English As America's Official Language
Shay
I just wanted to comment on the U.S. Senate's approval on Thursday to make English the official language of the United States for federal services. It now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives to work out differences in the proposal. I say it's a good move by the U.S. Senate, and long overdue. I wouldn't emigrate to, say, Japan, and then arrogantly expect to be catered to in English. I'd work hard to learn Japanese. Too bad the U.S. Senate killed the amendment opposing amnesty-in-thin-disguise for illegal immigrants though, on Wednesday.
I mention this because there have been states within the union which were officially bilingual; Louisiana was once officially French and English, and Pennsylvania was once officially Dutch and English, and neither gave up their second languages until the 20th century if I recall right (I know Pennsylvania didn't drop Dutch as an official state language until the 1950s or so).
I can see some state like California, in reaction to the Federal government, declaring that English and Spanish are the official two languages of California. Then the whole country's in an uproar trying to accomodate California, just like all of Canada bends over backwards to accomodate Quebec.
And it's just the sort of thing Californians would do, too.
Wikipedia article
As you may recall many of the "original" immigrants to what would become the USA were German and it seems many of them settled in Pennsylvania. I believe when it came time to decide what language would be spoken, German only lost out in second place by a small margin. Although, American history is not my strong subject.
Most interesting is that without exception prospective Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 voted against the measure. There was one Republican vote against the measure: Domenici (R-NM) and I presume that local political triangulation influenced that vote.
Depends. The Tenth Amendment is an all-or-nothing rule. If you think that Congress has no power to declare English the language of the U.S., then your argument is that Congress has exceeded its enumerated powers, and the bill is unconstitutional whether it preempts state law or not. Conversely, if you think Congress has that power, as I'm tempted to argue it does, then the Supremacy Clause clearly allows the federal law to trump state law, and the Tenth Amendment will play no role in the analysis whatsoever. In that case, it's just a question of interpretation; was the law intended to preempt inconsistent state laws.
Nobody gave her a break, and the kinds of jobs was able to get until she actually learned how to communicate in Chicagoese, involved slinging hash at this greasy spoon. Including one run by an immigrant Greek who cheated on her wages, until I called the bastard one day and threated to bring the law down on his ass. (He paid her what she was due, without further bullshit..)
And the both of us spent a couple of years or so in Europe and the Middle East. We weren't travelling like rich tourists, so we had to learn how to shop for groceries and stuff the way the people of Israel, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria and Portugal do it. One when we in Croatia, with her family, did we have any kind of linguistic and familial social cushion.
So let these mexican folks show us all how bright they are in learning English. It's not much. It's bastardized German, Danish, Norman French, Latin, and a little of this and that from maybe dozens of other languages. But it's ours, and that's all anybody needs to know.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The Pennsylvania Dutch were Germans. You know, those low-down,... ;)
Ah, for the time when each colony loathed the others. Good times, good times!
Of course, my dad went to school in Saginaw, and the farm kids bussed in from the outlying villges, some spoke German in the home, and even had a slight accent. Funny how seventy years pass in this land and things change so dramatically.
The tenth amendment is remarkably flexible when Federal funds are involved.
Maybe you should spend some time here in Los Angeles before you make a statement like that.
It's extremely frustrating when you are searching for something then get distracted by attempting to discern whether what you are reading is information you understand or not.
In Japan it was easier to either "tune-out" the Japanese characters and kana or tune them in.
Lots of countries have more than one language in common use by a substantial minority of the population. In Spain, 7 million people speak Catalan or Valencian (languages so related that they are considered dialects). Another three million speak Galician, which is more like Portuguese than Castillian Spanish -- which is only spoken by about 75% of Spain's population, by the way. Then there are Basque, Asturian, and Extremaduran, which boast between 200,000 and 600,000 speakers. In Germany, there are ten million people who can understand Low Saxon (though few speakers) and two million who speak Upper Saxon. In France you get Auvergnat, Breton, Corsican, and others, plus spillovers from Germany and Spain (Alemannisch and Catalan). There are one million Italian speakers in France. Then of course in the British Isles you've got your Scots and Gaelic -- as much as 30% of the population of Scotland speaks Scots. And of course, there's Canada.
These countries do not seem to have much trouble standing.
I don't really understand why Americans feel so threatened by Spanish. It's an easy language to learn (much, much easier than English), often beautiful, fun to speak once you get the hang of the Rs the Ts and catch the rhythm, and it has quite a rich literary history. The southwestern United States and Florida are full of Spanish place names that are quite fun to know the meanings of (e.g. Boca Raton = Mouse Mouth) and that evidence the intermingling of the Spanish language with the United States throughout its history. Why are people forgetting that? There's nothing wrong with Spanish and there's certainly nothing wrong with a little Spanish being spoken in the United States, either. Remember that the next time you order a Disney movie on DVD from "Buena Vista" ("Good View") Home Entertainment. It doesn't get much more American than Disney, does it?
More than flexible; try irrelevant. The Tenth Amenmdent only prohibits Congress from exceeding its enumerated powers, and courts have ruled that the tax and spend power is a separate, enumerated power of Congress. Thus, if federal funds are involved there is no Tenth Amendment issue, period.
Humanitarian exceptions should be made for criminal proceedings and medical care. So-called bilingual education is a crock designed to frustrate assimilation.
Here's what it comes down to, anc you can call it racist if you want to, but it isn't:
It's our damned country, that's why.
I have nothing against immigration -- Spanish or otherwise -- but part of becoming an American is learning English, just like every other immigrant before them. That's part of cultural assimilation, and cultural assimilation is especially important here in the States because we don't want to end up like France.
Amercians are generally very open and happy to have immigrants here... as long as they learn to speak the language and don't expect US to adjust to THEM.
Get it?
In spite of this, the driver’s license test and ballot pamphlets, which explain all the propositions on the ballot every year, are available in ten or more languages. Making English the official language, doesn’t forbid people to speak other languages.
What I think is driving this issue, is that Hispanics, whether legal or illegal, are starting to spread beyond the border states and the east and west coast. They are starting to move into large and medium size communities in the Midwest and South. Suddenly, people who have lived in communities were everyone spoke English all their lives are starting to hear people speaking Spanish at the supermarket or mall. That is what has made illegal aliens suddenly a big crises and what drives the English as an official language movement.
Where do you live?
It is quite possible to live a lifetime in this country without being able to read, write or speak English.
It's easier in some places than others (California, Texas and Florida come to mind) but the phenomenon is not limited to those states.
A better question would be why Mexican immigrants (among others) are so threatened by English. After all, they're demanding to live in our country, not the other way around.