Splitting states

[Scott5114]

Notice how you never see these people who get up in arms about immigrants speaking other languages learning to speak Cherokee, or Chickasaw, or Hawaiian, or...

Anyone who's that upset about someone else speaking another language is just too lazy to learn to speak another language, and pissed at other people for missing out on things due to their own laziness.

[hbelkins]

People are (and should be) free to speak whatever language they wish as they go about their private business. I speak fluent hillbilly at home, but more standard English at other times.

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

I would say that PR road signs should be in English instead of Spanish, but there probably aren't a great number of mainland Americans who drive there.

I'm still amazed that Quebec seems to cling to French and hasn't adopted English yet. Or is there a tremendous cultural attachment to the French language?

[Roadgeekteen]

People are (and should be) free to speak whatever language they wish as they go about their private business. I speak fluent hillbilly at home, but more standard English at other times.

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

I would say that PR road signs should be in English instead of Spanish, but there probably aren't a great number of mainland Americans who drive there.

I'm still amazed that Quebec seems to cling to French and hasn't adopted English yet. Or is there a tremendous cultural attachment to the French language?

Is there a problem with a bilingual country?

[Scott5114]

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

Why? Conducting official business in additional languages has the benefit of making the government more transparent to those who may not be as proficient in English as they are other languages (note that even if you are reasonably fluent in a language, you may run into terms that are not easily understood, and the likelihood of this rises in technical, specialized discussions that tend to happen during discussions of government policy). Or do you like the prospect of a crooked politician being able to get away with things because the constituents don't speak the language of the government? What if a non-English speaker wanted to participate in a public meeting about a road project, or perhaps report an urgent issue to the local DOT public information officer?

Two of the recent stimulus checks were accompanied by letters in the mail, one signed by both current president and one by his predecessor, explaining the timeline for the checks and what to do if they didn't arrive. In both cases, the letter was printed in English on the front and Spanish on the back. Would it have served the people better to leave the back blank? If so, why? I can't imagine the IRS had to go on an exhaustive search for someone to translate the letter.

I would say that PR road signs should be in English instead of Spanish, but there probably aren't a great number of mainland Americans who drive there.

Why not both? Statens vegvesen in Norway has signs that have as many as four languages on them in certain areas, and they seem to work fine. Canada has bilingual signage and that works fine too.

I'm still amazed that Quebec seems to cling to French and hasn't adopted English yet. Or is there a tremendous cultural attachment to the French language?

Definitely the second one, to the extent that KFC operates under the name PFK in Quebec (the only jurisdiction in which KFC has felt the need to translate the words "Kentucky Fried Chicken" to the local language).

[empirestate]

Who cares what language they speak? Also this isn't a joke.

He does realize that, of course. This goes along with what I was saying earlier: there's really no refuting the racist nature of the comment, and to his credit he doesn't attempt to. He said what he said, meant what he meant, and is sticking to it. All that's left, then, is to try to dismiss any criticism by framing the criticism itself as illegitimate. This is what you'll notice more people doing these days, especially as viewpoints of this kind become more popular to hold and express.

[Scott5114]

I would also guess that most people holding such views have never actually undertaken an honest attempt to become fluent in a language, at least nothing beyond high-school or college-level language classes. It is one thing to learn a smattering of words and how to string together a sentence, but another entirely to learn to read, write, and speak a language to the extent that one could, say, protest the IRS's assessment of how much in taxes you owe.

[texaskdog]

Who cares what language they speak? Also this isn't a joke.

He does realize that, of course. This goes along with what I was saying earlier: there's really no refuting the racist nature of the comment, and to his credit he doesn't attempt to. He said what he said, meant what he meant, and is sticking to it. All that's left, then, is to try to dismiss any criticism by framing the criticism itself as illegitimate. This is what you'll notice more people doing these days, especially as viewpoints of this kind become more popular to hold and express.

And race and language are two different things

[Scott5114]

Who cares what language they speak? Also this isn't a joke.

He does realize that, of course. This goes along with what I was saying earlier: there's really no refuting the racist nature of the comment, and to his credit he doesn't attempt to. He said what he said, meant what he meant, and is sticking to it. All that's left, then, is to try to dismiss any criticism by framing the criticism itself as illegitimate. This is what you'll notice more people doing these days, especially as viewpoints of this kind become more popular to hold and express.

And race and language are two different things

Only insomuch as language proficiency is mutable and race is not. But arguments against language usage can easily be used as a proxy for racism. Most Spanish-speakers in the United States are not white Spaniards. An attack against the Spanish language can be used as a thin veneer over an attack against those of Mexican descent.

Case in point, you generally don't see people react anywhere near as negatively to bilingual English-French materials (which the US sometimes gets for cost-saving reasons, because they can be distributed in Canada as well) as you do to English-Spanish ones.

[empirestate]

And race and language are two different things

Only insomuch as language proficiency is mutable and race is not. But arguments against language usage can easily be used as a proxy for racism. Most Spanish-speakers in the United States are not white Spaniards. An attack against the Spanish language can be used as a thin veneer over an attack against those of Mexican descent.

Case in point, you generally don't see people react anywhere near as negatively to bilingual English-French materials (which the US sometimes gets for cost-saving reasons, because they can be distributed in Canada as well) as you do to English-Spanish ones.

And even more simply than that, language is a shared cultural aspect that binds together groups of people, and with which they identify. It is these groupings of people–people with a shared set of traits–that constitute "races". The shared traits can also be physical and visual differences, but are by no means limited to this.

So indeed, language and race are different things, in the same way that wheels and cars are different things. One is an aspect of the other, and not necessarily an exclusive one: all cars have wheels, but not everything with wheels is a car. Likewise, all people within a race will typically share a language, but not all speakers of that language belong to that race, nor do all differences in language classify people into different races. You get the idea.

(And to Scott's point, just like "language" and "race", one word can be a synecdoche for the other. You can even say "do you have wheels?" to mean "do you have a car?")

[kphoger]

People are (and should be) free to speak whatever language they wish as they go about their private business. I speak fluent hillbilly at home, but more standard English at other times.

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

What do you mean by "official business"?

Do you mean government correspondence only, or do you mean commercial transactions?  If you just mean government correspondence–well, then, Puerto Rico already has English as one of its two official languages, so all of its government correspondence is already available in English.  Is the only thing you're asking that the Puerto Rican government stop making available its official correspondence in Spanish as well?  You do realize that such wouldn't affect very much at all, right?

Or do you mean that all commercial transactions be done in English only?  I think this is what you really mean, so bear with me if I'm incorrect in that assumption.

How, exactly, do you see that working?  Allow me to give you a few real-life examples, and you tell me your answers:

1.
A block from my house, there used to be a family-owned bakery.  The family who owned it are Mexican-Americans, originally from the Mexican state of Michoacán, and the husband and wife speak very little English–although their children are fluently bilingual.  A few years ago, they closed the bakery and bought a grocery store about a half-mile away.  That grocery store is where I buy my avocados, because they're the freshest around, and I occasionally buy some other things there too.  Over the years, I've gotten to know them a little bit.  Whenever I see them in the store, I speak Spanish with them–not just when chatting but also when going through the checkout line.  Usually, though, it's not one of them who's actually running the register.  But, half the time, I still speak Spanish when paying for my groceries, or asking for assistance while shopping, or whatever.  It's just easier and simpler that way.

Should I not be allowed to do that, to speak Spanish with the employees or owners of the store?  If I ask a question in Spanish, should the employee or owner be required to answer me in English?  When the owner gives his daughter instructions for closing up the register, should he be required to do so in English only?  Should the signs on the doors and windows be required by law to be in English only, when 80% of their customers speak Spanish and many of them don't know English at all?

It seems a bit ridiculous to answer yes to those questions.

2.
My family's best friends live in northern Mexico as Christian missionaries.  They are very white people.  He grew up in Michigan, likes to shoot squirrels, listens to country music, enjoys ice hockey, likes to wear camo and cowboy boots–would probably fit in well in your neck of the woods, HB.  She was homeschooled in a farmhouse here in southeastern Kansas, surrounded by corn and milo, raised by parents originally from Nebraska.  He speaks decent Spanish, she struggles to learn it.  In the town of 45,000 people where they live, I'm not aware of a single person other than them who speaks English as a first language.  Most locals only learned enough English words to get them through English class in school, and couldn't even hold a basic conversation in English.  A few college grad types know enough English to get by, but trust me when I say nobody in town is speaking English in their daily lives.

Our friends had a decision to make:  what language to speak at home.  When they moved down to Mexico, they had one daughter.  They're now currently in Wichita awaiting the passport for their third and will be heading back south of the border once it arrives.  This means two of their daughters will have never lived permanently anywhere but Mexico, and they spend their daily lives surrounded by Spanish speakers.  So our friends decided to speak English at home, even though speaking Spanish at home would help them all become fluent in the local language.  They made that decision because they want their children to be able to communicate in English whenever they come stateside to visit family and friends.  But that's all kind of beside the point, because you said people should be free to speak whatever language they want at home.

However, what about that local shopkeeper or restaurant waiter, wanting to practice and/or show off his or her English language skills, choosing to communicate with our friends in English, speaking English with them instead of Spanish while doing business?  When our friends got into a fender-bender last year, should the police officer have been disallowed from speaking English with them while writing up the report?  When they were seeing their obstetrician during pregnancy, should the doctor or nurse have been disallowed from speaking English with them during the consultation?  When he buys a car part at the local Auto Zone, should the clerk be disallowed from speaking English when figuring out what part he needs?

Again, it seems a bit ridiculous to answer yes to those questions.

[NWI_Irish96]

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

There are a multitude of multi-lingual nations in the world. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Philippines, and so on. The countries were formed by speakers of different languages who decided that they wanted to be a single country. Should they all be forced to use a single language for official business?

[Avalanchez71]

D.C. was meant to be a federal district, not a state. If people in D.C. want representation, I think that either Federal Buildings should be D.C., or the new borders of D.C. should be based upon the Anacostia River, Rock Creek and Massachusetts Avenue.

The obvious compromise here is for the GOP to agree to grant statehood for Puerto Rico (which is going to happen at some point anyway) in return for a Dem agreement to turn the populated portions of DC back to Maryland and abandoning statehood.

I personally don't like the fact that US owns a bunch of land off of the contiguous U.S., I think Alaska should be given to Canada, Hawaii independence, Puerto Rico independence, even though that is for an alternate history timeline, not a road forums, and it would simply never happen. I also think the GOP would want more because giving Maryland more Democrat land doesn't really change anything and I don't understand your point.

Well I think Canada should be given to the US excluding Quebec.

Except Canadians' entire identity model is built around "we're not Americans" .

It's funny because it's true.

(Cut to all of Canada both nodding and scowling.)

Actually we will take just Alberta.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

There are a multitude of multi-lingual nations in the world. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Philippines, and so on. The countries were formed by speakers of different languages who decided that they wanted to be a single country. Should they all be forced to use a single language for official business?

I don't think he really cares what other countries do, he just doesn't want *this* one to become too multilingual. People viewing use of non-English as some kind of threat or subversion to national unity and identity isn't really new; Theodore Roosevelt's famous "there is room for but one language"  quote probably wasn't the beginning of it either, but more or less codified to some circles that the immigrants' old world languages needed to be left behind in those countries so far as however long it took them to learn English and then never use them again anywhere for any reason. Of course, things like 9/11 and certain political encouraging emboldens idiots to complain and attempt to police others if they happen to hear non-English conversation, especially if it's Spanish, Arabic, or Somali.

[Roadgeekteen]

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture. Puerto Ricans can continue to speak/write Spanish all they want at home, in church, or in correspondence. But official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

There are a multitude of multi-lingual nations in the world. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Philippines, and so on. The countries were formed by speakers of different languages who decided that they wanted to be a single country. Should they all be forced to use a single language for official business?

I don't think he really cares what other countries do, he just doesn't want *this* one to become too multilingual. People viewing use of non-English as some kind of threat or subversion to national unity and identity isn't really new; Theodore Roosevelt's famous "there is room for but one language"  quote probably wasn't the beginning of it either, but more or less codified to some circles that the immigrants' old world languages needed to be left behind in those countries so far as however long it took them to learn English and then never use them again anywhere for any reason. Of course, things like 9/11 and certain political encouraging emboldens idiots to complain and attempt to police others if they happen to hear non-English conversation, especially if it's Spanish, Arabic, or Somali.

Our nation is super disunited nowadays and it has nothing to do with language.

[kphoger]

But official business should be conducted in one language, that being the predominate language of the nation or overall culture ... official business should be conducted in the primary language of the nation at large.

But the USA has more than one predominant language.

I made this map a few years ago:



As you can see, there are more than 40 counties in Texas in which more than 40% of the people speak Spanish–including two of the top ten most populous counties in the state, four of the top twenty.  It therefore makes little sense to me that all official business would have to be conducted in English only.

Why should all official notices in Webb County, for example, be required to be posted in English only, when–according to the US Census Bureau–90% of the population over age five speaks a language other than English at home?  That just doesn't make any sense to me.

[JayhawkCO]

I'm sure all the people who want everything only done in English only have English ancestry too, so they never had anyone in their family that spoke anything but English. 

Chris

[kphoger]

I'm sure all the people who want everything only done in English only have English ancestry too, so they never had anyone in their family that spoke anything but English. 

When Spanish-majority California was admitted to the union, my ancestors hadn't even arrived on US soil yet.  It strikes me as a bit presumptuous that I might dictate what language the descendants of those Californians should be speaking for what purposes.

[Roadgeekteen]

I'm sure all the people who want everything only done in English only have English ancestry too, so they never had anyone in their family that spoke anything but English. 

When Spanish-majority California was admitted to the union, my ancestors hadn't even arrived on US soil yet.  It strikes me as a bit presumptuous that I might dictate what language the descendants of those Californians should be speaking for what purposes.

Yes. The US is essentially a bilingual country now, and people gotta deal with it.

[kphoger]

I'm sure all the people who want everything only done in English only have English ancestry too, so they never had anyone in their family that spoke anything but English. 

When Spanish-majority California was admitted to the union, my ancestors hadn't even arrived on US soil yet.  It strikes me as a bit presumptuous that I might dictate what language the descendants of those Californians should be speaking for what purposes.

Yes. The US is essentially a bilingual country now, and people gotta deal with it.

Part of my point is that the US was already a bilingual country in 1850.

[JayhawkCO]

And there are plenty of Spanish-speaking folks in New Mexico whose families have lived within current U.S. boundaries for centuries.

Chris

[Roadgeekteen]

I'm sure all the people who want everything only done in English only have English ancestry too, so they never had anyone in their family that spoke anything but English. 

When Spanish-majority California was admitted to the union, my ancestors hadn't even arrived on US soil yet.  It strikes me as a bit presumptuous that I might dictate what language the descendants of those Californians should be speaking for what purposes.

Yes. The US is essentially a bilingual country now, and people gotta deal with it.

Part of my point is that the US was already a bilingual country in 1850.

True. Back in the 1800s a lot of immigrants in communities spoke their own native languages, although the Spanish speakers in the southwest were not really immigrants (the US came to them, not the other way around). In fact German was widely spoken in America until the World Wars.

[JayhawkCO]

True. Back in the 1800s a lot of immigrants in communities spoke their own native languages, although the Spanish speakers in the southwest were not really immigrants (the US came to them, not the other way around). In fact German was widely spoken in America until the World Wars.

I visited some cemeteries where my relatives were buried in southern Minnesota and almost all of the gravestones were "written" in German.  They all passed away in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Chris

[Avalanchez71]

True. Back in the 1800s a lot of immigrants in communities spoke their own native languages, although the Spanish speakers in the southwest were not really immigrants (the US came to them, not the other way around). In fact German was widely spoken in America until the World Wars.

I visited some cemeteries where my relatives were buried in southern Minnesota and almost all of the gravestones were "written" in German.  They all passed away in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Chris

By the time WWI hit they would have been looked at as potential spies.  Many had to quit speaking German so they were not suspected as being a spy or even a deafest.

[Roadgeekteen]

True. Back in the 1800s a lot of immigrants in communities spoke their own native languages, although the Spanish speakers in the southwest were not really immigrants (the US came to them, not the other way around). In fact German was widely spoken in America until the World Wars.

I visited some cemeteries where my relatives were buried in southern Minnesota and almost all of the gravestones were "written" in German.  They all passed away in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Chris

By the time WWI hit they would have been looked at as potential spies.  Many had to quit speaking German so they were not suspected as being a spy or even a deafest.

What is a deafest? Something to do with hearing?

[Avalanchez71]

True. Back in the 1800s a lot of immigrants in communities spoke their own native languages, although the Spanish speakers in the southwest were not really immigrants (the US came to them, not the other way around). In fact German was widely spoken in America until the World Wars.

I visited some cemeteries where my relatives were buried in southern Minnesota and almost all of the gravestones were "written" in German.  They all passed away in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Chris

By the time WWI hit they would have been looked at as potential spies.  Many had to quit speaking German so they were not suspected as being a spy or even a deafest.

What is a deafest? Something to do with hearing?

I though I typed defeatist.

Must have been some stupid auto non-correction.