English – The Official Language of the USA

I lived in Panama for 6 months and we could get documents in English (my Spanish is fine, but it's not official document fine, so I prefer reading anything important in my native tongue). Luckily for me, Panama is not zenophobic, so no one whined about English translations. Likewise, no one cares about what the "official" language is because they will continue to speak Spanish regardless! Frankly, it's a stupid non-issue. I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, which has a huge Arab population. Hence, everything is translated so they can read it. Seriously, who gives a shiite?

 

You need only be careful that you don't attempt to discriminate with such a policy.

I posted earlier that Spanish should be an official language alongside English in this country, and that is because there are so many Spanish speakers here, making a dual official language system more equitable and practical.

The question is whether those clamboring for English as an official language would ever agree to this? I think if they refuse it, it will demonstrate that their motives are not as they portray them to be.

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Yep, we do get by just fine without having any official language. I feel that attempts to make English the sole official language are borne of xenophobic sentiments, not of any practicality.

 

Of course. And in reality English is already the official language. 100% of all government documents in this country are in English. What the hell more do you want? I've never had an issue with something I needed being written in another language. It's like people are searching for solutions to problems that do not exist.

 

Good question. They seem to want foreigners to learn English and use only that, and never to rely on the services of translators and interpeters. Odd, that.

 

I think it's a good idea to learn English. Necessary even. I learned Spanish in Panama. But when you are new to a country there are things you really need to know. And those needs come before you can become totally fluent in a new language. Further, almost everyone remains more comfortable reviewing important or meaningful documents in their native tongue. So what's the big deal with translating something? This is a problem how exactly? Are they making you read things in Mandarin? Me neither.

 

In that case, since the thread title actually is "English - The Official Language of the USA" it seems we're in agreement. It didn't say anything about banning the use of other languages for non governmental purposes.

 

Well I don't understand why Spanish should be an official language. I've not really heard anyone making that argument before and I'm not sure of what the reasoning is behind it. So I'm not really following your point. And I don't understand what point you're trying to make about "need only be careful that you don't attempt to discriminate with such a policy." How would that be discriminatory? I think you have some sort of agenda with this topic that you've previously thought about but I'm not sure I'm following what point you want to make.

 

The US has a great many Spanish speakers and other people with a hispanic background. It seems to me the people pushing to make English, and only English, the official language of the US are attempting to use the government to force those Spanish speakers to assimilate linguistically as well as culturally.

I think we have enough of these people in this country, though, that if we were ever to institute an official language at the national level, we would reasonably have to make Spanish an official language as well. Again, I refer to Canada, where French, despite being a minority language, is nevertheless an official language. This means that people study it in school and that public communication is generally bilingual rather than monolingual. We've already been tending toward this approach here in the US, too, with many signs, notices, you name it really, all being published in English and Spanish at a minimum. In this respect both languages, and not just English, are already de facto official languages in some respects.

 

I don't know that Canada is a good example. Francophones are primarily located in Quebec, so they were geographically concentrated. And Canada has been more than solicitous with French speakers. English signs can be banned in Quebec, but just try to ban French signs in the other provinces... So with all that, there has been a separatist movement throughout much of Canada's history, and although it's kind of dead in the water now, it's been dead before and will probably be back in some future domestic or international crisis. Canada tried to foster two nations, and it got them. I can't imagine why anyone would purposefully inflict that sort of situation on a nation that doesn't currently have it. That really sounds like the height of stupidity to purposefully create a permanent rift in your own country.

I don't know about culturally, but linguistically, yeah, that's a no brainer that we would want people who come to the US speaking other languages to learn and use English. That's what assimilation is. We've had various large immigrant groups come here before and if we had your policy then, we would be speaking German, Italian, and probably several other languages as well as Spanish. I prefer the US of E pluribus Unum. I don't see how it works any other way.

 

That's a good point about how it's turned out for Canada, though I would expect a troublesome reaction to an attempt to enforce English as the sole official language of the entire United States right now as well. That might push the Hispanic population to behave more like Canada's French have, might it not?

Funny thing about German - it was very popular here prior to the world wars. Many people do still speak it, though it's been on the decline since that time for obvious reasons.

 

Do you mean Spanish speaking people would agitate for secession? I doubt it. If it would upset them it would depend on how it actually effected them and I would think it probably wouldn't be that much difference; if they're in the US they are already in a majority English speaking environment anyway.

Although I'm all in favor of people learning other languages, Americans don't have a common ethnicity so English is one of the few things that hold us together as a people. I think wanting to elevate Spanish or any other language as an official language is creating a lot of necessary and permanent problems.

Using your German example, if at the turn of the 20th Century, the US had made German a co-official language, you would have effectively created a secondary separate group of Americans who wouldn't have assimilated and might have had very different sympathies during the first and second world wars.

 

Using English at USA is a MUST right? Even at CA. and Better learn German as well, but it's too complicated, I cant even make the English tenses clearly.....and I wanna learn Japanese too...

 

Do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?

Most of the people here running Chinese restaurants seem to speak Cantonese, not sure why.

You will find very few Chinese speakers working in the stores, etc, but if your only problem is with verb tenses you can easily make yourself understood without them by using the same types of qualifiers you do in Chinese, so learn those first.

 

thanks! I easily mix up passive tense and past perfect tense, future perfect tense, and how to make a sentence with past perfect + passive tense? and should I use past tense to say all things in past, or if there some exception?

luckily I speak Cantonese, the immigrants of early days usually are Chinese from Canton, that's why.

learning English makes you think more logically, in Chinese grammar, gender and time are not important.

 

And yet, 80% of American Citizens support the measure when polled on it. England still has English as its Official Language. I don't see you calling the English xenophobes. It's because it's not xenophobic to learn the language of the country your residing(or heck, even visiting in). If nothing else, for courtesy purposes. Yes, we the American People deserve about as much courtesy as anyone else.

(Especially given how much courtesy we give to the world.) I ask the Liberals, when has the "rest of the world" given a damn about us? Aren't we the ones always bailing them out of crap? Aren't we the largest resource of foreign aid? Isn't that millions that could go to US Schools, infrastructure, medical research?

I beseech every US Citizen: Stop taking it up the arse for the "rest of the world" and start demanding US-first policy.

 

Many if not most English speakers with no experience trying to learn Chinese will be quite confused if you do not indicate tense in some way.

If you use the proper adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions you can avoid a lot of the verb tenses--as in, "Before, I like run a lot, but now I too busy" instead of "I used to run a lot, but now I am too busy." It sounds like broken English but is understandable, and many Chinese speakers of English speak that way over here to some extent because of all the irregular verbs in English.

It also helps to have the "to be" verb down pat. It is one of the most irregular ones. However, it is used so often it really helps to clarify many other time frames, because it can be used with so many adjectives:

"I am pretty." "She is pretty." "They/you are pretty'"

"I was pretty." "She was pretty." "They/you were pretty."

"I would have been pretty." "She/they would have been pretty"

"I will be pretty." "She/they will be pretty."

Then after each of the above you can use a preposition to clarify: if, when, because, etc.


Anyway, I would concentrate on the prepositions, because there are relatively speaking only a few of them as compared to the verb inflections.

Here's a link that gives illustrations of active vs passive verbs, but frankly, for years students in the US had it dunned into their heads that the passive voice sounded "weaker" and should be avoided where possible:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/activepassive.html

A Chinese acquaintance in college once asked me if I still came across words in English that were unfamiliar to me, and I admitted that yes, occasionally that still happened, even though I am a native speaker and read quite a bit. English has drawn on so many other languages it has an enormous vocabulary. That of course is part of the fun of speaking it, since so many nuances of meaning are possible. Admittedly, a skillful use of the verb tenses also helps with that.

I found, when I briefly *tried* to learn Mandarin, that the written language did something to the way I thought, too, but it's hard to understand or explain what was really happening. Something about combining symbols in different ways making me process concepts differently. Also, something about thoughts being more concise.

 

Thank you so much! the grammar table is what I want!!!

I think stick to the grammar and tense at least can make me describe things clearly.

I think Phonics is the most important part of learning English, which is also the missing part of my English learning process.
I am so angry that I didn't get a formal Phonics class when I was still a student. (may I know this sentence is grammatically correct? thanks!) (this is my present feel, but I am describing a past story.)

Now Hong Kong's parents know its importance, so they let their kids to learn this even before they can hold the pen correctly, as people heard that it's "sooner the better", vice versa.

Vocabulary...that's the biggest obstacle for me to read English books and orals. Esp when I speak English, I feel like run out of vocabs and can't use the correct grammar, when I see the confused faces of the people I talk to, feel very bad.

Thanks again you give me that link, it helps we a lot! and I am planning to take courses at British Council to strengthen the oral skill.

 

What are you talking about? I have never been to a school that did not have an American flag.

 

My wife is a nurse (critical care), and has on more than one occasion almost lost a patient because they could not understand English. In my opinion, if someone wishes to take advantage of the benefits this country provides they should not expect the providers of it to learn their language.

 

And that's what government business is done in, for the most part. I don't know of anything I can do with the government that I can't do in English. I think the above bill doesn't do anything practical, except add to the bureaucracy.

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My guess is almost no immigrant's children don't learn English. We've always had some immigrants that couldn't learn English. that's why places like Little Italy and Chinatown occur.

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Well, English is a Germanic language with an overlay of French. Guarantees that almost every rule in the English language has an exception.

 

Not really. A good percentage of Hispanics identify as white. We are not going to the be minority.Now, non-Hispanic whites may become a minority, but whites won't.

 

I've never been at a k-12 school (public or private) that didn't say the Pledge of Allegience at the beginning of the school day....... but I do live in a conservative part of the country.

 

Be it as it may, Mexicans themselves consider themselves a non-white minority in this country. Brown skinned, you know? No offence.

 

Is Senator Inhofe aware of the fact that English is NOT the native language of America?

 

Leave the Official Language requirement to Europe. Where nation states are ethnic homelands.

The United States is a free open and changing nation of immigrants.

Sure most people in the USA speak English today, but what about tomorrow? As the centuries grind on there's no guaranty that English will still be the major language here.

Let's not complicate the situation with legislation that'll be a pain to repeal later.