It’s as if people actively seek out confrontation and controversy on the internet or something.
I definitely do not want to have to speak Farsi. That I do know.
America is pretty safe from invasion simply due to its sheer physical size and geographical situation. It has wide oceans left and right; up top there is Canada, which is only a thin layer of people topped by lots of ice and snow. The only way America is ever likely to be under threat of invasion is if Mexico should one day become a lot more wealthy, powerful, and aggressive. I am not really holding my breath.
The USA will fall apart due to its own internal conflicts long before it ever faces a serious invasion threat.
(Yes, I know the British invaded in 1812, but America was a lot smaller then, still just a 18 states on the eastern edge. Even so, the invasion failed, despite Britain being a much greater military power than the US at that time.)
My grandmother’s grandmother spoke Swedish. If it weren’t for Brigham Young, so would I. (I didn’t vote for Romney – does that make me disloyal to my roots?)
You asked this three years ago, Lobohan. I’m afraid you’d not need to ask it these days.
Actually, my Mom taught me to read long before I ever started school.
So bite me, teachers of America! I don’t have to thank you for squat!
You, sir or madam, are a cad to suggest such a thing!
I will now proceed to call you nasty names and say improbable things about your parentage!
Yeah, really. If those damned Norman veterans hadn’t invaded England and put Willy on the throne then there wouldn’t BE an ‘English’ language most likely. The fact that most (well, all really) of the veterans you’d be thanking would be far in the past (thus, mostly dead) and many if not most not from America (hell, most predating America) doesn’t invalidate that you have veterans to mainly thank for being able to read English. 
ETA: Of course, ‘thank’ is a matter of perspective, since English is such a major pain in the ass (it’s my second language and I have to say it was fairly painful to learn, especially the odd spelling, diction and syntax).
Shut up and thank your Mother you little ingrate.
And this is why homeschooling is a good idea.
I dunno, but the chances of anything coming from Mars were a million to one, they said…
So when we’re all speaking Spanish does that mean we can blame the veterans?
So, let us take a hypothetical. The US unilaterally disarms during the Cold war. The Russkies begin by nuking Wash DC, then threaten to nuke one city a month unless we surrender. So, we do. The problems of a giant trans-Atlantic invasion are then moot. Unlikely? Sure, but unilateral disarmament was heavily touted, and we’re talking ‘“without the US Military”. The USSR then makes teaching & printing in of English forbidden.
WWII? Even more unlikely but let us say the US goes hyper-anti-interventionist, we let the Japanese do whatever they want in China, they even invade India. The Nazis win in the east, GB sues for peace. The Nazi’s invent the Bomb- not until the 1950’s sure, but they do. Again, they begin by nuking Wash DC, then threaten to nuke one city a month unless we surrender.
So, if I can’t read it in Erse/Cherokee/Welsh/Nakota/Shawnee, what response is appropriate?
Of course there would. The Normans spoke French (or a variety of it). Now, English does have a good few words that come originally from French because of that, but the French influence on spelling, diction and syntax has been minimal at best.
An English language without the French additions would be different to what we have now, but it would still be English – even more so, if anything.
Other than the Cherokee and Welsh, do any of those have written languages?
Erse does.
Since (according to Wikipedia) there are books and websites in the Shawnee language, it must have a written form.
I don’t know about Nakota.
There’s no real written language. It’s English characters used to phonetically represent Shawnee words. That’s true of other Native American languages set to print.
So, “If you can read this in Shawnee, thank the invading hordes”, I guess.
I take it you mean shawnee doesn’t have its own alphabet, the thing that is supposed to render a language phonetically?
What are english characters?
And with President Joe Kennedy and Secretary of Lebensraum Charles Lindbergh, who needs nukes?
Yes, that’s what I mean. They use characters from the English alphabet in particular (rather than a generic Latin alphabet), i.e. no diacriticals and no characters not found in English text, to phonetically represent the language.
Many Native American languages have no native written form and are currently preserved by phonetically representing them using mostly the English alphabet, at least for tribes in the US/Canada.
The Mayans used to have their own unique writing system but that was mostly discontinued through intervention of the Spaniards and the current Mayan written language is a mix of mostly a Latin alphabet (essentially Spanish) and a few unique characters to represent sounds unique to Mayan.