I’m not trying to. What I’ve proposed is restricted to government. The culture issue is related, yes.
Sigh.
The Great Tom Tantredo is a hero of mine only in that he was the first politician to stand up and make illegal immigration an issue. I’m not sure what his stance is on any other issue. But on illegals it’s aligned with Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan and, it looks like, our next President: Fred Thompson. (Fingers crossed on both accounts.)
It is not the same, but one can help build the other. I ignore it because it is not a necessary component of it. You’re obviously free to assume whatever you want.
Sure. And your proposal would do just that: by discouraging anyone who doesn’t speak English from coming here.
They already have every incentive in the world to learn English as quickly as possible. You’re not giving them any extra incentive, you’re just making it harder for them to get by until they do. Seriously, what are immigrants supposed to do when they need to make use of a government service, and they’re already learning English as quickly as they can? How are they supposed to get by when their own government won’t take the simplest, easiest steps to help them get by until they’re up to speed?
Depends on what they mean by, “official language,” since what you’re proposing is not the same thing as what many other countries have adopted. The ones that refuse to make government services accesible to non-speakers of the official language are sure as hell putting that sign out. Which countries on your magic list are sending that message? Well, we don’t really know, because the list doesn’t tell us what those countries mean when they say they have an official language. Which is why that list is useless to this debate.
Well, it was joking when I wrote it, but if that’s what you got out of that part of my post, maybe it was closer to the truth than I thought.
I rather doubt that there are very many people on this world who would not interpret you’re proposal as a giant “Fuck you” to people trying to come here from non-English speaking people. You are, at the very least, the only person I’ve ever heard who supports an English-only policy because they think it will encourage immigration. Every other source I’ve read from your side of the debate (and I’m not talking about the blatant racists, here) favor a hefty brake on immigration, and see this as a tool towards that end.
Okay, we have a situation here where, since there’s a lot of Spanish speakers moving into the US, we’ve responded by making more services available in Spanish. Now, this seems to send a pretty unambiguous message that, if another language group moves here in large numbers, we’ll give them the same consideration. That’s inclusionary by definition. How on Earth do you torture logic to the extent that you can look at that and call it exclusionary? I mean, that’s the fucking definition of the word!
You’re right, I should try harder to emulate your entirely realistic, hyperbole-free debate style.
Yeah, try reading the rest of that post, where I point out that you do not, in fact, demonstrate anything of the kind, because your list doesn’t describe what those countries mean by a national language. A lot of them do, in fact, offer services in non-official languages. The entire point behind your official language proposal is to not do that. Since we’ve got two radically different definitions of what it means to have an official language operating here, your list is totally fucking useless.
Why is that, anyway? If making the government English-only would improve cohesion and assimiliation, wouldn’t making the entire country English-only speed the process up even faster? I mean, sure, it would be illegal, but half the stuff you’ve proposed in this thread would be illegal, so I don’t see why that should stop you now.
As far as I can tell, there’s two points you could be trying to make.
That simply having English as the official language, as a pure ceremony without practical implications, has been claimed as “drastic and draconian”. Perfectly fine to use that list to make your point, assuming it’s accurate. However, since no-one’s claimed that simply making it a ceremonial official language is horribly terrifying thing, and the point everyone is disagreeing with you is the practical implications, I would say that you making that tangenital point is either lying or a shitty debating tactic. Or both.
Or, that having English as the official language, plus practical implications, has been claimed as “drastic and draconian”. Which, to be fair, it pretty much has been. Of course, since your list doesn’t represent only countries that have such practical implications would mean you’re deliberately attempting to mislead or you didn’t think about what you were posting when you posted it.
So really, i’m spoiled for choice. It’s not a case of me taking the more insulting of the two options, 'cos so far i’m thinking bad of you either way. Feel free not to care what I think, of course, but generally I find that people are only willing to let people say whatever they want when they can’t defend themselves.
Monty basically pointed this out already, but this is, if not out and out false, then at least so misleading as to be skirting the line of it. Although Hindi and English each have particular special roles in India, there are, in fact, a total of 23 languages which are currently granted “official” status by the Indian constitution. Furthermore, while only a minority of states have made Hindi one of their official language (many recognize multiple official languages at the state-level), I’m not sure what your point is with this: the number which have made English an official language is even smaller; pick N states from India at random, and pick one state-level official language from each, and you can pretty much expect to end up with about N distinct languages.
If your point with India is simply to demonstrate that, yes, they do have a notion of “official language” and haven’t fallen into ruin, well, great. But the way it works seems so very different from what you’re proposing (a single official language of English, presumably at both the federal level and every state-level, such that no government work or services could be done in any other language) that I don’t see how it would bolster your argument. And, at any rate, the particular linguistic environment of India could not be more different compared to the situation of the U.S.: there truly are gobs upon gobs of different language communities in India, and random people pulled from different areas are likely to have different mother tongues, whereas in the U.S., paranoid rantings to the contrary notwithstanding, almost everybody’s primary language is English and an even larger almost everybody understands English and is used to using it daily for interactions with the community at large; the levels of linguistic diversity are so wildly different between the U.S. and India that there just can be no fruitful equating of what’s appropriate for the two, in terms of the intermingling of government and language.
Since you have already declared your antipathy to history or the understanding of it, it will be difficult to respond in ways that you can understand. Still, it is worth a try for the peanut gallery at home.
You claim that I have simply found a few crackpots who hate immigrants. My explicit point (in response to your demand) was that I had no difficulty finding such crackpots, today, rather than in history. I did not even have to go back any number of years to find people harrassing and threatening immigrants. My examples were current. One was nineteen months old, two were seven months old, and three were fewer than three months old. However, the pertinent point is that without even exhausting the current news I was able to find a half dozen current examples. (And your “allegedly” objection is dishonest: the persons accused of wrongdoing might be innocent of the crimes that they are alleged to have committed, but the crimes were committed by someone.) Given a longer time frame and a finer search program, I could find far more examples. (I already deliberately excluded any reports from pro-immigration or left-wing web sites that more than tripled the number of reports I found in the same time period.)
Then, of course, you come up with the old defense that the guilty parties should be what? “understood”?, “forgiven”?, “defended”? because they were simply driven to violence by the presence of these immigrants due to anger at an uncaring government? (I know you will complain that you did not say that explicitly, but that was a pretty clear subtext.) In fact, an “official” language would very definitely exacerbate the problem because it would be one more wild claim by the “angry” people that immigrants are, in some way, violating the country by not speaking the “official” language.
Now, you ask how could an official language make things worse? As I have already noted and you have ignored, if people who already are harboring their xenophobic feelings find a law that claims that English is “official,” they will be more likely to display their hatred of those who do not speak English fluently, feeling that they have the backing of the government for their position. Any time that the government takes a position that labels one group lesser in the eyes of the law, individuals have seized on that action to demonstrate intolerance. The first “Separate but Equal” laws were passed around 1891. (Plessy v Ferguson was decided in '96, but the laws preceded it.) In that year, the number of lynchings jumped over 30% with another huge jump the following year. The exclusionary laws against Asians were each followed by riots and harrassment of Chinese and Japanese immigrants. The earlier riots against Catholics occurred when the various cities ruled that Catholics could not use the Douai-Challoner bible. When HUAC began its witch hunts for “communists,” lots of people who had flirted with the Communist Party twenty years earlier as college kids suddenly found themselves deprived of jobs, regardless whether they had served their country in WWII, renounced any ties to left-wing politics, paid their taxes, and behaved as excellent citizens. The pattern, here, is that the violence against people all followed cases where the government declared a specific preference for one group over another. (And it should be noted that the “Separate but Equal” laws all carried the fig leaf of “equality,” just as an “official language” would carry the pretense of “unity.”) You are right that such an act would provide powerful symbolism. Such symbolism has, historically, (sorry, there is that painful word about learning things from similar events in the past), led to attacks upon people.
Your lists of countries that have or lack official languages, (flawed by inconsistent definitions and suspect provenance as they are), are really immaterial to this discussion. I have never made any blanket claim that official languages are evil. Other countries may find them useful, (although I will echo the point already made that where they occur, such official languages typically set inclusionary minimum standards while incorporating one in the U.S. would go against that trend being an exclusionary effort that did nothing to guarantee any rights). Official languages might work very well in many places, just as constitutional monarchies and parliamentary governments work well in many places. My objection is explicitly for its imposition on the United States where it is neither useful nor necessary (except to give nativists one mnore opportunity to display their xenophobia).
And before that, here, in response to your initial query:
As I stated, there are two different issues. Forst comes whether or not a country can or shold establish an official language. The list went to that. That and that alone. The subsequent issue—in play if the first step is taken and a sole official language is established—is what will it mean for the country in a practical sense. Will it merely by a wave of the wand with no enforcement whatsoever? Will the government be allowed to provide some—all—documents in more than the official language? Will they be required to do so? Etc. Again, as I stated the list I cited has nothing to do with that secondary aspect. I advocate English as the official language. Regardless of how much meat it has. But when asked to describe specifically what that might mean I offered this:
I think you’re assuming that I’m treating the two issues as one. I am not. The spoecific I offered could be shown to be a bad idea and I still would opt for English as the official language as even just a symbolic gesture. I think it should be more than that. And I have no doubt that people more knowledgable about the governement could put more teeth to it. I still think that what I offered immediately above is something easily doable, and a tiny step at that. But I do not profess to have all the answers. Peolpe throw questions at me, I respond.
If I feel you have missed or misunderstood something I’ve said, I am eager to help the communication. After that, I really can’t be too concerned about what someone on an anonymous message board thinks. I hope my attempt at clarification here was helpful. If not, I’m happy to try to straighten out something specific that might still be unclear. But if you still choose to ignore what I’ve explicitly said here and choose to believe that I was trying to be intentionally misleading or I was lying about something, enjoy.
One difficulty we seem to be having in this discussion is people appear to have different ideas of what it would mean to make English the official language of the United States. There seems to be three different trains of thought.
1 - It would be a symbol. English would be the official language but people could still speak whatever language they’re currently speaking. The government would have English as its official language but will still offer some services in other langauges depending on the circumstances.
2 - It would only apply to the government. People could speak whatever language they wanted at home or in private businesses but the government would be English only.
3 - It would apply generally. People would have the right to speak English in most situations including in places of business and these businesses would apparently be legally required to provide services in English.
Okay, does everyone agree these cover the possibilities? If so, I have to say I don’t like any of these ideas. I’ll address them seperately.
1 - This idea would be meaningless in any practical sense. It would change nothing. Its only purpose would be to publically declare that English is superior to Spanish and other langauges.
2 - A bad idea. Most people don’t deal with the government on a regular basis but on the occasions when they do it’s often very important. This plan would do nothing to make it more convenient to buy groceries at the bodago down the block. But it would make voting or appearing in court or getting a business permit much more difficult for non-English speakers.
3 - This one would be unconstitutional as all heck. As I’ve said before what business does the government have telling me what language I should use in my place of business (okay, bad example, I work for the government so I guess it is their business in my particular case - but you can see my point).
Number 3 would at least make life easier for English speakers, albeit at an unacceptable cost. Ideas 1 and 2 would do nothing to alleviate the problems monolingual English speakers face in a non-English situation. Their only purpose seems to be to make life more difficult for non-English speakers (a feature they share with 3).
Actually, the Isle of Man isn’t officially a part of the United Kingdom. In the words of Wikipedia, it is a “self-governing British Crown dependency”. It’s interesting that despite being situated right in the British Isles, the Isle of Man isn’t actually part of the European Union.
Thanks. I try my best to explain my viewpoint as well as possible, given that on this I am in the minority here. I also find it interesting to hear your and others’ viewpoints, by the way.
But you see, this is the beauty of that point. If you make it a pain in the ass to the non-english speakers to vote, appear in court, get a business permit, etc, then they have a solid REASON to learn English. They effectively knee-cap themselves as citizens if they don’t (well, I think not learning english currently does that, but this type of policy would reinforce the point further). I mean, I wouldn’t dream of the Mexican government pandering to me in English. I assume if I moved to Mexico, I’d have to learn Spanish.
Now if you will excuse me, my ailing horse needs some more beating.
(bolding mine) You made this point before and I called you on it. Where do you get this from? Please show me a cite that shows that immigrants are learning English “as quickly as they possibly can”.
The experience I have points to that not being so. As I relayed once in the past. I had jury duty. Of the 14 people who randomly were chosen to sit on the jury (2 alternates) two had to be disqualified because their English was atrocious. One was a Chinese man here for, if I remnember correctly, from the 70s. The other was a Hispanic woman here for 12 years. Additionally, my landlord just had some remodelling done. The owner of the company who did the work is from Guatemala. His English was very good. Of his six-man crew, one spoke English well enough to communicate. The other five, virtually none. One night, I asked the boss about the crew—all of whom weer very nice and hard workers. I assumed that these guys were new arrivals. No, they had all been here for 6 to 12 years. Anecdotal, yes. BUt until you can provide me with some evidence that your claim that they’re learning English “as fast as they can” has some bearing in reality, I’ll have to go with my own experiences and impressions.
Ah, more retroactive obfuscation. Tsk, tsk.
That is not my position. We do not have to encourage immigration. There are many, many more people who want to coime here than we can ever let in. I heard that if all those who are waiting to come in right now are processed it will take eight years. I don;t thiink the policy would make America or stronger or a weaker draw. What it would do is help define what this country is. It is an English-speaking nation. That is our heritage on the majority. I sincerely think that a well-defiined culture will help people understand what to assimilate into. And, to be clear, I am not trying to stop the Chines restaurant from attracting Hispanic patrons. That is not government’s business.
Because I reach some numeric threshold, America is for a whiole bunch of groups, but not me. But if English is the sole official language, all groups are equal in the eyes of the government. I come to America, English is the language they speak here, I will learn to speak it. What do you have against a Spanish-speaking entrepeneur starting a translation business, or a tax preparation business and living the American Dream?
Thanks for the reminder. I would hate to think of you writhing in pain all night.
The assertions were not mine. I should have used quote tags in that post. I though it was clear that it was part of the site. I guess it wasn’t. My apologies.
First, what outlandish claims? Second, do you really think I’m going to look up every country—when it doesn’t even matter? I was curious how common it was fro a country to have a sole official language som I googled it. Fifty of those countries could be mislisted and my point would still be made—that a country having a sole official language is not out of the ordinary, drastic, or draconian.
I don’t thinik there’s much more point to this. I’ve stated my positions, most disagree. I’m not changing your minds, and I’m comfortable with my general position.
Culture again, I think you are just stuck in a “having my cake and eating it too.” method of debate. This is why I do not trust your message that this is only symbolic.
Nothing, but many Americans that feel comfortable with other languages appreciate not having to waste time and gasoline going to other places if the government could offer that convenience.
And once again you demonstrated how silly you look by ignoring my examples of countries that did apply drastic and draconian measures to reach that goal.
In the USA I do however think it will reach the level of out of the ordinary, and there will be politicians that will use that new law as a way to make the life of even citizens that have problems with English harder.
Ah, I see. They’re just assertions you used to support your position.
Why, the erroneous assertions you produced–whether they were yours or not doesn’t matter as it was you who produced them–to bolster your position.
Actually, I don’t think this is the correct forum to state my take on your attitude/comptence towards research. And, if it matters not, why then did you produce them in an apparent (since you say they don’t matter) bolstering of your position?
I really don’t think it would take all that long to check those country’s government’s own English websites.
Ah, so that’s your point now, is it? Sorry to tell you this, I don’t buy it. I think my post upthread regarding the difference in the official language movements in other countries is far different than that movement in the US is spot on.
Really clear Little Nemo, great summary and criticism.
I see magellian01’s effort so far as:
Make it a symbol
???
Profit!!!
Really, he pointed as a possible step 2 to **Revenant Threshold ** and **Miller ** a proposal to deal with just the annoyance to him of a congress critter speaking in Spanish (a bad example that he still tells himself was a good one) :smack:
And then he forgets that getting to pass a law with “more teeth” is reaching “snow ball in hell” chances of passing level.
My conclusion then is that his second issue is really not well defined or supported.
