aunti-terrestrial said:
The bit has more to do with rality than inferiority. It points out that Americans have never felt the need to learn other languages. Now that we have a global economy, treaties like NAFTA, etc., we are at a disadvantage and the little joke ñpoints out whuy.
I am Gaelic Irish by heritage, and don't consider myself Anglo... were I to be sensitive to the history of my family, I would take offense at being called by a name that identifies the peoples who let Ireland starve in 1848 and the nation that honored Kipling for writing about "the burden of the white man..."
There is no stereotyping in saying that, as a nation, Americans have less training in foreign languages than Europeans, Latin Americans and most Asians. There are plenty of figures on High School and COllege level alnguage training. In South America, my oldest daughter had English from kindergarten... not as a subject, but as the language of half her classes. French started in third grade.
When I briefly attended the U.S. Ambassadors monthly briefings of the American business ocmmunity in Ecuador in the 60's, I was the only Spanish speaker
In the 70's, NEC built nearly every TV staiton in Latin America... multi million dollar contracts, too. That was because the Japanese had fluent Spanish speaking sellers, technical support and Spanish manuals. No American company in the decade would reduce itself to speaking anything other than English.
There are plenty of Spanish songs that sing about the American tourist... but those would obviously offend you. Being offended by somehting one does not know is tantamount to trying to cover the sky with the palm of ones hand (old Spanish saying).
I am most comfortable in Spanish with my daughters, since they all were raised in Hispanic homes in Latin America. They got lots of other languages in school, so they ended up bilingual... one is a full, 5-language polyglot in fact. I did not need to help them in English as my spelling and syntax and usage of that language is not as good as what they got in school.
But such legislation is highly limited to certain affairs of government, not commerce, etc. Anything more stringent would not stand to a Constitutional challenge, as it would ammount to a limitation of freedom of speech.
And that is why broadcasters and publishers and webcasters can use any language they want.
