Maud Araminta

No doubt she lives in a Greek community.

Giantaxe

If by "Greek community" you mean she has a Greek husband, then yes. Otherwise, no, she lives in a mixed neighborhood. She never worked in the US and relies on her husband's English to get by.

Maud Araminta

Not always the best arrangement. Makes for an isolated life and an over-dependence on one's spouse.

Giantaxe

Her husband is very controlling. I wouldn't be surprised if he discouraged her from learning English way back when.

Maud Araminta

My point exactly. I see this a lot here, especially when the wife is naive and much younger. She relies on her husband for everything and, eventually, is unable to think for herself.

Jerseygirl

Maud I have a feeling we have met before...several times in fact. Your posting style, multiple threads in quick succession and username remind me of her. She was from Conneticut if my memory serves me well.

Maud Araminta

Am I posting too much?

Jerseygirl

Nope. Just saying you remind me of someone and I'm not usually wrong.

MMcD

Surely you don't mean "here" (in the States) in particular....as opposed to other countries?

Referring back to the Salvadoran woman I mentioned earlier - her illiteracy was entirely due to the fact that her father forbid her to even get a minimal education as a child.
"School isn't for girls!", he asserted.

Hence, her brothers were allowed to at least obtain a basic education while she was sent off to sew in a factory and "be useful".

Hideous domestic abuse....

Pulaski

It must be something in the water in Sheffield.

Jerseygirl

I think so.

It's gone very quiet hasn't it...was it something I said?

scrubbedexpat097

JG, you are so PRIM and proper and and Stirchley. .oops strictly speaking you are usually right

Maud Araminta

I used the word "here" because America (and England) are all I know. I didn't mean to infer that this type of abuse happens only here.

Hideous domestic abuse indeed.

Jerseygirl

but she was from Conneticut...but wait...

Yorkieabroad

I would move somewhere without knowing the language, but I doubt it would have been America. Wife did move to the U.S. in her very early teens and went to school first day knowing not one word of English. She had done the same when moving to Japan a year earlier. Her father was the only one that spoke English, but he was a chief engineer at sea for 12 month trips, so the family had to get set up and get on with life in a strange language. Her mom now speaks very good, but heavily accented English. Her main confusions are on gender and tense, especially when she gets mad the 3 daughters all went thru US universities for first and second degrees, and speak very good English..for all of them it is their written English that betrays the fact that it is not their first language.

I still have a hankering to move back to the Far East, and if it happened, Taiwan would likely be the place, where English is pretty limited, as is my Chinese. We are in Taiwan at the moment, and the kids are sucking up the Mandarin like sponges. My 10 yo daughter has been elevated from youngest kid to de facto leader because she is doing so well and will jump in with both feet. The boys are more reticent. Wife is not with us for the last couple of weeks so I'd expected to be the "guide", but daughter has surpassed my limited abilities in double quick time, speaking, reading and writing.