'Speak English' signs found not DISCRIMINATORY!!!! About time.

[shellpry]

'Speak English' signs allowed at Philly shop.
The owner of a famous Philadelphia cheesesteak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled Wednesday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23715954/from/ET/

Comments

[fireivy83]

My great grandfather and great grandmother couldn't speak English when they arrived, and prefered to speak Portuguese at home. (My grandfather worked for the city (of Boston) and once sat on a gurney in a hospital, in a hallway for several hours after being in A CAVE IN! because there werent interpreters to help the doctors talk to him.) They never spoke fluent English, and according to my grandmother, they had accents till the day they died. Does that make them less American? Were they stupid? Incapable of learning? Does that in some way make some comment about their desire to be here or the fact that they uprooted themselves and never saw their family again in an effort to live in America, rather than their country of birth?

I think not.

That sign says a lot more about the person displaying it than the persons it is directed at.

The immigrant is the quintessential American. Whether or not your family comes from an English speaking country, we are ALL foreigners here. The sounds your mouth make are no more a comment on what country you claim as your own than the color of your skin.

I'm not really sure when America stopped being about being the place where anyone can come and make a better life, be an American, and started being about whose more American than who and what guidelines we are going to use to DECIDE who counts as a "real" American?

Americans' unwillingness to put forth any effort to improve their ability to communicate with other Americans, no matter where they come from is horribly sad to me.

[shellpry]

I have never implied to thinking or believing that someone who doesn't know English is ANYTHING other than someone who doesn't know English. Please don't put words in my mouth.

As for what happened to your great grandparents, I'm truly sorry. That is terrible. However, it was their decision to come here and not to speak English. I would not expect to move to another country that doesn't speak English, not learn that language myself, and get the same treatment in a hospital that I would if I knew the language. It just can't work that way. There has to be some kind of common way to communicate. We are not technically advanced enough as a people to implant translators into everyone.

I have no problem with speaking other languages. I do think it inadequate the way that most Americans are reluctant to learn other languages. I do believe that being multilingual will become necessary and should be encouraged. But with the cultural spread that America has, what language do we choose? Would choosing Spanish have stopped what happened to your grand parents? No, it may have helped. I don't how similar Portuguese is to Spanish. If we did choose Spanish, what about the citizens living Hawaii where there is a larger group of Asian speaking people? If we don't have a common language that everyone is encouraged and able to speak to some degree, we can't communicate effectively on a day-to-day basis and in emergency situations.

We need to have a common language. I really don't care what language it is. As long as everyone is expected to learn it no matter what they speak at home. If as a country we chose to speak Creole, I would defend learning Creole just as strongly. We just happen to be speaking English. To me there are no degrees to being American. When we start comparing people that way, I see it as a very dangerous slope to tread.

I believe that a common language actually encourages us to communicate and learn about other cultures. It encourages different cultures to be able to live in closer proximity. I believe that it could help to reduce racism. People in general are skeptcal of what they don't understand. How do we overcome that barrier without being able to communicate? And very few people have the ability to learn every language out there. Again, that expectation is not realistic to me. The only workable alternative I see is to choose a common language and have everyone living there learn it. And English is the closet thing we have to a national language until we put it in the books as one.