This made me feel sick... I hope that dumb bitch realises English was created in England... So it's a foreign language.
I guess my fancy-dancy linguistics degree gives me an unfair bias when examining points of view such as these, so I'll keep this short. Asking someone to abandon their native language is asking them to abandon their culture. That, in a land that is self-identified as multicultural melting pot, is nonsense. In the early 80's, when signs in Spanish began popping up in places like Las Angeles and Miami, America was identified by advertisers as the 5th largest Spanish-speaking market in the world. This started as an issue of advertising, not of some forced multiculturalism.
Yep, we're a melting pot, where you let your culture melt off onto others while absorbing the dominant American culture. We're not Chex Mix where all the cultures live among each other, but distinctly. In fact, the most successful immigrants have had the highest degree of assimilation. And yes, it's possible to assimilate and still keep touch with your former culture.
"What's the most unusual place you've absorbed the dominant American culture?" "That'd be up the butt, Bob." barfo
I always thought that was an urban myth, then I saw the actual footage (I think from that Chuck Barris movie).
Right now, many parts of our country ARE a chex mix of cultures, with various enclaves making up different sections of major cities, with different languages dominating everyday life. All I'm really saying is that poorly written country songs that basically boil down to "HEY IMMIGRANTS SPEAK ENGLISH THIS IS AMERICA SO I DONT WANNA SEE NO DAMN SIGNS IN NO DAMN FOREIGN LANGUAGE," isn't the way you're going to get immigrants to assimilate.
??? For starters, English was NOT created in England. It was brought to Britain in the 5th Century AD by Germanic settlers from various parts of northwest Germany. But that isn't even the issue. The isssue is what is the dominant language of the culture? One of the things that makes America great is that people from all cultures come here and assimilate. When the Poles and the Italians and Russians immigrated here, they learned English and "melted" into the culture. Their English language skills helped them succeed and flourish. They were proud to learn English and proud to be Americans. They may have continued to speak their native languages at home, but they used English in all public forums. That is the issue today. ALL of our immigrants need to learn English to help keep us a homogenous and unified people. The more you are allowed to use your own language in the marketplace, the less reason you have to learn English, and the more disadvantaged you are when it comes to getting a job and melting into the mainstream.
Waaaah, people don't speak my language as much as i'd like and I refuse to learn their language... waaah.
Yeah, all Americans should learn Spanish so we can communicate with people who don't want to learn English. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I'm not so sure that's true, Shooter. There's plenty of people in Chinatown who speak chinese 99% of the time and flourish. Same is true for other immigrant groups throughout the nation. And the USA isn't one big melting pot, it's a place made up of peoples from all over the world who seek the kinds of freedoms we offer. If govt. is to empower the people, it needs to be sensitive to things like X% speak spanish and Y% speak chinese. It's also not a melting pot in the sense that we have two official (and several unofficial) outright nations within our borders: native americans and native hawaiians; the unofficial ones would be the "illegal" immigrant mexicans WHO ARE MEXICAN CITIZENS. It's a pretty general statement, but 1st generation immigrants here do not tend to speak english. 2nd generation immigrants speak english and the language spoken in their homes. 3rd generation immigrants tend to speak english. But it should be their choice. Where we are truly a melting pot is where the cultures mix. I happen to like the food and music that the various cultures bring to our eateries and stages. That's not even doing these great people justice.
There are over 300 different languages spoken in the U.S. Should we learn them all in order to communicate better with each other, or should everyone learn English? What makes more sense?
Right. I'm sure that the people in the video you posted were concerned about the welfare of immigrants struggling to assimilate.
English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and is the main language in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century to the present. They had to learn English because they were the first members of their family to step foot in America. They had no other choice. In modern times there are parts of cities that are full with foreigners so it's easier to use their original language than learn a whole new one. That's like saying people should all be Christians because that's the dominate religion of American culture. Ridiculous.
Learning other languages is bad. Teaching children more than one language is bad. Learning science is bad. Teaching children science is bad. I see a trend in thought here... STOP LEARNING! STOP TEACHING! Guess what Republicans, Mexican-American children are almost all bi-lingual. That means in 20 years your children won't be able to get a good job because Mexican-American workers will be far more skilled at that point. You'll have nothing to blame except your hatred and ignorance. Getting a management job without having the ability to effectively communicate to a diverse workforce will only become more difficult and workers who chose (or had it chosen for them) that they will only learn english will have to settle for bottom end jobs. Learning is never bad. Keeping someone from learning is always bad. Getting upset at other people because you don't want to learn is humiliating, even if you don't realize it.
That actually isn't true for a large part of US history. Prior to the 20th century, there were lots and lots of public newspapers produced in languages other than English, to reflect dominant heritages in parts of America. There were Swedish language newspapers in Minnesota, Italian language newspapers in New York, etc. Those started dying out early in the 20th century, but the idea that the US was founded on immigrants coming here and only using English "in all public forums" is patently untrue.
