I got what appears to be a Clinton appointee to The President's Interagency Group on Puerto Rico as a commentor to the Huffington Post version of this article.

It's the fourth comment down.

Sorry to beat my own drum, as it were, but he's the highest ranking commentor I've ever gotten, and he has some interesting information.

-CW

Now yer just teasing... :D

Michale.....

[Actually, two. That should read "historical titbit"... American spelling was bowdlerized due to Puritanism around 100 years ago.]

But what I really wanted to say was: the Founding Fathers considered having a "National Language" -- but it would have been German. That's right. Much as President Bush came into office determined to do everything 180 degrees the opposite of what Clinton had done, the FF wanted to totally break away from England in a big way, and breaking away from the language was one thing they considered. At the time, German was the biggest "second language" in America (lots of Pennsylvania Dutch, who really aren't "Dutch" but "Deutsch," or "German"), and most people with a higher education already spoke it.

So be glad they decided not to have a national language, otherwise we'd all be debating this issue in German!

Come to think of it, we'd still be making fun of Schwartzenegger for his Austrian accent, but only because it was different from our "American German" accent.

Achtung!

-CW

Where do you stop??

If you have things printed in Spanish, then the Chinese immigrants are going to want things printed in Chinese. And, since the Chinese are getting their way, of course the Norwegians are going to DEMAND that things be printed THEIR way... And, since the Norwegians got their print, the Upper Moldavians are, of course, going to have to have things printed in THEIR language. And, not to be outdone by the Upper Moldavians, the Klingons are going to have to have things in Klin'zhai or else blood will be spilled. And, once the Klingons get their way, of course, the Rihannsu are going to.... and so on and so on ad nauseum..

And, since the US does that in PRINT for all, then, of course, it stands to reason that we must do it for the SPOKEN word.. Poor little Joe's Diner is shut down by the Politically Correct Police, because he can't find someone who speaks fluent Klin'zhai or Rihannsu....

Herm, you made the point that the US is a mongrel nation. Fair enough. Another way it has been put is a "Melting Pot"....

The US is a melting pot.. OK.. Fine. So melt! Learn the language of your adopted home...

It's always been a constant source of amazement to me. People from all over the world come to this country because (apparently) something is lacking from their own country.. And yet, they do their damndest to make THIS country INTO their old country..

Yea, I know.. I come across as some xenophobic redneck.. But that's not it at all... I have no problem with people coming to this country (LEGALLY) to become American citizens... That's great... But for chreest's sake, BECOME Americans.. Don't make America into YOUR country... Because, frankly, I can't afford to give you everything YOU want, just because you are too lazy to learn the fracking language...

/Rant

Michale.....

OK, let me play devil's advocate a moment here. While I largely agree with your comment, I have to bring this up. What happens when there's a wreck/road construction/other out-of-the-ordinary siguation on the freeway, and a cop/emergency road sign tells a driver to do something unusual (like detour, or move to the left lanes, or whatever). Should the emergency signs be up in 8 different languages, or should the cop be fluent in all languages the driver's handbook is? Otherwise, the driver may be missing (through not understanding English) instructions which endanger him, or those around him. Because the state has tacitly agreed that he can drive (by printing the handbook in Vietnamese, Tagalog, Russian, etc.), who is really at fault if he disobeys the instructions and kills someone? Would you feel differently if the person he kills is near and dear to you?

Like I said, devil's advocate worst case sort of situation, but this has indeed happened before in California, so it's not just a hypothetical situation.

I actually agree with you about the fishing warning signs - print them in every language, no problem. But fishermen don't pose a threat to the public on the roads the way a driver does....

-CW

What I'm against, however, are folks who gripe that government forms ought to be in English only and if you can't read 'em, tough. In my opinion, printing forms in English when the majority (or significant minority) of the population to whom you are charged with communicating doesn't speak the language is grossly irresponsible and more costly in the long run. Here's an example: I live in Oakland, CA. The SF Bay is pretty dang polluted, but folks still fish from the shoreline. In my area, the people who do this are predominantly S.E. Asian immigrants (Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Hmong). There are warnings posted at every public shoreline access I know of about mercury poisoning and how much fish or shellfish one should limit their consumption to. "English only" advocates would not have these warnings posted in any other language. My reply would be to ask: What's a better use of taxpayer's money, printing the warnings in the other languages of the targeted population or, using taxpayer money and suffering the associated rising insurance premium costs in order to treat this non-English, most-likely under insured, population once they get heavy metal poisoning from eating too many mussels because they couldn't read the posted warnings? I'm no economist, but it seems to me an ounce of prevention is definitely worth the pound of cure here. Same thing applies to DMV: Folks are going to drive anyway, wouldn't it be nice if they could read the DMV handbook so they'd know the laws? Wouldn't it be a better use of public funds to print the handbooks in different languages than suffer the social cost of increased accidents and subsequent higher insurance premiums?

We're a mongrel nation. Our citizens' ancestry comes from every corner of the globe. There are *always* going to be non-English speaking immigrants here; our country was designed that way. We can't afford the chauvinism of other more homogeneous nations of requiring "English only". It's not in our best interests as a nation.

You want to be a state.. The English language comes along with it..

You don't want to speak English?? Then you don't want to become a state..

What could be more simple???

Michale.....

But, I have a real problem with people coming to this country for all it's benefits, yet not wanting any of the responsibilities that go with it.

If you want to come to America for it's benefits, then get off your lazy asses and learn the language.

If I immigrate to Germany or France, I don't expect them to talk to me in my language. Sure it would be nice, but I don't expect that. I sure as hell wouldn't DEMAND it..

This is America. We speak English.. With the great "power" of all our benefits, comes the great "responsibility" to learn the fracking language...

Spiderman meets Battlestar:Galactica..... :D

Michale.....

While I agree with you in substance, I think a lot of what drives this issue for average Americans is fear, due to their unilingual (monolingual?) nature.

I can sum up this argument best as: "This is America, dammit, and those people over there shouldn't be talking in a language I don't understand. Who knows WHAT they're saying about me?"

Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, I dunno...

-CW

Yeah, I thought Arnie had a good point too. If you read his entire commentary, he basically said "When I got to America, I watched TV and listened to the radio constantly, since it was the best way of picking up how to speak like an American. If Spanish-speakers in the US want to improve their English, they need to turn off Telemundo and watch English TV."

Having lived in a foreign country, that's exactly what I did to improve my language skills, so it's hard to disagree with Arnie.

And those language service places already exist. While California gives you forms in 17 different languages (I'm not exaggerating... well, not much -- you can get your DMV forms in Tagalog, for instance), the US government, and private businesses like banks, aren't always that accomodating. So there is a booming business in "filling out forms in English" at least out here in California.

-CW

I think that you're right about teaching languages early. To strain the metaphor, I think we blew our chance to force Puerto Rico to speak English back when we got the island after the Spanish-American War. If we had made speaking Spanish illegal, forced everyone to learn English only, then today we'd be in a different place.

But I am most definitely not advocating such naked "power of empire," I merely point it out as historical fact.

Take Ireland as an example of how this actually worked. England outlawed Gaelic ("Irish"), and punishments were harsh. Outlaw "hedge schools" defied the ban, and the language does indeed still exist today. But very few people (other than in the sparsely settled western parts) actually speak Gaelic as their first language today. The Irish proudly display Gaelic on every street sign in big letters, but they also display the English (in much smaller letters, underneath), since that's what everyone speaks. I know of Irish students (who are forced to take Gaelic classes in school) who, later in life as adults, know only one or two phrases of Gaelic.

But the point is, we didn't do that 100 years ago to PR, back when nobody had heard the term "politically correct." Successful empires are supposed to crush colonies, and force them to knuckle under. But we as a country have always been wary (or even amibivalent) of actually "being" an empire, so we didn't act as harshly as some other European empires at the time.

So we've now got an island full of American citizens, whose primary language is Spanish. The question remains, what should the US do if PR joins the Union? Outlaw Spanish? Punish it harshly?

I personally don't think that would work, either politically or practically.

-CW

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First, to the English only issue. Although more and more other nations are being economically forced to learn English, we Americans see no need to strain our brains to do so. Experts know that the VERY best age for people to learn a second language is pre and primary school. So we delay such learning until high school which makes no sense at all. A second language should be mandatorily learned along with English all throughout elementary and high school. Instead of pushing Spanish or French, our students should be learning Arabic and/or Chinese or even Hindi.

When I taught GED many of my students were Hispanic and applauded the election ballots (as well as the driver’s test) being written in Spanish. I don’t know of any other country that returns the favor. Although my immigrant (and we won’t go into their legal status) students were appalled that one had to be American born to run for president, they fell off their chair laughing when I suggested any other than a native born Mexican run for the Mexican presidency.

I suggested to them that one solution to the immigration problem would be to make Mexico a part of the United States, they were very upset. They didn’t want to be part of the United States, they wanted the US to be part of Mexico. They had no intention of becoming Americanized (as so many of our early and other country immigrants are so eager to do), they want to be Mexicans (or El Salvadorians, or Columbians) living in Mexico and fully expected the American to cater to them. Isn’t this a case of the tail wagging the dog? If Puerto Rico wants to be a U.S. STATE, then I think it should be an English-speaking U.S. State.

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[2nd valbrady comment:]
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In my first post I said that the Hispanics wanted to live in Mexico and expected the Americans to cater to them. I meant the Hispanics want to live in America, but NOT as Americans.
v

I liked the joke :)

But...lots of countries have an official national language or even two so I don't see a problem with having one. I think though that the US as the "melting pot" should be multi-lingual.

Stan....