November 1, 2007

The Language Debate

Tuesday, I attended a book release for "How I learned to Speak English" By Tom Miller. Miller rounded up 55 hispanic authors from all around the United States and told their stories through this novel. In the book release, Miller spoke mainly on how congress continues to ignore spanish speakers and continue to refuse to put both English and Spanish signs up, offer texts in both languages and things of that sort.

The stories the 55 authors told really showed how hard it is to learn English. This makes me wonder why it would be so hard to make the United States bilingual.

The cost of completely bilingual-izing America would be huge as everything would have to change, but this would certainly end the stigma that America only knows English. If America was bilingual it would certainly improve international relations, as foreignors could no longer accuse America of caring only about itself.

Specifically, this would create better relations with Mexico and South America, relations who as of recently have been quite strained. It is vital to have good relations with neighboring countries, and a bilingual America would certain show our spanish speaking southern neighbors a lot more respect that we currently show.

Personally, I feel the reason why America has refused to convert to bilingual system is because over the last decade the government has been mainly conservative. I feel with the growing rate of spanish-speaking immigrants, this law will be changed.