Maynard Keenan
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- Aug 21, 2004
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There are only 8 countries in the world without a national language.
Every first world country has a national language except the U.S. and Britain.
http://www.englishlanguagefaqs.com/2014/05/which-countries-do-not-have-official.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/201508200681.html
A national language can unite the people, why don't we have one on the federal level?
No but local governments could. If San Fancisco China Town breaks off to be its own municipality they could pass local ordinances in Mandarin. Or Miami could start passing ordinances in either Spanish or Portuguese. Dearborn MI could pass them in Arabic.
There are things other countries can do better than us that we can learn from. The unifying ability of one language is powerful. We are a melting pot but we also cannot be completely different from one another. We are 50 states but we are also the United States. We need an official language, not everyone needs to just speak one language, but everyone should speak the language. I said should, it is not necessary. By making English the official language, we aren't forcing anyone to speak it, we are only saying you should speak it. It is very helpful, and it is the language the government recognizes.
We are also giving the heads-up to people, that, our laws will only be in English, public employees will only communicate in English (translation services are just costly, and the cost shouldn't be passed onto the majority).
Language is different than just culture. Language is suppose to allow us to communicate. It creates understanding.
Also, it is much harder to get the majority to learn other languages, than have the minority learn ours. It is just unpractical to get most Americans to learn another language.
Humans need the ability to understand each other to get things done. We can have different cultures, they can speak another language, but they need to learn the majority speaking language. It has been tested throughout time again and again. A employer and a employee needs to speak the same language. A servicer and client need to speak the same language.
It is practically costly and ineffective to always have a translator.
Yes, as I pointed out previously, it worked so well for Belgium when they tried to force everyone to use a common language. It really brought them together [/sarcasm].
You mean the language they invented that we use and people want to make official? It is called English for a reason.
Why?
There is nothing in the constitution that says we are a Christian nation and nothing that says our language needs to be English. There is no requirement to speak English to be an American.
Not everyone thinks as you do.I think it's cute how everyone is pretending this wouldn't instantly become a stick with which to beat non-English speakers.
Yes, we should. Its been our de facto language for ages, and thanks to the Chinese not being able to use their own language effectively for computing combined with our business dealing with them, english is probably the most widespread language on the planet.
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understand?
As I mentioned in the previous post on the thread, Belgium originally had a single official language (French). It didn't work out for them (they now have three), including the fact that the country is largely polarized based on the two main languages (French and Dutch) -- even more than Democrat vs. Republican in the US. Just a couple of years ago, Belgium went 589 days with no functioning government because the politicians wouldn't work with the politicians speaking a different language, even though they belonged to similar political parties (either both conservative or both liberal).
So is this explained simply enough for you?
As I mentioned in the previous post on the thread, Belgium originally had a single official language (French). It didn't work out for them (they now have three), including the fact that the country is largely polarized based on the two main languages (French and Dutch) -- even more than Democrat vs. Republican in the US. Just a couple of years ago, Belgium went 589 days with no functioning government because the politicians wouldn't work with the politicians speaking a different language, even though they belonged to similar political parties (either both conservative or both liberal).
So is this explained simply enough for you?
We who? Some of us started out speaking Dutch, some of us German, some of us French, many of us Spanish, Norwegian, Hawaiian, Inupiat, etc. etc. etc.and we started out speaking english
Not to be a smart aleck on this, but non-rhoticity (/r/ dropping) is more modern and rhoticity (pronouncing the /r/) is the older form of English. (Linguistics and the history of language development is one of my personal interests.)You mean the language they invented that we use and people want to make official? It is called English for a reason.
If English became the official language today, what changes tomorrow to make us more united? In what way would you feel closer to me as your fellow American that you didn't today?We can certainly use some uniting!!!
So that means we need a national language more than anything. We can't have a 2nd language emerging in the country. Right now we need to establish English as the official, before this country becomes divided with 2 powerful languages.
If everyone in Belgium learned French, they wouldn't have had the whole dutch vs. french problem.
Well, you get to unite with other people in their now state sanctioned smug superiority towards non-English speakers, obviously. It means it won't be racist when you tsk tsk at people speaking Spanish in Public.If English became the official language today, what changes tomorrow to make us more united? In what way would you feel closer to me as your fellow American that you didn't today?