Languages

[smc]

I thought some of our language enthusiasts might find this interesting.

Riding home on the T yesterday (the T is Boston's trolley system), I had occasion to help an elderly couple with some directions. I could tell they were lost. The man asked the driver for help a couple of times, in English, but wasn't really getting the information he needed. Then he would carry on the conversation with his wife. I could tell they were speaking another language (which sounded Germanic), but I couldn't hear it very clearly until I moved to the front to offer some assistance.

When I asked the man if he needed some help, the accent of his reply immediately told me he had been speaking Yiddish. So, I spoke Yiddish to him. His wife chimed in, and after I helped them with directions I sat and spoke to them for another 15 minutes before they got off the trolley. It turned out that the wife did not speak English (or barely), and they had lived in the United States for nearly 20 years! This is highly unusual.

[Tread]

I don?t find this unusual. I can?t speak for USA, but I guess you?ll find more of long time barely English speaking people in the immigrant quarters. In the case of Boston the most would be Italian or Spanish speaking.
Mostly they are female, married, don?t work, under average income household, and in my experience some kind of religious.
You don?t need to speak well to buy the usual supplies. For doing the paperwork or dealing with authorities, the husband, children, or a friend have to assist.
They don?t integrate and stay most of the time in the quarters, this is because it seems to be an exception, but I?m sure there are quite a lot of them.