In Alabama, we speak English.

I didn't realize xenophobics were a significant voting demographic 

ThatGuitarGuy wrote: Please let me know if you move down here. So I can move out.

Pariel, what's bad, is I live here, and I facepalmed when I saw the ad.

What makes it so scary is there's far more right-wing nutjobs in this state than I would ilke to admit, and it's THOSE people that make this state a red state every election cycle.  EVERY election cycle.  Even democrats running for local office are more republican than most of the republicans elected from other states.

__sneaky__ wrote: Didn't we give Alabama away to some other country a few years ago?     ...can we at least try?

Please?

This is Alabama, we speak 'MERICAN

Frankly, I don't see a problem with expecting people who immigrate to learn the language of the nation they're immigrating to.

(Although, I'm not sure the guy in the commercial was actually speaking English . . . there seemed to be a few extra vowels in some of his words.  For instance, the "you" in the last sentence seemed to have a few extra "o's.")


Edited by Mack - 18 May 2010 at 2:59am

__sneaky__ wrote:   I'm not even against them learning English. What bothers me so much about it is the whole, "Hey, we're from 'Merica! We're better than everybody else, so they need to learn OUR language!" attitude. We're not special, we are no more important than they, quit whining.

This needs clarification before I can decide if I agree or not.

If you mean that we should not expect people moving here from elsewhere to learn English, I disagree.

On the other hand, if you are referring to the expectation of U.S. citizens traveling abroad that there should always be someone handy who speaks English, then I agree whole-heartedly.  (Visiting another country and expecting them to be the one's who are bilingual for one's own convenience is just arrogant and stupid.*)


*Except in the U.K.  Supposedly they spoke English, but I remember some very annoying/amusing miscommunications while I was there.  Whatever the heck those people did to our language, they need to undo it. 

Mack wrote: __sneaky__ wrote:   I'm not even against them learning English. What bothers me so much about it is the whole, "Hey, we're from 'Merica! We're better than everybody else, so they need to learn OUR language!" attitude. We're not special, we are no more important than they, quit whining. This needs clarification before I can decide if I agree or not. If you mean that we should not expect people moving here from elsewhere to learn English, I disagree. On the other hand, if you are referring to the expectation of U.S. citizens traveling abroad that there should always be someone handy who speaks English, then I agree whole-heartedly.  (Visiting another country and expecting them to be the one's who are bilingual for one's own convenience is just arrogant and stupid.*) *Except in the U.K.  Supposedly they spoke English, but I remember some very annoying/amusing miscommunications while I was there.  Whatever the heck those people did to our language, they need to undo it.

I think that people coming to live here should learn our language out of courtesy, yes. I also think Americans who go travel abroad should learn the dialect of that nation as well. That attitude extends further than that though - at least with some people. I was recently sitting in my Oral Communications class, and one of the girls was giving a speech about the U.S. in comparison to other countries, and she mentioned that nearly half the population from many other countries were bilingual, while about 9% of the U.S. was. I laughed to myself and said "wow, we fail." To which someone quickly replied, "It doesn't matter, we're the best, so we shouldn't have to learn." I facepalmed.