Immigrants and Language

Published by

Clarissa

July 19, 2016

Melania Trump’s plagiarism was not the only scandal of her speech. It was equally shocking how poor her English is. This is not a minimum-wage maid from Miami. This is somebody who could hire a battalion of the best language teachers in the world. And she chooses not to in a show of stunning disrespect for the country her husband wants to run.

As I always say, it is a duty of immigrants to assimilate and make themselves comfortable to locals. The locals around here are too polite to mention that this supposedly multilingual person was straining to read Michelle Obama’s words off the teleprompter so painfully that it was uncomfortable to watch. But I’m from the same part of the world as Melania, and I have to admit that plagiarism, hatred of language learning, and a profound contempt for “idiot Americans” who are only fit to be bamboozled and robbed are what we grow up with. Some of us make a choice to work long and hard to get rid of this sorry baggage. Others, however, choose not to.

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29 responses to “Immigrants and Language”

cliff arroyo

July 19, 2016

“But I’m from the same part of the world as Melania”

I dunno….. the USSR was very different from Yugoslavia. I was only in Slovenia for a few days but it had the overall feel of a first world country, a little more westernized than Poland (which seems somewhat more westernized than say Lithuania in the most westernized region of the former USSR)

I haven’t known many Slovenians but all the ones I have known were multi-lingual (which makes sense given the small size of the country and its location at the meeting point of several different geographical regions).

I didn’t hear the speech so I youtubed an interview and found her English kind of not great but not terrible either. And given her age I don’t think there’s a whole lot to be done, even with language teachers. I don’t think she’s stupid but she’s not a scholar.

I would rank her as considerably more fluent sounding than Colomba Bush (though fortunately her husband’s presidential bid died the horrible death we were all hoping for….).

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  I agree that Melania comes from farther away from the source of the rot. But that makes this whole thing even more inexcusable. I cringe with vicarious shame when she puts on this show of a lazy, shifty, whorish, dishonest Eastern European mail order wife. And she isn’t some poor as dirt woman from Saratov. She’s had access to money for a while. There is no excuse not to make herself more presentable.
  
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2. Shakti
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  If Colomba Bush got up on stage with the same level of fluency as this woman exhibited, she’d be barbequed and told to “learn how to speak English.”
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    Exactly.
    
    I also don’t understand why she can’t hire a normal makeup artist. This horrible caked on makeup reminiscent of the workers’ barracks in Voronezh (where no actual workers live, of course) looks bizarre at a political gathering. Is she too cheap to spend on herself? Or that oblivious?
    
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    1. Evelina Anville
      
      July 19, 2016
      
      Oh Melania pays her makeup artist a good deal of money, I’m sure. I feel confident that she (and Trump) like that creepy, fake, caked-on-makeup look.
      
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      1. el
        
        July 19, 2016
        
        \I feel confident that she (and Trump) like that creepy, fake, caked-on-makeup look.
        
        Why suppose others are fools? May be, Mel and her husband think Trump’s potential voters love her look.
        
        Surely, many male Trump voters envy him for having a pretty wife. I looked at her and she does look attractive, probably especially to less educated voters.
        
        \But the hypocrisy of ranting against immigration and then sticking in everybody’s face an immigrant who isn’t even pretending to try is shocking.
        
        She is presenting herself exactly as the (sole ?) non-threatening kind of immigrant Trump voters want to see.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        July 19, 2016
        
        She looks cheap and creepy. You can take a girl out of a brothel, etc.
        
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      2. Shakti
        
        July 19, 2016
        
        Some people like “natural makeup”; some people don’t. Who knows?
        
        She breaks some unofficial makeup rule by wearing the makeup she does. It wouldn’t look out of place in a Victoria Secret’s catalog but as a political wife, it’s a bit much. It would be just as much of a faux pas if she had herself made up like “dude going before cameras” or “toned down Rachel Maddow.”
        
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Shakti

July 19, 2016

An accent is an accent. I only heard part of the speech. But it occurs to me that if she didn’t read as “white model” in an American context people would be far less forgiving of her heavy accent and the couple of errors I heard. In front of many of the same people who freak out when they hear non-European accents and also harbor regional snobbery (not just city slickin’ liberals do this), it stuck out like a sore thumb.

I did not realize she had plagiarized but it just struck me as weird that after “6 weeks of practicing” she sounded like a wooden newscaster reading things off by rote. In addition, she didn’t even look like she half believed any of the words coming out of her mouth.

I remember an assignment in middle school where we had to give speeches and were recorded. I was mortified I could hear traces of my mother’s accent coming back from the tape. Nobody said anything mean about it, but still.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  It’s especially funny that this is a campaign fueled entirely by anti-immigrant sentiment. If they were the party of multiculturalism and open borders, ok, that would make sense. But the hypocrisy of ranting against immigration and then sticking in everybody’s face an immigrant who isn’t even pretending to try is shocking.
  
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2. Stringer Bell
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  “I was mortified I could hear traces of my mother’s accent coming back from the tape.”
  
  I didn’t get this part. Were you that self-conscious about having a trace of a Indian accent?
  
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  1. Shakti
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    Yes, weirdly enough. Of all the things kids made fun of me for, my accent wasn’t on the list. And she didn’t have people making fun of her for her accent (that I knew of), so I have no idea where that came from. I was self conscious for a day, and then got over it.
    
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Stringer Bell

July 19, 2016

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1. Dreidel
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  Stuff that Stringer Boy finds funny, apparently…
  
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  1. Stringer Bell
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    No ‘apparently’ about it, son. Your party shitting the bed on the national stage will never stop being funny.
    
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David Gendron

July 19, 2016

Although I agree with a large part in this post, I have some remarks to make.

1) It’s not Melania’s plagiarism. It’s “some guy in the Trump team” ‘s plagiarism. She had never heard about Michelle’ speech before.

2) How you grew up with plagiarism?

3) Politicians do plagiarism regularly. Have you heard about Harper-Howard speeches before?

4) There’s no contradiction with Trump’s campaign in this. For his conservative base, women and immigrants should be stupid and submissive. That’s exactly what they get from Melania Trump!

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1. David Gendron
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  About the Harper-Howard speeches: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/harper-staffer-quits-over-plagiarized-2003-speech-on-iraq-1.756590
  
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2. Stringer Bell
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  “It’s not Melania’s plagiarism. It’s “some guy in the Trump team” ‘s plagiarism. ”
  
  That would be true if Melania didn’t explicitly say she worked on the speech independently. Furthermore, one could easily mitigate this issue by saying someone in the campaign fucked up, he/she was fired, let’s move on. But the fuckups that they are, they’ve double-downed on it. Calling it not plagiarism, thus ensuring that this topic will remain at the forefront of the news cycle for at least another day.
  
  The day of ‘Make Amerian Safe Again’ has now being hijacked by ‘Did she Plagiarize’. How much of a fuckup would you have to be to turn a sympathetic spouse’s speech (easy, cheap ratings boost) at the national convention into a we-shat-our-pants-again situation.
  
  Just the best people.
  
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  1. Stringer Bell
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    “Politicians do plagiarism regularly. ”
    
    Not a good message for Trump who’s ran on the ‘I’m not a politician’ platform. He’s supposed to be this super-efficient businessman who knows how to get things done, not just a regular ‘politician’.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      July 19, 2016
      
      “He’s supposed to be this super-efficient businessman who knows how to get things done, not just a regular ‘politician’.”
      
      Good point. The whole convention is such a mess, so poorly organized, such a freak show. The party is collapsing before our very eyes.
      
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      1. Stringer Bell
        
        July 19, 2016
        
        He gave a prime time interview to Fox last night, thus siphoning off viewership from his own fucking convention. It really is incredible how stupid he is.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        July 19, 2016
        
        He doesn’t care about the convention. If the camera is not on him, he gets antsy and miserable.
        
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  2. Clarissa
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    “How much of a fuckup would you have to be to turn a sympathetic spouse’s speech (easy, cheap ratings boost) at the national convention into a we-shat-our-pants-again situation.”
    
    Yeah. . . And now let’s try NOT to imagine how responsible and organized they would be at running the country. All of the money in the world, and they can’t come up with a speech they don’t steal from Michelle Obama? The same Michelle their base has been vilifying for years?
    
    Losers.
    
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3. Clarissa
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  “It’s not Melania’s plagiarism.”
  
  As I always say to my students: the moment you try to pass it of under your name, sole responsibility for it becomes yours. She is an adult. She chose to stand in front of millions of people and deliver this text under her name. It’s her text and her responsibility now.
  
  “How you grew up with plagiarism?”
  
  We were actually given failing grades at school and university for NOT plagiarizing. When I came to Canada, I was convinced that an academic essay consisted of paragraphs you copied from books and articles (without any attribution, of course.) The only reason I didn’t try to submit this kind of essay at McGill is that I didn’t know where to find books and articles to copy.
  
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  1. David Gendron
    
    July 19, 2016
    
    If she really wrote her speech, that’s ok, she’s responsible. But I can’t believe she did that all by herself. But in both cases, Donald Trump is mainly responsible.
    
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anonSlo

July 19, 2016

I am Slovenian and what is well known here, but less in US is that Melania is way less educated than you might think. Her life story is literally that of a teenage model from a poor background who found a rich husband. She finished professional high school, which usually has limited language education, then supposedly started studying architecture, which she dropped in the first year and went to Paris to become a model at 18. She is also, sorry to say, but it’s well known in Slovenia from her public appearances as a model, not very intelligent (although clearly very clever in the way that she married and managed to keep Trump).

So nobody in Slovenia is surprised that she plagiarised from Michelle Obama, it was to be expected.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  Thank you for the input. I’m not surprised to hear any of this.
  
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valter07

July 20, 2016

— it is a duty of immigrants to assimilate and make themselves comfortable to locals.

This is a relic of the traditional nation-state model… Which will go, sooner or later. The duty of the immigrants is to obey the laws of their new country. Psychological comfort of the locals is the responsibility of the locals. If the locals are not comfortable with the immigrants, they should not have allowed immigration in the first place, and should have lived with all the consequences of this decision, or rather the consequences of combining this decision with other decisions the locals made, like not procreating in sufficient numbers, having pyramid-style social security system, etc.
(And psychological comfort of the immigrants is the responsibility of the immigrants, of course.)

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 20, 2016
  “The duty of the immigrants is to obey the laws of their new country.”
  
  Theft of intellectual property is illegal in the US. So it’s not like Melania has shown great respect for the law.
  
  “Psychological comfort of the locals is the responsibility of the locals.”
  
  One can take such a position, of course, but I can’t see it leading to any productive result. I’ve seen immigrants who go through life angry and resentful that nobody accepts their uniqueness and celebrates their difference. They are miserable and invariably rejected by their children who don’t want to feel associated with this angry misery.
  
  Not that I suspect Melania Trump of being aware of concepts such as uniqueness and difference, of course.
  
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