You Will Speak English at Geno's in Philadelphia

By the way, I forgot to mention, if you're a citizen of any EU country there is little reason to get Latvian citizenship, so you can just as well work and live here and not be required to know state language.

 

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I went to Wal-Mart yesterday. There was a shit ton of ethnicity in there. I counted three different languages, other than English, spoken in there.
One was either Arabic or Farsi (it had the throaty phlemy pronunciation), one was of course Spanish, and the third was one of the SE Asian languages; I'm assuming Laotian, as we have lots of Laotians here.
Hearing all those languages did not bother me one bit. Why? because those families were talking amongst themselves. Like I've mentioned, I have no problem with that.
What I would have a problem with is that if they got to the cash register and the clerk rang up their stuff and said something like, "That'll be $xxx.xx please". If the person answered the clerk with a 'que', that would aggravate the shit out of me. THAT falls under the lack of the ability to communicate effectively. It's not the clerks job to have to understand any language in that setting, other than English.
The sign on the side of the building says Wal-Mart Supercenter, not El Wal-Marte` Fabulosio Centro.

 

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On racists as good guys, idiots as smart people

Hey, any time two-bit hatred qualifies someone as among the "good guys", there's just not a whole lot to say.

Next thing you know we'll start calling the monumentally stupid people geniuses.

 

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This is far from hatred, that much is certain.

 

Hmm, so the US government should play social engineer. You know who else played at social engineering? Hitler. And Stalin.

Let business use whatever fucking language they want. Chinese. Pig Latin. Gibberish. Then let the market decide. If you're a bigot who can't stand to hear something that's not English, then stop going there. Simple as that. But if I, as a business owner, want to tap the Hispanic market, why should I be restrained simply based on you intolerance?

It's like levying tax on haircuts that aren't American enough.

 

You can show angst here because America never declared a national language. Such angst does not arise in England, Spain, France, or anywhere else in Europe.

Common culture is what defines a nation, and language is a vital part of that culture. English is the de facto national language of America. If you come to live here, you better learn American English.

What makes you think that good guys don't hate anything?

 

Good guys are expected to meet higher standards

Did I say that?

Good guys are human, too, Whitewolf. They're prone to hatred. It is expected, however, since they're the "good guys", that their hatred be of a slightly different nature.

Think of it this way. It's an old joke in American comedy, and I don't know who started it:

Snob: And just look at you, dressed up like a cheap, disease-infested would-be whore!

Rebel: I am not cheap!​

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Tacky, jingoistic, and without any decent subtlety.​

Think of it this way: If there is something you want, there are at least two ways to go about getting it. One is to be "proactive" and intimidating; the other is to be courteous. When you are courteous, you are asking for a courtesy. If you make a point of being "proactive" and intimidating—or, as we Americans, for some reason like to say, "in your face"—about it, you project a supremacist demand.

And trying to tie the demand into "patriotism" (jingoism) just doesn't help. "This is America". Yeah, good for you sweetheart. That and a buck might get you a cup of coffee around here.

So, yeah. Score one for the chest-puffing, jingoistic, petty hatemongers—

—or, as some would have it, score one for the "good guys".

Sickening. Pathetic. Disgraceful.
______________________

Notes:

Associated Press. "'Speak English' signs allowed at Philly shop". MSNBC.com. March 19, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23715954/?GT1=43001

 

Important question: Why haven't you made English your national language with law?
All European countries have their national languages, it's easier that way.

 

Because we're not supposed to be racist prigs

Because.

Philosophically, it's because we're supposed to be a nation of immigrants.

More practically, it's what that means to those immigrants. Take, for instance, the Snohomish County Public Utility District, to whom I pay my utility bill. (I just did, so it's foremost in my mind.)

"If you speak English, press one. Para Español, marque dos."​

The way the English-only bills are generally-written, this would be illegal. The PUD is, indeed, a public entity, and therefore would be obliged to conduct business exclusively in English. And, frankly, as I see it, if someone has an easier time understanding the transaction in Spanish, that's fine with me. Because if they're using the same payment system I am, it means they have a job and a credit card or checking account. Frankly, I don't care if we have to pay for 143 languages on that system. It just doesn't seem too much to ask that someone be allowed to use the language they know best in a necessary financial transaction.

As to making English the national language in a symbolic form, without the exclusivity, it's just not something people really care that much about.

There's only a narrow representation of the issue that treats exclusivity seriously. The rest of us would be happy to carry on with life if only the racists would let it be.

 

How is the concept of a national language racist? :bugeye:

 

It's not. No more than a national flag is. Tiassa just seems to what to whine and bitch like a little girl about anything that doesn't agree with what he thinks.

 

lol i am laughing at this only because im thinking about all the time/effort/energy and resources used to effectively communicate with people accross the world.....or in my case....the local taco shop.

It really is a rediculous waste of time......there is absolutely no possibility though that the whole world will speak the same language.....as that would make a great bit of sense and save us all a great deal of fustration. Alas though the world is not in the business of making sense.....its madness.

Culture is a curse/prison. Some people are so involved in their culture they will be nothing else. Americans are the worst at this. (I'm american")

 

The concept itself is not racist, any more than concerns over immigration and a desire for immigration reform are racist, *but* there are a lot of racists who would like to harry latinos (as really we are mostly talking about the Spanish language in the course of this debate) and have seized on "national language" and "immigration reform" issues as a way to expand their numbers and press forward on goals that would otherwise be unattainable.

It's not that great a leap for many from "English should be the national language" to Spanish is "the language of living in the ghetto" (to quote Newt Gingrich) And it's not a big leap from there to negative thoughts about Spanish speakers in general.

People in America should learn English, for themselves and for their children, but not to stay in the good graces of those who consider themselves to be "better Americans" because of the language were born into. American citizens born in Cuba who came here legally or born in Puerto Rico and so Americans from birth should be made to think that their first language is somehow second class just to make a few monolingual easily offended types feel better.

I say again, if you are offended at hearing languages other than English, that's your problem (and a very strange mental defect). Some suggest that the real fear isn't "Spanish" but a potential shift brought about as Spanish speakers influence the national culture and their values and tastes are incorporated and, to some extent, displace or alter the current cultural elements. I'm not sure I'd go that far, as people have railed against the "damned fer'ners" for a long time in America and elsewhere. Even "anti-other" language campaigns have been waged. The British fought hard to kill off Gaelic and make it seem socially inappropriate, and that fight against Gaelic has impact in America and Canada where Gaelic-speakers were also subject to outright contempt. In 1895, a man in Massachusetts (working in a rope factory) commented on the number of Gaelic speakers there who were ashamed that they spoke the language:

Source

To some extent the anti-Gaelic crusade was a means of persecuting the Irish and Scots and others who spoke their versions of it and it was tied in to the larger "anti-Irish" movement here in the U.S. Obviously hatred of the Irish is not "racism," it's just "ethnocentrism," but I am not sure it was any more morally pure for the distinction. I am sure there were a few people contemptuous of Gaelic-speakers who weren't ethnocentric, but I legitimately wonder how many. It's the same with the present anti-Spanish movement, imo, save that "racist" is a tag that can fit some of the members of that movement rather than "ethnocentric."

 

National language is racist in the hands of racists like Mike

In a nation of immigrants, the context of the national language movement is to essentially say that those elements that don't speak English are not welcome in the nation.

In other words, the concept of a national language is racist in the hands of racists.

• • •​

If you had something more rational than base hatred to support your cause, you could come up with something better than that.

 

There's something amusing about that photo

'This is America' :bugeye: A Latino name for a country that never was originally 'English' speaking. The racists aren't only active but as ignorant as ever.

Little Maria ordering a taco in Spanish is a 'threat' to the USA

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As if non-immigrant US citizens can speak English.
As if English was one language.
As if people over 40 speak the same language as people under 20
As if language was the issue.

 

I'm not here to speak for racists who hate Mexicans because they're Latinos.

You misunderstood, then. A nation of immigrants means that all immigrants are welcome as long as they come in to join the nation, live by the country's laws, and participate at least in the most identifying cultural customs. U.S. has seen immigrants from a wide variety of countries, from Germany to Japan, and they all didn't mind learning the common language, the language that everyone else in the country spoke. A nation is a nation, it must be unified somehow. If we all got stubborn and refused to learn a common language, we'd never be a big nation with a big country.

 

I dont understand that the problem is. Would it be any different if the language was Chinese? Well now Geno has to train everyone who works in the store to speak Chenise.

 

There's a flaw in that argument. Most Latinos in America do know or learn English, and likely always will, without your having to browbeat them into it. They do it for their own reasons, not because they should give a damn that you look down your nose at those who choose to do otherwise. No one is arguing that learning English is a bad thing. That some Latinos in the U.S. do *not* want to learn English, or want to learn it but have not yet done so will not—will not—lead to the dire consequences you mention. Whether English is forced upon them or not, most will choose to learn English on their own or their children will. Once the language in ingrained, it will be nearly impossible to dislodge it, and perhaps American English will evolve to pickup some more Spanish vocabulary and grammar, who knows?

So the only real question is: "Is forcing the few non-adopters and stragglers to learn English, or else be denied opportunities that would otherwise be open to them, worth the cost in liberty and treasure?"

I say it's not. I would rather have a federal campaign to force smokers to quit and banish it from public life, than a federal campaign to limit the opportunities of Spanish speakers. I oppose both and see both as contrary to the idea of liberty, but there are good reasons to speak Spanish in the world, and I can think of no good reasons for anyone to become or remain a smoker.

 

Considerations on a theme

Kindly enumerate some of those customs?

One of the problems we encounter in such debates is the conflict arising between human progress and identity cues affixed to old notions. Nations as we see them today are complex networks built atop old foundations reaching all the way back to family groups in prehistory. At each new layer of the network, the identity cues of social cohesion become more complex; inevitably, the older, more basic cues are challenged, and much like natural selection either adapt or become extinct.

Linguistic connections are very basic, but also very flexible. Indeed, within our own lifetimes, the relevant language of our community—the vernacular—will constantly transform. A teenager of the late 1990s and the new century would be incoherent to a teenager of the 1950s. Yet both in this country, theoretically, speak American English. There are people in the contemporary culture with whom it would be very difficult for me to communicate all but the most basic concepts, and yet we all speak "the same language". So at the level that language is a common identity cue, at least in American culture it is a mere label.

And here's an aspect of that label that you'll find in this topic as well as the general debate at large: Fearmongering. The bloc of immigrants who "refuse to learn the language" is relatively small. What it really comes down to is that a bunch of racists are impatient with the rate at which immigrants learn the language. They want what they want and they want it now. So they try to pass laws, for instance, to make teachers speak English exclusively in the classroom. This presumes that every Hispanic, for instance, will learn the language at the same rate. In the meantime, they also satisfy their desires to interfere with the progress of Hispanics because, while you might have an otherwise talented student, preventing teachers from maximizing communication slows the development of that progress.

Do you happen to be good at math? Sit down with someone and teach them a mathematical concept. But don't say anything while you do. Just show them. Over and over. Shall we pretend it will be a faster process?

Or are you a musician? Teach a kid to hold a bow on a 'cello. But don't say a word. Teach a kid the fundamentals of ragtime without saying a word. Teach percussion rudiments. Teach arpeggiation.

How about woodcraft? Auto mechanics? Any of these things you can teach by rote, but it is a much more efficient process if there is more communication than simple demonstration and imitation.

The point is that while students A and B might learn the language differently, the pretense that there is some large body of immigrants who refuse to learn the language is used to demand that B not be allowed to progress until s/he demonstrates a certain proficiency with the language that, usually, is greater than the average among born Americans.

As Sowhatifit'sdark pointed out, "Can police use Spanish questions while on the job to make sure those they are interviewing understand the questions?" There are times when it might be advisable to use the other language.

And, frankly, if I happen to speak Spanish, and someone who is learning the language is having a hard time communicating what they need, I think the last reason I should use to not switch languages and try to help the situation go better should be because my boss says "This is America" and I'm not allowed to accommodate people in other languages. As theowner of Geno's told the AP, he posted the signs because of concerns over immigration reform.

The reality is that we're supposed to believe there is this massive group of people out there who have brown skin and refuse to learn the language. People overstate the problem, intentionally mischaracterize the immigrants, in order to artificially inflate their arguments. I'm supposed to look at someone who has yet to learn enough about the language and believe that s/he's rudely refusing to speak the language. And, frankly, the hatemongers who peddle that kind of crap can go screw.

To come 'round, then, to your point at which I opened this response, language is one of the few identifying cultural "customs" the racists can remotely pretend is unsullied. Country music? Classical? Jazz? Rock? Rap? Classical is too European and pretentious for many, and the latter three all bear significant black influence. Baseball? Well, we've come a long way since Jackie Robinson reinstated the black man's place on the diamond. Now we see players from the Caribbean and Asia. (One of the jokes that eventually surfaces wherever there is a Japanese star on a Major League team—say, Ichiro Suzuki in this case—is that they are constantly speaking through translators. If you watch closely, though, you'll find that this is a ruse; they continue to hide behind translators because it's the best excuse in the world to do what most star players wish they could do: duck the press.)

So, yeah. What, exactly, are these identifying cultural customs? Language and what else? Apostasy, maybe? That's a big one in the U.S.