Alright folks, when do you think Spanish will become our national language? Or, when do you think there will be enough support to make English the national language?

4/28/2006 3:31:21 PM

esperanto

4/28/2006 3:40:36 PM

Spanish will never be the national language. But as immigrants move in there could be shift in values, as has been experienced over the last 100 years, making it no longer reprehensible to make English the national language.

4/28/2006 3:46:20 PM

so many reprecussions (sp?) to this i doubt it will ever happen. (english that is.)

you have to do all sorts of stuff to make sure you can still educate deaf kids.
you have to make sure funding doesnt dissapear from esl programs.
im sure there are other stuff im missing.

i just dont see it happening anytime soon, but it could. i just doubt that it will

4/28/2006 3:55:19 PM

haha, just saw this

Sing the U.S. anthem in English only, Bush declares
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/28/bush.anthem.ap/index.html

4/28/2006 4:17:52 PM

having english as the national language just means that all business documents must be in english, nothing else.

4/29/2006 8:28:37 PM

no.
it doesnt.

4/29/2006 8:34:12 PM

holy crap... English isn't the national language?

4/29/2006 8:48:21 PM

Could we make Spanish and English both the national languages?

4/29/2006 10:00:35 PM

potentially.

i see that as being even less likely. (really going out on a limb im sure)

4/29/2006 10:03:37 PM

it is exponentially less likely that we would bypass having one official language to having two

it isn't that likely that we'll get english as a national language anytime soon, beaners have proven they'll march to defend their ability to do whatever it is beaners do

but its even less likely that we'll become a bilingual nation (officially)

4/29/2006 10:53:35 PM

Superman might be the dumbest soap box poster since Penzoate.

4/29/2006 10:54:33 PM

Quote :

"beaners have proven they'll march to defend their ability to do whatever it is beaners do"

public protests for rights?
how unamerican

4/29/2006 11:01:07 PM

uhm

the first protests were in response to the idea of making it a felony to be an illegal immigrant

PUBLIC PROTESTS TO FIGHT THE ENHANCEMENT AND ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS?
HOW BEANERISH

4/29/2006 11:04:40 PM

i hear the blacks did the same thing and now they are almost treated like equal citizens.

we need to stop this now

4/29/2006 11:06:30 PM

big difference between being born a different color

and

being born in a different country, and then taking an illegal route to enter another country

we can play this game all night, at some point you'll prolly give up though

any more dumb comparisons to make?

4/29/2006 11:29:26 PM

your dumb

4/29/2006 11:35:14 PM

His dumb what?

4/30/2006 12:07:31 AM

thats as "clever" as i could be.

im done now

4/30/2006 12:21:47 AM

clearly

and yes

my dumb what?

4/30/2006 1:21:47 AM

your dumb ass can shut the fuck up.


yeah that sucked. hence the "im done now", but that was a lie

4/30/2006 2:17:15 AM

Yea, Jose refused to move to the back of the bus.

4/30/2006 3:41:38 AM

Quote :

"no. it doesnt."

So what, out of curiosity, do you think making english the national language will do?

4/30/2006 10:16:11 AM

It means a lot more than just "business documents"

4/30/2006 11:31:53 AM

All government documents would have to be in english, and all government business would have to be conducted in english. All legal documents--contracts, wills, etc--would have to be in english.

I don't see how this would prevent educating deaf kids.
I don't see why funding would dissapear from ESL programs.

While a national language is not on my list of things that need fixing, I don't see how it's bad, evil, or part of Bush's oil-driven imperialism.

4/30/2006 12:36:10 PM

its not just government documents

EVERYTHING has to be in english. nothing in any school could be written in a foriegn language unless it was for a foriegn language class. it might not affect esl programs, but i know for a fact it will affect deaf kids because I was talking about all of this with a coworker whose mother is a teacher of deaf kids.

noone is saying its part of bush's imperialism, we are just saying its a bad idea.

4/30/2006 12:42:29 PM

I'd still like you to explain the deaf kid thing. Do you think the government would refuse to teach sign language or whatever to handicapped kids?

"EVERYTHING has to be in english..." How is that different from how public schools are taught now? Classes are taught in english, notes are given in english, and school books are written in english. You make it sound as if the language police will jail anyone overheard speaking, reading, or otherwise engaging in anything foreign language related.

A national language is the language required for government business and legal documents. As it stands now, enlgish is pretty much the de facto national language. You keep saying it's "a bad idea" to have a national language, but you haven't said why.

4/30/2006 12:58:15 PM

We haven't had a national language for over 200 years

shit ain't happening.

4/30/2006 2:10:02 PM

when you say "it has to be done in this language" you then have to write in exemptions for deaf kids. American Sign Language is not english. it is considered to be a seperate language, therefore these kids are being taught without using english. just a for instance, if you have ever seen the people doing sign language at any large function that would be disallowed, because english would be our national language so nothing else would be allowed.
this is just a small thing that could be worked around very easily, but how likely is it that a bill that says "english is the national language" will have rational exceptions?

4/30/2006 3:15:57 PM

We should make "American" our national language & not define it. Rather than a hats off to the Brits, we should call our version of English American. Leave it undefined or broadly defined so that it can include all accents (or maybe all languages) found in our melting pot. The brits would hate us if we acted like this was our own language that we came up with (or atleast perfected)
[/stupid, yet hopefully mildly funny idea]

4/30/2006 3:32:02 PM

^^^ I agree.

^^ uuuummmmmm, yeah. I don't think that you understand what a national language is. Having a national language doesn't mean that you can't speak another language. It doesn't mean that you can't use sign language. It doesn't mean that a Mexican family can't speak Spanish at home or in public. Having a national language means that government business, government documents, and legal documents will be done using a particular language. For example, French and English are the two official languages of Canada. That doesn't mean that you can't speak German there. It just means that government documents, etc are done in English and French as opposed to, say, Swahili, Icelandic or Klingon.

As for ASL, ever heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

4/30/2006 3:42:00 PM

Quote :

"when you say "it has to be done in this language" you then have to write in exemptions for deaf kids. American Sign Language is not english."

i think that when someone tries to write out sign language they'll figure out how retarded that was

4/30/2006 4:06:08 PM

maybe it means that all classes have to be conducted in English, which ASL is not

although I'm sure there will be an exception for classes at schools for deaf kids

4/30/2006 4:24:52 PM

they are pointing out that there already is an exception for deaf kids, its called the americans with disabilities act

they get translaters because they are disabled

i doubt you would be able to amend that act to cover people who speak another language

4/30/2006 4:28:29 PM

there is already and exemption for a national lanaguage

it's called the 1st amendment.

now move along and stop talking about a fucking pointless discussion.

4/30/2006 4:29:53 PM

true, and there is court precedence for that argument

4/30/2006 4:34:42 PM

Quote :

"It doesn't mean that a Mexican family can't speak Spanish at home or in public."

i never said that.

the point i was trying to make is that government documents and government business is a lot bigger than you think it is.
the american with disabilities act is a valid argument for the one specific example i have talked about.

4/30/2006 4:59:58 PM

Ok ok, regardless of how much damage you dispute would occur, would someone tell me why we need to make english the national language? What's wrong with everyone just using English because they feel like it?

4/30/2006 9:35:26 PM

I believe that the major reason is for cost and ease. Countries like the old USSR or China which are comprised of various countries/republics/ethnic groups without a common language, define a common language to make things easy and cheap. There is no need to produce 10's of translations for every government document, and hire thousands of people to serve as translators just so various parts of the government can talk to each other.

This doesn't really apply to the United States, where everybody pretty much speaks English anyways. I don't think that we need a national language, I'm just trying to figure out why RevoltNow thinks it would be sooooooooo bad.

4/30/2006 10:59:10 PM

http://www.boredmuch.com/view.php?id=200

click (safe for work, unless people are really sensitive to immigration issues where you work)

4/30/2006 11:05:35 PM

^^ Here's a thought. Because once we declare english the national language, all the little lingual groups will demand we write in exceptions for them... Eventually, we are releasing government documents not just in english but in Spanish AND French.

People find it more difficult to fight against an unspoken rule. "It was published in English because the guy writting it only spoke English" is more justifiably on moral grounds than "It was published in English because the law says governmental activities must be performed in English" The latter sounds unfair, almost like an institutional disenfranchisement of non-English speakers. Conversely, the former is logical.

This is before anyone mentions the cultural aspects of forced assimilation, such as this would represent. It turns out immigrants from all over the world to the United States fall over themselves learning English. Often the second generation has gone so far as to abandon their grandparents native language. The same cannot be said of immigrants to Canada and Europe, both of which have declared national languages as well as other institutional requirements for "assimilation." It turns out that immigrants are sometimes like teenagers, if you make them do it they will resist you, fearing forcibly being stripped of their heritage, but left to their own devices they will come to the socially optimal decision to assimilate.

4/30/2006 11:24:35 PM

no pienso que le hara

4/30/2006 11:42:14 PM

i'm sitting here, trying to think of a reason why Superman would force a national language on America, the melting pot of the world

then i remembered that the real Superman, a superhuman alien of enormous strength (who adopted America as his homeland), who knows all of the languages of the planet, isn't real

4/30/2006 11:48:25 PM

^^I don't think that (s)he will do/make her/him?

Maybe you meant lo hará

5/1/2006 7:42:25 AM

yea, sorry, that is what I meant, I had already taken my ambien for the night, and it was making me cloudy-headed.

5/1/2006 3:57:51 PM

very soon the pure white people will no longer exist

5/1/2006 3:58:51 PM

EDOMITES FOR ERRYBODY

5/1/2006 4:41:52 PM

English all the way

if you can't speak or read it, too bad, deal

learn it you lazy wetbacks

5/2/2006 1:14:29 AM

http://www.wral.com/politics/9238008/detail.html

Quote :

"The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to make English the national language of the United States. Sort of. It first voted 63-34 to establish English as the national language of the United States. A few moments later, it voted 58-39 to call English a "common and unifying language." Both were added to the immigration bill that is being crafted by the Senate. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who supports "national" but not "common and unifying," complained that his colleagues were trying to "have it both ways." The bill already requires illegal immigrants to learn English as a condition of earning legal permanent residency, a step toward citizenship. The debate occurred as the White House sent Congress a formal request for $1.9 billion to cover the costs of steps on immigration that President George W. Bush announced earlier in the week. Bush is requesting funds to pay for 1,000 new border agents, as well as the cost of fences and surveillance aircraft. It would also help cover the cost of deploying National Guard troops along the border."

Sorry if this is old news.

5/19/2006 7:22:23 AM

Wha? That isn't going to stay, right?

5/19/2006 8:36:57 AM