[dhconnelly]

From the article, without comment: 'He’s a big proponent of his own ignorance, saying he doesn’t choose to learn more than a smattering of Japanese because he needs mystery and “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar.”'

[GuiA]

A sign of the privileged, to be able to move to a foreign country and categorically refuse to attempt to integrate.

The 7/11 clerk from Sri Lanka or janitor from the Philippines who emigrated to Japan for a better life certainly don’t have much room for “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar”.

[peteretep]

> The 7/11 clerk from Sri Lanka or janitor from the Philippines

Most of the Filipino workers I’ve come across in South East Asia don’t make any effort to learn the local language, and just stick with English.

> A sign of the privileged

Growing up brown in the UK doesn’t scream privilege to me, and anyone who’s spent much time in Asia will have witnessed that people of South Asian extraction can run into some serious prejudicial turbulence

[et-al]

How about growing up brown in the UK, but also being able to immigrate to California?

> Born in England to Indian parents who later moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., [Pico Iyer] attended graduate school at Oxford and Harvard and then went to work for Time magazine.

We're getting off course here, but I do think there's a certain level of privilege when one snowbird's in a foreign country and doesn't bother learning the local language.

Immigrant workers in SE Asia would probably love to learn the local language if they weren't occupied working 16 hour shifts or sleeping.

[mc32]

It really depends on critical mass. If the foreign pop achieves critical mass it can operate within its own bubble within a country. Some are ghettoes, some are little [some country|some city], some are clubs for foreigners who are passing through.

In the US, as well as some EU countries and elsewhere, you can have foreigners who don’t speak the local language outside of a few stock phrases because of critical mass.