"Some of my best friends are racist"

I hope this isn't too off topic but...here  in Central and South Florida there is a whole boatload of people that speak Spanish (and some are even citizens!)  They don't even bother to learn English. Of coarse their kids are fluent and translate for them, so why bother, right?

Nicely put George.   

Many people buy into the 'fact' that you can't learn languages when you get older.  And with plenty of people around to translate, they figure they don't need to - and of course, the younger ones now have some power - information and need - that they didn't have before, so they don't really push their parents, grandparents etc to learn either.

Coming to a place for 12 months many people will say, 'too hard to learn another language for a short time', and not bother learning any more than the address home and ordering beer. But... then they like it here, stay another 12 months and use the same reasoning - only here for this 12 months.  So after 5 years they still speak less Chinese than the average toddler.  And this reinforces the Chinese view that foreigners can't learn Chinese and Da Shan is a miracle!!

I know its gonna be hard, but one of the first things I want to do when I touch down in China is to find myself a Chinese tutor....wanna be able to at least try and converse in Chinese at some stage.

I'm learning to read it. I can't learn to speak it.

I have tried over the years learning many languages. I can read parts of several. I can speak none.

Not everyone can learn.

I can order beer, and dinner, and tell the taxi where to go. My daughter knows more she is 2 1/2.

However, I understand the culture well, and have been studying it for decades.

I still speak more Cantonese than Putonghua, since I learned it through my kung fu. About 300 words is it.

The inability to learn foreign languages as adults is tied up with brain function. Those who are male have a harder time (usually) than female. This is due to the fact that women have two language centres, one in each frontal lobe. Men don't have it. Women use them to solve problems, so get to use them a lot. Men don't. If two languages are learned young, then this apparently doesn't apply. Last I read, no one knows why.

The other is to do with maths/science background. Anecdotally, from the language department at my university where I studied, I was interviewed in regards to learning languages, since I was learning Japanese and German at the time. I was having a hard time with speaking, but could write etc, and understand etc, but not say anything.
The tutor told me her PhD thesis she was writing covered some of this, and that those with good maths backgrounds or science backgrounds seemed to find it much harder. No one knew why.

It doesn't always hold. I have a freind who has a PhD in physics and a masters in engineering and speaks 5 languages fluently. but he learned 4 of them as a chinese child brought up living in Rio, brazil. (mandarin, portugese, spanish, and english. Learned italian.)

CD I agree on the topic of immigration, I have a few issues with people who immigrate and then 30 years later still cannot have a basic conversation in English, I don't mean they need to have a PHd in English, but at least be able to do the basics....for safety reasons as well, if ya can't speak English in Australia hwo are ya gonna chat to the people at emergency services??? could be life or death situation.

I've often noted that different communities seem to integrate in different ways, all with their own problems.  In the UK, the immigrants who have integrated best - at least IMO - are the Afrocaribbeans. The problem is our class based system still.  Many of the Afrocaribbean people have lots of white friends, drink in pubs together, all speak the same language and 'dialect' of English, go to festivals together (Notting Hill etc).  That is, white working class and afrocaribbeans.  I think we have one of the highest incidents of mixed race relationships and kids in the world and the majority of those are afrocaribbean/white - probably 60% where the woman is white but still quite a lot the other way round.

But in those instances, its our glass ceiling and the fact that, as with many places, the more things change, the more they stay the same, i.e. social mobility whether you're white and from the estates or black and from them is still quite shit.

Americans, Australians etc often seem surprised when they hear black Britons speaking in an English accent, and often seem to have a more racist retrograde idea of 'English' than we do.  I've heard Americans tell me that someone black can't be English - tell Ian Wright that.  We're just as hung up on class as Americans etc think, but not on race, any more.

Thing is, the caribbean people have kept the christian anglo churches going in a lot of London.  The troubles with their youths are another matter, but again similar to white working class youths right now - the older afrocaribbeans were very conservative and treasured the old fashioned british way.  It's a problem suffered by both races. (Substance abuse, single parent families, broken homes etc)

But despite the latter, I do feel that they have become an innate part of England now.

Am I schizophrenic for saying that and then saying that I feel somewhat less comfortable when I see a woman in a full burkha going down the street in the UK? Or reading about forced marriages or the case I mentioned before?

It seems that it's really culture, language etc which are the issue here and not race.