Anyone else notice...?? (Hicksville, Westbury, Ontario: home, neighborhood, buy)

[Johninwestbury]

The past month or so the CVS's in the Westbury/Hicksville area have changed their in store advertizing (those annoucements you hear over the loudspeaker) to spanish!
I will definately be calling CVS Corporate to tell them what I think.
Has anyone else experienced such announcements? Its not exactly fair when many of the people shopping cant understand what they are announcing!

[bmg97]

Welcome to Amexica !

[TeamExit]

im pretty sure theyre not ONLY in spanish... i havent been around here in a while but yet i quickly see not much has changed.

[dnalsI gnoL]

So what? If my customers were Hispanic I'd advertise in spanish too.

[Yzette]

You do know that Hispanics and Latinos comprise more than 16% of the U.S. population, right?

And a shop owner should ignore them--and their money--why? Because you get offended by Spanish?

Believe me, I'm all for people learning English when they come here. Likewise, I favor making English the official national language.

But in my opinion, there are more important things to worry about than whether CVS makes announcements in Spanish.

[OhBeeHave]

I spent a rainy Sunday watching HGTV. One of the numerous shows was filmed in Canada. This episode had a trip to a big box home improvement store. All of the signs were in English only; none in Francais (despite being a bilingual province) or Espanol. A Canadian flag was suspended from the rafters.

A trip into the same big box home improvement store on LI and signs are bilingual with no American flag displayed.

[bmg97]

Originally Posted by OhBeeHave

I spent a rainy Sunday watching HGTV. One of the numerous shows was filmed in Canada. This episode had a trip to a big box home improvement store. All of the signs were in English only; none in Francais (despite being a bilingual province) or Espanol. A Canadian flag was suspended from the rafters.

A trip into the same big box home improvement store on LI and signs are bilingual with no American flag displayed.

Whats even better is when you buy something from the depot and the description is only in Spanish. I love that. If we keep catering to people that refuse to learn English then we only strengthen the reason why they never should learn.

[Smash255]

Originally Posted by OhBeeHave

I spent a rainy Sunday watching HGTV. One of the numerous shows was filmed in Canada. This episode had a trip to a big box home improvement store. All of the signs were in English only; none in Francais (despite being a bilingual province) or Espanol. A Canadian flag was suspended from the rafters.

A trip into the same big box home improvement store on LI and signs are bilingual with no American flag displayed.

What province was it? Where in the province? Perhaps it was an area that has very little French speaking population.

I don't have any problems with stores advertising, making announcements, etc reflecting their customer base.

It wouldn't make much sense to have announcements in Spanish in lets say North Dakota, but on Long Island, and specifically the Hicksville and Westbury area where a significant Spanish speaking population exists, I don't see anything wrong with it.

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by Smash255

What province was it? Where in the province? Perhaps it was an area that has very little French speaking population.

I don't have any problems with stores advertising, making announcements, etc reflecting their customer base.

It wouldn't make much sense to have announcements in Spanish in lets say North Dakota, but on Long Island, and specifically the Hicksville and Westbury area where a significant Spanish speaking population exists, I don't see anything wrong with it.

There were two episodes that day and I can't recall which one:
Quebec; in a suburb of Montreal.
Ontario; a neighborhood just on the southeast outskirts of Toronto.

Either way, English and French are official languages of Canada. Eastern Canada is where most of the French speaking Canadians are found and yet, no signs in both languages.

Doing a little reading online, Toronto has the largest non Canadian born population; if anything, Toronto sounds like a place which should have bilingual signs. I also discovered that the box store is only located in Ontario, so I have to guess it was the Toronto episode.

From a report on Toronto:

The top 3 places of birth among recent immigrants were:

Eastern Asia (24.0%)
Southern Asia (21.5%)
Eastern Europe (9.5%)

Toronto, Ontario has a total population of 4,366,508 (Urban 2001). The United Nations Development Programme ranked Toronto as second in its list of world cities with the largest percentage of foreign-born population.

Given the percentage of foreign-born population and non native speakers, shouldn't the box store in Toronto cater to immigrants as the CVS in Westbury does?

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by bmg97

Whats even better is when you buy something from the depot and the description is only in Spanish. I love that. If we keep catering to people that refuse to learn English then we only strengthen the reason why they never should learn.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Why learn? Eventually everyone will have to speak Spanish. Don't understand Spanish? Then you'll be SOL.