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“Why Aren’t You Speaking English?”

mike2810 said:
thank you.
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De nada.

Why do you want a law that states english is offical language in the US. Why did you learn french when you went to france?
Common respect. Seems you have little.
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You just contradicted yourself. The fact that I spoke French in France shows that I do, in fact, have "common respect". Try again.
 
theplaydrive said:
1. He can speak English, he chose not to because he didn't feel comfortable.
2. The highlighted part is my main point - the outrage and applauding just seems so stupid to me.
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Ah, my mistake. Then it's even stupider than what I first thought.
 
katiegrrl0 said:
Hispanic Americans: Census Facts — Infoplease.com

According to that link Since the 1990's the Spanish speaking population has more than doubled. If more people are speaking Spanish and there is more accommodation for that, people are less likely to learn English. If there was no need to do so why would you? They can function in the neighborhoods easily. When you consider Texas, California, and Arizona which are nearing the 50% mark how much English do the Hispanics have to know. Some schools teach in Spanish. The language will become more prevalent over time. I don't think it will pass English any time soon but it is something that English speaking Americans will have to come to terms with.
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I never said they don't speak Spanish. I just said they also speak English. Which means this is a non-issue, in the same way that everyone in my grandmother's town can still speak Italian but they also speak English is a non-issue.
 
theplaydrive said:
Great. Again, we don't have an official language here, he can speak whatever language he wants.
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He can speak another language even if we had an official language. Your premise is complete bull****, and off the mark besides. He should be speaking english. When my father came here in 1955, he spoke no English, but he damn well learned it in order to work here. He would never have thought to speak German in a hearing like this. Your sympathy and politics are wholely misguided.
 
Personally, I think we should make an effort to unify the language in this country for its practical benefits. It makes it easier to conduct commerce, it helps with social discourse, and its reduces expenses to society over supporting multiple languages.

I would have no issues with making it a requirement to learn at least basic (4th grade level) american english as a requirement to move from legal resident to citizen.
 
American said:
He can speak another language even if we had an official language. Your premise is complete bull****, and off the mark besides. He should be speaking english. When my father came here in 1955, he spoke no English, but he damn well learned it in order to work here. He would never have thought to speak German in a hearing like this. Your sympathy and politics are wholely misguided.
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Thank you for your opinion. I respectfully disagree. (Although I do agree that learning English is practical.)
 
it boils down to this:

If you are addressing an assembly and you speak their language, it is rude NOT to speak their language to them.
 
OscarB63 said:
it boils down to this:

If you are addressing an assembly and you speak their language, it is rude NOT to speak their language to them.
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Which is why he had a translator.
 
MistressNomad said:
I was talking about the fact that English is the official language in Florida. I am well aware it is not nationally (although it is in the majority of states).

When I pointed this out, he said people can still speak what they like, we need to get with the times, Spanish rules in Florida, etc. This shows that he doesn't support the contingents of his own argument. which is that speaking only Spanish is ok because English is not the official language. But it is official in Florida, and he pretty much ignored that.

Please read all of the correspondence...
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It is 27 states. Those states that have that law can certainly enforce it. But when the Spanish speaking population of these 16 states is growing faster than the national average how foolish it is to enforce those laws. Some of those states are much higher than the national average. Florida is one of them. It is not going to happen where all Americans will speak English. There will come a time where both languages will be needed. In much of Europe people speak any number of languages. The US falls far behind in people with multilingual skills.

16
The number of states with at least a half-million Hispanic residents–Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
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American said:
He can speak another language even if we had an official language. Your premise is complete bull****, and off the mark besides. He should be speaking english. When my father came here in 1955, he spoke no English, but he damn well learned it in order to work here. He would never have thought to speak German in a hearing like this. Your sympathy and politics are wholely misguided.
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Personally, I think it would be a good thing for everyone to learn English, including immigrants. But if he's managed to function this far without being able to speak English particularly well, I don't know why we should be angry at him. If he feels more comfortable speaking Spanish to get his point across, then he should be allowed to speak Spanish. Why the unnecessary outrage?
 
Erod said:
What a load of BS.

This was a formal hearing, and the language of this country and the people in that room is English. How are these state senators supposed to address his issues if he won't communicate in their language?

Do we need to have 150 translators in the room in case someone comes in speaking some 4th dialect of a Tanzanian tribe?
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You can show me where in the constitution it says the language of the US is English exclusively?
 
theplaydrive said:
Wait, does Texas have an official language...where this incident took place? No, no it doesn't. The official language in Florida was a separate point that had nothing to do with my original argument, if you read our conversation well, you'll get that.
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I wasn't talking about Texas. What the hell.

I was pointing out that your argument is inconsistent. You brought up Florida, not me.

And once again, your post above this one warrants no response. You're arguing in circles against the notion, not the fact. If the argument you originally presented was true to what you really believed, then you should think this is wrong, since Florida has an official language and it's not Spanish. So you've basically just proved yourself to be intellectually dishonest, despite all your clever clipping to show the contrary.
 
OscarB63 said:
sorry, but I get "insulted" when people do pointless, stupid stuff. :shrug:
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Like make a big deal out of what language some one is speaking?
 
katiegrrl0 said:
It is 27 states. Those states that have that law can certainly enforce it. But when the Spanish speaking population of these 16 states is growing faster than the national average how foolish it is to enforce those laws. Some of those states are much higher than the national average. Florida is one of them. It is not going to happen where all Americans will speak English. There will come a time where both languages will be needed. In much of Europe people speak any number of languages. The US falls far behind in people with multilingual skills.
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That has nothing to do with how many of them are official. It has to do with education - Europe values being culturally literate and teaches their students accordingly. They should. But it has nothing to do with necessity or the law.
 
I just thought of another good reason to support a national language. Having different groups speaking different languages with no primary motivation to learn whatever the unified language of the country is promotes regionalism or the community over the country as a whole, making our population even more factional (which even further complicates politics)
 
katiegrrl0 said:
Hispanic Americans: Census Facts — Infoplease.com

According to that link Since the 1990's the Spanish speaking population has more than doubled. If more people are speaking Spanish and there is more accommodation for that, people are less likely to learn English. If there was no need to do so why would you? They can function in the neighborhoods easily. When you consider Texas, California, and Arizona which are nearing the 50% mark how much English do the Hispanics have to know. Some schools teach in Spanish. The language will become more prevalent over time. I don't think it will pass English any time soon but it is something that English speaking Americans will have to come to terms with.
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I never said they don't speak Spanish. I just said they also speak English. Which means this is a non-issue, in the same way that everyone in my grandmother's town can still speak Italian but they also speak English is a non-issue.
 
MistressNomad said:
I never said they don't speak Spanish. I just said they also speak English. Which means this is a non-issue, in the same way that everyone in my grandmother's town can still speak Italian but they also speak English is a non-issue.
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That is probably true but more and more as time passes Hispanics will not need to speak or learn English at all. You mentioned Florida as having English as the official language. I understand that there voters ballets are printed in both Spanish and English. That is pretty funny considering they thing their official language is English.
It is one thing to be able to speak a language but to function fully as in reading and writing that number would be well below those that speak both. To enforce English as official would then wipe Spanish from ballets and so on. That would make many of these people functionally illiterate.
 
I would just be pissed at the guy for wasting my time. why should I have to listen to him tell me something in spanish and then wait for the translator to say it again in english, when he could just tell me in english to begin with?

rude.
 
MistressNomad said:
I wasn't talking about Texas. What the hell.

I was pointing out that your argument is inconsistent. You brought up Florida, not me.

And once again, your post above this one warrants no response. You're arguing in circles against the notion, not the fact. If the argument you originally presented was true to what you really believed, then you should think this is wrong, since Florida has an official language and it's not Spanish. So you've basically just proved yourself to be intellectually dishonest, despite all your clever clipping to show the contrary.
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Texas is where this situation, the topic of this thread occurred - so your point about "official language" has no bearing on the specific situation I'm talking about. What the hell indeed.

Again, if you look back at our conversation and actually read it this time, you'll realize the Florida comment was a response to a strawman comment you made about the US in general.

MistressNomad said:
If there was a large population of solely Spanish-speaking people you might have a point, but there really isn't. Even in Tucson most of the Mexicans speak English.
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Also, it's too bad you think I'm being dishonest, that's not my intention at all.
 
tessaesque said:
40 million of 300 million isn't "catching up", it's just a significant minority. Just sayin'.
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The two are not mutually exclusive. A larger portion of the country now speaks spanish that a few years ago. That is catching up.
 
megaprogman said:
Personally, I think we should make an effort to unify the language in this country for its practical benefits. It makes it easier to conduct commerce, it helps with social discourse, and its reduces expenses to society over supporting multiple languages.

I would have no issues with making it a requirement to learn at least basic (4th grade level) american english as a requirement to move from legal resident to citizen.
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That would mean that you would have to see that every citizen does speak, read, and write in the official language. You might find that a challenge as education in those skills would have to be provide free of charge for all of those people.
 
Redress said:
You can show me where in the constitution it says the language of the US is English exclusively?
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IMO There never was a deliberate decision against making English the official language of the United States. With English as the language of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the vast majority of the population, a declaration of English as our official language may have seemed superfluous. Quite simply, it may not have occurred to them to do so.
 
OscarB63 said:
which he did NOT need.....since he speaks english. hence the rude bit.
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Not that rude. He was speaking at an important event and his first language is Spanish - he wanted to get his point across as well as possible.
 
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