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| English as an Official Language | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 30 2009, 02:03 PM (86 Views) | |
| BarkAtTheMoon | Aug 30 2009, 02:03 PM Post #1 |
Your Friendly Neighborhood Wolf
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This all started from a poll I saw on Facebook a while back. The question pertained to the fact that the United States, unlike many countries, does not have an official language. The question, of course, was that since English is the most widely spoken language in the United States, should it be made the official language. Well, I took this quiz and it alarmed me just how many people voted "Yes" to this poll. Now, my opinion on this topic could be construed as a very biased one being that I speak multiple languages, but since English is my mother-tongue, I don't exactly know how one could make that argument. As you can probably guess, I disagree with the idea of making English the official language. This is in respect to the vast amount of immigration and tourism the US receives. We have such a diverse populace that it would be stupid to point at one language and say it is superior to all the others just because more people speak it. It almost sounds like a form of racism in that sense, but language distribution has more to do with cultural diffusion than anything else. An example of this could be that a person could be natively Russian but speak no Russian whatsoever, instead speaking Swedish because that is where his/her family lives. People, especially English speakers in the United States, have this delusion that their language is superior to every other language in existence. I do not agree with this. I believe English is a very lazy language that uses simplistic structure. The only real redeeming quality about English is that it has the largest dictionary of adjectives of any language in the world. On the other hand, most people only use a small selection of these in everyday speech. This simplistic structure leaves a vast deal of supposedly acceptable room for error. On top of adjectives, there are more native speakers who absolutely mangle the English language than any other language on the planet. Do I think that there are languages better than English? Yes, I do, but that does not make them any more viable to be considered for an official language position. I do not believe that any country should have an official language. A dominant language, perhaps, but not official. I think it would be much better to simply say "We accept all languages but speak mainly English." But what is your opinion? I await your responses. |
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| Mr. Lawltastic | Aug 30 2009, 02:16 PM Post #2 |
Hmmm...this Fanta tastes like magic...I LIKE that *falls over*
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I wholeheartedly agree, Glenn. Having an "official" language and forcing tourists/immigrants to learn it is pointless and borderline egotistical. I don't understand why people get so angry when they see a sign with a segment in Spanish. It's not like the Mexicans are going to over-run the country and destroy us or anything (hell, they can't become president due to the immigration clause, so why are people so worried?). I say it's a lot more fair to have those signs in multiple languages so everyone can understand them instead of FORCING people to learn our language to so much as navigate. And besides, would it KILL us to learn a few extra languages? Or at least ONE? |
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| BarkAtTheMoon | Aug 30 2009, 02:37 PM Post #3 |
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Wolf
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This is true. I see this all the time. It bugs the crap out of me. People who don't even bother to even make an attempt at getting at least a working knowledge of a second language are useless in my opinion. Future generations of people are going to have to be bilingual. We are going to have to be. We lose so much business and opportunity for communication when we cannot understand what another person is saying. Multilingual persons in the world vastly outnumber monolingual persons for a reason: because it is beneficial to be so. The Netherlands has four languages it recognizes as majority languages and as such is able to better communicate with their neighbor countries. On top of all this, knowing another languages opens up new doors as far as jobs and traveling are concerned. Look at you or I. You are learning Spanish and are going to learn Romanian. I am learning Japanese, already have a working knowledge of French, and am probably going to take some German and Italian classes when I reach college to better my understanding of the languages. This opens up SO many doors for careers and such. Americans are so jaded in that they think they only need one language when that is vastly not true. Edited by BarkAtTheMoon, Aug 30 2009, 02:38 PM.
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4:20 AM Jul 31
