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2006-08-21 Home Front: Culture Wars

Will English Survive the Immigrant Flood?

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Posted by mcsegeek1 2006-08-21 12:16|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I saw this and I got the schedule for CCD classes for my church and I noticed something very interesting. My church has services in Spanish and English but they only offer Spanish CCD classes for grades 1, 2 & 3. Kind of tells me that parents that speak Spanish at home arent forcing their children to speak only Spanish and by age ?8? most kids are proficient enough to have classes in English only.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2006-08-21 12:47|| 2006-08-21 12:47|| Front Page Top

#2 Pish. English will survive quite well.

I am a lot more concerned about what kids are taught to speak at school than what they speak at home. Bilingual education must be ended everywhere. It was shown in California that there was an increase in test scores when the kids went to English only instruction.

And disgruntled Hispanic parents led the fight. They knew their kids couldn't fit in a succeed economically if they couldn't speak English.

Immigrants need to be assimilated by our public institutions. But let them keep their family culture as long as they want. If they're willing to take the economic consequences like the Amish, fine. If they want to be typical Americans that's fine too.

All that listing shows is which states get lots of immigrants and where defence should go to get bi-lingual recruits.

Now what does stick in my craw is bi, tri, you name it-lingual ballots... If you can't speak English well enough to vote, you can't speak it well enough to understand the debate.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-21 13:17|| 2006-08-21 13:17|| Front Page Top

#3 What is called New Mexico today was the most populated of the areas acquired in the Mexican-American War. The % shown approximately matches the number in population of the Hispanic community to the whole these days. The Hispanics in NM didn't move there. By and large, they were there from the time of the acquisition. The NM state Constitution, not some federal judge, established both English and Spanish as official languages. So in this case, its a so what.

Posted by Phunter Ulalet1168 2006-08-21 13:31|| 2006-08-21 13:31|| Front Page Top

#4 The Hispanics in NM didn't move there. By and large, they were there from the time of the acquisition.

Old buggers they must be.

Posted by Besoeker 2006-08-21 14:08|| 2006-08-21 14:08|| Front Page Top

#5 I'll worry when Mr Kim and Mr Wu and Mr Muhammed and Mr Singh start teaching their kids Spanish in order to get by.

I have inlaws whose command of English is pretty weak. But until Mr Sanchez speaks Yiddish, hes going to have to use English to communicate with them.

At least around here adult english classes tend to be pretty heavily subscribed, from what i understand.

Posted by liberalhawk 2006-08-21 14:32|| 2006-08-21 14:32|| Front Page Top

#6 I'd be willing to bet that when my parents were kids in the 1930s, 42% of Youngstown, Ohio didn't speak English at home. I know there was a Hungarian parish that said a Mass each week in Magyar well into the 1970s. Heck, there's a weekly Vietnamese language service at a protestant church just up the street from where I sit typing right now.

Posted by Mike 2006-08-21 14:52|| 2006-08-21 14:52|| Front Page Top

#7 Now what does stick in my craw is bi, tri, you name it-lingual ballots... If you can't speak English well enough to vote, you can't speak it well enough to understand the debate.

If you can't read and understand the Declaration and Constitution in its original language, you should not be permitted to vote.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-08-21 18:49|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-08-21 18:49|| Front Page Top

#8 I and my two sons (18 and 17) seem to get by OK with a complicated system of grunts, pointing and body language.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-08-21 19:40|| 2006-08-21 19:40|| Front Page Top

#9 If you can't read and understand the Declaration and Constitution in its original language, you should not be permitted to vote.

That would rule out about a third of all high school graduates voting. They can't understand a simple parking ticket, how are they going to understand the Constitution?

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-08-21 20:37|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-08-21 20:37|| Front Page Top

#10 NS-I like what you said about ballots. But I would extend it beyond ballots to English-only governmental documents, utility bills and answering services on the principle of no preferential treatment: no favoritism for Spanish language speakers over those who speak Chinese, Polish or Ewe. We can't (and shouldn't have to) provide equal bilingual services for all-what a waste of money and energy that would be. There are many different groups here-why cater to one?

I have lived in a country where there is more than one official language. While people get valuable multilingual skills, internal communication can be inefficient, exhausting, and more expensive. Most importantly, feelings of rivalry emerge. A common language encourages communities to bind together.

Push for language study in school-we still need to be able to understand the rest of the world, but squelch the government services angle.

Posted by Jules in the Hinterlands 2006-08-21 20:51|| 2006-08-21 20:51|| Front Page Top

#11 "push 1 for English...push 2 to be disconnected"

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-08-21 21:20|| 2006-08-21 21:20|| Front Page Top

#12 ¿Qué?

Posted by DMFD 2006-08-21 23:16|| 2006-08-21 23:16|| Front Page Top

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