Welcome to america

[Vonderbach]

didn't you just argue that the constitution does not allow the gov. to mandate a national language??

and wouldn't excluding people based on thier language be a another form of discrimination?

Apples -vs- Oranges (States rights -vs- Federal Government)

Nobody is excluding anyone by designating an official state language. Last I checked nobody has interpreters on staff for every language spoken. If you speak Russian, Mandarin or Arabic, you're going to need to learn English to interact with our government. Are you claiming that these people are being discriminated against?

 

[afterhours]

Apples -vs- Oranges (States rights -vs- Federal Government)

Nobody is excluding anyone by designating an official state language. Last I checked nobody has interpreters on staff for every language spoken. If you speak Russian, Mandarin or Arabic, you're going to need to learn English to interact with our government. Are you claiming that these people are being discriminated against?

actually you are incorrect...

State and Federal governments do employ interpretors so that people can interact with the gov.


that you believe a state has the right to mandate an official language is irrelevant, as i do not know of any state that has.

so write a letter to your state rep. and get it done.


this would bring up another issue, because you would then be discriminating against US citizens living in your state if they cannot access services due to a language barrier...

 

[Vonderbach]

actually you are incorrect...

State and Federal governments do employ interpretors so that people can interact with the gov.

Employing "some" interpreters and employing interpreters for every language are two very different things. There is not Constitutional guarantee of interpretation at any level of government. Do you believe that every state government employs a Samoan interpeter? Icelandic? Fijian? We only provide interpretation as a convenience.

that you believe a state has the right to mandate an official language is irrelevant, as i do not know of any state that has.

so write a letter to your state rep. and get it done.

I thought we were discussing the merits or demerits of such a measure, not whether or not it was being considered.

this would bring up another issue, because you would then be discriminating against US citizens living in your state if they cannot access services due to a language barrier...

I'll be honest, I did a bit of research on this and found that some jurisdictions have special laws to this effect, but there is no national legal foundation for the case of discrimination based on language spoken...as far as I can find. There is one thing for certain, the Constitution does not "mandate" that we communicate in any language. And frankly, that's the crux of the issue...it's a state's right to choose and determine their language of choice, should they wish to do so.

 

[Blanca BusaLess]

Depends on which state you live in. My mother in law just took her test in Spanish here in SoFla.
I remember in CT my Uncle made an appt to take his and they had an Arabic interpretor there for him.
My wife studied english for 8yrs to understand it and studied again many hours a week at home and at the local comm college so she could take it in english. It was one of the happiest days in her life as well as mine. We studied so hard and the lady working there was so kind cuz I kept wanting to help Jerry with the answers but the lady slowed down and asked my wife all the questions in english and she was answered in english.
Passed it first time......

ps.....a Linguist usually specializes in regions and can speak more than one lang sometimes.
The more you speak, the more you make. A freind of mines father worked at the UN when I lived in CT and he spoke like 8 langs.
The were dutch and super smart...

 

[afterhours]

the problem we have here is this.....

the "this is america, speak english" group like to ignore the fact there is not national language, they ignore that nobody ever decides to make a law that states english as an official language. we as a country are nearing 250 years of exhistance w/o english as an official language. we have gone from a poor collection of english colonies to the ultimate world power.....

all without a national or official language.

"this is america, speak english" is a thinly veiled racist remark, we have a history of scapegoating descriminating in this country and this is the popular one today.

 

[Dino]

No doubt, I agree. I have even considered marketing to Spanish speakers. But I will never make my English speakers jump through hoops to speak their native language. At the very worst I would do one of those rapid speech greetings that asks Spanish speakers to press one.

However, mandating a government language preference would force many to learn the language. As it stands today, our government enables ignorance of the English language.

Being asked to Press 1 is jumping through hoops?

 

[Vonderbach]

"this is america, speak english" is a thinly veiled racist remark, we have a history of scapegoating descriminating in this country and this is the popular one today.

How is it racist? Language is not determined by ethnicity. If anything it's a mild form of Xenophobia. Even so, asking someone to respect the commonly spoken language is not much to ask. I for one would like to see it as a prerequisite for visa's and naturalization. The Federal Government does have the authority to control the borders, hence they have the power to mandate English as a requisite for entry. I for one would vote for this measure in a heartbeat.

Being asked to Press 1 is jumping through hoops?

Absolutely. But then again so is any other "press # for XYZ department." To be honest, it's the people the directly answer the phones that you never even think about. The ones that predicate their machine with "press 1 for English" are normally setting you up for a barrage of automated questions anyway.