Utterly Meaningless

The native inhabitants of this land might dispute his assertion that we have always spoken English in these parts.

Honestly, I though our French-Canadians were language obsessed…

The native inhabitants of this land might dispute his assertion that we have always spoken English in these parts.

As might the Cajuns in LA.

Apparently the tax money needs to be spent on a history lesson for the adults. The oldest non-Native American settlement in the U.S. was St. Augustine, FL which was settled by the Spanish. Not to mention all the other areas in the U.S. which were under Spanish or French control originally. Mississippi being one.

I think it’s wonderful a foreign language class was offered in kindergarten. If I had homeschooled my kids in kindergarten we would have definitely done a foreign language, our public schools didn’t offer one.

Given the amount of butt saving the French did in the early days of America, it’s surprising sometimes that we don’t speak French. Let’s not forget the German immigrants that didn’t readily adopt English either, and to put a little more spin on it, how about the German who eventually migrated into Mexico? Of course, if we want to look at world history, if the Chinese hadn’t pulled in their welcome mat a few hundred years ago, there’s a very good chance most of the world would be speaking Chinese.

A lot of cajuns came from up here. 🙂 Cajuns = Acadian, the words anyway, especially when said in heavily accented French.

And what Dawn said. Buddy should move to a billingual country for a while.

*barfs* I feel my comment to the previous post still applies. And wait! There’s more!

There are numerous studies that show that when it comes to language: the earlier, the better. I will never speak German as well as someone who started learning it as a young child (I started in high school and continued in college).

In fact, there are sounds in other languages that a non-native speaker will likely NEVER be able to get right if that speaker starts too late. I can think of a few in Arabic and German off the top of my head.

I highly doubt that American children would become anything except a little more open-minded, tolerant, and EDUCATED if they started learning other languages at a young age. What a novel concept.

I live in Houston. Within two miles of my apartment, I frequent businesses on a weekly basis where it would serve me if I knew Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Maharashtrian and Gujarati, whatever it’s called that they speak in Pakistan, and a couple unidentified varieties), Thai, Arabic, Persian, Italian, and Russian.

Where I work, Norwegian, Portuguese, German, Scots, and Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig Polyglot ™ could come in handy. I could learn Hungarian to tease my dad, but he spent too much time learning English to appreciate that sort of teasing.

This is what living in the world means. Every time I hear some dumb uncultured American whine about preserving his country, I want to punch him in his ignorant fat face. Preserving our national identity, to the extent we have one in this nation built and sustained by immigrants, requires that we understand and communicate with non-English speakers. If I was talking to the dumb American, I’d ask him how he likes not being able to understand those “foreigners” when they talk about him. LOL…

I learned to speak Spanish by living in lower-class neighbourhoods in S. Fla. Er… I should say that I learned to speak Cuban that way actually.

Anyway, now I’m in Canada and my Spanish doesn’t mean diddly. I did take French in hs and univ. so at least I manage okay with the francophones (who speak English anyway, but I’m not getting into THAT debate).

I hate the politics that goes on with the whole lingua-cultural war here. Just to piss off my francophone in-laws, I’m teaching my kid Spanish. And, it probably doesn’t please them too much that he learns low-German from his Hutterite friends.

This is what living in the world means.
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Yes!

We were just remarking on the heritage of our newest family member now that his Dad has added an Italian/? element to our Dutch/German/English/French/?? bunch.

We told him was a perfect American. The baby smiled but he smiles at everything! 🙂

Nance

Well, looks like this has been a dead topic for a while, but it matters to me now, so I’ll post…

I have to agree mostly with the OPs stance that learning Spanish should eventually be an option available to our children in middle or high school. But other languages should be encouraged as well. When I was in middle school, Spanish was my only option. But in high school, I got the opportunity to pick between Latin, German, Spanish, and French. I ended up taking German for three years, and in the process, I got to learn a lot more about European languages and societies. I’m in my mid-20s now, and am partially fluent in Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese.

I also have a three year old son, and have the privilege of getting to work from my home… which also allows me to spend more time with him than I normally would working in an office. Here’s where I get a little irritated; everywhere I turn to find children’s programming for him to watch, every other show is trying desperately to get him to learn Spanish. They’re everywhere, and to be quite honest, they’re annoyingly persistent. I understand that young children like my son are capable of learning more than one language at such an age. I’m keenly aware of this, and in fact have been teaching him conversational Japanese. Now, this is a language that I’ve been unfamiliar with for my whole life, and I’m learning it right alongside him. He is actually able to remind me what certain words are in Japanese when I forget. I’m so proud of him for what he’s learned, and continues to learn… but recently I’ve been noticing that whenever he watches a television program that’s actively teaching Spanish (especially for simple words like cat, dog, numbers, letters, etc.), he gets confused about all the different translations for one word. And this is really frustrating me.

Now, I’m not one to say much about the current language barrier between Spanish speakers, and English speaking Americans… but, of course, I do notice them. I’m starting to get a little more frustrated, though, as everywhere I turn, our tax dollars are being wasted trying to make the American public learn another language against their will. Why aren’t there more programs being instituted that teach our Spanish speakers how to speak OUR native language? That just seems like it should be a common courtesy to the good folks who are paying for this one-sided tripe…

When you make plans on visiting another society/culture, there’s nothing wrong with knowing how to have simple conversations in their native language. But… when you plan on living amongst that society, you should have the common courtesy in this instance to become FLUENT in the native language. It’s a burden trying to find a translator all the time, so why not suck it up, take a course, read a book, and learn the language? Why in the world the powers-that-be cater to the needs of people with such a blatant disrespect for OUR culture, I’ll never know. But I know this, my son will learn Spanish when/IF he ever decides to. It’s not going to be forced upon him by an unscrupulous television network, and they’re going to find out just how annoyed this makes many parents. Petitions are circulating as we speak, with THOUSANDS of names on it, and these networks are going to watch their ratings decline significantly if they don’t tone down all the Spanish brainwashing.