Doesn't anyone speak English anymore?

All right. Pet peeve of mine. America has been called a melting pot, well, I just people would assimilate and melt already, for pete's sake. Yeah, this is going to irritate people when I say this, but I am sick and tired of people who cannot speak English or whose English is so heavily fractured and accented that you can't understand them. I'm not talking recent immigrants. I'll always cut them a degree of slack, but come on people, if you're going to live here, learn to speak the language. If I decided to move to a foreign country, I'd try to learn the language BEFORE I got there and then work really hard to become fluent.

So what does this have to do with transcription? People from all walks of life get into accidents and they get interviewed. If they speak English at all, many times the accent is so thick that they might as well not be speaking in English. I'm supposed to figure out what they're saying? If they really aren't comfortable in English, then by all means, they should have an interpreter. It would be nice, though, if the interpreter didn't have a HEAVY foreign accent and broken English that you couldn't understand either!! Interpreting services, please hire interpreters who speak both languages fluently and clearly. Is that too much to ask?

To those who say, oh, poor immigrant, it's SO hard for you to learn the language, we'll just coddle you and never make you learn English, I say GIVE IT UP! I see people who've lived in the US 20, 30 years and they still don't speak English. What's wrong with you? My son, who is currently in Brazil and has been there only since December, now speaks fluent Portuguese. He never spoke a word of it before November. NOT ONE WORD. When he speaks English, he now speaks with a Brazilian accent. Is he a genius? I love him to pieces, but no, he's not a genius. However, he has the desire to speak Portuguese and it comes down to total immersion. No one is coddling him, no one is making excuses for him. If he wants to communicate, it's up to him.

Back to transcription, hey, adjuster, guess what? If you can't understand what the person you're interviewing is saying, don't assume I'll be able to figure it out any better than you. I speak English, German, some Spanish and some words in Korean, but I don't get paid to interpret.