By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
April 17, 2013
So, have any of you seen Tide’s latest commercial? It’s cute. It shows a teenage girl translating some of the things her Spanish-speaking grandmother is saying to her about the detergent. The girl, by the way, speaks flawless English with no accent whatsoever.
Well, there’s a bunch of folks who are outraged (OUTRAGED, I SAY!) that Tide DARE air a bilingual commercial in the U.S. of A. Because, sheeettt, this is ‘merika, where we only speak one language. Period.
Of course, I was thinking, “Why are all you bigots assuming that the grandmother can’t speak English, just because she isn’t heard speaking English?” If she’s anything like the real-life immigrants I know, she’s probably self conscious about her accent, which probably was the subject of much derision by the monolingual knuckledraggers who speak English real good.
© 2013 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved
also, “native tongue”??? — i think dear monica needs a history lesson about what is “native’ in the US… what an ignorant idiot.
This is why I hate when my bilingual Spanish skills are framed as a privilege by monolingual English speakers. America works really hard to destroy non-English languages via ignorant people like her.
Monica needs some lessons on imperialism and colonialism. Her entire post reeks of privilege. How convenient for us Americans that we really don’t have to know a foreign language to travel, since so many people around the world learn to speak English. So, for Monica and others of her ilk to make that claim of, “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of traveling to another country where I can’t communicate with them”–I call bulls–t! It’s ingenuous, because you will be understood by someone just about anywhere you travel. Unlike a Japanese person touring the U.S. who most likely won’t find an American who can speak Japanese, Monica and her cronies can travel to Japan and easily find someone who can speak English.
LOL. This makes me laugh. They all need to get out of whatever rock they’re living under and educate themselves.
First of all, just because some Spanish is being spoken in a commercial doesn’t mean anyone is trying to force them to learn Spanish or abandon their “native” “American” culture and language (what the fuck is that even?!). If they actually paid attention to the commercial before criticizing it, they’d have seen that there were subtitles. And the whole point of having a Spanish-speaking grandmother and an English-speaking granddaughter is to show the humor behind how the granddaughter actually tells us the truth unbeknownst to her grandmother, despite her attempts to sugarcoat her old fashioned way of washing her white laundry (i.e. the granddaughter saying “‘Cause before it was salt, lemon, milk…” instead of “Because I only like to use the most modern products”, which is what the grandmother actually said). If their puny, bigoted, racist, white supremacist, imbecilic minds actually paid attention to the commercial instead of immediately rejecting it because there’s a language spoken in it that they don’t understand, then maybe they would have understood the humor behind it.
Second of all, as Shannon said, “native tongue”? Are they serious? English is not the native tongue of the United States. There have been SEVERAL *NATIVE AMERICAN* tongues and dialects spoken throughout this land before Columbus even came and “discovered” it (he didn’t), and GUESS WHAT: English was NOT one of them! They may address English as the de facto national language, but it is NOT the OFFICIAL language at a federal level. We do NOT have an official language at a federal level. If we did, would they suggest that we forbid those who reside in Hawaii to speak Hawaiian and in Puerto Rico to speak Spanish?
Third of all, to be quite honest, I doubt Tide will be moved by their racist and white supremacist sentiments. I’m sure Tide has already thoroughly considered what backlash they may receive from producing the commercial, and in the end, as any decent, reasonable, progressive, and intelligent business owner (and human being) would, they probably decided that they don’t give a flying fuck. I personally would rather do business with open-minded, tolerant, and unbigoted human beings than ignorant and racist xenophobes.
It’s 2013, and there’s a big world out there with many, many people who do not have the same culture, race, language, religion, and beliefs as themselves. Deal with it.
Quite sad and closed minded. I feel sorry for her.
…… people are so ridiculous.
There is just so much going on in this Facebook post that I cannot even bother to deal with it.
Monica Matthews Daniel, why you gotta be like that?
PLEASE SIT DOWN…take seats 1 through 100, do not pass Go and do not collect $200!
I haven’t seen this commercial but this whole thing pisses me off because I know people like this. The most ignorant people are the ones who always feel the need to make public declarations on Facebook or somewhere on the internet and I’m so tired of it.
I heard so much of this bullshit when I was growing up. We’re in America SPEAK ENGLISH.
Land of the free, right? People are allowed to speak whatever language they want and people who don’t like it are free to fuck right off. It’s always a mixed bag of mildly amusing and absolutely horrifying to remember people twice my age insisting, vehemently, that America’s only language is English…and if people don’t like that, they can leave. Oh, and once they actually see proof that America has no set ‘official’ national language, they get all indignant and ‘well, the majority speaks English so that’s how it should be……’
Ugh. And they all had kids. I shudder to think how they’re being taught….
..and on top of it all it really isn’t that great.
Are you old enough to remember the detergent that had the catch phrase “Ancient Chinese secret”?
Exactly the kind of person who would travel outside the US and expect everyone to speak English.
@Michael – didn’t think that was Tide but Calgon. I remember those commercials.
Who cares? It’s freaking detergent anyways. They’ve cheating the American public for ages haven’t they? Who washes whites and colors separately? If you do then you’ve been cheated.
http://youtu.be/ZjNRXfRXnoc
As an Indigenous American, I find the assertion that English is our country’s “native” language -amusing. The Spanish were here before the English (oldest still functioning city in the US? Saint Augustine in FL). But beyond that, the country was not vacant when any of these people arrived. If folks could please look into how the Native languages were nearly lost – what was done to Native children – then folks might be less offended about the opportunity to learn Spanish – voluntarily, without child theft and beatings.
Countries change over time. My people have had to change with it – or die. Holding madly, rather than gently, to the past because it’s what’s you know serves no one.
Sounds like Monica is really my uncle. Even my uncle who has some higher education under his belt is still a moron.
My parents immigrated to the US in the late 80s. My mum was an ESL major in university so she knew English on an academic level, but was not used to speaking it every single day. My dad took some English in high school. It took him YEARS to get the hang of English.
Bottom line: learning a brand new language isn’t easy, especially if you don’t start learning at a young age. And it’s really annoying when people like this insist that immigrants just magically learn how to speak English perfectly. Why do you people even care? Because you have trouble understanding the woman on the phone when you order takeout? Just stop and get over yourself. Think about how hard it must be for that woman to leave her homeland and start her life over completely. Maybe she couldn’t learn English before she moved to America. Maybe she was escaping an abusive home life, or poverty, or war, or something else equally as bad.
In high school, we had to take a practice citizenship test in my govt. class and every single student failed. Many people were shocked by how difficult it was. Things like this bring it into perspective; immigrating to the U.S. legally and becoming a citizen is fucking hard. Immigrants are not lazy (immigrants are some of the most hardworking people in this country, because they do the shitty jobs Americans refuse to do in order to get by), it’s just very difficult to start over.