official US langauge

[MAGGIO]

let me preface this with a few things.

Im not perfect. I am ingnorant when it comes to some things like exact history and facts, but I am pretty knowledgable on most subjects.

I am white. I live in a larger city, but not close to the biggest. Annapolis, MD the capital of Maryland between Baltimore, and Wash DC about a 20 min drive each way.

My Topic.

It burns me up when people talk about how english is the only acceptable langauge in the US. I think this is the land of the free, and majority rules to an extent. This suject always seems to be brought up by "white people".

What is wrong with us. A crap load of the people in the US are not white yet we take a crap on every little thing from tradition, heritage, and langauge of other races.

My son is in fourth grade, and everythign that comes home is in both english and spanish. Apparently there are enough hispanic population that the state board of eductation thought they should use both.

When you go to the store you see quite a few products with both english, spanish and sometimes even more langauges. I guess big corp america thinks there is enough other races to take money from.

THIS IS NOT AN immagration thread, but someone just said that illegal aliens dont pay taxes blah blah, but they still buy products from stores in the US which have to pay sales tax, which have employees and products from manufactures, so they do support the US economy, just not as much as say me. Surely they save money better according to most because they send it to their families abroad...maybe we should take a lesson from that, and not over spend and buy more than we can pay for on credit.

YOu know when the white man landed on north america they were not the first here, but as their population grew english naturally became the first lang.

Now we see other populations grow and second and third etc...lang start to emerge everywhere....why are we so pissed about it.

Why must we force ourselves on others like we did with the indians. Maybe we should adjust to our surrounding in the country we created that is supposed to be free. If you dont like not knowing what others are talking about maybe you should learn another lang. I know that sounds like a pain, but your not going to commit a genocide against all the spanish, chineses and other people that live with us now, so maybe we should be the ones making an adjustment, and stop complaining.

Maybe i am dead wrong, maybe it is because I dont live in a small town, with 90+% white people and I am not a "real american" according to Palin...JK....but seriously.

Let me postface this with a few things.

Im not talking about you specifically just because your white. I not talking about everyone, I am not rascist towards white people as I am one. I sware I like Rock and Roll too. I am just trying to understand.

[Will]

Shouldn't this be in GD?

[MAGGIO]

Shouldn't this be in GD?

LOL my bad total accident.

[Divine Intervention]

we were kind enough to let you guys pretend to run your own country when George III gave you control (in reality nowadays the President still answers to HM Queen Elizabeth II...behind the scenes of course), the least you can do is speak our language in your US of A. or w/e vile deformation you have going on of it over there. ¿Comprende señor?

jokes reply btw

[Will]

At most you can run a country with two, maybe 3 "official" languages, particularly one the size of the US. Catering to every individual language would be a nightmare, and since English is dominant that tends to be viewed as the official language.

As far as disparaging culture goes, from my knowledge it is white history and culture that is usually attacked in the US (and here in the UK) The founding fathers are called backwards, racist old white men, and many would like to hold up for example Martin Luther King as someone who should be considered their equal, despite a number of facts (rarely if at all mentioned) that destroy his credibility.

In the UK there are street signs in some cities in languages like Urdu (Pakistani) which to some is a sign of progress and tolerance, whilst to others (myself among them) this is little more than cultural imperialism. The difference is that while English in the USA was the language of it's founders, Urdu certainly was not the language of the English (or Scottish or Welsh for that matter)

The indians may have lived there before whites arrived, but they did not found the USA. In fact many indian tribes aided the British Government during the revolutionary war because they realised that without the Crown to act as a check on the impulses of the settlers, they would be doomed.

[Tnova]

The constitution of the United States was written in English. So i don't think it is a stretch to say that English should be the only "official" language. There will always be a minority, in a land of immigrants, and you can't cater to everyone.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be bilingual. I think it is good for everyone to learn other languages. Its a shame that I spent quite a few years of my high school learning and becoming fluent in Spanish. But the truth of the matter is there just weren't enough people around me who speak it where I could practice it. So basically all I learned is lost. It would be different in California, Texas, or Florida where there are heavy Hispanic communities. But the truth of the matter for a large part of the United States the Hispanic Community is no larger then another group, for example the Korean community in my area.

And this issue makes you mad? :) Lets not stress about the little things ;)

[MAGGIO]

im not mad that english is the prominant lang. I am upset when some people say things i consider rascist that bash people that dont speak english. I have heard that it is one of the hardest to learn. I dont think it is right to take a crap on hispanics because they speak spanish as their primary lang even though they live inthe US. or when some look down on hispanics who when trying to speak english it comes out badly. IE the drive through. If we didnt look down on them so much maybe they could get better jobs as a majority.

in favor of this community i dont see if very often esp..when someone like skycat gets on here adn you can barely understand what he is typing. no one seems to point out his errors... thats really cool. we, including myself used to pick on Shiva and Crazyeyes when they couldnt speak eng. in the WOW community.

[tippysmurf]

i see no issue with spanish as long as we annex mexico.

[Hoebawt]

You should travel to the north east so u can see that the Hispanic Communities there are just as big as the ones in Texas Florida and Cali

[Green]

If I ever go to Germany, I will demand everyone to speak my language.

[Tnova]

Maggio, people are crappy, there will always be people who look down on other people. If it isn't language, it's because they are fat, or because the smell weird. Or because they have a ritual that involves cutting the neck off a chicken and drinking the blood.

My points are human beings are judgmental. People never see themselves as being judgmental at the time, only what they perceive as offensive to them. Kind of like how you talked about how you looked or treated shiva for poor English in the past.

I know I'm taking this in the broader context. But I think it applies to every situation. Instances like Racism, sexism, nationalism, and any other prejudices people have.

It has nothing to do with why English shouldn't be the only official language of the United States in my opinion.

[esco]

This shouldn't even be a real topic for debate if people had a working knowledge of history and some common sense. What does history show us? Most groups tend to assimilate to the dominate culture completely in about 3 generations or less by my estimates and I'm not a genius. Take the german, italian, and others that came before... have those cultures or languages overtaken english and the "American" way? No they have not their all english speaking Americans and some are even anti immigration :rolleyes:
A more recent example would be my family and all those in my area. My family are immigrants and I'm first generation and so are many of the people I know are too. We are all fluent in both english and spanish and are entrenched in American culture. I know others who have arrived here for a few years and can speak english fine (of course they have a strong accent). I doubt this goes only to the Hispanic community but all other non-english speaking communities: We're not stupid, we know we need to speak english to succeed. Just give it a few years and most will be speaking better english than spanish... hell I speak, write, and read better english than I do spanish. My younger brother and cousins all speak with bad spanish already. Just tell your white friends that in a few years we'll be drinking beer and having a barbecue complaining about the **** Chinese stealing our jobs.

[MAGGIO]

thanks for that post esco, im glad to here something from your perspective.

[Shabaz K]

in Canada is english adn French, but that can cahnge becuae the popultion od mandrid speaking are is rising and haveing more influence.