July 10, 2008
Quote of the Day
"Don't worry about immigrants speaking English, make sure your child can speak Spanish."- Barack Obama.
He's also embarrassed that Americans only speak one language while Europeans are mostly bilingual. Someone should tell him that he and his wife should stop saying how embarrassed they are by the country he seeks to represent.
Dear Republican party, if you don't have that clip on permanent repeat in the general election I will be very, very annoyed.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey quotes this from a Salon article:
There’s nothing particularly exceptional about Obama’s position, unless you are an English-only partisan cowering in fear of your cultural identity being swamped by funny-looking people from strange lands. Or one of the similarly insecure patriots who believe any criticism of the U.S. is a sign of “blame-America-first” treachery. And I suppose the whole comment about “going to Europe” opens Obama up to more charges of elitism, and disconnection from the lives of those who, right now, can’t afford to even think about going to Europe.But to most people who actually grasp the fact that we live in a complex, interconnected global economy, being able to speak more than one language just makes a lot of sense. Maybe those of us who do feel threatened by Spanish-language signs in government offices would sleep a little easier if we understood what they they were saying.
As a multilingual immigrant (English, Russian, enough Hebrew and Spanish to get by) I'm not exactly worried about those strange people from strange lands. I'm one of those people! But yes, I'm an English only partisan and here's why: it's better for the immigrants. I know this from experience and I know this for a fact. Sure, government offices can have their Spanish signs to make it easier for immigrants. But their local supermarket probably won't. The job they want will likely be in English. I really believe it's anti-immigrant to not help them assimilate. The Russians I know who never had to learn English because the signs on Brighton Beach are in Russian, they have RTV and listen to a Russian radio station are so much worse off than the Russians I know who learned English and adapted to their new country. The former have such limited opportunities it's not even funny. The latter, well, they're Americans and have every door open to them that someone American-born would have. I don't want to deprive new immigrants of America's promise.
Posted by Karol at July 10, 2008 12:04 PM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags: Barack+Obama
[B]eing able to speak more than one language just makes a lot of sense.
Unless you're Mexican, apparently.
Posted by: Tanya at July 10, 2008 12:56 PMBorn in the Philippines as an American citizen, I grew up speaking only English. My father forbade my mother to teach me any Tagalog, because he wanted me to be proficient in one language, rather than be mediocre in two.
Jesse Jackson's recorded gaffe is an excellent example. "Barack been talkin' down..." Wonderful. Now he can learn some Spanish after demonstrating such mastery of English.
I don't feel threatened by non-English speakers. I just don't want them to come here and then tell the rest of us that we need to make things more "accessible" to them. Forget practicality: it's about force. If they demand duplicate pamphlets, signs, etc., in Spanish, that's forcing the rest of us to pony up more tax dollars for their convenience. If they want to live here and not learn English, fine by me. This is supposed to be a land of freedom. Just don't expect and force me to make things more "accomodating" for them.
By the way, has anyone noticed that when you call the hotline for U.S. passports, you have an option to continue in Spanish? That's almost as ridiculous as people taking the loyalty oath in "their own language."
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 10, 2008 03:09 PMOh Karol Karol Karol, sweetie (says Obama in his "vote for me and I'll kiss you" voice), when I'm president I'll MAKE the grocery stores fix it so that immigrant looking for a job can go on speaking nothing but his native language.
Posted by: Anwyn at July 10, 2008 05:01 PMI don't quite grasp the rationale behind his invocation to "learn Spanish."
Unless we're all planning on sucking up to Dem. constituencies, i.e. becoming Dem. politicians, I don't see what the practical use is. Wouldn't we be better advised to learn Mandarin or Arabic?
I don't see many Chinese people queuing up at day labor sites.
We would be very well advised to learn Mandarin or Arabic, or Spanish or even Portuguese, considering the growing size of Brazil's economy.
The big problem is that we don't, at least not very well...I think that is what the problem is. Language instruction in America is usually not taken very seriously, partially because we don't need it to be - there're lots of us who don't travel to non-English speaking places.
So we should work on learning more languages are we are becoming (have become) part of a global economy, and at the same time, immigrants should learn English so they can fully participate in American society.
In a funny aside, returning from my recent trip to Costa Rica, I was chatting with my parents (immigrants who learned pretty good English) and they were both shocked that I don't really speak Spanish. They both assumed I would! (I can get by very slowly and painfully, with no classes, just based on high school Latin and French and growing up in New York.) Mom told me she was shocked that someone growing up in the US now wouldn't learn Spanish, just for the practicalities.
Posted by: Yana at July 11, 2008 01:58 PMYana, it's called "comparative advantage." Americans can run around and enjoy leisure time, because foreigners are willing enough to learn English. Brazilians are far more willing to spend time learning to communicate to Americans, because they need Americans' business more than Americans need Brazilians' business.
Why didn't you grow up speaking Spanish? Simply, it's because it wasn't enough of a priority. You had more leisure time and/or more time to study other things.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 14, 2008 05:49 PM
