From its inception, the United States of America has been, and should still be, a predominantly English speaking nation. Up until more recent decades, we have always expected those who immigrate to learn to speak English or not thrive here. It was expected and respected. Now, we have a whole new set of rules for those who speak Spanish or Farsi. What is driving this new language concession? As usual, it is economics. Those who have the money dictate to the elected who are suppose to be representing all of us, and they tell them they want rules just for them.
In California, because the Persian population is wealthy, they have asked for voting ballots in Farsi. See: BEVERLY HILLS, California: The city's decision to publish its first completely bilingual election manual featuring Farsi side-by-side with English has generated hundreds of complaints…
And, this week when I emailed my own Representative, Norm Dicks, his response was that it would limit voter materials from being written in any language than English. My question is, why do we have to have them in other languages at all?
When my husband’s German ancestors came to the USA they had to learn to speak English. They did. When my own Swedish ancestors came to this country in the late 1890’s, they had to learn to speak English. They also did so. When we lived in Germany from 1970-72, we knew we were not going to live there the rest of our lives, but we still tried to learn our host country’s language because we were residing in Germany. We didn’t ask for any special services, nor did the German or Swedish ancestors. They were proud to adapt, and so were we.
We have become a country afraid to stand up for what it right and normal. When I go to the grocery store, I don’t want to look at labels on my products and have to scan down until I get to the English translation. I want my ballots in English only. I don’t want to have to push 1 or 2 for English when I call a business. I want the immigrants to adapt to my country and its language, not demand that we cater to their special needs. If they don’t want to learn English, then they will have to suffer the consequences, or go back to their own birth land.
And, to my elected officials: Stop voting with your re-election in mind. Vote what your constituents dictate. That is why you are in office. You serve us, not the other way around.
Â
Â
Â
Â
recommend
Facebook
Twitter
bookmark 
print
Comments: 50
I get yelled at by Hispanic people for "not speaking spanish which is my heritage, and you should be proud to peak it" what morons!
I explain to thse morons, that not every person who has dark hair and brown eyes is Hispanic. ;-)
In Miami it can be worse, as you try to find a person WHO actually speaks English.
Referring to your last sentence, "Us" is not a sample set of people who look and act like you. "Us" is your representative's constituency. Your representative's constituency may include...brace yourself...people who are not like you.
I have learned to speak a few languages and I know I am better for it. And those that I don't know, I am happy to learn if I have to. I am not afraid of people unlike myself and I am not afraid to learn something new. I wish someone would drop a phonebook in Farsi on my doorstep. I might learn something.
I used to live in a room full of mirrors
All I could see was me
Well I took my spirit and I crashed my mirrors
Now the whole world is here for me to see
Totally agree with you on this one and am featuring it in THE PLACE TO VENT AND JUST TALK ABOUT THINGS.
or
www.talkboutit.gather.com
with thanks, oh... by the way, my grandparents came over here as children, aged 9 and 11, and they were the ONLY members of their respective families that got to come - guess what? They learned English - and also to read, write and speak it and were damned proud of that fact too. Where's the pride these days?
Marilyn
rated 10!
?????
Such anger generated by your inability to speak another language!! Why?? What are you afraid of?
They represent the majority of people!! They vote exactly for re-election in mind!!
The majority of people in California (especially Southern California) can speak both English and Spanish!! If you are from Southern Californai and only speak english
YOU ARE IN THE MINORITY SIR!
To become a citizen in america you were supposed to be able to read, write and speak english.
Not everyone who migrates to the USA is young enough to learn a new language easily. Many adults after they get here try to learn English as a Second Language, but it is not easy. Children lean a new language almost without trying.
My son came to the USA at the age of 5 knowing only a few words and very few phrases in English - mostly the ABCs, numbers and some nursery rhymes and songs I had taught him. His first language was Spanish. While playing with the neighbor children, he started picking up English ind in about two months time, he was as fluent as any 5 year old can be. By the time he started school a year later, you could not tell he was not born to it.
If you were to move to Russia as an adult, would you expect to learn the language as easily as a child could? I don't think so.
Please, cut the adult immigrants some slack. They might want to learn English, but believe me, learning English as an adult is not easy. To begin with, it is one of the languages where the same sounding words can mean different things and words that might sound the same can be spelled much differently.
Try threw, through, thorough - sale, sell, sail, etc............and those are just a few. If I stopped long enough to think I could probably come up with a slew of them!
English to an adult can be very confusing.
Like you would even take the time to try and help recent immigrants understand English if they asked you on the street!!
For example if someone came up to you and asked for the time very nicely in "broken English" you would probably LOOK AT THEM CRAZY and keep walking!!
Thanks very much for the feature Liz. I am happy to be in such a circle.
Joseph, people like yourself seem to delight in missing the point so they can get off topic and promote their own agenda. We are speaking in the here and now, and not when the Indians first migrated to the Americas. From the majority of the comments made to this article, it seems to me that many of my fellow citizens would agree that English should be the official language.
If I moved to another country, of my own accord, and planned to stay there, I would most certainly learn the language! As I said, we knew we were not going to be in Germany for more than two years, but we still made and effort to learn the language of our HOST country as a courtesy. (Courtesy....hmmm, something else that has gone by the wayside in our country!).
Sonia: Cut the immigrants some slack? They chose to come here! Did they think they were migrating so they could become their own little country here in the USA? They want all the perks that coming to the US gives them, but they don't want to learn the predominant language? That is bassackward thinking.
Amber: Whenever someone disagrees with your thinking, you assume they are angry. I am not angry about this issue of the immigrants not speaking English. I am stating my opinon. Telling someone they are angry is just fogging the issue. Something the unsure and bullying types like to do when they don't have a better response.
For the record: I live in a very mixed community with many ethnic groups including asian, Somalian, Hindu, Pakistani, Indian, Norwegians, Swedes, etc., and I would NEVER be rude to anyone who asked me for help or just wanted to converse. BUT, I draw the line when it comes to wanting me to change my native English to give them special treatment.
I can't imagine myself moving to a country whose people have a primary language other than English without learning it before I went. It's stupid; do we want stupid people immigrating to our country?
I agree that anyone who can learn English should do so. I am fluent in two languages, English and Spanish - I read, write, understand and communicate in every way in both and can read, understand and make myself understood in Italian, though I am not fluent in that language by any means - but there are many people coming to the States now, as they did through Ellis Island that are older and it is harder for them to learn. If you read your history, many of the early immigrants chose to live in neighborhoods that housed people from "the old country" - that is why you find Little Italy or Chinatowns, in many large cities. So this situation is nothing new.
Funny story here though, my daughter handed me her school folder last week and all the fliers and hand outs were in spanish. I laughed it off, and than looked up the weekly calender online and made daughter get replacement bulletins (glad I did since a day off was changed to half day to make up missed snow days).
Hell, I had to move to Australia for a while, which, theoretically, should be easy for an English-speaking person, but I made sure I understood the nuances of their language and culture before I went.
I was required to take Spanish in school when I was growing up because in Texas, where we lived, there was a large group of Hispanic emigrants who often came through our part of the country. I wasn't fearful of them and I didn't need to be. They were good people, respectful toward me and everyone else they came in contact with, and I still remember seeing their campfires late at night from my bedroom window overlooking the cottonfields and listening as they played their guitars and sang softly. It was a comforting lullaby. I also remember that my grandfather would regularly feed those emigrants when they appeared on his ranchhome's doorstep, and when he spoke to them, he spoke in fluent Tex-Mex border lingo. I always admired him for his compassion. Later, as an adult, I found that the little Spanish I remembered from school was very helpful to me when I began to help out at the local library, teaching Mexican emigrants how to read and speak English. It was very fulfilling volunteer work that I have many fond memories of. Those people had taken any risk necessary to find a way to support themselves and their families, and they weren't unwilling to learn English. They just needed time, support and encouragement to do so. Isn't that what our own German, French, Scandanavian, Russian, etc. ancestors did--come here speaking their own languages, fearfully, just to have an opportunity to support themselves and their families?
As for the rest, I am backing Joseph H. My adopted Kiowa father once told me that he had not learned English until he was seven years old and taken away from his family, by force, and placed in the boarding schools. His experience in the school was a positive one, unlike the experience of many other Native American people. But he never forgot his mother tongue and he never forgot who he was. When he grew old enough for college, on enrollment day, a professor ran over to him and said, "You MUST learn this foreign language! Enroll in MY class." My Kiowa father looked at him and said, "What do you think this is that I am speaking? This English of yours--it is a foreign tongue. If you want to hear a real American language, then I'll speak it to you." And from there, he began speaking in Kiowa.
And by the way, my adopted Kiowa father was every bit an American. When World War II came along, he flew as an aviator and a gunner with the Flying Tigers over Burma. On one occasion, when he and his flight crew were shot down behind enemy lines, it was he who led his fellow Americans out from behind enemy lines. He was wounded, yet he also knew he was the only one who had the knowledge of tracking, recognizing and following "sign", and keeping his comrades safe from capture, so he led them all out. In 1992, one week before his death, he showed me a little knife that he always carried in his truck with him, on the floorboard in front of the driver's seat. I took the knife from its sheath and saw on its stiletto blade Japanese characters. Sadly, he told me that during the two week journey out from behind enemy lines, he had taken the knife off a Japanese soldier who had attacked him. "This little knife took care of him and two others just like him," he told me. But he wasn't proud of that fact. He had counted coup on the enemy, but the memory was one that haunted him all his life. To him, it was a tragedy that he'd taken a life, even in the course of war, and he wished he had not been forced to defend himself and his men.
Now that is an American.
So, why did I think I could function effectively in their society without at least a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese? Perhaps my outlook on the whole thing is different because my grandparents were the stupid and ignorant types who had the audacity to come to the US without knowing english. My dad spoke spanish at home and learned english in school and on the street. I am lucky enough to have grown up in a family where there are mixed races and cultures and languages. And I know that I can learn a new language (or fake it well enough to get a cab and food) and I am unintimidated by an unfamiliar situation. And reaching out to people who are not like you is a positive experience. I met a lot of great people in China and I know we are better off having gotten to know each other. Stupid and all.
I helped my s i l learn english, she was from Korea.
We cant have every language in the world on products and ballots. If you add one why shouldnt you have to have the rest.
Hmmm, a lot more Spanish and French were spoken in New York, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida at that inception. At the time of the Founding, Dutch and Spanish (esp Ladino) were just as common as was English in NYC. French remained quite commonly spoken in New England. Moreover, the entire Southwest and California spoke exclusively Spanish, not English. And that's just the European languages.
If language purity is what you want, how about Abenaki or Penobscot which was the language spoken by the Indians who greeted the Mayflower gang? After all, Roger Williams learned them in order for him and his followers to survive.
I think it best for the states to determine for themselves as to what their ballots should look like. Here in Minnesota, Spanish as a second language is actually more popular than it is in NYC. Latin-American cultures are popular here but perhaps the language is also popular because it is so easy to learn.
As for me, I prefer Ladino as it is even easier to learn. Too bad there aren't any courses on the subject around here. Darn!!!
The thing is and is missed by many in order to gain citizenship you do have to be able to speak English, its a very big part of the test that is given for citizenship. But you don't have to speak English to be an illegal in this country. I find it totally absurd that people think that becoming an American doesn't mean that you need to be able to speak English. I think those who feel that English should not be the spoken language here in America are just in the wrong Country all together.
Can anyone tell which was the first official city established on the land we now call the United States? No. OK, the very first city was Saint Augustine and it was established by Spanish people.
The first settlements all up and down California were the missions. Who founded/established them? The Spanish. Why do you think California has so many cities named in Spanish: Los Angeles (the angels); San Luis Obispo, santa Clara, San Diego, Santa Rosa, Santa Barbara, Adelanto (go forward); Alameda (avenue). Alamo (Elm); Alta Sierra (high mountain); Sacramento (the sacrament); Arroyo Grande (big or large creek); Santa Catalina island (St. Catherines's ) and these are just a few.................
The French & Spanish were here way before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth
Pensacola was founded as a settlement by the Spanish in 1559
The French established a fort and colony on the St. Johns River in 1564
St Augustine was founded as a city in 1564 or 65
Ft. Carolina (now Jacksonville) in 1564 - the first baby of European (Spanish) ancestry was born there one year later in 1566, in what is now the mainland United States.
All this 21 years before the first English arrived in Roanoke Island (now in coastal NC)
The Pilgrims first landed at what was to become Provincetown, on Cape Cod, on November 21, 1620.
So if we are to get really techincal.....besides the indians who inhabited this continent....the Spanish and French were here first.
;-)))
Muchas gracias por leer mi comentario!
When I attended school in Cuba, at my school we started learning English from Kindergarten.....ABC's, numbers, nursery rhymes.....as you moved up each grade had English as a subject.....by the time you graduated, you had at least, a rudementary knowledge of English and were able to speak, read and write.
The earlier the better to learn languages.
I think schools here do our children a disservice by not teaching languages until you reach High School. By then, it is too late for many people.
gracias por su commentario.