Posted on 06/19/2007 7:58:44 AM PDT by SmithL
It was an odd comment coming from a German-speaking immigrant who came to the United States from a continent where children routinely learn to speak, read and write two or three languages.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last week that to get ahead, Spanish-speaking immigrants in California should avoid Spanish-language newspapers and TV. "You've got to turn off the Spanish television set," he said at the 25th annual National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in San Jose. "It's that simple. You've got to learn English."
Yes, of course, today's immigrants to the United States should learn English -- and they do. As in the past, the further away from the first generation of immigrants, the more likely later generations are to speak English.
But for some perspective, Schwarzenegger might take a look at the experience of German-speaking immigrants from the 1880s to the 1920s, who came in a wave as large as the current wave of Spanish-speaking immigrants today.
In those days, it was German-language newspapers that dominated the foreign-language press in the United States -- with 600 to 750 newspapers in the years 1880 to 1920. As late as 1910, an estimated 9 million people in the United States still spoke German as their native tongue. Children learned to read and write German at school, along with English. Some public and many parochial schools taught exclusively in German, mostly in rural areas. German-language clubs and church parishes abounded.
Yet the sky didn't fall. Those immigrant families successfully became Americans. Then, as now, the first generation in the United States typically spoke the home country language. The second generation spoke English in school and the parents' language at home, but English was their home language in adulthood.
. . . The third generation, then as now, speaks English.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Yes, but they were here legally and did not drain our economy via free medical care, free education, and welfare.
There's a place for bilingual education as a stopgap, but only as a path to full English fluency. Then, unlike now, no one saw refusing to learn English as some sort of cultural identity preservation, they saw it as glupi
-Eric
Yeah, language is a non-issue for me. Children learn language when they’re young. We pick up vocabulary through absorption and no one really analyzes what they’re saying or writing when speaking in their natural tongue.
We can try to teach people second languages later in life, be it immigrants or our own native students learning a second language in high school, but it ends up being broken and survivalist. Our high school students don’t graduate fluent in Spanish and French, and we don’t really expect them to even though we force them to take the classes.
To speak a language WELL, you need to learn it before age 8 OR spent a LOOOOT of time in the culture where it dominates. I have immigrant relatives that can run their own business, but even 30 years into living in America, you can tell their language isn’t anywhere as good as a native. Their kids of course, speak Hollywood-accent English like anyone else who grew up on TV in America.
^^Then again, that suggests Schwarzenegger is right, because the kids of the immigrants need to absorb English. This will primarily be from TV if they hear Spanish spoken in their house. If a kid is introduced to multiple languages early in life, there is no harm in that and they can be truly fluent in both without much conscious effort.
Funny; I don’t remember “Press 1 for English, press 2 for Polish” on phones in my neighborhood; nor do I remember anyone protesting for ballots or driving instruction in Polish. These Hispanic types can bite the bullet and learn the language or go back home.
Nothing odd about it. The governor was suggesting that immigrants to this country learn to speak, read and write in two (or more) languages—just so long as one of them is English.
That Schwarzenegger himself learned English when he came here lends credibility to his comments. He speaks from experience.
Our neighborhood Blockbuster (video tape rentals) put up a new sign, `Entrada’, over `Entrance’.
Not long after, another bi-lingual sign appeared near the bottom of the door:
`Employees Do Not Have Keys to the Safe’.
video-tape=DVD
(Is it still 2007?)
Bush and the GOP Congress drastically cut back on funds for bilingual ed, virtually eliminating it, although some states continued to fund it themselves. California stopped it except for particular situations. I have a very liberal relative who is an elementary teacher out there, and she was very upset about it - but then a year later, she told me that she was really surprised, but now that they'd gotten rid of the bilingual program, the Hispanic kids were learning English, adapting to the US, and getting along with the non-Hispanic kids a lot better! I didn't say "I told you so," but it was sure tempting...
In agreement. Nor did they demand graduation requirements from high school be changed to accommodate their students.
The public school system did not live under the threat of lawsuits by parents and special interest groups if they did not comply with the demands of immigrant parents/special interest groups.
Activist groups such as Padres Unidos and Comite did not descend upon schools and call for audits of the public school system to accomodate students. Teachers and administrators did not have to empty file cabinets, show written lesson plans, and have the classroom set up to appease activist parents/groups.
My father’s parents came from Germany and learned to speak English fluently. One major incentive that’s not mentioned here is that during WWI, it was ILLEGAL TO SPEAK GERMAN IN PUBLIC in many places. My great-grandfather was essentially under house arrest because his English was poor.
2. My great grandmothers never learned English. There was no American mass media (other than radio, which was largely local), and they lived in SEGREGATED ethnic enclaves. Do you folks actually think that the Anglos went into Polish or Italian neighborhoods? Were there even ANY Anglos in Newark (unless you count the Irish?). The WASPS fled like hell from the northeast thanks to my ancestors.
You need to learn English to get ahead in life, and GOVERNMENT SPONSORED bilingualism (aka documents in Chinese, Spanish, Russian, etc, as in New York) is WRONG. Nevertheless, if a private business decides to promote themselves in Spanish, English, or Esperanto (including such choices in their automated phone messages), that's their prerogative.
So, you support the suspension of Civil Liberties (as happenned to German Americans during WWI) in order to get people to speak a language? Sieg Heil! ;-)
Comparing the current crop of illegals to the immigrants that came before them in prior generations is disingenuous - they came here, assimilated, were definitely NOT catered to, and didn't exhaust our nation's resources by demanding public services to which they have no right.
Besides, what does it really mean to be "an American?" Do you mean the Redneck subculture, the Urban Metro subculture, the black American subculture, the tight a-sed California suburban housewife subculture?
Deport illegals, penalize employers who hire illegals, and stop the government promotion of linguistic ghettoes. Other than that, I really don't give a damn.
Exactly. That's the problem. I worked in a polling place in San Francisco where we had the ballots in Chinese as well as English. A bunch of Dem "activists" brought busloads of Chinese grannies to vote. They didn't speak English, of course, but they also didn't read the Chinese the ballot was printed in (in fact, they were probably illiterate in any language), but the Dems got to send "helpers" into the booths to help them vote with the Chinese ballots. Since they "helped" them in Chinese, none of the polling place workers knew what they were saying anyway, and the Dems were essentially just pointing to the dot to punch and guiding the elderly Chinese hands to the appropriate Dem candidate.
Because it is a clear indication that a large and fastest growing segment of the resident population (Hispanics) really is not fluent in English. After all, why do you think that you don't hear same offer for people who speak French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Hungarian, Hindi, etc. Apparently those sorts of people don't exist.
These government agencies and corporations know exactly what they are doing. Setting up groups of services in more than one language is a very expensive and time consuming endeavor. You don't do something like that unless it is truly necessary to reach a very large percentage of people. And again, that group is the fastest growing segment of our society.
If we don't reform our immigration laws the southwest will evolve into our own Quebec.
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