What are the Pros and Cons of a bilingual society?

[KrazyHorse]

You're being dense.

Population US 1910: 91.6 million

http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen.pl

Population US 2000 280 million

Immigration (from your link) 923 000 in 1910
984 000 at present

Immigration rate was thus 3 times higher in 1910

And that's all that's important.

[Drake Tungsten]

That doesn't prove that today's rate isn't massive as well; you're the one being dense. Why can't you ever just admit that you're wrong? It's not that hard...

[KrazyHorse]

What wrong?

Why is today's rate massive? It's a third of the maximum seen by the US a hundred years ago, and is half what countries like Canada and Australia take in. As a matter of fact, on this the US is closer to Europe than it is to us (countries like Germany have close to the US level of immigration).

Snooze.

[Drake Tungsten]

Why is today's rate massive?

Just for the record, I never used the term "rate"...

Anyway, the biggest problem with American immigration policy isn't the massive numbers, but the inequal distribution of immigrants from different countries. The block of Mexican immigrants (both legal and illegal) in particular is extremely large, which is making it difficult to assimilate them. There's no need to "melt" if you can get along without doing it.

America needs to change its policy so that it spreads its immigrant population across many different regions and states. You can accept massive amounts of immigrants and still assimilate them if you make sure the individual ethnic groups each make up a small portion of the immigrant population...

[GePap]

"The Melting Pot" never really applied to all groups, now did it? The Chinese were kept out for a long time, along with all other asian immigrants. Mexicans were not invited in that much either for a logn time, or Puerto Ricans, and Blacks never seemd to be high up there in the "melting Pot". That terms alays applied, it seem to me, to the "white" european immigrants that came in the late 19th and early 20th.

As for blingualism: individuals who are bilingual geenrally have better grasp of language in general. All children should be expected to know multiple languages. But as far as making it a legal requirement for all documents to be in multiple languages..only if 2 languages are relatively equal (such as in Quebec or Belgium). otherwise it is a wate of resources.

[Drake Tungsten]

"The Melting Pot" never really applied to all groups, now did it?

True, but that doesn't mean the concept is bad, just its past implementation. Asians have been assimilated pretty well since we overcame the racism directed at them. So have many Hispanics and blacks to a lesser extent. The melting pot still works...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

That's the old "Melting Pot" theory, which seems to be a bit outdated by now.

It isn't outdated at all.

It is, if you have ever studied Organisational Behaviour. A society is a pretty damn big organisation.

[Jaguar]

Hispanics are the second largest ethnic group in the US and will reach parity with white people within this century. This is good because they make good food and hispanic girls are hot.

I've learned Spanish to deal with the growing bilingualism in this country. Obviously I'm not very articulate yet, but I can say whatever I need to. (I could read and explain a newspaper article or a book or whatever.) Everyone should do the same, those lazy bums.

I think it would be better if the world all spoke one language, however that is unlikely. A bilingual society is good because your population can talk to speakers of both languages instead of just one. Thus your population becomes more popular around the world.

[Tattila the Hun]

Cons: Swedish!
Pros: Hmmmm...

[Andemagne]

pakkoruotsi

[OliverFA]

That's not exactly the same situation, but by my own experience in one of the bilingual regions of Spain (Catalonia) and my travels around Europe the worst thing that can be done is force hispanic people to use English. Being a minority with so big numbers, it's normal that they will get their own newspapers, TV channels and speak Spanish with their family and friends. But if they want to integrate and become part of the community (and I hope they do) they will also learn and use English. Of course, there will always be an small minority that won't want to, but they are condemning themselves to margination.

So, it's ok to help them making it easier for them to learn and use English, but it isn't ok to force them to, or what you will get is exactly the oposite effect. When I was a child I was almost Spanish-Catalan bilingual, until I realized that the Catalan "government" was imposing me the use of Catalan. Then I reverted to Spanish. They forced me to choose a language and I did.

By the way, I don't think this is a new situation in the US. When I was at Philadelphia's Chinatown everybody seemed to know both Chineese and English. Why would it be different for Hispanics?

[Pekka]

It's ok, but I don't that we have to learn swedish by force. For example I had to study first of all my own language, english, swedish and german when I was 14. and first three were mandatory. It's a bit too much.

I was never interested in learning swedish, because it was mandatory. If it was obligatory, I might have even studied it and learn it properly. But by force.. what can you do, young rebels..

[Spiffor]

Wow OliverFA, that sure is surprising.
Are there many Catalans like you who prefer the use of Spanish rather than Catalan ? Everytime, I heard the Spanish people are very defensive of their regional language, is it true, or is it a mere misconception ?

Drake :
From what I've seen in France and Germany, the problem of integration applies here too. But people from the "regular" population rarely learn Arabic or Turkish to communicate with the minorities, as the latters seem to interact more with the majority than in the US. If only, the public schooling is held in French, and very very few schools can teach in another language, and need to go through a bureaucratic hell for that. Are there many Spanish-only schools in the US ?

[Hurricane]

In a perfect world, everybody would speak the same language. This is obvious.

But the world is far from perfect, and we have hundreds of different languages and hundreds of countries with long histories of different language groups within their borders. Denying part of a country's population of service in their native language is both discriminating and economically unsound. All studies I have seen show that minorities that are forced to "unlearn" their own language and culture are less productive (i.e. unemployed), less happy (i.e. troublemakers) and less well (i.e. use more medical services=cost more). All this has a negative effect on the country as a whole.

So the lesson is that it is good for the country to support the minorities. The minority language will assimilate into the majority in time, when (and if) it becomes too weak.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Wow OliverFA, that sure is surprising.
Are there many Catalans like you who prefer the use of Spanish rather than Catalan ? Everytime, I heard the Spanish people are very defensive of their regional language, is it true, or is it a mere misconception ?

I don't prefer to use Spanish rather than Catalan. My native language is Spanish, and that's the situation for the 60% of the Catalans, probably more due to the Hispanic American immigration.

I knew that this is not what the Catalan government (dis)information campaign says, but these is what they are after all. disinformation campaigns.