On 3/29/14 10:45 AM, Mark Lawrence wrote:
On 29/03/2014 08:21, Mark H Harris wrote:
Yes. Well, as the joke goes, if you're trilingual you speak three
languages, if you're bilingual you speak two languages, if you're
monolingual you're an American (well, that might go for Australia too,
maybe). When whole continents speak the same language that tends to
happen.
You mean like the USA, where I saw an ad in a shop for a bilingual shop
assistant? Or is Spanish so like US English it doesn't count as a
separate language?
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. We have people here from
all over the earth, and enough illegal immigrants speaking Spanish to
account for a population about the size of Ohio. But, Americans are
mostly monolingual. ...point of fact.
The people of the United States are in a smallish battle over whether
the official language of the United States should be English? In other
words, no special signs, if you're going to live here you're going to
learn English (end of the story, for some people).
I'm not in that camp. I am preparing to start French studies soon. My
son and daughter are fifth year fluent in Spanish (my daughter is
minoring in Spanish, and plans study abroad for that purpose as she
prepares for medical school.
There is no nice way to say this... we have a lot of pin-headed bigots
living here that have to intention nor inclination to learn another
language. Some of them even think that if English was good enough for
Jesus , its got to be good enough for them (I'm not kidding).
Sadly, true.
But then, more than half of our population is not aware that the earth
revolves around the sun, either. :-}
Cheers
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