"No English!"
66--Life saving tips for immigrants in America
While many U.S. immigrants struggle with learning and improving their English in order to get themselves an easier and better life in this dream land, there are certain amount of immigrants who have given up on learning basic English. I know most of them are elders. It is understandable due to their ages and the type of life style they have set before they came to this country. Learning English is a torture for those who are being illiterate, who came to America just want to enjoy their retirement life, someone who specially came for medical reason, someone who came to help his/her child take care of their children as a free babysitter. I know most of them must have tried their best but for some reason they are just not capable to learn the language.
So they at least know how to say "No English!" As a second generation immigrant, I found that nothing actually better than only knowing these two fabulous English words and widely use them dealing with all kind of life crises in America. "No English!" reminds me the principle of Zen, nothing is truly better than anything. One of the best example that I can think of is dealing with telemarketers' calls. I've heard so many stories from my Asian immigrant friends about how they got trapped by those telemarketing people and how they hate those people calling them beginning with a quick, non-stop statement in English, as well as emphasizing that "We are not selling you anything...."
When every time my friends using their fluent English dealing with telemarketing calls, they still can not avoid being convenience by some attractive offers, or simply waste their time to come out some excuses to hung up the phone. In this case, I think it would be super to have a family member who only knows two English words "No English!" to answer the call. I have a full-time working friend whose retired Dad moved to California from Taiwan and lived with her family for years. He always stays home taking care of my friend's house chores and sometimes he picks up the incoming phone calls because he doesn't want to miss his Ma-Jian pal's call. For most chances, this "No English" Dad received telemarketing calls with a long introductory of "scary English". And the only thing he can and will do is simply saying "No English!" then he hung up the phone.
My friend lately found that her Dad is really useful helping her fighting annoying telemarketing calls. Since then she will ask the telemarketing sales to hold on a moment and she calls her Dad to come answer the phone and have him saying "No English!" to the sales.
It is funny to see that "No English" can be such a powerful phrase as throwing a hot potato to others, when one says that the other has to either catch it or simply pass. What can you do? He doesn't even speak English! I supposed "No English" will also prevent certain telemarketing scam, such as a type of donation campaign using the name of local police department. We Chinese respect and somewhat afraid of policemen so most people won't dare hang up on the calls that so called from "Police Department". Many immigrant household who has family members know a little bit English will seriously take such a junky call and ended up donating money to the "police". I've occasionally heard about the cases and most of the victims are elders who know basic English and understand the call was coming from a "policeman" or a "Sargent". I guess this proofs that "A little knowledge IS dangerous". I've once published an article in Chinese press talking about this type of scam to warn my community people to be aware of. In my article I also suggested the elders don't panic when they receive the call like this. If the "police" is not talking nicely then he probably is not real. Simply say "No English!" then the "policeman" will quickly hang up on you before you do to him.
Of course, I do use these two powerful and wise words to dealing with a few of my life crises: I sometimes used "No English!" with heavy accent to reject homeless people asking me to spare changes, when I really have no changes to spare; I used very fluent English to say "No English" to a nasty looking stranger who wants to have a chat with me while I enjoy my McDonald's meal and a great Chinese novel alone; Before California exercising this lovely law called "Do Not Call Registration", I used very fluent English saying "No English!" to many telemarketing calls, include several "Police Department Charities" which the callers are aggressive with really bad phone manners (I said to them: "No English... And by the way, all people in this house are 'No English' so please don't ask me to call someone in my house who speak and understand English to get on the phone...".)
I thought the above "'No English!': Life saving tips for immigrants in America" supposed to benefit people who have last names actually sound like they might really not speak English such as Wong, Kim, Suzuki, Nguyen or Garcia. A friend of mine who came from Taiwan and married to a Caucasian man happened to lose such a privilege after she changed her Chinese last name to her American husband's. She got lots of telemarketing calls and she can no longer pretend she doesn't speak or understand English anymore. One day, she got an idea and she answered to the telemarketing caller "No English!" again. The caller quickly replied "...but your last name is a Caucasian name. How do you NOT know English!.". "We are German!" she reply in English with fake Chinese accent then she hung up the phone.
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Yxhuang, great hub. Those police associations calls are really scary. I don't know that all of them are scams, either. However, police officers should not use their official position for special perks.
Mdvaldosta. I don't think this hub is about the difficulty of learning English. It seems to me that it's about the convenience of pretending not to know English, when dealing with pesky phone calls.
Yes. mdvaldosta. I agree with you, too. Thanks for your comment.
Hello Aya! Thanks for visiting me again.
Great hub. My wife came to this country when she was 12 and did not speak a word of English. She has used the "no english" on telemarketers in the past....but then again, so have I-and English is all I speak.
The big drawback to having a wife who speaks two languages is that when she speaks to her mother on the phone, I have no idea if they're talking about me:)
This is too true yxhuang! I remember when I was young my grandmother who speaks english would switch to chinese just to mess with a telemarketer. Sometimes she would even be cruel enough to sound intereseted by saying yes...yes and she'd finish with "No English, bye bye."
Very interesting hub that details what thousands of people go thru every day when they move from a familiar setting to the unfamiliar. Americans experience this same kind of social isolation when they move to foreign countries because our language skills are so poor in this country. It could be argued that too many Americans don't know their own language very well either! :)
America is a nation of immigrants. What few people realize is that it often takes two generations or more before they are no longer socially isolated and mainstreamed into the culture. I really do feel for the elderly when they take on such a move to a foreign culture as an older brain finds it very difficult to learn a new language.
Thank you all for dropping by.
rockinjoe- When your wife speaking her native language to her mother on the phone, the most chances are she is talking about you, something bad or good. You can still sense what she was talking about you even if you don't understand her native language. Normally her impression tells the most. If you start to hear your name repeatedly coming out from a long nagging unknown conversations then you better watch out, perhaps this means the time for you to buy her flowers or take her out for a romantic dinner.
Ariana- Isn't fun to be bi-lingual or multi-lingual? I often found out Chinese immigrants who are not so good at learning English will still survive in very interesting and diverse ways. I wrote this hub simply wanted to make fun of some tele-marketing firms that did not consider cultural diversity as one of the major factors of doing phone marketing in this country. I happened to work in an advertising industry that specializing and emphasizing in diverse cultures so I understand what most immigrants think and what type of marketing works well when dealing with their language barrier issue.
Denny- I agree that it takes two generations or more to conquer the language barrier for most immigrants. I came to the U.S. when I was 15 with basic English knowledge that I've learned from Taiwan for three years (mostly grammar skills in British English system. The lectures don't emphasize conversational skills.). Many people say that young generation immigrants pick up English fast and easy but this never happened to me. I am a slow learner in English and I had a terrible English teacher since I was in Taiwan. I used to have fears of challenging this language. After came to the U.S. I did not meet teachers who really stimulated and inspired my interest of learning English so I kept on having resistance of learning and using this language.
I won't be able to speak English confidently and fluently till about my eighth or tenth years of living in the U.S. It is a long journey of learning but I found that even a slow learner like myself can comprehend a foreign language bit by bit. Sort of like making oneself get use to driving so one will finally become a good driver. You have nothing to lose but gain knowledge and technique. That is the best reward I found myself learning English in this country.
Hi yxhuang,
Back in high school, I had two part time jobs as a telemarketer. I actually did quite well, and learned quickly how to deal with all kinds of people. I was never rude, if they said no, I'd just say thanks for listening anyway. More often than not, males were the easiest people to sell to. At the time I was selling magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Some men would even go so far as to ask me for a date, which I firmly but politely turned down. It was an interesting experience. Being the recipient of such calls, I simply say no thank you. Sometimes I would say, after their first sentence, I appreciate that you have a job to do, but before you waste your time and mine, I'm simply not interested.
Dealing with the public is quite challenging. Our motor vehicle agency, many years ago, had a horrible reputation. It was often believed that the employees took nasty pills before coming to work. Most of them were rude and obnoxious. The sad part was, you had no choice but to go there for your vehicle documents. One summer, I was looking for work, and they advertised for a typist. I applied and was hired on the spot. What an experience that was! I got to see first hand what the employees had to deal with every day, and I have to say, they sometimes had a right to be rude to a customer. Some customers were nastier than the employee. Although I did not engage in being rude, to anyone, I could then understand the attitude the workers had. It was a great experience to be on both sides of the fence.
yxhuang, I so enjoy your hubs! You rock! :)
Trish: Thanks for sharing your story. I am happy to learn from someone who has been on the other side of the fence. It's important for us to understand how you work and feel about your job so we get less bias to this tele-marketing profession that has bothered me the most for the past years.
I've experienced so many tele-marketing crank calls and some of them are using police department's name asking for donations. Most of the callers were very aggressive with not so good phone manner. They would also follow up to harass you if they found out you did not make a donation later. I then discovered those are scam because they would give you the local police department's number as their call back number. The worse thing is that our local police department has no way to trace these people. The police officer would not take report for this type of cases, either.
My husband once thought of an idea of talking to tele-marking people to practice his English. I thought it was a great idea but ended up having our long distance phone company switched by no means (He must say something "Yes" by no means to give the caller a permission to switch without further action). Same things with accepting these unnecessary "Credit Card Protection Plans". As a result, I have to do all the talking on behalf of my husband otherwise he could make troubles again.
Sounds pretty flattering to have someone asked you out for a date while working over the phone. You must have some kind of sexy voice. ^_^ We need such successful examples to show the bright side of the tele-marketing business. Thanks again for sharing your experiences.
I think chinese is very difficult language to learn.This time the only sentence thats a solution to many of my problems in the marts is "ting bu tong"
I've never had calls from anyone claiming to be the police department, thankfully. If I do get a call, I say thanks but no thanks, and also remind them that I am on the Do Not Call List. I remember people would ask me how I got their private phone number. The way that happened is all we were given was an area code, and a list of random numbers. It was never a matter of knowing who we were calling as there were no names attached. Some folks believed me but others didn't, they were convinced I knew their private number.
A sexy voice? I think it was more because it was a young voice :)
Hi! topstuff. thanks for stopping by. "Ting bu tong" is the important phrase for a beginner learning Chinese. At least you've caught these phrases and they are yours now. My way of learning a new language (I've also learned Spanish, Japanese and Cantonese) is to catch as many as words and phrases as possible and try to make these words as my property. Have fun!
mdvaldosta 3 years ago
I understand your frustration, but I do personally belive that basic English skills should be a pre-requisite to becoming a citizen of the United States. It's not that hard to learn the 'basics' of any language in my opinion.