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The "speak english" requirement

H

Hawk and Awe

HB Heisman
Sep 15, 2012
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The Palin thread about requiring native Americas speak English got me thinking. Where did that thought/idea come from? Or why is it viewed as disrespectful to not speak English in this country? Is it like that other places? For some reason I would suspect parts of Asia might have this in their culture?

I used to feel this way but really don't know why. On a trip to Europe I think the most increddible observation I made was everyone spoke like 5 languages. I walked around an office with someone who spoke English, French, Spanish and some other language just in the course of our tour. Why aren't we striving for that?
 
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Hawk and Awe said:
The Palin thread about requiring native Americas speak English got me thinking. Where did that thought/idea come from? Or why is it viewed as disrespectful to not speak English in this country? Is it like that other places? For some reason I would suspect parts of Asia might have this in their culture?

I used to feel this way but really don't know why. On a trip to Europe I think the most increddible observation I made was everyone spoke like 5 languages. I walked around an office with someone who spoke English, French, Spanish and some other language just in the course of our tour. Why aren't we striving for that?
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Countries in Europe are about the sizes of some of our states. If you didn't have to travel far to run into other languages necessary to get what you need you would learn those languages. It isn't necessary here
 
I have no problem with citizens speaking different languages. I do have a problem with the position that America should encourage official language diversity.

Assimilation (the melting pot) made America great. The ridiculous emphasis on the importance of multiculturalism is making us weak.

If one wants become a U.S. citizen, then adopt our language and embrace our culture. Otherwise, please go back from whence you came.
 
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Between 1890 and 1910 there was a surge of Germans,
Norwegians, Swedes, and Italians who came to America.
They checked in at the New York City harbor and Ellis
Island to become legal immigrants. Those people for the
most part learned English on the run as they assimilated
into American culture. They got jobs and started earning
a living and raising children Today, we have illegals
coming in and trying to get a free ride from Uncle Sam..
 
I've written this in other threads, but when I travel to other countries, I try my best to speak their language. Having spent extended time in Spain, Latin America, Germany, I made out well in all of them and could clearly tell the locals appreciated the effort I was putting forth to use their language. "When in Rome..."

It's not too much to ask the same respect from visitors to our country, and definitely not those who want to stay here. If they choose to not learn English, we should not be bending over backwards to make things easy for them to continue in ignorance.
 
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thewop said:
. . . . If they choose to not learn English, we should not be bending over backwards to make things easy for them to continue in ignorance.
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Agreed. If they refuse to commit to us (the collective us - America), then we should not commit to them.
 
LuteHawk said:
Between 1890 and 1910 there was a surge of Germans,
Norwegians, Swedes, and Italians who came to America.
They checked in at the New York City harbor and Ellis
Island to become legal immigrants. Those people for the
most part learned English on the run as they assimilated
into American culture. They got jobs and started earning
a living and raising children Today, we have illegals
coming in and trying to get a free ride from Uncle Sam..
Click to expand...

I buy and sell antiques, and have seen several textbooks and printed in German and Swedish from that period. Most, I think, were used here, and many were even printed here. While many of those people did eventually learn English, many also continued to use their native tongue for many years after immigrating. I think the general rule is that English use doesn't really make the full swing until the second generation.

My dad's paternal grandfather immigrated from Holland. Dad said that this grandpa and his wife never learned English very well, and always spoke Dutch in the home. He did use English to speak to his Swedish neighbor (also an immigrant), which resulted in some hilarious conversations.
 
augHAWK said:
I have no problem with citizens speaking different languages. I do have a problem with the position that America should encourage official language diversity.

Assimilation (the melting pot) made America great. The ridiculous emphasis on the importance of multiculturalism is making us weak.

If one wants become a U.S. citizen, then adopt our language and embrace our culture. Otherwise, please go back from whence you came.
Click to expand...

Our culture is a mesh of a bunch of different immigrant cultures. Each group over time contributes to it. American culture didn't just arise out of no where and it's been changed over the years with new groups adding to it. What would embracing our culture even look like anyways?

English however has been a constant so I agree on that. However I think this is much ado about nothing really. Most immigrants I've run into in this country can speak English when needed.
 
thewop said:
I've written this in other threads, but when I travel to other countries, I try my best to speak their language. Having spent extended time in Spain, Latin America, Germany, I made out well in all of them and could clearly tell the locals appreciated the effort I was putting forth to use their language. "When in Rome..."

It's not too much to ask the same respect from visitors to our country, and definitely not those who want to stay here. If they choose to not learn English, we should not be bending over backwards to make things easy for them to continue in ignorance.
Click to expand...

There is a big difference between speaking a few words while on vacation and trying to live every day speaking only a language that you don't know very well. I'm fine with doing it only on vacation, once in a while, but do revert to English to speak to the people I'm traveling with.

I took Spanish throughout junior high and high school. The fall after my senior year I lived in Central America for a few months. For me, using it every day for every word I spoke was very difficult. Even though I became fairly fluent, every night my head felt like I had a band around it that had been tightened several notches. Whenever I had a chance to speak English for a while, I did - it was a wonderful relief.

There is no language like one's first, IMO.
 
Immigrants that immigrate to this country should want to learn english. All business in this country is conducted in english. There are more economic opportunity for those that can speak english. I wouldn't move to Mexico and not be expected to speak Spanish. Even when I vacation there, I attempt to speak their language (poorly) and they usually laugh at me but they appreciate the effort.
 
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LuteHawk said:
Between 1890 and 1910 there was a surge of Germans,
Norwegians, Swedes, and Italians who came to America.
They checked in at the New York City harbor and Ellis
Island to become legal immigrants. Those people for the
most part learned English on the run as they assimilated
into American culture. They got jobs and started earning
a living and raising children Today, we have illegals
coming in and trying to get a free ride from Uncle Sam..
Click to expand...
Look into this, I think you will be surprised by what you find. Many first generation immigrants don't assimilate. It's their kids that often take on that role. There were German newspapers in Iowa right up to WW2.

And it's not just immigrants. I'm down here in Louisiana and you would be amazed by the number of people speaking something sort of like French prononced with marbles in their cheeks. Somehow they get along.
 
naturalmwa said:
Look into this, I think you will be surprised by what you find. Many first generation immigrants don't assimilate. It's their kids that often take on that role. There were German newspapers in Iowa right up to WW2.

And it's not just immigrants. I'm down here in Louisiana and you would be amazed by the number of people speaking something sort of like English with marbles in their cheeks. Somehow they get along.
Click to expand...

FIFY.
 
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naturalmwa said:
Look into this, I think you will be surprised by what you find. Many first generation immigrants don't assimilate. It's their kids that often take on that role. There were German newspapers in Iowa right up to WW2.

And it's not just immigrants. I'm down here in Louisiana and you would be amazed by the number of people speaking something sort of like French prononced with marbles in their cheeks. Somehow they get along.
Click to expand...

You may be right about some German language newspapers hanging on until WWII, but, here in Iowa most ended during WWI, when the governor illegally banned the use of the German Language in church services and on the telephone, or the teaching of the German language in public and private schools.
 
whatsup12579er said:
FIFY.
Click to expand...
The English speakers sound like that often too, but I swear there are a fair number of frogs down here still. A civil war reenacter to,d me his father spoke French his whole life and was born here. They really seem to embrace their culture here. So often it seems like you travel where the culture is artificially emphasized for the tourists and I'm sure some of that goes on here too. That said they appear to enjoy being different.
 
augHAWK said:
Assimilation (the melting pot) made America great. The ridiculous emphasis on the importance of multiculturalism is making us weak.
Click to expand...


I can understand and relate to most of the positions taken in this thread except for this one. Can you provide examples of how multiculturism is making is weak?
 
dandh said:
There is a big difference between speaking a few words while on vacation and trying to live every day speaking only a language that you don't know very well. I'm fine with doing it only on vacation, once in a while, but do revert to English to speak to the people I'm traveling with.

I took Spanish throughout junior high and high school. The fall after my senior year I lived in Central America for a few months. For me, using it every day for every word I spoke was very difficult. Even though I became fairly fluent, every night my head felt like I had a band around it that had been tightened several notches. Whenever I had a chance to speak English for a while, I did - it was a wonderful relief.

There is no language like one's first, IMO.
Click to expand...
I agree with everything you said and can relate completely. Vacation is certainly different, although even in a country where the language is totally foreign, it helps to learn a few things so the locals respect you enough to want to help you.
 
Hawk and Awe said:
I can understand and relate to most of the positions taken in this thread except for this one. Can you provide examples of how multiculturism is making is weak?
Click to expand...

The Balkanization of America.

A hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt said, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
 
I think what frustrates most is not even a complete lack of attempt at assimilation, but almost a defiant refusal at any attempt at assimilating from some immigrants now.

I worked at a manufacturer 8 years ago that spent massive amounts of money on a new facility that would essentially take us from 1970s era machines into the modern world. Because of the level of automation in the process and need to interact and understand the automation, basic English skills were determined to be a requirement. At the time we a large amount of Korean, Bosnian and Mexican immigrants on the floor. The company made every attempt to help everyone out including giving ESOL classes during normal work hours, while still paying the employee for those hours in class. Essentially they got paid to learn and got out of work, yet close to 70% of the employees who were determined to need those classes deferred out. At the very least if they didn't want to continue to work there and transfer over the new factory (where they would have been making more money), it was a perfect opportunity at learning English and making themselves more marketable to any other job. Yet they made the choice to find other work than making any attempt at learning English.
 
Hoosierhawkeye said:
Our culture is a mesh of a bunch of different immigrant cultures. Each group over time contributes to it. American culture didn't just arise out of no where and it's been changed over the years with new groups adding to it. What would embracing our culture even look like anyways?

English however has been a constant so I agree on that. However I think this is much ado about nothing really. Most immigrants I've run into in this country can speak English when needed.
Click to expand...

I was wondering what the "American Culture" he was referring to was.

Assimilation =/= taking on a new culture and adapting.
 
theIowaHawk said:
I was wondering what the "American Culture" he was referring to was.

Assimilation =/= taking on a new culture and adapting.
Click to expand...

I think people forget we've been through this before. When an immigrant first comes in they tend to hang onto their old culture quite a bit and usually their old language at home. And for some reason there is always some group of people that see these people holding onto their old culture as some sort of threat to their way of life. This always happens, if it's not the Germans it's the Irish, if not the Irish, the Chinese, if not the Chinese, the Italians, and if not the Italians it's the Latin Americans.

Now what happens over the course of a few generations is that if there is enough of their group here parts of that old culture start to influence our current culture and add to it and the original immigrant's grand children start to be more in tune with the culture of the people living around them then grandma and grandpa's culture from their home country. . . This can often cause some pain to the grandparents who often foolishly hope that their descendants will hold onto the old culture in perpetuity.

By the time you get down to the 3rd or 4th generations the descendants no longer learn the original language at home and some of their culture has merged into the general local culture and national culture and this is accepted by just about everyone.

And then they find a new immigrant group to be scared of. And so history repeats itself over and over and over again. 'Merica

Latin American culture is already starting to fold over into ours and the Latin Americans themselves are becoming more and more a part of our culture. This doesn't happen overnight, it takes time but it is happening. It's nothing to be afraid of, we've been through this about a half dozen times already and while each large immigrant group has added to our local/national culture no large immigrant group has taken over our culture nor have they changed the fact that English is the dominate language here.
 
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Hoosierhawkeye said:
I think people forget we've been through this before. When an immigrant first comes in they tend to hang onto their old culture quite a bit and usually their old language at home. And for some reason there is always some group of people that see these people holding onto their old culture as some sort of threat to their way of life. This always happens, if it's not the Germans it's the Irish, if not the Irish, the Chinese, if not the Chinese, the Italians, and if not the Italians it's the Latin Americans.

Now what happens over the course of a few generations is that if there is enough of their group here parts of that old culture start to influence our current culture and add to it and the original immigrant's grand children start to be more in tune with the culture of the people living around them then grandma and grandpa's culture from their home country. . . This can often cause some pain to the grandparents who often foolishly hope that their descendants will hold onto the old culture in perpetuity.

By the time you get down to the 3rd or 4th generations the descendants no longer learn the original language at home and some of their culture has merged into the general local culture and national culture and this is accepted by just about everyone.

And then they find a new immigrant group to be scared of. And so history repeats itself over and over and over again. 'Merica

Latin American culture is already starting to fold over into ours and the Latin Americans themselves are becoming more and more a part of our culture. This doesn't happen overnight, it takes time but it is happening. It's nothing to be afraid of, we've been through this about a half dozen times already and while each large immigrant group has added to our local/national culture no large immigrant group has taken over our culture nor have they changed the fact that English is the dominate language here.
Click to expand...

Great post.
 
cigaretteman said:
You may be right about some German language newspapers hanging on until WWII, but, here in Iowa most ended during WWI, when the governor illegally banned the use of the German Language in church services and on the telephone, or the teaching of the German language in public and private schools.
Click to expand...
The point being - that German was used daily by people who parents and grandparents were immigrants. Neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, etc, show the country was not a "melting pot", but all of these people did assimilate into Americans, using the language so that they could communicate with others. I don't think we started "melting" together until court ordered bussing and now people trying "diversify" neighborhoods.
 
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SoonerBeAHawk said:
The Balkanization of America.

A hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt said, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good argument against state rights. One federal system to rule them all.
 
Titanhawk2 said:
The point being - that German was used daily by people who parents and grandparents were immigrants. Neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, etc, show the country was not a "melting pot", but all of these people did assimilate into Americans, using the language so that they could communicate with others. I don't think we started "melting" together until court ordered bussing and now people trying "diversify" neighborhoods.
Click to expand...
This is a really good point. The moment the U.S. Really tries to melt, the same people calling for assimilation get very upset. You know in Singapore they have forced melting. Every neighborhood has quotas on what ethnic groups live there so that everyone mixes. I bet most would object to this idea.
 
DutchyFunStar said:
"But what will you speak in heaven" was a quote from when some Lutheran churches in MN switched from services in Norwegian to English.
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Doesn't the Bible have a story indicating its against God's plan for us all to speak the same language?
 
naturalmwa said:
This is a really good point. The moment the U.S. Really tries to melt, the same people calling for assimilation get very upset. You know in Singapore they have forced melting. Every neighborhood has quotas on what ethnic groups live there so that everyone mixes. I bet most would object to this idea.
Click to expand...

I'm positive most would object to this idea. People of the same culture i.e. blacks, whites, Chinese, Mexicans, etc, etc. tend to stick together and live in the same neighborhoods. It's a tribe thing if you ask me. It would be forcing them out of their comfort zone.

At the same time, I believe this would be good for race relations. I'm not for the government forcing it. But I would hope that one day that it would just naturally happen. I kind of think it is slowly. My small middle class neighborhood is predominantly white, but we also have a few families of other races. We have a Black family, two Asian families and an Indian family, but everyone just kind of sticks to themselves for the most part.

One thing that I would like to see happen is more block parties. I don't think those happen as much as they happened in the past. My wife and I have talked about organizing one, maybe we will for next summer. It would be a great way to get to know each other better.

Nonetheless, I think mixing a few neighborhoods around the country would be an interesting social experiment. What works for Singapore may not work for the US. But I would like to think it would.
 
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Hawk and Awe said:
The Palin thread about requiring native Americas speak English got me thinking. Where did that thought/idea come from? Or why is it viewed as disrespectful to not speak English in this country? Is it like that other places? For some reason I would suspect parts of Asia might have this in their culture?

I used to feel this way but really don't know why. On a trip to Europe I think the most increddible observation I made was everyone spoke like 5 languages. I walked around an office with someone who spoke English, French, Spanish and some other language just in the course of our tour. Why aren't we striving for that?
Click to expand...

Answer to your first question, where did that thought/idea come from? Well it's been a long standing legal requirement to gain naturalized citizen status in the US.

There is also an issue of practicality. The language of government and commerce in the US is English. If you do not have a strong grasp of the English language, your ability to participate and succeed economically and socially will be very limited. That has even taken on a more global significance post WW II as English has gradually replaced French as the language of international commerce and diplomacy.

Regardless of what country you are in, and regardless of how many official languages that country may have, there is always a single language that is officially or unofficially adopted as the means to communicate within the gate keeping structure of government and business. This is not unique to the US.

Some people have mentioned Canada as an example of multi-lingual success. I think you would be hard pressed to find a majority of Canadians who would agree with you. That policy has caused numerous issues and resentments between Quebec and the rest of Canada including multiple separation attempts by Quebec.

So if you want to speak your native language within your ethnic enclave, that's fine, but if you want to succeed outside that enclave, you better assimilate. The US has become what it is today because of the successful assimilation of our multiple immigrant cultures into one American identity. Once that is no longer the case and people begin to identify themselves with their ethnic culture first, and United State second, then you can mark that as the beginning of the end of this country being great. When that happens we will be little more than a bigger version of Yugoslavia, with probably the same outcome.
 
naturalmwa said:
Doesn't the Bible have a story indicating its against God's plan for us all to speak the same language?
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Not really, the differing languages I'm pretty sure had to do with Humanity's narcissism.

If I remember right people built the tower of babel to kind of prove how awesome they where and God mixed up languages in order to somewhat put humanity back in it's place.
 
Hoosierhawkeye said:
Not really, the differing languages I'm pretty sure had to do with Humanity's narcissism.

If I remember right people built the tower of babel to kind of prove how awesome they where and God mixed up languages in order to somewhat put humanity back in it's place.
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So wouldn't trying to undo that by getting everyone speaking the same language be very "babel-like"?
 
naturalmwa said:
So wouldn't trying to undo that by getting everyone speaking the same language be very "babel-like"?
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All depends on the purposes. . . If we are trying to get people to speak the same language so we can again try to do something that would equate us with God then yes.

If we're just asking people to speak the local dominate language then no. Honestly the question asked "what will you speak in heaven" is a pointless, silly, and stupid question to ask. It hardly matters. And every indication seems to be that the new earth after the ressurrection will be re-united in one language.

Not to say that German congregations wouldn't necessarily ask the same questions but I will point out that the Norwegian and Swedish congregations are the liberal congregations.
 
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