(Untitled)

[calysto]

The United States almost incorporated Canada into its fold during the U.S. Revolutionary War. If that occurred, would Quebec still predominately speak French? More than likely yes. Which leads me to wonder... if, today, the U.S. had an area as huge as Quebec speaking French... (as well as other parts of what would have been Canada) would Americans

Comments

[abydosangel]

I think the question is; "Who would be considered white and therefore non-threatening to the majority of the populace". Language (in my opinion) is secondary to the root of the bias.

[eracerhead]

IMO, it is simply incredibly disrespectful to come to a host country to live or work and refuse to at least learn the local language and customs. That's true for everybody.

[thelala]

I wish I could understand why English is considered sacred to Americans. The French are accused of thinking their language is overly important, but it's nothing compared to the sanctity of the English language that exists in the US.

[eracerhead]

So, say for example a language is spoken by 98% percent of a given population. Is that population supposed to accommodate people who don't speak it? If true, then why shouldn't everyone have to learn all 6,912 languages that exist in order to accommodate everyone?

[thelala]

"Is that population supposed to accommodate people who don't speak it?"

This kind of privileged view is pretty unsurprising. As is the claim that if a member of a minority class fails to accommodate you, that must mean that you are somehow accommodating them no matter what you do or don't do.

But this:

"If true, then why shouldn't everyone have to learn all 6,912 languages that exist in order to accommodate everyone?"

How on earth did you get there?

[thelala]

I think the answer is yes, the xenophobia would still be there, and there would be scathing attitudes to the Spanish-speaking areas (or at best, they would be exotified) , which would probably be heavily ghettoized. The social construct of race is heavily tied to the social construct of language. In Scandinavia, up until recent history, the Finns were considered to be a different race than the Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and Icelandics because their language had a different origin.

Some observations

[jonathankorman]

I doubt that Quebec would still be French-speaking had it been incorporated into the US; recall that the southwestern US is made of conquered territory where Spanish was originally spoken.

thelala's assertion that US chauvanism about the English language surpasses the legendary linguistic chauvanism of France is laughable. Yeah, American linguistic chauvinism is strong, but it's far from unique: everyone's linguistic chauvinism is strong. The French have a government ministry that regulates what words can be included in dictionaries. In Eastern Europe, there have been recent shooting wars not even over which language to use, but which alphabet to use when writing the language. Europeans like to mock Americans for being monolingual, but they have both more cause to learn other languages and better opportunities. Most Europeans live a few hours' train ride away from entire countries that speak other languages from the same linguistic root. Most Americans live a long way away from Mexico ... where they speak the Romance language Spanish vs

Re: Some observations

[eracerhead]

Thank you. You stated it better than I did.

[jonathankorman]

I thought that was where you were going.

But I'm hardly surprised that this point got lost. You made a huge leap from the original post and folks' comments to a completely unfounded straw man immigrant who refuses to learn the local language and demands perfect accommodation of that choice, then escalated conflict with everyone who disagreed with you. This is a not only a faux pas in online discourse, where you should always assume goodwill even when you have cause to presume otherwise. It is also a problem in antiracist and other liberationist forums, where “you're demanding special rights and privileges” is a familiar and fallacious claim made by defenders of the unjust status quo. To fail to be more careful about that pitfall is a mark of privilege.

[schoolofsoul]

Anti-Spanish backlash is mostly three-fold.

For some, its roots lie in ancient British anti-Spanish sentiments that go back centuries, and include the competition between the European powers for the New World territories. So some of it is related to just that. Old cultural and political prejudices.

For some, it's racism, pure and simple. They consider Spanish speakers, particularly those of Indigenous ancestry to whatever degree, to be of some sort of lesser race, or from a lower quality culture.

For other people, though, it's mostly just frustration with Spanish simply not being the primary language of social discourse and commerce in the US, which, traditionally, has been the status quo for quite a long time. Also, before the 1980s, you generally did not see the kind of immigration influx from Spanish-speaking countries, on a national level, that you have in the last 25 or 30 years. This has affected the job market, even at the lowest-paying level. There have been cases where, even at fast food outlets, one cannot be considered