We got a report-for-jury-duty notice in the mail. On the back is a series of checklists to determine if you are qualified or unqualified for jury duty (e.g., don't bother showing up if you aren't a US citizen, a convict, too old, or hear voices in your head).
And this interesting qualification:
DISQUALIFIED: I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO SERVE AS A JUROR BECAUSE:Um, yeah. That trumps the classic: Keyboard Error: No keyboard Present. Press F1 to continue.______ I am unable to read, write, speak or understand the English Language.
Re:Nah
hfb on 2005-01-07T22:37:14
spoken like a true english speaker. It says,essentially, "Hey, motherfuker, move back to fuckall wherever you came from if you can't read this". Move to a country like Finland where you have no hope of understanding anything in the least for months if not years, even after you pay taxes, and you might have a fucking clue. Until then, you don't have even the slightest. The same thing happens in every language. It's galling and humiliating at best.Re:Nah
jmm on 2005-01-10T20:46:27
Um, I don't see much point in trying to accept a person who cannot understand English to be a juror in a trial that will be carried out in English. Without adding enough extra information to voting registration to cause significant privacy concerns, I don't see how the jury selection people could hope to write their letter in the recipient's native language. So, they write in the language they they need for a useful response, and that 95% of the population understands. (Perhaps the notice that the original poster received also had a Spanish translation, that would depend upon which part of the U.S. it happened in; jury notices here in my part of Canada are written in English and French, but not in Finnish, Hindu, Arabic, or...) I was addressing the specific situation that was posted, not a generic world situation.
I don't really understand your point, actually. It sounds like you're upset that the Finns speak to you in Finnish instead of English - which fits the mold of <sarcasm> true English speaker </sarcasm>. I'm pretty sure you knew that you would be encountering this problem before you chose to move to Finland, perhaps it is worse than you originally expected. Good luck with improving your Finnish to the point where this is no longer a problem - with my "ability" at learning human languages, I don't envy you that opportunity.Re:Nah
hfb on 2005-01-11T05:40:19
For most of the English speakers here who can't even read Finnish well enough to order basic foods from a menu, reading 'Minä en ymmärrtä suomea' from a government mailing is very unlikely. Of course, Swedish is also the second language but, yes, for English speakers, especially from the US where language education barely gets by for the primary language, most tend to take English for granted. It's not just the jury cards, everything is in English.
Why would I be upset at the Finns speaking Finnish to me? I do, afterall, live in Finland where the language is Finnish and I don't want to be like most of the 10+ year expats here who still can't read a menu. It's just very difficult, tiring and, well, not English.
Re:Nah
jdporter on 2005-01-10T19:02:23
Huh? Just because the PC didn't detect a keyboard doesn't mean there is no keyboard. It may simply be that the connector was a little loose, or something.Re:Nah
jmm on 2005-01-10T20:54:08
Yes, I overstated it a bit. But what proportion of the time when the "Press F1..." message comes along will the reader actually be able to usefully press F1. Now compare that to the proportion of the time that a jury selection letter goes to a non-English speaker who is nonetheless able to return the later having checked the box that admits being incapable of working in English. So, does this second situation "trump" the first (as an example of oxymoronic catch-22 speak)?
