The USA has an official language? Since when?
Um. According to you it’s a store or two. Surely in the entire city of Denver there are other stores. And, hey, you could maybe even learn a new language and grow in so doing if you wanted to shop at the stores where there is Spanish!
When I was in Amsterdam, one of the tourists in my group remarked upon how English is spoken pretty much everyplace. The Dutch tour guide joked that Dutch is such an awful language that nobody wants to speak it and then he said that people there learned other languages to do business with people from other countries. What a refreshing point of view that was. Contrast that with some people on the tour (from the US and South Africa) who refused to learn even how to say ‘cafe au lait’ :rolleyes:
My point? Kwitcherbitchin. Bust loose and learn some Spanish. It’s a great language, you’ll be able to communicate with more people, and you’ll increase your knowledge. What’s wrong with that?
Whoa! Hold on. There’s a New Mexico? 
If the people want to speak English, the government should adapt and deal with them in English. If the people want to speak Spanish, the government should adapt and deal with them in Spanish. If enough people decided they want to speak Pig Latin, then the overnmentgay ouldshay adaptway. Because the people run the country and should be able to decide what language they want to use and the government has no business telling the people what language they can use.
It’s a very fundamental issue. Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?
And here’s the other shoe waiting to be dropped. Hilarity isn’t talking about any government officials here. These are private businesses. And Hilarity wants them to stop speaking Spanish and thinks Tom Tancredo will make laws to do that.
I thought so at first too. But there is a legitimate point made that not every school system can provide a teacher in every subject in the native language of every student who enters that system. There will always be parents who are itching to sue the school system and this shortcoming provides just another avenue.
Unofficially, I am for leaving no stone unturned in an effort to reach as many children in as many ways as possible. But make English the official language – or even English and Spanish the official languages – so that we don’t become unbearably burdened and sued out of necessary funds.
Why should you? What kind of valid case could be made for suing because some kids in a school speak Spanish? None. I could see a case being made where the majority of people in a neighbourhood spoke only Spanish and needed to learn English and would be doing it in school, but otherwise, this is just another example of throwing up improbable hypotheticals.
Fact is, if a lot of Spanish-speakers are moving to the US, then some of them will be teachers and perfectly able to teach the kids in Spanish if need be.
The de facto language of trade and government in this country is English. We do not need a law to prevent immigrants from demanding that school boards provide an education in a different language, particularly when failing to teach kids English would give rise to future suits that claimed the kids were not prepared for the real (American) world.
As I have sought in most of the discussions where someone proposed an Official English Law, what will the law say?. Will it bar all commerce in languages other than English–meaning that we will no longer be permitted to trade with countries outside the U.S.? Will it prohibit translators at trials? Congress will not conduct business in any language but (tortured) American, anyway, so we need no law there. Imposing it on the states violates the sovereignty of New Mexico.
If it is simply a feel good “here’s how we talk,” then it is a waste of paper and time (and gives bigots a tool with which to beat both immigrants and tourists). If it has some genuine weight, I want to know what sort of club we’re creating. Thus far, no one has ever provided a text for such a law that was not either silly or draconian (or both).
Heh. Down here in PR, “bilingualism” gets a bum rap because it’s portrayed as a codeword for a nefarious plot to teach our kids so much English that they’ll assimilate into Anglophone culture and vote in favor of Eeevil Statehood. 
Of course, then I have to deal with the wackos in the Far Loonie Fringe of the statehood movement who think that WOULD be a good idea as a policy :rolleyes:. Fools to the right of me, jokers to the left…
(*Meanwhile the middle-class kids have been watching MTV and reading English blogs for years…)
But yes, Tancredo and others have this nightmare vision of “bilingualism” in which eventually it becomes entirely unecessary to use English and future generations just never “assimilate”. While those of us who are sensible about it believe that what you need is a policy that accommodates the newcomer AND rewards the learning of English with the aim towards integration into the greater polity.
I’m on record in earlier threads as stating that a state as complex as the USA needs to have a common language of business in order to have the different parts on the same page, and that it behooves any rational citizen or would-be citizen to become able to interact efficiently with all parts of the polity in order to maximize their potential. But similarly, it behooves a rational businessman to cater to the marketplace: a storeowner’s function is not to make a stand for Anglo culture, it’s to sell goods for a profit. In any case, no law can defeat the marketplace, and the common language will be what it evolves to be. We’re NOT writing this in Latin, Briton, Saxon, Norman or Leonese, are we?
Just to use my own case as an anecdote, the fact I am fluent in English and attuned to Anglo culture means my job search market is not just Puerto Rico plus a few Boricua enclaves in the continent, but it’s the entire U.S. of A. If I wish to stay here, a local employer knows that they can send me to deal with stateside clients/suppliers; if I take a job stateside, that employer knows they CAN send me out to deal with Hispanophone customers/clients AS WELL as Anglophones. Also, even while here in PR I can acess knowledge sources that a majority of the locals can’t, PLUS those available in Spanish. That this means someone in each community who is just as educated and experienced and is part of the majority culture in each place, but is monolingual, loses to me, is in no way unfair.
And, of course, part of the whole issue, as Zoe points out, is that there’ll always be someone who decides to demand that the polity not just bend over backwards but tesseract itself into parallel dimensions to accommodate every conceivable case scenario. That’s the part where the polity should say, “this is as far as we go, you’re not being serious about this now.” It** is ** possible to make an accommodation without creating an unlimited entitlement, the answer does not have to be preventing the accommodation.
I would think, that more than future generations being forced “sink or swim” to assimilate linguistic culture, we should think about future generations being inculcated with a common CIVIC culture – respect for individual rights, the rule of law, proper procedures, free and fair competition, public accountability, etc. And that includes both newcomers and natives.
Focusing exclusively on Spanish misses the point.
Say you’re a small suburb of Los Angeles. Should your police be required to have a Hmong translator on call 24/7? (+about 50 other languages)
Seems only practical to me that all immigrants should be required to have a baseline level of English to interact with our institutions. That ≠ racist.
Except when it gets used as an excuse for not even trying, which seems to be the posture of some of the hardliners on the issue. And I don’t mean trying to have access to an interpreter at a moment’s notice; again,* a reasonable accommodation is not the same as an unlimited entitlement*. In that kind of case, any judge who rules the local police should have had a 24/7 interpreter just in case is a damn fool. I mean trying to make the newcomer feel welcome enough that he can trust the new society to have his/her best interests at heart. Too many of the hardliners take the position: “Learn English or else!.. What?.. NO, of course I’m NOT paying to teach YOU English! YOU came here, it’s YOUR problem.”
(Besides, a family of exclusive-Hmong-speakers with no functional capacity to communicate in English or Spanish, plunked down in the middle of American suburbia, should be *themselves * reasonably expected to make some arrangement with a relative or neighbor to serve as their spokesperson.)
I’m not saying we need to accomodate every language spoken by anyone in the country. But we should recognize situations that exist. I grew up in northern New York; you’ll see traffic signs up there in English and French because the government recognizes that a lot of Quebecois tourists travel in the area. If you go through the Chinatown section of Manhattan, you’ll see street signs in English and Cantonese. By the same token if a million people in an area speak Spanish, the government should recognize that and deal with it. And if you happen to have an area where a significant amount of people are speaking Hmong, then the government should hire Hmong translators.
If we started to see the American born children of immigrants unable to speak English then I would say we have a problem. Until then I will just assume that the most recent wave of immigrants want to learn English as badly as every previous wave.
I want to shop at the store in my neighborhood that I can walk to, not drive to some suburb. I don’t even mind that people are speaking Spanish, because I can read it, I can write it (sorta) and I can understand it (again, sorta). What I can’t do is ask where the mint sauce has been moved to. That’s sort of frustrating, you know?
And many years ago I lived in a neighborhood known, pretty much, as a Latino neighborhood, where the stores were on one end of my block was a carniceria and across the street was a place that showed peliculos mexicanas. And what happened when I moved into this neighborhood was that my neighbors threw rocks at my house. I think I had to replace every single window on the first story in the first six months I lived there. Those people did not want me living in their neighborhood.
In fairness there was at the time a syndrome where a bunch of Despicable Yuppies moved into a neighborhood, bought a bunch of properties, spent a lot to pretty them up, and sold them for immense profits, raising the tax base and gentrifying the neighborhood. The DYs had some bad business practices that resulted in people not getting fair prices for their houses, not getting paid when they thought they’d sold them, and other things. The people in that neighborhood might have thought I was going to do that, but I just wanted to buy a house I could afford.
But my point is, I don’t care if people move into my neighborhood who speak Spanish, I’m not throwing rocks, but I think they are trying to invade my neighborhood and turn it into another Latino neighborhood. There is already a new carniceria, elsewhere in my neighborhood. I’ve been living here all this time and they are making me feel unwelcome.
I understand where Hilarity N. Suze is coming from. although nobody has thrown rocks at my house yet, every new business in my neighborhood in the last few years has been a Spanish language business. I welcomed the new influence on my culture at first because it was new and different, but it has reached a point where there are more Spanish language small businesses near my house than those that function in English. I want to support locally owned businesses because I don’t want my money going to Wal-Mart and China; I’d rather see more of it staying here in my community. However, I can’t really use these new businesses much because I can’t read the signs very well or understand the people who work the registers. The business owners don’t seem concerned; I guess they don’t want English speakers’ money.
I’ve learned some Spanish over the years from co-workers and girlfriends as well as checking out CDs from the library, so don’t even bother implying that I’m a racist or a xenophobe. I’m adopted and 2 of my sisters and one of my brothers were born in Central America. I’ve had Latina, American Indian, Chinese and African girlfriends, and guess what? All of them spoke English. I just want to be able to communicate with the people around me.
I don’t know much about Tom Tancredo or his immigration politics, and I know that the government is pretty much powerless and has no business telling people what language to speak among themselves at home or in the street, but I think it makes sense to keep doing government business in English and teaching public school classes in English. If the children of immigrants need to have intensive ESL classes, I’ll gladly pay for it. And I have given the address of a local school that teaches ESL classes to adults in the evening to more than one person.
I’m sick of being Godwinized by the more-liberal-than-thou for speaking English and wanting newcomers to this country to adapt to our culture, like my ancestors from Ireland, Germany, Greece and other countries did. In fact, if you think I’m bigot for what I just posted please tell me so I’ll know not to take you seriously.
I think “official language” is more about legal requirements than the government telling us what we must do.
In New Zealand for example the “official languages” are English and Maori. This means that all (government) doucments must be in both languages, that Members of Parliament can speak in either language and be recognised etc.
Discrimination wise, nationality / ethnicity is not a grounds for discrimination, but not being able to speak english well most certainly is - and without an official language how would you be able to discriminate against people that don’t speak it?
In Singapore there are four official (recognised) langauges, however the defacto business language is English, and it is the expectation that in the office you will be speaking English.
As said by others - it goes to the language of government. Further for me though I feel that a country should have an official language. I don’t care two hoots what that langauge is though. Without an official language it is arrogant and bordering on discriminatory to just arbitrarily use english for everything.
Going to New Zeland again as an example (something that I am familiar with). For immigration matters it is the problem of the applicant to provide an English translation of any foreign language documents. How do you require that unless English is the legally recognised official language?
In other words, by not having an official language I could turn up in America speaking Zulu and the onus would fall on the listener to translate - anything less is cultural arrogance.
For the record I don’t see it as the same arrogance to designate an official language after suitable debate, research and measurement of which language is the most convenient.
I think I’d thoroughly enjoy tossing what I believe would be a particularly fun statistic at people like the horrified candidate. I wonder what the percentage of people in the following groups have earned their Bachelor’s Degrees in the United States:
[list=a][li]Natural born citizens who do not speak another language.[/li][li]Natural born citizens who do speak another language.[/li][li]Immigrants who do not speak English at the 12th grade level.[/li][li]Children of Immigrants.[/list][/li]
If a is any appreciable number less than b, I’ll suggest to the horrified one that perhaps he should be getting on the bandwagon of having people actually learning another language instead of quaking in their boots while mired in their own ignorance.
Is there any good evidence that modern Hispanic immigrant families are adopting English at a lesser rate than previous Irish, German, and Greek immigrant families did?
Bolding Mine…
Subsitute “official language” for English and I would absolutely say yes. Why not flip the coin over… as a patient, shouldn’t I be able to get clear and trustable instructions in the country’s defacto language?
Do take note, it is perfectly reasonable in my books for the pharmacy to layoff an English* only speaker for someone that is genuinely bi-lingual if that is a real requirement of the job (as is their positioning is “we offer advice in Spanish”)
- I am using English and Spanish for simplicity only, it makes no difference what the languages are for the basis of the arguement.
And yet, in a country that is over 200 years old, that has grown to become the most powerful nation in the history of humanity, we have not actually had the problems you suggest. (We certainly have difficulties regarding language, but using English as the de facto language has not permitted anyone to demand that we recognize their petitions to the court that have been written in Gheg, Baluchi, Frisian, or even Spanish.) Believe me, Americans (and their courts) are past masters at cultural arrogance. I simply see no reason to enshrine that arrogance in law.
In the case of New Zealand, my guess would be that it was part of the give and take–the whole range of compromises that accommodated the Anglo conquest without the North American genocide–that led to an official recognition of Maori. Australia, following more nearly on the North American model, (both in terms of genocide and in terms of a multitidue of indigenous languages), has no such provisions of which I am aware.