[quote name='elprincipe']I think grouping RollingSkull with evanft is a mistake...kind of like grouping mykevermin with alonzomourning23 (Note: I am not trying to say anything derogatory about any of these folks).
I was arguing the slippery slope argument. What's to say other groups besides Spanish speakers can't convincingly make the same argument? Yes, obviously Spanish is the most common language here other than English, but there are other languages that are spoken in immigrant families. Here's a quick look at numbers:
http://www.ethnicharvest.org/regions/50languages.html
Spanish = 17.3m
French = 1.70m
German = 1.54m
Italian = 1.30m
Chinese = 1.25m
But looking further at the numbers provided, note that 4.5m Spanish speakers (26%) speak English "not well" or "not at all." That is a huge, huge number. For comparison, around 158,000 French (9%) and 101,000 German (6.5%) speakers speak English "not well" or "not at all," although 30% of Chinese speakers fall into this category. But it goes down the line on these stats (Tagalog = 7.5%, Polish = 13.6%, Japanese 21.3%). There are other groups that are at or above the ratio for Spanish, so not singling Spanish speakers out (heck, I studied Spanish in school and regularly watch soccer on Univision/Telemundo/etc), but this is a problem for our country.
The gist of it is that I think it's great that people know other languages, as long as they know enough English to get by in everyday life. I completely suck at learning other languages so I fully sympathize, but our society and economic system is most well-ordered, efficient and harmonized when everyone can communicate with everyone else. Therefore, while I have no big beef with companies putting Spanish on boxes if they want (quite frankly, companies with mottoes such as "Eat Good" and "Where You At?" distress me quite a bit more), I feel that people living in isolation from the rest of society and "keeping to their own kind" is something we should be avoiding (see: France), and not knowing English is a huge, huge contributor to this phenomenon.[/quote]
Well my comparison was just that they both have the habit of writing things that don't necessarily make sense just to be a smartass or something (though not all the time).
I see what you're saying now, but in this situation I think pure numbers are more relevant than percentages and Spanish wins that in spades. More than the immigrant population there is Central and South America where a lot of people speak Spanish and I think it's the combination that makes it the most reasonable.
I'm not saying that they should'nt be trying to learn English, but realistically most people that immigrate from Central/South America that are looking for job/education opportunities for their children are probably never going to be able to learn English past the "not well" stage (and since the survey was a self-report it all depends on what the individual thinks that means). They'll probably have shit to do. It seems to me that that is one of the main reasons that people immigrate from that part of the world as opposed to France, Germany, or Italy where the people are probably already educated. I imagine the reasons for Chinese immigration are similar to Hispanic ones and why they have a high percentage of non-English speaking people, but yeah, the numbers just aren't very high and there aren't any bordering countries with high Chinese-speaking populations or anything (also there are far more first-generation immigrants from China and Central/South America than from France, Germany, and Italy).
I don't necessarily think that putting some things in Spanish will make it
more likely for immigrants to isolate themselves. If you can get statistics for that then that's cool, but I'd think the reasons for isolation are much more complicated than that. And as I said there's a possibility that it could take some people out of isolation since they wouldn't need as much of an understanding of English to function outside and they could just move to the suburbs (provided they have the economic ability and the realtors don't steer them away) and understand English enough to function, but read the Spanish in stores, etc. But I'm not sure it would really have much of an effect at all on isolation. A lot of the 19th century isolation of Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, etc. immigrants were because the WASPs didn't want to have anything to do with them and they felt that they had to stick together.
So yeah, read that big rambling hunk of shit.