Re: PRESS ONE FOR ENGLISH
As other posters have pointed out, for me too, my one regret is that my father was fluent (reading, writing, speaking) in seven languages (including English, but that of course took him time), and I ended up with only English. This is the other extreme, and I personally feel that I've lost so much because of it....
On the other hand, we travel throughout the world and find that countless people speak English, whereas we visiting Americans have to rely on that because we don't speak a word of other languages.
I had a businessman cousin in Toronto (now deceased) who was once offended to hear another businessperson scream at a French-speaking customer, "Talk WHITE!" (Yes, WHITE; can you imagine!?)
I think you'll hear "Press 1 for English" mainly in the phone systems of merchants who are in business to either 'earn money' or 'worship the Almighty Dollar,' however you want to look at it. For those who are purists, if that's the right word, and choose not to deal with such merchants, that's certainly their right. I do know not only from my own parents but from immigrant families that we've known over the years that one doesn't arrive to the U.S. able to speak and understand English immediately, and the phone systems don't differentiate between an immigrant here six months versus six years....
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