Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Unfortunately that sentiment is all too true. My best friend is Chinese, and was born here 23 years ago after his parents immigrated to Calgary shortly before that. While his father is an outgoing businessman who knows that integration with the community has many benefits for him and his family, his wife refuses to leave the house, has never done so other than for a few hours at a time, and as a result, cannot speak a word of English, our official language, after 25 YEARS of being a citizen. That's quite shocking to me, actually.
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Most people that can't speak english are usually the older people, as learning a new language is harder the older you get, not to mention some people just don't have the linguistic knack for learning languages. Unfortunately there is also the mind set that "i'm too old to learn english now" My mom and dad run a store and my mom can speak better english then my dad by a fair margin with the same amount of time in North America.
The ethnic communities are great, but can sometimes become a crutch for people, as they think that they don't really need to learn the language because they can just stay in their own community. Unfortunately it creates a large amount of problems in regards to communication with police, government and emergency workers. Like when my grandma was hit by a car this past summer in Chinatown and my aunts and uncles couldn't speak english well enough to understand police officers, doctors, nurses, etc. My mom and dad were caught up at work, so my mom had to call me over to the hospital just to see how she was doing and to communicate with doctors.
I just don't think that Canada has the same problem as whats happening in the UK. Here it is the older generations that have trouble communicating and keeping to themselves, the problem facing the youth is a disconnect with their own ethnic culture in most cases. From what I can gather in the UK, they seem to have even the younger generation having trouble interacting with british society. Though I think even in Canada there is a danger of seperating ethnicities just by the actions of some people, a theoretically possible scenario is with the bars/clubs (you know who you are
) in Calgary having what looks like racial discrimination not letting asians in, would create the idea of someone opening an Asian bar/club where they would do the same to non asians causing even more problems.