85% Support English as Official Language Of U.S.

[chequita guevara]

And as pointed out in return, nothing keeps you from learning everything else like having it taught to you in a lanugage you don't understand.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kontiki
This is the part of the practicality I'm not understanding. We have an official language (two actually) in Canada, and we also have large pockets in some of our cities where few people speak English or French fluently. Unless the version of official language the US is considering is "if you aren't fluent within X years of coming to this country, we're kicking your ass out", I'm not seeing how it would actually address the issues that it seems to be borne from.

The problem is that this is one step in the larger campaign against all that sort of thing.

[Drake Tungsten]

And as pointed out in return, nothing keeps you from learning everything else like having it taught to you in a lanugage you don't understand.

If you can use your native language in every other subject, how much would you really care about learning a foreign language? Total immersion gives students a need to learn a language that is lacking when you treat a language as simply one more intellectual subject to be mastered.

[DanS]

Having an official language would just be a federal mandate to local jurisdictions that is devoid of reality.

In my area, a very substantial portion of the population only speaks Spanish. This is because the federal gov't isn't seeing fit to control the borders. The city gov't has to deal with the reality as it comes, not as some would wish it to be, and therefore has substantial Spanish-language assets.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DanS
Having an official language would just be a federal mandate to local jurisdictions that is devoid of reality.

In my area, a very substantial portion of the population only speaks Spanish. This is because the federal gov't isn't seeing fit to control the borders. The city gov't has to deal with the reality as it comes, not as some would wish it to be, and therefore has substantial Spanish-language assets.

While I don't disagree, I'm struck by how this has changed in the last couple of generations.

My grandparents had no English when they moved to the US from the Ukraine, and they lived in a Chicago neighborhood where the majority of the population spoke only Ukranian. The city government actually didn't deal with that reality, as you put it. Instead, the community dealt with that reality by providing its own liaisons to the English-speaking world. To the extent the government got involved, it was only in making sure that the local precinct captians had enough standing in the community to turn out reliable Democratic votes.

Obviously, the Federal governemnt is a bigger presence in people's lives today than it was in the Fyoder's and Olga's time. Still, there's a model here of immigrants accomodating themselves to the linguistic realities of their adopted country, rather than vice versa.

[Kuciwalker]

Adopting themselves by essentially providing services in their native language, using an ad-hoc local government, rather than asking the de jure local government to provide them intelf.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


CASE IN POINT.

Vesayen is one of those idiots who considers things like ESL to be catering towards immigrants. It's not. It's good policy. It is absolutely ****ing useless to try and teach kids who don't speak English in English. Teach them how to speak English, yes, but until they learn, teach them math, history etc. in Spanish.

You are confusing ESL with one (discredited) version of bilingual education. What you describe has been an educational disaster, children don't learn english nearly as well when it is not taught in an immersive environment but instead taught as badly as all the other foreign langauge classes. They also seem to do pretty poorly learning and retaining anything useful in the courses taught in spanish for some reason. This is perhaps a cultural phenomena, as bilingual education is defacto cultural segregation.

Children learn languages easily, particularly the younger they are. But they learn languages through immersion rather than a by the numbers grammar and vocab program that is typical of language classes in our school systems. Millions of immigrant kids over the last couple of centuries with no special provisions have attended regular american public schools and despite their lack of english language skills managed to both learn english as well as the other subjects taught in english. Even today special provisions are only made (sometimes) for Spanish speakers, everyone else still does it the old fashioned way. They nonetheless succeed educationally at much better rates than those who are subjected to the traditional "bilingual" education.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
But a land of liberty does not have the authority to force them to do what is wise.

Official languages don't force anyone to do anything.

Canada has two, and there are still immigrants who speak neither. Nobody is rounding them up for language offences.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Teaching them in English only is pointless. There's no reason to make a kid sit in a class he can't even understand. Frankly, kids already learn English. We even have classes designed for it (which we didn't used to have). Don't keep them from getting any other education while they're learning it.

Not true.

There was a Korean kid who came into my class when we were 9 or 10. The principal brought him in, introduced him, explained his situation and made it our job to teach the guy English.

He quickly learned a very colourful dialect of English and did just fine in school. He didn't even know how to say hello on the first day.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
While I don't disagree, I'm struck by how this has changed in the last couple of generations.

My grandparents had no English when they moved to the US from the Ukraine, and they lived in a Chicago neighborhood where the majority of the population spoke only Ukranian. The city government actually didn't deal with that reality, as you put it. Instead, the community dealt with that reality by providing its own liaisons to the English-speaking world. To the extent the government got involved, it was only in making sure that the local precinct captians had enough standing in the community to turn out reliable Democratic votes.

Obviously, the Federal governemnt is a bigger presence in people's lives today than it was in the Fyoder's and Olga's time. Still, there's a model here of immigrants accomodating themselves to the linguistic realities of their adopted country, rather than vice versa.

The Mount Pleasant riot of 1991, among other things, convinced the city that it was impracticle to operate in such a manner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Washington,_DC_riot

My guess is that the hispanic community is more transient and disunited than the Ukrainian community of your grandparents. It's probably case-by-case. I note that NYC was able to handle a half million or million Russian immigrants in the early 90s without too much trouble.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
And as pointed out in return, nothing keeps you from learning everything else like having it taught to you in a lanugage you don't understand.

So you're saying they don't have the will, interest, or desire to pick up the tools to improve their lot or education?

When confronted with a total immersion situation, it seems to me that most people, wanting to be competent and not painfully out of the loop, would start to learn anything they can to fit in and make things work.

It's only human, after all.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DanS


The Mount Pleasant riot of 1991, among other things, convinced the city that it was impracticle to operate in such a manner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Washington,_DC_riot

My guess is that the hispanic community is more transient and disunited than the Ukrainian community of your grandparents. It's probably case-by-case. I note that NYC was able to handle a half million or million Russian immigrants in the early 90s without too much trouble.

I suspect you dont realize how much effort the organized Jewish community put into supporting the absorption of Russian Jews. Even so there were SOME problems, IIUC.

[DanS]

I think you just proved my point...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming




Enough with the personal crap... Discuss the topic and stop insulting other posters!

Hey Ming.

No-one ever reads this sentence closely any more.

How about having a laugh and writing: "stop dicussing the topic and start insulting other posters."

10 bucks says that nothing would change.

[Dis]

I just heard today that Utah has an official language.

And some people were upset because they had a goverment webpage in spanish. Public pressure made them take the goverment webpage down.

I hope this hasn't already been mentioned. I don't have time to read the whole thread. Got to go in a few minutes.