Speak English, Get Ahead

Human Events ^ | 11/23/2007 | Michael Reagan

[vietvet67]

It's no secret that in America knowing how to speak the English language is the basic requirement for success -- if you can’t speak the language everybody else speaks, you are back at the Tower of Babel wondering what everybody around you is trying to say.

For any youngster starting out in life, knowing and speaking the common language is the first step in moving up the ladder. And in the United States, English is the common language, and has been from the beginning. The Constitutional debates were conducted solely in English. Only English is spoken in Congress and in the world of business, not only here in America, in most of the world.

Bill Cosby recently spoke about the vital necessity of youths learning and speaking English.

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English,” he complained. “I can't even talk the way these people talk: ‘why you ain't, where you is, what he drive, where he stay, where he work, who you be’ ...And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.

“Everybody knows it's important to speak English -- except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.”

[george76]

[samtheman]

I don’t get the connection to the Salvation Army.

If peckerhead Pelosi gets her way, won’t that mean that all businesses must hire non-English speakers?

[MarkL]

There was recently a commercial on TV for some sort of a cellular telephone service, and the line used over and over again was "where you at?"

I hate that!

Mark

[Don Corleone]

“Push 1 for Spanglish...2 for Spanish...3 for Uruwandi...4 for Long Islandese...5 for Texican.....#76 for English/sarc

[Haddit]

There are thousands of jobs here in Los Angeles where you won’t get hired if you don’t speak Spanish. I’ve been to restaraunts where nobody spoke English. My wife went to Von’s Market and the cashier couldn’t speak English.

[mewzilla]

I don’t get the connection to the Salvation Army

ALIENS FILE SALVATION ARMY SUIT

[nyyankeefan]

Speak English, Get Ahead ....

english is the lingua-franca of america and the world....it is not spanish/ebonics/or anything else.....

only the UN and lib/dems like piglosi want english to be trivialized!!!!

[samtheman]

That’s a law suit alleging that the SA promised to help legalize some aliens and failed to deliver after taking their money. What’s that got to do with a law requiring the SA to hire spanish-speaking people?

[kabar]

"Perhaps equally important, business groups seeking to corner the Hispanic market support bilingualism as well. Indeed, the orientation of U.S. businesses to Hispanic customers means they increasingly need bilingual employees; therefore, bilingualism is affecting earnings. Bilingual police officers and firefighters in southwestern cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas are paid more than those who only speak English. In Miami, one study found, families that spoke only Spanish had average incomes of $18,000; English-only families had average incomes of $32,000; and bilingual families averaged more than $50,000. For the first time in U.S. history, increasing numbers of Americans (particularly black Americans) will not be able to receive the jobs or the pay they would otherwise receive because they can speak to their fellow citizens only in English."

The Hispanic Challenge By Samuel P. Huntington

[Straight Vermonter]

You, I have been refused work because I don’t speak Spanish. I’m told that I can’t supervise the workforce if I don’t speak their language.

[mewzilla]

Sorry, sam. That's last year's suit. Someone just filed suit against the SA because the SA wanted some employees to learn English. I'll scare up the proper thread :)

[samtheman]

thanks

[mewzilla]

No thread, but here's a link to a Human Events column on the subject...

The Salvation Army or the Hispanic Caucus?

[jabbermog]

What is Ebonics ?
Is it like a phonetic thing they teach ?

[cll]

Contrast that with this:

Puerto Rico is a predominantly Spanish-speaking territory of the U.S., yet most job listings here require fluency in English. In my industry, we don’t even require Spanish.

[ought-six]

I went to the local hardware emporium this morning. It was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it (my wife said it’s because of the Day After Thanksgiving phenomenon). No exaggreration, 85% of the people in the store did not speak English. It was an ear-numbing gaggle of yackety-yack in who knows how many foreign languages. And rude? There is no name for the kind and extent of rudeness they displayed. Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.

[mewzilla]

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

President Theodore Roosevelt 1919

[Emrys]

Ebonics is a type of English spoken in the African American community. Do you remember when the Oakland City schools were going to teach this as standard English? BTW: one is not allowed to call Ebonics a dialect (but of course, it is).

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

The place I worked over the summer brought in Mexicans, paid them more than the local people, gave them the easiest jobs and forced us all to take spanish lessons.

Anyone(like me) who refused was fired.
I wasn’t fired til the season ended because my job was too hard for managers or mexicans.

I see no evidence that speaking english will even continue, never mind get you ahead.