Should we recognize English as the official language of the US of A?

[TheBarrd]

You think that the cops should stop every person with a brown skin and demand to see their papers?

It shouldn't come to that. Surely, there would be records...birth records, marriage records, naturalization records...that could be checked.
But if it comes to that, then yes. And not just brown skin...but anyone who is suspected of being an illegal.
I know I would be happy to show my documentation. I was born here.

I doubt you would understand how difficult and expensive the process is. I've been through it as a white European without a hitch, but I saw others at my various attendances at the immigration office who had been trying to get citizenship for a long time. Many are escaping from poverty and hunger, some are escaping violence and murder. I'd like to see more empathy and less contempt. But that's just me of course and my bleeding heart.

My own bleeding heart is more concerned about the poverty and hunger that is already here, and being made worse by the added burden of some 11 million more people taking, and putting nothing back. Why should a single mother work herself to exhaustion trying to keep her family together, and paying income tax, as the law requires, while some illegal alien skips on through, getting benefits she is denied, taking from the system and putting nothing back? I say that single Mom is more our responsibility than any illegal alien...

 

[Hetta]

It shouldn't come to that. Surely, there would be records...birth records, marriage records, naturalization records...that could be checked.
But if it comes to that, then yes. And not just brown skin...but anyone who is suspected of being an illegal.
I know I would be happy to show my documentation. I was born here.

And what makes them a suspect? I don't believe that you believe that race will not come into it.

My own bleeding heart is more concerned about the poverty and hunger that is already here, and being made worse by the added burden of some 11 million more people taking, and putting nothing back.

It's impossible to live here and not put anything back, unless you prevent illegals from paying taxes. If they are here and working, then they are putting back. They are doing work that benefits others. The poverty and hunger in the US has nothing to do with immigration. It has been always been present, and in fact the Europeans brought it over with them.

 

[Skaloop]

If they are "illegal immigrants" then they are not "lawful hard-working people". Illegal and lawful just don't go together like that. If they were "lawful" then why haven't they gone through the process, and become naturalized American citizens?

That's specifically why I said it the way I did. Aside from being illegal immigrants, they are otherwise hard-working contributors to their community, and are otherwise law-abiding.

 

[AHH who-stole-my-name]

The issue is that we don't speak English We speak American, which is a bastardized concoction of any word that sounds cool and catches on long enough for someone to place it in the dictionary. If we were to separate what was originally spoken as English from those words acquired from other languages and that which was created by people who created their own words, I don't think anyone here could understand each other. Heck A person fro the Upper East coast has definite problems understanding a person from Lower Louisiana.

You have to have a nation to have a national language and we are so far apart in so many things we hardly qualify as that.

 

[AHH who-stole-my-name]

Someone gave you an incorrect story on The Tower of Babylon issue.

I just about fell off my chair at the persons quote. I tried to go to it, but I guess it was stricken from the forum. God is indeed a jelious God, but his actions at the tower were not because of that. It was because people were not spreading out across the land. This was part of the fruitful and become many commandments. He wanted us to fill all lands not one land. If I'm not mistaken,

 

[morningstar2651]

The issue is that we don't speak English We speak American, which is a bastardized concoction of any word that sounds cool and catches on long enough for someone to place it in the dictionary. If we were to separate what was originally spoken as English from those words acquired from other languages and that which was created by people who created their own words, I don't think anyone here could understand each other. Heck A person fro the Upper East coast has definite problems understanding a person from Lower Louisiana.

You have to have a nation to have a national language and we are so far apart in so many things we hardly qualify as that.

Language is interesting, isn't it? Language changes over time as words and phrases fall out of use and new words and phrases take their place.

Even technology changes the way we think and talk. Think back before the invention of the cell phone - how often did someone ask "Where are you?"

We have more than different spellings than the English - we have different words and phrases since our two branches of the English language developed with an ocean separating our two cultures.

This isn't unusual or unique - when I studied Spanish in high school I learned three very different dialects. I learned Spanish from an immigrant from Spain, from an English teacher from Argentina, and from an American that learned Mexican Spanish. The English taught by the Argentinian wasn't American English.

We have multiple dialects of English within our country, and I find the idea of us having a single shared language to be laughable. There is a reason people on the east coast and the west coast have difficulty communicating, and it isn't the distance. Several sub-cultures have emerged in our country and they can't be unified by signing a law that specifies a national language - it's something that extends beyond language and it's something that can't be legislated.

 

[Hetta]

That's specifically why I said it the way I did. Aside from being illegal immigrants, they are otherwise hard-working contributors to their community, and are otherwise law-abiding.

They would like to compare these people to home grown crooks who murder and rape.

 

[AHH who-stole-my-name]

Language is interesting, isn't it? Language changes over time as words and phrases fall out of use and new words and phrases take their place.

Even technology changes the way we think and talk. Think back before the invention of the cell phone - how often did someone ask "Where are you?"

We have more than different spellings than the English - we have different words and phrases since our two branches of the English language developed with an ocean separating our two cultures.

This isn't unusual or unique - when I studied Spanish in high school I learned three very different dialects. I learned Spanish from an immigrant from Spain, from an English teacher from Argentina, and from an American that learned Mexican Spanish. The English taught by the Argentinian wasn't American English.

We have multiple dialects of English within our country, and I find the idea of us having a single shared language to be laughable. There is a reason people on the east coast and the west coast have difficulty communicating, and it isn't the distance. Several sub-cultures have emerged in our country and they can't be unified by signing a law that specifies a national language - it's something that extends beyond language and it's something that can't be legislated.

Language is a phenomenal subject as it has a history of it's own that many people are incredibly ignorant of. I've dabbled in some of it's history but not enough to make informed statements about it.

I agree with the idea that any one language can't be owned by anyone. That's simply arrogant banter by those people who haven't the information to think such a statement through. I think they are so insecure that they are grasping for anything that is familiar to placate their fears.