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A couple of weeks ago, Sarah Palin insisted on the much needed-cleansing of the American tongues.
Trump previously said, “[Jeb Bush] should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”
A CNN interviewer asked Palin, “Donald Trump said ‘Jeb Bush should speak English, and not Spanish, when he’s campaigning in the U.S..’ Jeb Bush’s response was that Trump doesn’t value tolerance. What do you think of that?”
“It’s a benefit of Jeb Bush to be able to be so fluent in Spanish…” said Palin, but “I think we can send a message and say, you want to be in America…you’d better be here legally, or you’re out of here… [And] when you’re here, let’s speak American. Speak English.”
Her ‘message’ can be interpreted as this: Speak only the default language of English, American-English (not to be confused with British-English) in America.
Also, don’t confuse it with the original tongue of the Native Americans before the Americans evicted them of their homes. Don’t confuse ‘American’ with the abundance of dialectic diversity—Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, etc.
Palin inadvertently reminded us to resurrect the “English Language Unity Act” bill, which proposes, “To declare English as the official language of the United States, to establish a uniform English language rule for naturalization, and to avoid misconstructions of the English language texts.”
It would save people the chore of learning to be bilingual.
There needs to be classes for this “American” language, which would include terminologies such as “refudiate,” coined by Palin. Completing those credit hours for languages requirements are all for naught.
Who needs a translator to bridge the communication gap between the Spanish-speaker and the American-speaker? The pros of exclusively speaking American-English outweighs the pros of learning Spanish.
“(The) kind of a unifying aspect of a nation is the language that is understood by all,” said Palin.
Sí.
The immigrants who don’t understand American don’t understand how to live in America. We are unified by speaking the same precise vocabulary. If they speak their archaic tongues, they’re aliens. We refuse to understand them if they make it harder on us.
We’re unified not by the co-existence of the multiplicity of culture and language—that would only divide the nation—but by having as much in common as possible.
Carol Cao is a creative writing and media production senior and may be reached at [email protected]
Making English the official language simply makes it the standard
language of government operations and says that whenever government acts
in its official capacity, i.e. with legal authority, it has to use
English. It would not prevent government from using other languages
whenever there is a general public interest in doing so. So exceptions
would include things like teaching foreign languages; printing documents
or taking actions necessary for national security; foreign relations;
the promotion of commerce, tourism, and international trade. Protecting
public health and safety would be exempted, for example, in the
distribution of information to warn people about the dangers of diseases
like HIV/AIDS, etc. An official English law also would have no effect
on how the Census Bureau gathers information, or on actions that protect
the rights of victims of crimes or criminal defendants, or on many
other common sense needs government has to use other languages.
On the other hand, if properly implemented, official English laws
would bar driver’s license exams in multiple languages, taxpayer-paid
interpreter services in civil lawsuits, foreign-language signs in
government offices, and numerous other instances in which no public
interest is being served for the wider community.
Eighty-five percent of the UN’s member
nations have official languages. Fifty-three (53) of those nations have
adopted English as their official language. Twenty-seven of those nations, mostly in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, have made English their only official language.
The Queen of Word salad has spoken !
We will modernize English language till the end. ‘Yanno’ is one example:
http://www.informalenglish.com/what-does-yanno-mean/