Tired of voice menus on the phone?

  Bring the umbrella and we'll give it a go.

Tom said:

In a pub or restaurant in Wales, the little boys room would be marked with the equivalent of hombres - "Dynion".

To this day we have problems with folks misunderstanding some sounds. e.g. if I go into a store and ask for maps (as in street maps), I'm shown where the mops and brushes are. I s

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Tom,

I don't think that's the room Wendy would be asking about. ;D

Jim Dick said:

I don't think that's the room Wendy would be asking about.

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Hopefully not Jim  ;D She'd be looking for "Merched" (madames).

LOL Wendy, that sounds like a sequel to last year's Moab entertainment.

wendycoke said:

...when I'm calling customer service I shouldn't have to try to understand the service rep.

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I couldn't agree more with this. It's bad enough you have to waste who knows how long wading through endless voice response prompts, but when you do finally get through to a human, half the time it's either not the right person, they don't know what they're doing, or they can't speak English clearly. From what I've seen, customer service in this country is at a real low point lately. Many businesses are technological marvels, but are almost totally impersonal. It seems a lot of them don't have a clue how much their customers hate doing business with them, but don't leave because their competitors are just as bad.

As for the rest of life, I feel just the opposite - we're becoming a bilingual country and that's a good thing. I get a chuckle from people who complain that new immigrants don't bother to learn the language, because I know that a lot of their grandparents or great-grandparents came here from Europe and either didn't learn English at all, or only knew enough to get by. Most of the time, the kids learned it first, then taught it to the parents. A generation or two later, the descendants of those immigrants are complaining about people doing the same thing their ancestors did. Get over it folks. Hispanics are the fastest growing population in the country, and in a few decades it's likely that somewhere between a quarter and half of Americans will speak Spanish as their first language. I think that's great - our kids should be learning Spanish right alongside English from elementary school all the way to graduation, and learning a third elective language in high school. If they did that, we'd might hear the last of those petty complaints in a generation.

In the meantime, if I'm paying the bill, the customer service rep can speak my language.

Of course, if you're in the mood for a little payback, learn Spanish, then ask for a Spanish language rep when you get on the phone and let them put up with your lousy language skills for a change.

Wow, Welsh lessons at Moab.  How exciting

JGarrick said:

learn Spanish, then ask for a Spanish language rep when you get on the phone and let them put up with your lousy language skills for a change.

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LOL, Spanish won't help a lot when you're dealing with someone on the phone in Asia.

Ned said:

Wow, Welsh lessons at Moab.

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I was thinking more along the lines of Wendy giving us a rendition of 'Singing in the rain' with that umbrella.

Tom said:

I was thinking more along the lines of Wendy giving us a rendition of 'Singing in the rain' with that umbrella.

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Not me....my singing would chase everyone away. I was going to use the umbrella for the Welsh lessons, like the poor teacher in the cartoon you sent.

Glad you sent the word for the ladies restroom. I'd hate to go to Wales and ask where the men's restroom is.

Ned said:

Try http://www.gethuman.com/us/ for a list of companies and the trick to bypass the voice menus and talk to a real person.

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Very very clever. Thanks for the link, Ned.  ;D

wendycoke said:

Glad you sent the word for the ladies restroom.

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You could always have used the generic "ty bach", pronounced tee bach (as in Bach the composer). Of course, that might result in you being shown the outhouse  ;D

JGarrick said:

As for the rest of life, I feel just the opposite - we're becoming a bilingual country and that's a good thing. I get a chuckle from people who complain that new immigrants don't bother to learn the language, because I know that a lot of their grandparents or great-grandparents came here from Europe and either didn't learn English at all, or only knew enough to get by.

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I will argue with that, I'm second generation American so it's MY grandparents you refer to (who came over from Germany in my case) and Grandpa decreed, when they decided to obtain US citizenship, that ENGLISH would, from that day forward, be the language of the house.  My mother, who was the last child born to them (in 1930) speaks no German because, other than prayer (More on that in a second) she never heard German spoken in the hosue.

As for prayer,, Well, like Long Chaney.  (In a move about his life his wife, who is sick, complains when he prays because he prayed in american sign language... she felt left out, he replied "It would not mean the same if I spoke the prayers",  Grandfather was that way, he prayed in German because it would not be the same in English)

Imagine if you will a long table, One side is the sons in the Navy and their friends, the other is the Army sons and their friends.  And at the head of the table, Grandpa saying Grace in German  DURING WWII.

Mother, did speak fluent Spanish however.  She learned it teaching ENGLISH to people who came over from Mexico.. Again, these were the actual immigrants who wanted despretly to learn English.

It is their grandchildren and great grandchildren who are demanding we teach in both Spanish and English. 

Not the people you say never learned our language.. But people who, in many cases, had to learn "the old language' as a second language because their parents spoke only English

Great Grandma came from Germany, learned to speak fluent English, but continued to speak German around the family because she knew it drove her kids crazy....they couldn't understand a word she was saying and were afraid she was talking about them. One of the reasons I learned German was so I could listen in on what she was saying.

And on the gethuman.com hints, Mike was just on the phone with AOL and tried the "push 0 repeatedly" thing and got absolutely nowhere. I'm afraid these companies are just going to keep changing their secret codes. Why can't they just say at the beginning of the message, "If you want to talk to a live person, press 849. Be advised that there may be a very long wait as both of our live customer service reps have over 100 customers waiting in their phone queus." That way, we can wait for a live person if we want or we can continue to punch in numbers.

JGarrick said:

As for the rest of life, I feel just the opposite - we're becoming a bilingual country and that's a good thing. I get a chuckle from people who complain that new immigrants don't bother to learn the language, because I know that a lot of their grandparents or great-grandparents came here from Europe and either didn't learn English at all, or only knew enough to get by. Most of the time, the kids learned it first, then taught it to the parents. A generation or two later, the descendants of those immigrants are complaining about people doing the same thing their ancestors did. Get over it folks. Hispanics are the fastest growing population in the country, and in a few decades it's likely that somewhere between a quarter and half of Americans will speak Spanish as their first language. I think that's great - our kids should be learning Spanish right alongside English from elementary school all the way to graduation, and learning a third elective language in high school. If they did that, we'd might hear the last of those petty complaints in a generation.

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How is that a good thing? The illegal aliens in this country do not wish to assimilate into our society and the standards of our country, but they bring the third-world disastrous cultures from which they were fleeing, diseases, and intolerant religions with them and infect all around them. They have no respect for our country the way our grandparents and great-grandparents did. They want us to adapt to their cultural ways--it should be the other way around!

Both Democrats and Republicans are only anxious for reelection and power. A population can only support so many non-productive beneficiaries of goods and services, and the swelling underclass of illegal immigrants is straining our country?s infrastructure to a point where further inaction would be extremely detrimental to the economy and society.? For example, here in Tucson we only have one emergency room still open because all the rest of the hospitals are on the verge of going bankrupt after years of being forced to treat the steady stream of illegal immigrants.

The price America pays for being the strongest, most prosperous, and most free nation on earth is that people the world over are constantly striving to immigrate here. A microcosm of that is that many of those people attempt to accelerate their relocation here by doing so outside of the law. We as Americans, who pride ourselves on living in a "nation of laws," must take care to differentiate between those in this country who are law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants, and those whose presence is a violation of law.

While the majority of American are, and should be, 100% for legal immigration, we are, and must be, 100% for the law as well. This has always been a nation of immigrants; our history as a "melting pot" is a large part of what has made us the great nation we are today. However, even more importantly in this modern age of terrorism than ever before, it cannot?and must not?be too much to ask that those who come to this country, be it for the lifestyle, the opportunities, the freedom, or the work, do so legally, and with a full disclosure of their intentions.

Richard

RLSharp said:

The illegal aliens in this country do not wish to assimilate into our society and the standards of our country, but they bring the third-world disastrous cultures from which they were fleeing, diseases, and intolerant religions with them and infect all around them. They have no respect for our country the way our grandparents and great-grandparents did. They want us to adapt to their cultural ways--it should be the other way around!

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First, who said anything about illegal aliens? I said that I thought becoming bilingual is a good thing. We might have a lot less conflict in the world if people put more effort into understanding each other's cultures, and less into casting snap judgements. Learning a language is a first step in understanding a culture. I really don't have any idea why people get so bent out of shape about the idea of people speaking their native languages. It's not the end of life as we know it if our kids learn Spanish or Japanese or German or Swahili. It's just a new skill to learn, and one that could be mighty handy in the future.

Second, our ancestors didn't adopt our culture, they defined it when they became assimilated into it. Many of us have European ancestors, but we've adopted traditions from many sources into what is now American culture, and added quite a few original ideas of our own. Every American tradition wasn't delivered here on the Mayflower, and American culture isn't static. Why shouldn't we now also adopt the best of cultures from Africa, Asia, and Latin America just as we adopted the best of European culture?

John In Detroit said:

I'm second generation American so it's MY grandparents you refer to...

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It's also MY grandparents and greatgrandparents. I didn't claim that NONE of them learned English, or even that most of them didn't learn English, only that many (I believe my exact words were "a lot") of them didn't learn it at all or learn it well. Throughout our history there have been immigrant enclaves in cities and small towns where nearly everyone primarily spoke their native language, and used English only outside the community, if at all. Certainly many, and probably most, of them learned English, and some were committed enough to speak only English, even at home. That's great. I applaud their effort to blend in, but I still see no reason to condemn those that decided to stick to their own traditions and languages.

The same thing is happening today. People come here from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and still from Europe as well. Some learn the language quickly and blend in seamlessly, while for others it's a long and occassionally difficult process - sometimes taking a generation to complete. Why is this such a big problem for people?

Yesterday, while in Algadones, Mx, I saw the following sign in a store window:

Snowbird spoken here.

;D ;D ;D

Tom said:

Yesterday, while in Algadones, Mx, I saw the following sign in a store window:

Snowbird spoken here.

;D ;D ;D

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And how does one say "Where's the restroom?" in Snowbird??? 

wendycoke said:

And how does one say "Where's the restroom?" in Snowbird???

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I'd be afraid to ask down there  ;D

Tom

I don't know about your dentists in Algodones but the ones we have been to have very clean restroom, cleaner than some I have been in the states.  Same with the optical places.  They just aren't as fancy in some cases.