Posted on 11/08/2005 5:00:55 PM PST by IndyInVa
English As The "Official" Language of America? A recent poll by a nonpartisan research firm says 83% of Marylanders believe laws should be passed making English the official language of the U.S. This would require that all official documents and government business be conducted only in English -- no more printing in other languages. Do you agree with this proposal?
Actually, I think it was 62% to 38%. Sorry about that.
¡Ya lo he Freepeado!
I agree with you to a point. It does make good business sense to be able to conduct business in Spanish if that is what your customers want. I do not, however, support teaching every kid Spanish from elementary school on up. On the contrary, schools need to devote more resources to teaching every kid to read and write English properly. We are making it too easy for people to get by without learning the primary language of this country--English.
English is the international language of business. If you want to be sucessful at anything learn english.... nuff said!!!
Chris Core is a talk show host on one of the local stations, WMAL. He opened the show by saying he used to be against making this a law, but now was in favor of it. He invited discussion, with priority to anyone who could make a good case against English only in government. Two callers tried, but IMO had virtually no valid argument and relied on the PC card and invoked "strength in diversity". Most callers were in favor of English and made a variety of arguments - economic, social cohesion, etc.
This weekend, a middle-aged Caucasian woman and two young Spanish teenage girls (with Bibles under their arms) knocked on my door.
They politely said that they were looking for households which spoke Spanish, and started to walk away.
They devil got into me, and I asked them why would they not want to speak with me, just because I spoke English, and isn't that being discriminatory, and how outraged the Spanish families would be if I rang doorbells and only wanted to speak to Caucasian families.
The woman had a quick response that they wanted to talk with Spanish families about the Bible.
I told them that I wished all people who came to the U.S. would learn how to speak English, and assimilate in the the American system.
Also, I told her that she could make a bigger contribution if she'd encourage the Spanish-speaking families to speak English, and learn to read the Bible in English. That she was an enabler and making the language problem worse.
They were not happy Christian campers when they left my door step.
One more point that one of the anti-English callers made - He said he was a census taker in NY many years ago and it was his observation that the 1st generation immigrants couldn't speak English, but that of necessity, the second generation was fluent. Therefore his argument seemed to be that the problem would take care of itself in one generation. Core said something like: That's precisely my point. By printing everything in a foreign language there IS NO necessity to learn English, so the problem does NOT resolve itself in one generation and only gets worse.
64% Yes.
There you go again with your great pics...
FReepitty-BUMP! 64%-36%
I'm just here to entertain.
;-)
(nice to see you again).
Thanks to all Freepers! Keep those votes coming!
Lets ask the French what they think about allowing huge numbers of people into their country and not forcing them to learn French.
It may be a while before they can respond with all those fires and such.
Bilingual? How about monoligual, only in Spanish? Mexican fast food workers in San Diego often can't speak rudimentary English; case in point: I had to translate salt into Spanish (sal) before the clerk could understand me. Use Spanish when necessary, but preserve our language, English, which after all is the world language!!
Bilingual? How about monoligual, only in Spanish? Mexican fast food workers in San Diego often can't speak rudimentary English; case in point: I had to translate salt into Spanish (sal) before the clerk could understand me. Use Spanish when necessary, but preserve our language, English, which after all is the world language!!
Here's a poll to have fun with...
Yes, we must declare English our official language now before it's too late.
On the other hand, I'm not to keen on taking advice from the French right now.
The language that works the best is what people will speak, law or no law. English works the best, because it adapts and changes with the ideas that need to be expressed. That's why it's the international language. It's not necessary to make it a law. It's already the law of human nature.
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