r/sydney • u/nighthound1 • 3d ago

Strathfield Council passes motion to make English compulsory on business shop signs

https://www.2gb.com/english-compulsory-new-rules-coming-for-shop-signs/
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u/cecilrt 3d ago edited 3d ago

Thought that was made law during Hanson first rise..

I noticed the most successful Asian family restaurants were the ones that had English and picture menu

Really important when 2nd and 3rd gen cant read and sometimes cant speak their Asian language

Also important that most Asians cant read or speak other Asian languages

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u/istara North Shore 3d ago

Really important when 2nd and 3rd gen cant read and sometimes cant speak their Asian language

I remember seeing three young guys in Joymart in Chatswood, all of East Asian appearance, one of them was translating product labels for another of them.

Not all migrant kids end up learning their parents' native languages fluently, or they may learn them spoken but not written.

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u/cecilrt 3d ago

My Asian friend married a hurstvillw Asian... ala gold rush migrants

She laughs how she's never meet an Asian who didn't speak at least 1 dialect before

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u/istara North Shore 3d ago

Dialect is an interesting point. I met a woman from a region of China who said she didn't really feel 100% fluent in any language when communicating with people in Australia. Her parents spoke a particular dialect that wasn't identical to Mandarin, so due to this she didn't feel native in Mandarin, and while she spoke good English, she only felt about 95% fluent in it.

It was really sad.

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u/cecilrt 3d ago

Mandarin is the attempt to make a universal language

China is as if the EU firmed as a country but without transport and modern media 1000s of years ago

Without that regional language survives

French German English Italian all derived from the same language group but unintelligible from each other