Rimesume wrote:
Did you know the United States is ranked amongst some of the top (not necessarily the top) German speaking countries outside of Germany/Austria?
You can say that about the US and almost all other languages. The US has been the prime country to emigrate to for the last couple centuries. It's not exactly hard to guess that the US will be in the top couple countries outside the region of origin for any given language to be spoken.
Quote:
French is pretty popular in the United States too, as is about any other language. Why is it people only throw a fit about Spanish?
Because, despite attempts to paint this into some kind of racist/ethnist light, it's not about people speaking other languages. It's about people *not* speaking English. You'll be hard pressed to find more then a tiny tiny minority of people in any given town who can only speak French, or German, or Italian, or Polish.
Whereas there are entire *large* populations of people in the South West who can only speak Spanish.
That's the difference. And it's a biggie.
Quote:
Wanna open a business in MN, SD, or ND? Might benefit you to know a bit of German. Hell, the United States has 2 dialects of German, why aren't you throwing a fit about Germans?
Sure. It might. But it's a good bet you'll want to make sure you speak English first, with German or Dutch or whatever as a "nice, but not required" extra. You'd be unlikely to put someone at the front counter who *only* spoke German, and not a lick of English, now would you?
It's not hard to find many stores around here where you can't find anyone working in the store who speaks English. And no. I'm not joking...
Quote:
I don't know specific demographics, but I'm willing to bet there are more people with a German ethnicity than there are those with a Mexican ethnicity. Perhaps we should kick all them damn Germans back to Deutschland?
Missing the point. Entirely...
Quote:
Mexicans aren't making Spanish popular, business is making it popular. Welcome to Capitalism 101 moron. Businesses like this thing called money, and if there is a huge Hispanic population at the place they do business, then hiring workers skilled in Spanish facilitates that desire for money.
If we were talking about hiring multilingual people, you'd have a wonderful point. But that's not what's happening. We're seeing an increase in workers who can't speak much if any English at all. This may help the business in the Barrio, but effectively "ghettos" the whole population.
By allowing one segment of the society to speak a different language then everyone else, you aren't helping them. You really aren't. You're trapping them inside their own neighborhoods and limiting their chances of advancement. It's very much like saying that it's ok not to teach kids in the ghetto mathmatics and thinking that by letting them not have to learn it, that you're helping them. And they might even thank you for not making them go through the extra effort of learning math. I think we can all agree that you aren't actually helping them though, right?...
Quote:
If Chinese people were flocking here, then they'd want workers that were fluent in English and Mandarin.
Yup. Which is exactly what has and is happening. However, the Chinese folks smartly realized that they should learn English as well. And the Vietnamese. And the Koreans. Etc...
Quote:
Point is who the people are is really irrelevant, what is relevant is that these people have money they want to spend on goods and services. Business is wanting that money, and they are willing to compete for it, now if you have a business that is not facilitative to this rather large market, you lose money, and thus lose the race as a successful business compared to your competitor that can facilitate it.
That's really not what's happening at all. Catering to the Spanish-only speaking customer is a nicety (especially in areas very very close to the border), but you also need to make sure they can speak English, or you're cutting yourself off at the knees. It's one thing to cater to Mexican shoppers (and yes. lots of people come up from Mexico to buy goods in the US, shocking as that may seem). It's another thing entirely to create who communities that largely speak only Spanish and lock yourself away from the rest of the society.
Quote:
Hell, most Americans would benefit significantly (particularly those in south-western states) to learn another language IMO.
Yes. Keyword being "another". As in "more then one". As in "learn English plus another language".
You were sooooo close...
At least you are making decisions off of facts, and not just because he is black. 