[epups]

If I live in the country for 10 years, then it is my country too. Perhaps it is in my interest to learn the language, and perhaps it isn't. There are plenty of countries in the world where people get by perfectly fine without even having a unifying language.

Do you guys know how every language came to be? It was through the interaction of people from different cultures, and it is an ongoing process. Germany was not even a country not so long ago. I reject the normative notion that learning a language is central to being a positive member of a community.

[rayiner]

> If I live in the country for 10 years, then it is my country too

Lol no. You’re not a sovereign individual. You’re part of a society, and every society is the product of people who have a culture that’s been cultivated over generations. Japan is a creation of the Japanese—the fruit of generations of Japanese people building a society according to their culture—not some foreigner who’s lived there for a fraction of a lifetime.

[epups]

Japan is not a a lone entity as well. It exists in a concert of nations. It buys and sells products from elsewhere. If you showed how modern Tokyo looks like to a Japanese from only 100 years ago, they would have a breakdown. Meanwhile, to the average Westerner, Tokyo is perfectly understandable, although of course unique.

Let's just take one example. John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s. Should America make some silly rule like you propose, and say that people like him are not welcome there, or that America does not "belong" to them? I suppose you support giving back the land to indigenous tribes then?

[wellanyway]

You are not seriously comparing yourself to Neumann, are you?

[lostlogin]

I can’t see how you get that impression from the comment? Can you explain to me?

[rayiner]

> John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s

Not at all. Bangladesh, where I’m from, has computers too, but its government, institutions, infrastructure, constitution, etc., are still what Bangladeshis and the British created. Society is a product of culture, and culture runs deep and is extremely sticky.

[epups]

I'm not sure I understand your point here. All those things you mentioned are not at all a product of the people of Bangladesh alone, they are a collective effort. You live in a system of government invented in Europe, your infrastructure is more and more owned by China, your predominant religion is not from Bangladesh originally. You talk about countries as if they are some independent silos of people who have lived in the area for millennia, and I find that to be absolutely unjustified.

[rayiner]

Sure, it’s the collective effort of centuries, and the British, Mughals, etc. The British for example built many of our institutions, and we inherited British common law. Our constitution has language in it that you can trace back to the English Magna Carta. Modern Bangladeshi society fairly claims all of that. But who the country isn’t the product of, and hasn’t been shaped by, is some immigrant who has been in the country just 10 years.

The same is true of Germany or America. My wife’s family fought in the American revolution and were among the first pioneers to settle the Oregon coast. The culture of those pioneers—the rugged individualism, etc.—was passed down over the generations and has had a manifest influence on American culture and identity. My ancestors “didn’t build that.” I wasn’t socialized into those values growing up. My ancestors were from somewhere completely different that’s had civilization for a millennium and has completely different values and attitudes. My family came here in 1989 to a country that was fully formed in its modern incarnation by, among other people, my wife’s family. It strikes me as absurd when people assert out of misplaced political correctness that America is my country just as much as it is her country. It reduces culture and nationhood and citizenship to a shallow and impoverished concept.

[skedaddle]

We found newspaper articles that ran at the time my grandparents eloped from Misourri. They have headlines like "Kansas City woman marries Chinese", "she confirms he does speak English", "is pregnant with his son", ... etc. My father of course, when he came around, wasn't seen as an American boy in 1930s Kansas. His experiences there left him feeling like a "twilight child" for the rest of his life, caught in between foreign and native lands and not belonging in either.

Why is that alright? Were the anti-miscegenation laws wrong, but the newspapers not?

If you're from here or reside here and are committed to the future of the country, you are American. The country in its history has mostly not offered that assurance, and the law and culture behind it was badly racist.

I definitely feel American (on the same level as my white cousins I guess if that's how you want to pin it) and my dad did too. He rebuked my oldest brother once very strongly for suggesting he was first generation.

[selimthegrim]

1947-71 doesn't exist according to him.

[astrange]

Strong statement about a country that completely reinvented itself in 1868 (largely by copying the West) and then was forcefully reinvented (again by the West) in 1947.

[ajsnigrutin]

Yeah, sure, you're able to get by without learning anything in some places... but you are a foreigner who came to their country, and instead of you adapting to the local culture (..well language), you expect literally everyone around you to adapt to your culture (..language) and use a non-native language to interact with you.

Imagine a brit going to france, driving his car on the "wrong" side of the road and saying "it doesn't matter, people just drive around me, it's not an issue".

[cc81]

As you age and require more and more services from the state of those countries do you think that country should provide you with an interpreter? You might encounter government employees, healthcare professionals or elderly care that does not speak English.