but there are probably several decent reasons. Maybe the person isn't allowed to? (I know some English schools in Japan only hire people who don't speak Japanese). There are exceptions but that doesn't change how it should be viewed in general. When you speak English to someone in Japan, you are forcing them to accommodate you just because you can't be bothered to learn their language. They are forced to speak another language in their own country. Sure, they COULD ignore you and answer in Japanese but 1. It would probably not be appreciated in Japan where customer = God. 2. The person speaking English might go as far as consider THEM rude (I've actually seen this happen).

I'm not "getting my panties in a bunch", I'm just letting it be known that if your only reason for not learning the language of a country in which you live by choice is laziness, you're being rude to the people living there. It's like a person going to a dinner party and bringing their own food. If you're allergic to the food being served, fine, some people might have a decent reason sometimes.