[PRCo] Re: PRCo] Re: Europa (Foreign Languages)

[Fred Schneider]

What I should have said is approaching 1 in 5 don't speak English in  
the home.

Interesting that you can have a state constitution that supersedes  
the U. S. constitution which has no national language!   The U. S.  
Supreme Court has long since turned thumbs down on that issue.   What  
is are those 'important early documents' in English?   Because the  
people who wrote them were English and that's because they were the  
first arrivals.   Had they been written early on in New York (or New  
Amsterdam, they might have been in Dutch.

Single languages, in my mind, usually are the result of fear that you  
are doing something I don't like so I will intimidate you into  
learning my language or I'll break my part of the country away.   I  
listened to an item on NPR last night or the night before on an  
attempt to break Belgium apart into two nations, one speaking French  
and the other Flemish.

And then we have 12 million people in Quebec and some others in New  
Brunswick and Nova Scotia who would like to break away from Canada.    
And if they do, then there is another group of Canadians in the  
prairie provinces who think more like the USA to the south.   Crazy,  
isn't it.

Next there's a chunk of Italy which is the Süd Tirol, which was a  
part of Austria until the armistice after World War I gave it to  
Italy.   To this day German is taught in their schools.   Ninety- 
eight or Ninety-nine percent of those people speak German but it's in  
Italy.   Makes about as much sense in Italy as Point Roberts,  
Washington does in Canada.   Different tax collector.

I think that, in the past, the largest chunk of people in the U. S.  
that spoke a second language were German immigrants including my  
ancestors.   I'm aware that my mother's parents were mixed Irish and  
German, so that's when the language changed.   The great grandparents  
in Pittsburgh were both German and, in spite of what my bigoted  
cousin wants to believe, her and my great grandfather lived in the  
Point downtown surrounded by other Germans because he could make a  
living as a tailor in that language.    The hell with speaking  
English.   And my dad's parents spoke German at least in a German  
Methodist church until World War I when they were so intimidated by  
antiwar sentiments and hatred for the Kaiser that they knew better  
than to speak any English.   And they weren't alone.   At that point  
in our history we even renamed streets all over the country ...  
Prussian Street in Lancaster became Howard St., Prussian in Manheim,  
PA became Main St.

And today we have a big chunk of people who speak Spanish and always  
will and no matter what legislation we want to pass, we're not going  
to change that.   Let's start, Bob, with 3.8 million people, U. S.  
citizens, who live in Puerto Rico.  Most of them were born there.    
They have U. S. birth certificates and U. S. passports.   The U. S.  
postal service serves the island.   Puerto Rico has a higher  
representation in the military in Desert Storm on a per capita basis  
than any of the 50 states.   There are probably another 5 million  
former Puerto Ricans living in the continental United States.   Let  
me remind you that Puerto Rico was captured in the Spanish American  
War and when you take another country, you inherit certain issues you  
may not want down the road.   Just ask our friends in the U. K. about  
Israel or India or South Africa or Rhodesia the Suez or Jamaica or  
this little conquest they had with the United States up through 1812.

Now how is it that Switzerland can have four national languages and  
they all get along?   Probably because of a policy that says that  
membership in the Canton comes before membership in the Nation.   The  
Canton can be Italian speaking or German speaking or French speaking  
or Romanch speaking, and it's the national parliament's problem to  
make it all work.   Maybe if we had a system that said if you were a  
citizen of Los Angeles first, and then California and then the U. S.  
A., we could make multiple languages work too?   Just a question, not  
an answer.

I'm too old to be dumb enough to know I have all the answers.

On Nov 9, 2007, at 4:30 PM, robert simpson wrote:

> Don't want to start a firestorm and NO, this is not personal, but.....
>
>   Just wondering why 1 in every 5 U. S. citizens don't speak  
> English?  This number seems much too high and implies that they  
> only speak Spanish - and not German, Tagalog, Chinese, French,  
> Vietnamese, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, Russian,  
> Arabic, Indian, Korean, etc, etc.  Does this imply that these  
> immigrants should also learn Spanish in addition to English plus  
> their native language?    Even most (not all) illegal aliens speak  
> at least basic, rudimentary English.  Immigration laws, last time I  
> checked, still require basic English as a requirement with certain  
> waivers for the infirm and the aged.
>
>   When I lived in Germany, I learned to speak German,  when I  
> traveled to France, I learned to speak at least basic French  
> (enough to travel, get meals, directions, lodging, etc).,  when I  
> traveled to Russia, I learned very basic Russian (with great  
> difficulty because of the Cyrillic alphabet).   Unfortunately, I  
> have all bot forgotten these languages because because I returned  
> home to America - where English is our language.  Remember the old  
> phrase... "...when in Rome, do as the Romans..."??  Wonder why our  
> Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights,  
> Mayflower Compact, etc. are in English?
>
>   Seems it would be easier for the non-English speaking people  
> (mentioned as being possibly 20% of the population) learn to speak  
> English rather than make 80% of the population attempt to learn a  
> foreign language - presumably Spanish.  Who would benefit from this  
> new language requirement?  Certainly not the English speaking  
> majority.  Lest we forget, our Northern neighbor, Canada, has a  
> significant French speaking population in Quebec.
>
>   I know, I know - this is politically incorrect in the extreme.
>
>   Bob
>   from Krazy Kalifornia - where English is the Official Language  
> according to the State Constitution since at least 1986.  See:     
> http://tinyurl.com/hmm72
>
>
>
>
> What is important here? Spanish is important because 1 in every 5
> U. S. citizens speaks it in the home or will shortly. We should all
> bite that bullet and be bilingual and quit arguing about whose
> culture is ruined by learning a second language.
>
>
>
>