Bush opposes English as national language: Gonzales | Reuters.com — I kind of missed this story from the end of last week. Interesting, no? I guess they’ve been trying to spin it ever since. Let’s make Spanish the national language and get it over with.
HOUSTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush has long opposed making English the country’s national language, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Friday, the day after the Senate voted to do so.
The vote came in an amendment to proposed legislation overhauling U.S. immigration law and directed the government to “preserve and enhance” the role of English. Opponents said it could affect the status of some multilingual services offered by government organizations.
Adding to the confusion, the Senate also adopted a softer amendment calling English the “unifying language” of the United States. Senators take both versions into negotiations over a final bill with the U.S. House of Representatives.
Gonzales did not directly address Bush’s position on the controversial amendment because the Senate has not yet voted on the whole bill. But he said that Bush has in the past rejected such efforts.
“The president has never supported making English the national language,” Gonzales said after meeting with state and local officials in Texas to discuss cooperation on enforcement of immigration laws.
Good. These laws always (historically) end up oppressing language minorities. The US is simply too big to force everyone to speak English.
Doesn’t France do this?
Oppress my arse guys. people keep spouting that, or that its a turn off for visitors from other countries. when at the end of the day only 3 countries in the world don’t have a national language (USA, UK, Sweeden). I don’t think it matters one way or the other… but the whole offend people/oppress people thing just holds no water what so ever.
The sad fact is that our education system thinks Americans are too ignorant to learn more than one language. If Americans want to impress the world, I think learning more than one language would be a good start. Where has our pride gone?
This law is a crock anyway. It basically says that English is the official language, except when it isn’t.
One need only look to our neighbor to the north to realize that language alone is enough to darn near get your country cut up.
On the other hand, it is completely absurd that ballots should be printed in a dozen different languages, when only citizens are allowed to vote, and the ability to read and write in English is a requirement for naturalized citizenship.
Nobody is asking immigrants to cast aside their cultural identity, but they should be here at our convenience, not the other way around.
It’s time Americans stopped being embarrassed about our successes, and simply delineate those things we recognize as contributing to that success – free education for all, a single primary language, republican government, well-regulated capitalism, an open-arm well regulated immigration policy (please assimilate or else).
Making English the national language is fine. Let’s also require learning second languages in elementary and secondary school (any language, just offer them).
Sort of correct about the UK, but the UK is a bunch of countries anyhow, and each has a national language (English, Welsh, etc etc).
Personally one of the things I like about the US is the lack of an offical language. A certain standard of english is needed to get by, but that’s it.
I’m actually just learning some spanish atm so I can fit in more to the Bay area.
This is so silly. Legislating a national language is rediculous and unnecessary. Legislating English is especially funny, because, without much doubt, english is the “world’s” language, simply because of the cultural, scientific, and other “clout” the English speaking world has had over the past 200 years.
I have no problem saying that the USA deal with mulitple languages as minimally necessary, and obviously require English for ALL govermental discourse, including education. This is for both monetary/fiscal reasons, but also for “discrimination” reasons. We should not discriminate one “foreign” language over another (like, bilingual education in Spanish, but not Urdu).
We must be really lucky in Canada – we have two national languages … and a different dialect of each depending on which part of the country you’re in.
I vote pig-latin for a globally unifying language.
9. “Making English the national language is fine.”
no, it is not. The USA managed to get along 230 years without an official language. We can manage at least another 230.
we should be imitating Europe and their linguistically-based nationhood? look how poorly they assimilate their immigrants and tell me that we should be following in their footsteps ….
and problem with foreign language ballots? try understanding the legalese of these ballot measures in a language you weren’t raised speaking, then talk to me. we should be thankful that immigrants care enough to vote in the first place, a fact which makes them more civic-minded than most born-Americans.
Anyone else see this as related to the other thread about poor education in the US?
Common myths about making English our “national language”
1. It would prevent other people from speaking languages other than English.
2. It would prevent local governments from printing materials in languages other than English.
3. It would prevent local governments from having interpreters.
4. It would prevent advertisers from producing content in other languages.
5. It would prevent third-party businesses from producing materials in other languages.
The purpose of the “national language” was set down that if you were dealing with the FEDERAL government, you had to do so in English. The idea is to substantially cut down on the cost of producing everything in a bazillon different languages and dialects. It is a cost savings thing, not a discrimination thing. Many other countries such as France do the same thing.
Regarding ballots, since we already have people that *can* read English (so we are told) and still cannot cast their ballot properly (*cough* Florida *cough*), I don’t see how requiring the ballot to be in English will change much.
I think we should change America’s national language to text lingo. It will help make our country run more efficiently.
…or perhaps I should say…
I tnk we shd chng America’s nat lang 2 txt lingo. itl hlp mak r country run mor efficiently.
Somebody was discussing WWII one day, and mentioned that the USA Founders had a language vote. It was between English and German (Deutsch), and English won… can somebody clarify my foggy history lessons?
I’m impressed people can move here as adults, and actually learn the language. Queen’s english is bad enough, Americanized english is downright fugly. Three ways to spell too (two, to); two ways to spell won (one)… and all five words have different definitions.
What would have been nice, would’ve been the 70’s effort to switch to metric.
… last, and certainly least, tomé a dos años de español en escuela porque es una lengua hermosa, y la profesora era caliente — but, that was before Babelfish. 🙂
#17, apparently that German language vote you mentioned was a myth started by the German-American Bund, the American Nazi organization, and spread as propaganda in the 1930s.
If I’d had your hot profesora para español, I might be more functional in that language today. My greatest inspiration came from a student teacher in math class instead. She was so inspiring that it was sometimes difficult to stand up to go to the blackboard.
Why not just rename the English language American, like a lot of other things eg. apple pie, hamburgers, baseball.
#20. “The government’s purpose is to serve Americans. Americans speak English – it’s that simple.”
This is so passe. The government’s purpose is to serve PEOPLE. People speak various languages.
It’s a myth.
http://www.watzmann.net/scg/german-by-one-vote.html
I do agree with making English the official language for government documents, education, etc. It doesn’t mean you can’t speak another language or learn another language in school.
Anyone notice that SENIOR BUSH is spelled incorrectly?
“The US is simply too big to force everyone to speak English.” – China and Russia are a lot larger and have a national language. This statement is irrelevant.
“The sad fact is that our education system thinks Americans are too ignorant to learn more than one language.” – – great point, especially since there is only one “o” in to (as defined by the way you’re using it).
Notice I didn’t take a stance one way or another. However, again, if you post something, please make sure you know what you’re talking about. Senseless posts waste time.
#24, what an ironic post you made when you said “…if you post something, please make sure you know what you’re talking about. Senseless posts waste time.”
You made 2 spelling corrections to other posters, both wrong.
1) In correcting the headline, you actually made it worse (“SENIOR BUSH”). The only original mistake was the lack of a tilde above the “n” as in “Señor,” spanish for “mister.”
2) You wrote “…there is only one “o” in to (as defined by the way you’re using it).” He used the correct spelling of the word for his usage — the mistake is yours.
I really don’t want to play language police since I’ll quickly end up in jail myself, but when you start correcting other people, as you yourself said, “please make sure you know what you’re talking about.” The kettle isn’t nearly as black as you think, Mr. Pot.
#27 ……or two hemispheres that combine to form a critical mass 😉