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Like it or not, Hispanics are now the second largest group in this country. What is wrong with a family or indeed anyone speaking any language they care to. English is not the official language of our country. In fact we don't have one. That lady with the stupid complaint may have been jealous of the beauty of Hispanic women. I'm Anglo and I think they look gorgeous. Most of them anyway.
As far as I am concerned Spanish is a beautiful language spoken by beautiful, hardworking, family oriented people. I really don't understand why so many people have this hangup about Spanish ... meanwhile if they heard Pennsylvania German (aka Amish) they wouldent even bat an eye - this of course reveals their ignorance and nativism. Spanish speaking people were here long before the first British colonists arrived, they were the real first Americans.
I don't see why Spanish and English cannot co-exist equally.
I haven't read all the posts so I'll just pop in and have my say. I hope that the person doing the berating was 100% Native American or she hasn't got a leg to stand on. Also, if I remember my history correctly, the Spanish beat us to the land that we now call the United States.
LOL, just watched that and what an idiot. My favorite line from the "We speak English in America" woman: "We have freedom of speech here in America!" I have news for her too--more Spanish and Portuguese are spoken in America than English, since we share a continent with Central and South America lol.
^ Given the rather recent influx of illegal immigrants into the U.S., who are usually given free stuff and allowed to stay, and even engage in programs to help them out rather than our government enforcing our immigration laws and deporting people, some Americans are just very angry.
As was said in last night's debate, some of us feel taken advantage of. We are the most generous country when it comes to immigration (both legal and illegal). We accept a million new legal immigrants a year. We give illegals so much and often don't even care that they're here. We could be enforcing laws and deporting people, but we really don't. Not on a scale we should be. We shouldn't be creating laws giving free educations to known illegal inmigrants.
Other than education, what free stuff are illegal immigrants getting? Most adult illegal immigrants work hard for low wages.
Any source that the US is the most generous? By percent, some other countries accept more immigrants (not saying we should be higher)
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So Americans are, in my experience, getting frustrated. Some even feel we are being taken over. It may not be right to respond by yelling at a Spanish speaker in a restaurant, but we have a serious immigration problem here. Again - Americans are getting pissed off. Can't say I blame my fellow Americans since I am one of them.
Eh, the old lady should have just minded her own business. Why bother? The other customers were irrelevant to her anyway. The only person/people who would have an issue could potentially be the restaurant staff if the customers didn't speak English. There is no expectation that any establishment in the USA should have translation services for non-English speaking customers.
I've lived in the SF Bay area for many years, know San Jose pretty well, lived in LA for many more years, have traveled the farming corridor in between the two areas, frequented the fast food joints off I5 and HY101, and have never encountered any counter person who was unable to speak English to complete my order.
On the other hand, I’ve encountered quite a number of semi-literate xenophobic posters who, in professing their undying love of the English language, demonstrate not only that they couldn’t crank out two consecutive grammatically correct sentences in English even if their lives depended on it but that for them proper punctuation is an abstract concept with which they are only vaguely familiar.
Speaking Amish is fine because they are white. It's ok to speak white languages. Here's the ok ones: German, English, and all the weird ones like Irish, Norwegian, Dutch (From Denmark), Norwegian, Polish, Jewish, Chekesloavakia and others. Russian is not really ok but acceptable because Russians are kind of scary and Russian strippers are HOT. French is NOT ok either even though they are kind of white (dark hair) because they are anti American. Unfortunately there is not much we can do about French names like St. Louis and New Orleans. We just have to live with this most dark part of american linguistic history.
Bad languages are: Ebonics, Spanish, Spanglish, Somalian, African, Arabic, North Korean and Paki
Undecided: Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Punjabic, Hindu. PROBABLY ok but also ok to do the 'ching chong' behind their back because they are annoying (good at math, good food but TOO SPICY)
If you keep these rules in mind you will never have to deal with any language based humiliating youtube incidents
OK, maybe I missed the memo, but I'm of Dutch descent, with ancestors from The Netherlands, sometimes called Holland, and so I am wondering when the people in Denmark stopped speaking Danish and took up Dutch.
So Americans are, in my experience, getting frustrated. Some even feel we are being taken over. It may not be right to respond by yelling at a Spanish speaker in a restaurant, but we have a serious immigration problem here. Again - Americans are getting pissed off. Can't say I blame my fellow Americans since I am one of them.
I am Hispanic and I can definitely understand it if somebody's bothered by hearing Spanish spoken just about everywhere they go. Especially if they happen to live in a Hispanic-majority city or in a Hispanic-majority neighborhood. It feels like you're living in a foreign country, and I get that. In this case however, it was just this ONE family having a conversation amongst themselves at a restaurant, and the old lady suddenly took it upon herself to tell them to speak English because they are in America. The fact that somebody's having a conversation in Spanish does not mean that they speak no English or that they are here illegally.
You cannot go around casually telling people that they "need to" speak English because you never know what that interaction might lead to. Some people don't waste their time with words, and will readily shove a fist in your face.
^ Given the rather recent influx of illegal immigrants into the U.S., who are usually given free stuff and allowed to stay, and even engage in programs to help them out rather than our government enforcing our immigration laws and deporting people, some Americans are just very angry.
As was said in last night's debate, some of us feel taken advantage of. We are the most generous country when it comes to immigration (both legal and illegal). We accept a million new legal immigrants a year. We give illegals so much and often don't even care that they're here. We could be enforcing laws and deporting people, but we really don't. Not on a scale we should be. We shouldn't be creating laws giving free educations to known illegal inmigrants. But we are, if you're Obama, under certain conditions. Rather than deporting mothers and children we know are illegal clogging up immigration centers, we are placing them in cities and towns all over the U.S. We just are too nice. In many other counties, you can be shot for crossing the border illegally. You can be imprisoned for it. Actually deported! What a concept.
So Americans are, in my experience, getting frustrated. Some even feel we are being taken over. It may not be right to respond by yelling at a Spanish speaker in a restaurant, but we have a serious immigration problem here. Again - Americans are getting pissed off. Can't say I blame my fellow Americans since I am one of them.
Hmm. As you know, I'm a Jersey Girl myself, but I don't feel the same way at all. Illegal immigrants don't bother me in the least. If I were in one of those godawful impoverished countries and my best bet for survival was to get into the neighboring country where the food and the jobs are, you bet your ass I'd do whatever the hell I could to get in there, legalities or not.
I don't understand the fear of "being taken over" in the least. How are illegal immigrants taking over? By cooking our food and cutting our lawns? Taking over WHAT exactly? I am far more concerned with the money and effort made to dream up new and better ways to kill off other humans. Maybe if we spent some of that helping these immigrants to have better lives in their own homelands instead of figuring out how to murder people so we can get more stuff, we wouldn't have an illegal immigrant problem. Crazy talk, I know.
The language thing doesn't bother me, either. Language is language and always changing, and it's a subject that fascinates me. So much so that I gave birth to a kid who would grow up to be a linguist, lol. By the way, she's in Beijing teaching the small children of wealthy Chinese parents how to speak English. Some of you are gonna have a heart attack when they increase their emigration numbers to the US. And they are coming.
Remember the year 1066 from history? William of Normandy invades England and beats Harold for the crown at the Battle of Hastings. Not only did that event generate a really cool tapestry, but it forever and ever changed the English language from the Germanic-based Saxon English to a mix of English and Norman French that grew into what we speak today. I'm sure the same problem existed back then for the native-born English. All these damn foreigners in the land talking funny. Within two hundred years, the two languages had merged. That will probably happen here, too. It's not good or bad, it's just the way it works.
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