[Sca-cooks] OT OOP "Official Language" was Seville orange substitutions

[Huette von Ahrens]

--- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
wrote:
> Pardon me, the "official language" of the
> United States is English.  It is
> the language chosen for the conduct of
> government in Congress assembled over
> 200 years ago.  It won out over German by one
> vote.

Very true.  That one vote, from what I have
heard, was cast by a German immigrant, who
supposedly stated that he didn't come to America
to speak German!

> I find the entire "official language" debate
> ridiculous.  The people
> petitioning for English as the official
> language of the US really mean they
> want English as the (one true and accepted)
> language of the US (forcing all
> them furriners to learn English and keeping
> English-speaking Amuricans in
> their rightful place at the top of the heap),
> thereby displaying their
> ignorance of English and history.  Had that
> original vote gone the other
> way, they would be petitioning for German as
> the official language.  Ironic, eh?

While I agree with you on a federal level, I
don't agree with you on a local level.  Here
in California, English is the predominent
language.  In years past, Spanish was the second
language.  But in the past 10 years or more, that
has been changing rapidly to Chinese, especially
where I live.  Because of this and because of the
exclusive nature of immigrant Chinese, many towns
with large Chinese populations have had to write
laws stating that English is the official
language.  Why?  Take Monterey Park for example.
60% of their citizens are of Chinese origin. 95%
of their stores prior to this new law had signs
written only in Chinese.  This means that only
Chinese readers knew what these stores were
selling.  Which I find to be discriminatory, but
that isn't why the laws were written.  When
emergencies happened and 911 was called to a 
store, the firemen and the police had difficulty
finding the location, as even the store addresses
were written in Chinese on the building. Monterey
Park passed this law and also one requiring that
all signs had to be at least partially in English
so that emergency personel could find the 
locations and hopefully save lives.

Huette



=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.


		
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