| It's something that perhaps my generation and those younger will be able to overcome but currently I watch my mother and step-father struggle on a daily basis with foreign accents.
The subtleties we so often take for granted in our own languages, the colloquialisms and the slang, are often misunderstood by secondary speakers.
My mother often asks me to do conference calls with her when she speaks to technical support, which is so often in India.
I understand them and translate. It feels very weird to be translating in the same language. But when I listen to the words she misses, it's the stress on the syllables that is wrong.
I'm sure there's a study somewhere on "How we Listen" that discusses how our brains learn to fill in the gaps when we don't quite 'hear' the consonants or stresses in a word or sentence. And if those stresses are misplaced the brain can't reconstruct the word correctly.
Then, take my step-father for example. He's man who has prided himself on subtlety of expression. Often he'd say things to me that I'd were so subtle that I'd have to think about it for a few seconds before I saw the humor in it.
He would use words that are often called $25 words. And he would use metaphors and poetry like a pro. He would get frustrated with my mother and me if we didn't get the humor or slant of his meaning.
Now, put him in a rest home where the predominant language is Spanish, and a smattering of other languages I couldn't make out. Should he have learned Spanish? Yeah, I think so, I am. But his generation didn't always think that way.
They lived with the feeling that this was American and people should speak English.
So now he suffers for this choice. So do many other people of his generation. And with the feeling of helplessness that develops in patients who have lost the ability to do for themselves imagine the level of paranoia and fear that develops when a foreign language is spoken around them and they can understand what is being said.
He told us he was very afraid at the last home.
And a woman with either Alzheimers or Dementia sat outside his door way on a regular basis screaming.
So, why are all our rest homes filled with foreigners or at least people that have English as a secondary language?
Why aren't there more English speaking young people taking up health care as a profession?
Is it the money it takes to get through school?
Is it the lack of money one gets paid when one does get a job?
It seems to me this country should start giving free access to health care training to it's citizens. Perhaps more healers would seek medical training to become Doctors and Nurses if they didn't have to incur huge debt in order to get through school. I know that if I could go back to school and study medicine I'd be tempted to do so if I didn't have to worry about loans or future debt.
But, I also think that if it isn't already a requirement that a certain command of the resident language should be a requirement for licensing. And if it is already a requirement perhaps continuing education in language studies should also be encouraged.
If we could get more RNs out there into the rest home level of care, and rely less on LVNs and Nurses Aids we might increase the level of care we get as we age.
If Nurses and their hierarchy of assistants could spend more time with each patient and observe them as they recover, talk to them and actually understand each other no matter what language they speak, perhaps the statistic of what happens to older people who break their hips over 65 wouldn't continue to be a death sentence.
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