Spanish language in USA (again)

Travis,

While I hope you are right, I am afraid you may be too optimistic. I do live in a neighborhood where Hispanics are the majority, so it is encouraging to see language schools for learning English. I'm not sure if this is the norm, however. I don't wish for Spanish to "disappear," either, but my German- and French-speaking great-grandparents came over here and learned English. Today's Hispanics seem to be the only ones of our great melting pot who either refuse to learn English or feel that we should cater to them. Who are the immigrants here?

I would *never* move to a foreign country and not learn the language at least enough to get by. I have lived in three European countries (one was England, so that doesn't count), and I learned their languages enough so that I did not have to speak English with the natives. It troubles me that so many Hispanics seem to think that we owe it to them to provide all kinds of Spanish-language paraphernilia when no other immigrant group in the history of the United States has been so brazen and demanding and arrogant. Our German grandparents humbly learned English, as did others' Chinese, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and Japanese grandparents (not to mention all of the Italians and Poles) -- why can't more Hispanics? The answer is: they can.

That's the thing - I do not really see why Spanish-speakers should be forced to adopt English here, and honestly I sort of lament the local extinction of German here (aside from some post-WW2 first generation immigrants who are able to speak it today). I do not really believe in the value of the "melting pot", for that matter, as I do not really believe that assimilation is necessarily a good thing. It just is that I do not see that Spanish has any long-term prospects for survival in the US today outside of Puerto Rico and the region bordering Mexico, first-generation Spanish-speaking immigrants aside.

Marie Heron, you are partially right, but you are wrong in something.

- Spanish is not a foreign language. It is spoken in USA before English. If you prefer, both are foreign: English and Spanish. Only native american languages are not considered foreign, if you are strict. So, historically Spanish has the same or more status than English.

- Hispanics want "Spanish-language paraphernalia". That´s their right. If your great-grandparents French or German wanted to preserve their culture or their language, it was also their right. But they didn´t. If Chinese Americans or Italian-americans want to study their language and their culture is also their right. They can choose. You can choose.

- Spanish language and Hispanic culture is a way to understand the whole Continent: the Americas. Spanish language is the first or second language of all countries of the continent, but Canada. If you want to understand better (or something) almost all people from the Americas, you need to study Hispanic culture and Spanish language (at least a little).

<< Spanish is not a foreign language. It is spoken in USA before English. If you prefer, both are foreign: English and Spanish. Only native american languages are not considered foreign, if you are strict. So, historically Spanish has the same or more status than English. >>

It's not a matter of which language was here first. As things stand now, the United States is considered an English-language country, and all other languages, including Spanish and even Native American ones, are foreign. They're not geographically foreign, but they are politically.

- Kef

<< Hispanics want "Spanish-language paraphernalia". That´s their right. If your great-grandparents French or German wanted to preserve their culture or their language, it was also their right. But they didn´t. If Chinese Americans or Italian-americans want to study their language and their culture is also their right. They can choose. You can choose. >>

The French language is very much preserved in the US. The largest French speaking enclaves are Southern Lousiana, the home of the Cajuns and the French spakeing communities in Upper New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusets, Rhode Island, and Florida.

So, Spanish is not the only one that is preserved in the US.

>>So, Spanish is not the only one that is preserved in the US.<<

There are still pockets of German-speaking populations in the US, such as in parts of Texas and Pennsylvania, despite the practical extinction of German in the Midwest, but apparently they are generally limited to older individuals still speaking German and likely will disappear within a number of decades.

@ Travis?

What country are you in? In these United States not a day goes by where I don't here snippets of Spanish, whether changing radio stations, calling companies, or shopping at the supermarket, and I live a few miles south of the CANADIAN border.

Like Guest said, a significant chunk of current US territory was part of the Spanish empire and subsequent Republic of Mexico for centuries. These geographical areas already had a language. SPANISH.

Why is it LOS ANGELES and not the Angels, the list goes on and on.... So many people are mentioning Europe here, so let me add my two cents. My wife is Finnish and and in her country there is a 6 percent minority that speaks Swedish and their language is co-official in their national government, and this for a minority of 6 percent. In Belgium something like 3 percent of the population speaks German but it is an offical language. Switzerland has 4 official languages including Romansch, which is spoken by about 2 percent of the population, but a Romansch speaker in Geneva (french speaking) or Zurich (german speaking) can walk into any federal building and get service in their language. The same in Canada. In Vancouver all federal services are offered in French as well as English, 3000 miles from Quebec.


In the US, if you add all citizens/nationals that speak Spanish, including Puerto Ricans, (45 million) plus the illegals (12 million) and students (5 million) that learn the language, you got at least a 20 percent chunk (around 60 million people) of the population that speaks this language, nationwide. Spanish was never a foreign language in American and it never will be. Americans need to understand this. Spanish is a second national language of this country. American Spanish speakers should be catered to, they should have university majors and entire universities offering curricula in Spanish, the same for schools and societies. They shouldn't be told to speak English because this is already a Spanish speaking country. There should be more cultural programmes for Spanish speakers as well, public radio stations, etc.

German in the US is dead. The only people that keep it alive are US service personnel that come back after years of deployment in Germany. German (as an international language) in Europe is dying. Most Europeans think speaking English is a basic skill, like tyeing your shoes or driving. They speak another 2 to 3 languages on top of thier native tongues. Isnt it time that Americans followed suit.

It depends on where you shop (in my city)...I remember hearing a little girl pestering her Mom or a caregiver to tell her what "de nada" or something similar meant. I do not think her mother knew and I think the girl probably learned the expression in grade school. It was in an upscale health-food market.

On the other hand, in the economically depressed parts of the city, Spanish is common-Mexican markets move into deserted shopping centers, etc.

This isn't meant to offend anyone, just an observation.

"German in the US is dead. The only people that keep it alive are US service personnel that come back after years of deployment in Germany. German (as an international language) in Europe is dying. Most Europeans think speaking English is a basic skill, like tyeing your shoes or driving. They speak another 2 to 3 languages on top of thier native tongues. Isnt it time that Americans followed suit"

I agree with some of your post, but not all of it. Sometimes I wonder where people get their info.

There are pockets in the US, where people speak German or celebrate German culture (so there will usually be some German speakers)...A lot of people probably did not want to be identified as German after WWII, but in areas of larger German-American populations, there is less of a stigma to having a German background. I used to have a super neighbour who came from Iowa/Wisconsin and he had no shame in having a German name, etc.

I just looked up Deutsche Verein and I found several listings. I even found a group that reminds me of the German cultural groups in Brazil.

Spanish could easily become a wide spoken language in Canada also. If there are 40 millions of hispanics in US, to make Spanish even more spoken than French in Canada would be a piece of cake, only 7 millions of migrants are need. Even more, Canadian Government is more multilingual friendly than the US one, so Spanish would have a brighter future in Canada than in US.

I would *never* move to a foreign country and not learn the language at least enough to get by. I have lived in three European countries (one was England, so that doesn't count), and I learned their languages enough so that I did not have to speak English with the natives. It troubles me that so many Hispanics seem to think that we owe it to them to provide all kinds of Spanish-language paraphernilia when no other immigrant group in the history of the United States has been so brazen and demanding and arrogant.-Marie H.

I agree with you. I lived in France and Japan and I learned to speak the languages of those countries. I'm not sure who is demanding the Spanish language info. I think there was a law related to education back in the 1960s. Here's a problem, though. I keep running into Hispanics who cannot read and write in SPANISH.

I was in an elevator in a city building parking lot and there were the numbers,
1 (Uno) 2 (Dos) etc.
O-kay. So the city officials don't think Hispanics can recognize numbers...

>>@ Travis?

What country are you in? In these United States not a day goes by where I don't here snippets of Spanish, whether changing radio stations, calling companies, or shopping at the supermarket, and I live a few miles south of the CANADIAN border.<<

The only people I hear speaking Spanish here natively speak it, and are either first or second generation immigrants. Yes, there is signage and media content that is in Spanish here, but it is all aimed at people who natively speak Spanish and are in no way evidence of any kind of shift towards speaking Spanish overall.

>>Like Guest said, a significant chunk of current US territory was part of the Spanish empire and subsequent Republic of Mexico for centuries. These geographical areas already had a language. SPANISH.<<

I tend to view things from a regionalist type of perspective rather than a nationalist one, and honestly whether or not parts of the territory of the US today were once part of the Spanish Empire means little to me personally. (And do *not* say "Spanish-speaking", as Spanish was another colonial language brought in by Europeans just like English, which displaced native languages just like English did.)

>>Why is it LOS ANGELES and not the Angels, the list goes on and on.... So many people are mentioning Europe here, so let me add my two cents. My wife is Finnish and and in her country there is a 6 percent minority that speaks Swedish and their language is co-official in their national government, and this for a minority of 6 percent. In Belgium something like 3 percent of the population speaks German but it is an offical language. Switzerland has 4 official languages including Romansch, which is spoken by about 2 percent of the population, but a Romansch speaker in Geneva (french speaking) or Zurich (german speaking) can walk into any federal building and get service in their language. The same in Canada. In Vancouver all federal services are offered in French as well as English, 3000 miles from Quebec.


In the US, if you add all citizens/nationals that speak Spanish, including Puerto Ricans, (45 million) plus the illegals (12 million) and students (5 million) that learn the language, you got at least a 20 percent chunk (around 60 million people) of the population that speaks this language, nationwide. Spanish was never a foreign language in American and it never will be. Americans need to understand this. Spanish is a second national language of this country. American Spanish speakers should be catered to, they should have university majors and entire universities offering curricula in Spanish, the same for schools and societies. They shouldn't be told to speak English because this is already a Spanish speaking country. There should be more cultural programmes for Spanish speakers as well, public radio stations, etc.<<

The problem here is that you are treating the US as if it were one unitary, monolithic entity. Spanish may not be a foreign language in some parts of the US, but here in the Upper Midwest it has always been a foreign language, and until relatively recently there was no Spanish-speaking population here at all. You seem to be for imposing Spanish as an official second language across the entire US, even though the areas that it is established in are limited to only certain parts of the US, and in other parts of the US it is effectively a language of first and second-generation immigrants, just like any other immigrant language. Here in other Milwaukee, other immigrant languages did not get any kind of official status, so why should Spanish? There never were any government services provided in, say, Polish, back when there was a significant number of Polish-speakers here. The only immigrant language here aside from English which ever was dominant to the point that it "should" have actually been officialized was German, but German is dead here today.

>>German in the US is dead. The only people that keep it alive are US service personnel that come back after years of deployment in Germany. German (as an international language) in Europe is dying. Most Europeans think speaking English is a basic skill, like tyeing your shoes or driving. They speak another 2 to 3 languages on top of thier native tongues. Isnt it time that Americans followed suit.<<

As stated before, there are still areas in the US where German is being used, even though it is generally limited to older people. Yes, German is extinct in most of the US where it was once spoken, first-generation immigrants aside, but it is not completely extinct in the entire US quite yet. (And by the way, all the first-generation immigrants who speak German that I have known of here have had nothing to do with the US military.)

Would it be that bad if Spanish became in fact America's second language? I mean after all it sounds nice, it's easy and then we would have two languages which is better then just one, just like Canada.

Why would we like to be like Canada?

<< I was in an elevator in a city building parking lot and there were the numbers,
1 (Uno) 2 (Dos) etc.
O-kay. So the city officials don't think Hispanics can recognize numbers... >>

Heh, if I were a hispanic and I saw such a thing, I don't know whether I'd be amused or insulted...