Climbing the language barrier

Living in Israel as a non-fluent Hebrew speaker has really made me appreciate how difficult it must have been for all the non-English speaking immigrants to America. I'm being specific about the US, because I think Canada is far more tolerant of ESL immigrants than the US is.

At least in Israel, there is such a large English speaking population, that you can easily find someone who speaks English to help you find an address, a post office, explain your water bill (if you can find ANYBODY who could explain the water bill), etc. We constantly "complain" that when we do try to speak Hebrew, the person we are talking to - bank teller, supermarket cashier, cellphone service - usually says, "it's okay, you can speak English." We have to argue with them, saying we need to practice our Hebrew. Eventually, we compromise: we speak Hebrew, they speak English.

In one community I lived in back in the US, there was a significant number of immigrants from Guatemala. Hardly anyone in my town spoke Spanish, and these people didn't speak English. Typically, they found construction jobs, or housekeeping work. But a few were able to get jobs in other areas, including our local Burger King. I remember our receptionist stomping into the office one morning, because when she went to the drive-thru at the Burger King to get coffee (they had very good coffee), the Guatemalan girl working the drive-thru didn't understand "milk" and "cream" and our receptionist had to settle for the wrong thing. She was ranting about people "coming to our country and not knowing the language."

I felt for the drive-thru girl. I thought how scary it must be to be in a new country and not know the language, and to most likely, be far away from her family and friends. But I also thought, why doesn't she learn English? So many people speak it, it must be easy enough to learn.

I have a different respect for her now. Yes, enough people here speak English that I can get by for now, but this past Friday, the Health Ministry found E.Coli in our water. They issued a boil-water alert, and the City posted a notice to boil all water used for eating, drinking, and brushing teeth. Now, first of all, they issued the warning on Shabbat and came up with some lame excuse that they didn't want to disturb Shabbat, so they posted flyers outside of synagogues and called "some people." We didn't go to services that day, so we missed the flyer.

But the main issue is, the flyers were only in Hebrew. The notice on the City's website was only in Hebrew. The article on the news website was only in Hebrew. If it weren't for our English language email list, I never would have known about the water situation, and Morey, Maimo and I would have been merrily drinking tainted water. Fortunately, on Shabbat, we drink a lot of coffee and tea, which was from water boiled in our urn. But anyway...

I was reassured however, that in the event of war, the government issues all warnings and alerts in English as well as Hebrew.

Good to know/טוב לדעת