Do you ever feel like the level of English is declining in high-immigration areas such as Vancouver? I'm not "blaming" anyone, just stating an observation. As a demographic, the decendants of first-generation immigrants from non-English speaking backgrounds are worse off than those of parents who have spoken English all their lives. Furthermore, in Vancouver, where many groups of friends can be summarized racially (versus Toronto where there is more inter-racial mingling), people with sub-par English often collect in groups of sub-par English speakers, resulting in a reduced levels of English dialogs despite the conversations being solely in English.

The matter is simple. Languages are most easily learnt through those we have interactions with. Family and friends, mainly. As first generation Canadians, we typically first learn the language our parents speak, Mandarin in my case. And then our interaction with more outside-the-family people, whether in school or elsewhere, as we get older fuels the English-speaking abilities. In theory, that should be enough to make us all good English speakers. And yet, in my extended-group of predominantly Asian friends, there are plenty who continue to make simple grammatical mistakes in conversation without knowing.

What I find makes the biggest difference in "fluency" are the less common words and sayings. Sure, we're all "fluent" as it is. But we don't all know the words to all the things we see in our everyday lives. Virtually every object has a proper (correct) name, and yet so often, we describe them as "those things that you do ______ with", or "the piece that goes on the _______ and holds the ______". It's hard to come up with examples, because it's very hit and miss - some people will agree that they don't know what a particular word means, while others will consider it a commonly used word in their vocabulary. I'll randomly take the word "switchback", describing the zigzagging road that takes you up along the side of a steep hill/mountain. Not an uncommon word by any stretch, but I would question how many people I know would know to call it a switchback when they see one. The same can be said about sayings and proverbs which we don't hear at home or between friends. As such, I have a certain reliance on coworkers to feed me new English phrases. (Doesn't work so well now that I'm in Taiwan...)

Conversational English translates to written English. While not horrible, I'm far from a good writer, and only acceptable at best. But I look back at some emails written by my friend (Caucasian) who has been spending the last few years in England, and I read:

(An update of her trip to Scotland...)

"Oh, and Scotland is gorgeous! The best part - in our humble opinion - is the far North - above Inverness. Just stunning; God's country. The local schools have about 30 kids total. The nearest grocery store is generally about 1-2 hours away....along single track roads. Just amazing! The mountains are splendid and plentiful, the castles abounding, the greenery incessant, the water everywhere, the deer as frequent on the roadside as blueberries in Canada in the summer, and the people as kind and open as you'll find anywhere. One of the locals we spoke to actually revealed that he never locks his doors and his keys are always in the ignition of all of his vehicles and farm equipment. Apparently it's just the norm in the highlands."

... and it blows me away, because I know I could never put together a paragraph to read like that.

Anyway, I'm curious to know whether the overall level of English in, for example, Vancouver, is any lower than, say, Minnesota -- which I would guess has less of an influx of foreigns (no statistical research was done for this guess).

But maybe it's not a problem with first-generation English speakers. Maybe if you were to take a cross-section of any race, including those of English decent, you'd find the same issues existing. I would agree that there are a lots of very articulate English-speaking/writing Asians as well. I would include my brother in this group, with a knack for composing very readable articles and stories. Odd that we grew up in the same household. What went wrong? :\