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Seems like we are already effectively bilingual; all products and instructions are at least in English and Spanish, store signs at Walmart, Costco, Gas stations, kids TV teach Spanish, my kids daycare teaches Spanish, local school districts encourage at least a few years of Spanish (and this is in a Northeastern state).
So how soon that the US is in practice bilingual? Something like watching the President give a policy speech in Spanish with English subtitles. Or an episode of a TV program being in Spanish on a major network?
Some of the ads for employment require applicants to be bi lingual. It used to be when folks came to our country they learned our language Why should that be different now?.
Some of the ads for employment require applicants to be bi lingual. It used to be when folks came to our country they learned our language Why should that be different now?.
No, I don't think that they did. Where I grew up in the Northeast, many had an elderly relative who had never mastered the new language.
Seems like we are already effectively bilingual; all products and instructions are at least in English and Spanish, store signs at Walmart, Costco, Gas stations, kids TV teach Spanish, my kids daycare teaches Spanish, local school districts encourage at least a few years of Spanish (and this is in a Northeastern state)...
Well, I can remember taking Spanish in my small town high school in western New York state in the middle 1950's. The only other language offered was Latin. There were no Spanish or Hispanic children in the school or families in town, and in those years you never heard of Hispanics in the nearby cities. If there was a foreign language that I actually heard spoken frequently it was Italian, and on the basis of local regional culture it would have made more sense to teach Italian if practical bilingualism mattered.
However, the school had the "bizarre" idea that learning Mexican Spanish made sense because Mexico was our nearest non-English speaking neighbour country. (They were evidently unimpressed by Quebec, which was only a few hours away.)
I live in a country that has a large amount of bilingualism among residents. I am a native speaker of the minority language, but I can function in the majority language in uncomplicated situations. Most English-speaking minority residents never learn the majority language, and it is the same in Spain the English who live there are notorious for not knowing Spanish.
The fear of bilingualism seems almost always to center on the majority's fear that they are losing their superior position in their society, and financial points are made to give that fear a more acceptable veneer.
No, I don't think that they did. Where I grew up in the Northeast, many had an elderly relative who had never mastered the new language.
Ditto. I had school friends whose mother's never learned English. And the elderly Sicilians in town always spoke their own language.
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