Arizona mayor rejects invite because invitations were printed in English AND Spanish. (Congress, Canada)
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If this were an event that involved only mayors on the American side of the border, perhaps he'd have a point. But since the event is inviting mayors from both the U.S. and Mexico, I'd have to say that mayor is dumb as the fungus that causes valley fever...maybe dumber.
This guy must be enjoying his 15 mins of fame. This also points to a problem where a majority of Americans speak only English. In just about any other country, people speak 2 or more languages.
Its not good advice for Latinos, apparently. Only Anglo speakers can benefit from learning a foreign language. Latinos could never benefit learning the native language.
In English or Espanol. You make no sense mi hijo .
I speak 2 languages other than English (Spanish/French), can get by in another somewhat (Italian), but I use Spanish much more frequently than the other non-English languages in the US, here in Northern California.
I've had Spanish-speaking roommates, neighbors, customers when running a business, contractors, etc. And no, none of them are illegals, to my knowledge. And of course, Spanish-speaking friends -- all mostly of Mexican heritage. And in my experience, when I became friends with them individually, I ended up becoming friends with their whole family.
So I definitely have had the opportunity to use my Spanish here in the US -- even if I get teased for having a Bogotá accent.
Latinos *are* part of the US culture, and most of them originate from Spanish-speaking roots. I think the US misses out on a lot by shunning that. Learning each new language made me look at myself and everything else from a fresh perspective. It gave me more insight on even the English language.
And that's just with languages within the same family, which aren't even too dissimilar from English compared to many other languages.
I want to learn Mandarin next (maybe Cantonese instead though, since that's more commonly spoken here in the Bay Area than Mandarin). I can only imagine how much more that will shift my paradigm.
Sorry, I've gone way off-topic. But my point is, there is value in learning languages other than just English.
Just because someone is from Spanish roots doesn't mean they don't know English. In fact most Hispanic-Americans do know English. It is the common language we can communicate with them in and it is our national de facto language.
Well gee I know some Spanish, German and Russian. One of the reasons is because I consider it to be the act of an arrogant jackass to visit those countries and not try to make an effort to learn their language. Now certainly its not practical as a mere tourist to learn every language. However If I ever lived in another country I'd consider myself a worthless, lazy, dirt bag not to integrate and learn the native language.
I also find it intellectually arrogant while culturally pusillanimous to suggest Anglo speakers might benefit learning a foreign language while for some reason we could never expect those poor third world ignoramuses to benefit from speaking the language of the country they reside in. However it appears that you are suggesting people in the US who do not speak English are not missing out on anything. This is a kind of held to a lower standard form of oppression i see all too often.
It seems like once a month Arizona is in the news for this type of nonsense. Even some bum hick town like Huachuca City and it'll paint all of Arizona with this type of ignorance. You'd think if Spanish really bugged you, wouldn't live next to the border...
This was a meeting with Mexican nationals as well, the mayor of Huachuca City is in the wrong here fully. Probably shouldn't even be a mayor, seriously who voted him in??
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