I want to vote up the last part of your comment (importance of culture and recognizing how awful forcing people to be monolingual is) and not vote on the top part.
I know someone who lives in Colorado who said there is a town there where only Spanish is spoken. He went into the McDonalds where the menu was in Spanish and they were doing a promotion for the Mexican world cup team. A swiss friend of mine also tried to ask for direction from a police officer in Miami. The officer only spoke Spanish so he had to call English speaking backup to even figure out what my friend wanted.
The US has no official language, so this doesn't bother me but your comment about learning English is simply not true for ever growing parts of the US.
There have been places where German or French or Spanish or Italian or Vietnamese or Chinese or whatever have been used exclusively in the US for pretty much as long as the US has existed.
And you know what? It's not really a problem. People who want to do more than live in their little corner of their little town will learn English. Some others won't and their opportunities, as a consequence, will likely be limited.
Again, I just don't agree with this. I think non-English speaking groups are expanding enough that there is plenty of opportunity out there without knowing English. No, you wont get to be an officer in an English speaking US company but the Latino community is having big success in all aspects of American life. It's just a matter of time until there is a Latino facebook/google/whatever and then you'll have that opportunity too.
Personally I think it's great since I view the fact so many Americans never have to learn or even really be exposed to any other language is a big disadvantage.
If you look at Facebook and Google's popularity throughout the world, I think it's obvious that language isn't really a barrier to their spread and popularity, outside of some Asian countries where politics are also a factor.
I guess I'm just not scared of there being people speaking Spanish in the US. Over time, they'll integrate, just like everyone else has in the past.
Comments
I want to vote up the last part of your comment (importance of culture and recognizing how awful forcing people to be monolingual is) and not vote on the top part.
I know someone who lives in Colorado who said there is a town there where only Spanish is spoken. He went into the McDonalds where the menu was in Spanish and they were doing a promotion for the Mexican world cup team. A swiss friend of mine also tried to ask for direction from a police officer in Miami. The officer only spoke Spanish so he had to call English speaking backup to even figure out what my friend wanted.
The US has no official language, so this doesn't bother me but your comment about learning English is simply not true for ever growing parts of the US.
There have been places where German or French or Spanish or Italian or Vietnamese or Chinese or whatever have been used exclusively in the US for pretty much as long as the US has existed.
And you know what? It's not really a problem. People who want to do more than live in their little corner of their little town will learn English. Some others won't and their opportunities, as a consequence, will likely be limited.
Again, I just don't agree with this. I think non-English speaking groups are expanding enough that there is plenty of opportunity out there without knowing English. No, you wont get to be an officer in an English speaking US company but the Latino community is having big success in all aspects of American life. It's just a matter of time until there is a Latino facebook/google/whatever and then you'll have that opportunity too.
Personally I think it's great since I view the fact so many Americans never have to learn or even really be exposed to any other language is a big disadvantage.
If you look at Facebook and Google's popularity throughout the world, I think it's obvious that language isn't really a barrier to their spread and popularity, outside of some Asian countries where politics are also a factor.
I guess I'm just not scared of there being people speaking Spanish in the US. Over time, they'll integrate, just like everyone else has in the past.