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Do you have any stats on how many Germanics in the US speak German? How many Italics speak Italian? How many Nordics speak and Scandinavian language? How many Celtics speak Gaelic?
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Do you have any stats on how many Germanics in the US speak German? How many Italics speak Italian? How many Nordics speak and Scandinavian language? How many Celtics speak Gaelic?
Language spoken in the home is a US Census question. However, German language usage, Gaelic usage and the use of Nordic languages is of nearly zero marketing significance and thus not independently researched such as use of Spanish is.
Nielsen, the ratings company, does a regular enumeration of language usage by Hispanics in all the major markets with significant Hispanic population. This is because marketers want accurate information to allow buying of Spanish language media. Advertisers have no such interest in knowing the usage of German or Finish or Gaelic, so Nielsen does not use special procedures to sample speakers of those languages.
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I thought Italics was a font style.
Is English NOT the official language in the US?
Last time I was in court, English was the language in use.
But I can tell you, if you speak jibberish to a cop in south GA. or ALA., he will probably pull you out of the car and use you for a punching bag.
That subtle point just flew right over top of your head, didn't it?
No, now that you ask, I was just trying to put a bit of reality into your xenophobic post.
No, the US has no official language. The state of New Mexico has two official languages, based on its heritage of nearly half a millenium of Spanish language usage. Puerto Rico, USA, is also officially bilingual but about 60% of the population only speaks Spanish.
But in most jurisdictions, translators are available for those with limited English. And in a few parts of the US, some courts are in English and some in Spanish.
Having participated in voter registrations in Newton, MS, in the early 60's, I learned that bigotry, forged in ignorance, is a fearful thing.
In most parts of the world, being at least bilingual or, preferably, a polyglot, is encouraged.
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For the record, as of January 2014, 28 of the 50 states had designated English as the official language. Hawaii also includes Hawaiian as an 'official' language. I am not suggesting that radio stations shouldn't be permitted to provide programming for aliens and tourists visiting our nation who either cannot speak English or who would prefer to be entertained in a language other than English. However, that doesn't mean that the official, legal requirement for every station that uses the public's airwaves to identify itself in English, if only to remind foreigners who are living or visiting here that they are here in the United States, where English is one of the common threads of culture that binds us all together as a nation.
I made a conscious effort to learn to speak French, and am reasonably competent at communicating with other French speakers. All knowledge is good, including knowing a second language (or a third, fourth, or fifth!). However, even though I learned to speak French, I have not changed my last name to something French sounding for professional purposes. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that.
The only thing I oppose is to single out any one group of foreigners for special consideration just because there are large numbers of them. I do not think it to be any sort of bigotry or oppression to require that all radio stations broadcasting on American airwaves identify themselves every half-hour in English.
Does anyone know if Mexican radio stations are required to identify themselves periodically, and if so, are they permitted to do so in English?
I made a conscious effort to learn to speak French, and am reasonably competent at communicating with other French speakers. All knowledge is good, including knowing a second language (or a third, fourth, or fifth!). However, even though I learned to speak French, I have not changed my last name to something French sounding for professional purposes. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that.
The only thing I oppose is to single out any one group of foreigners for special consideration just because there are large numbers of them. I do not think it to be any sort of bigotry or oppression to require that all radio stations broadcasting on American airwaves identify themselves every half-hour in English.
Does anyone know if Mexican radio stations are required to identify themselves periodically, and if so, are they permitted to do so in English?
Stations do not have to ID every half hour, and have not been so required for nearly 40 years.
The ID requirement itself is obsolete, and was designed in the dawn of radio so that interference could be identified. Today, encoding could be used instead and much more effectively. And most stations today don't use call letters for marketing anymore, save for smaller market facilities and dinosaurs like WGN and WOR.
For listeners to be able to register complaints or comments knowing the station name or web address will be much more useful today.
Stations may do the required legal ID in any of the official languages of Mexico. That includes Spanish, Náhuatl, Zapotec, Yaki and others. Since there is no English speaking community or heritage in Mexico, English is not included.
In Canada, francophone stations must ID in French and English speaking stations must ID in English. That is sensible: ID in the language of your audience.
There are several issues here - but perhaps the underlying one is the feeling of national identity. My ancestors came here and learned English because their dream was to become Americans as opposed to the oppressive political atmosphere of their homelands. Unfortunately many undocumented immigrants do not come here with a similar dream - they are here to provide a livelihood for their families and escape what has become a war zone. Some actually see all Norteamericanos as usurpers who dispossessed their forefathers in the days of General Santa Anna. Have we so soon forgotten what the "Halls of Montezuma" in the famous Marine Corps song refers to?
Some history, which I hope David will confirm:
1) We defeated Mexico in a war of questionable legitamacy and could have annexed the entire country - instead we took only the Southwest because the WASPs in Congress did not want a bilingual majority Catholic nation.
2) Then came the civil war and Pio Pico and others sided of Mexican descent in California sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy because they wanted nothing to do with the puppet regime of Maxmillian.
3) After the Mexican revolution of 1912 both nations chose to ignore the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which allowed free movement cross the border by residents of either nation and mutual rights of property ownership. Instead Mexico nationalized American assets and shut out American companies and we responded by closing the border. For a time California even allowed white/brown school segregation as a local option (ruled unconstitutional in 1947 bit restrictive land transfer rules didn't fall until the Rumsfeld Act in 1959)
4) Under pressure from American labor unions the Johnson administration circa 1960 eliminated the bracero guest worker program instituted during WW2 which allowed seasonal workers to come up from Mexico - this is what triggered the major influx of "undocumented" workers because the Mexican economy doesn't have adequate jobs. Then came the Maquiladoras which took American manufacturing jobs south of the border and created resentment
Many participants in the ongoing dialogue today either do not know or choose not to consider the above context - those who have lived in the Mexican/American community as our family has for four generations can (if we choose) see the concerns of both sides. Radio station identification is an issue that stems from the desire of both the Anglo and Hispanoc cultures to preserve their roots.
Some history, which I hope David will confirm:
1) We defeated Mexico in a war of questionable legitamacy and could have annexed the entire country - instead we took only the Southwest because the WASPs in Congress did not want a bilingual majority Catholic nation.
2) Then came the civil war and Pio Pico and others sided of Mexican descent in California sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy because they wanted nothing to do with the puppet regime of Maxmillian.
3) After the Mexican revolution of 1912 both nations chose to ignore the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which allowed free movement cross the border by residents of either nation and mutual rights of property ownership. Instead Mexico nationalized American assets and shut out American companies and we responded by closing the border. For a time California even allowed white/brown school segregation as a local option (ruled unconstitutional in 1947 bit restrictive land transfer rules didn't fall until the Rumsfeld Act in 1959)
4) Under pressure from American labor unions the Johnson administration circa 1960 eliminated the bracero guest worker program instituted during WW2 which allowed seasonal workers to come up from Mexico - this is what triggered the major influx of "undocumented" workers because the Mexican economy doesn't have adequate jobs. Then came the Maquiladoras which took American manufacturing jobs south of the border and created resentment
Many participants in the ongoing dialogue today either do not know or choose not to consider the above context - those who have lived in the Mexican/American community as our family has for four generations can (if we choose) see the concerns of both sides. Radio station identification is an issue that stems from the desire of both the Anglo and Hispanoc cultures to preserve their roots.
The Latin American immigrants arriving in the US generally come for the same reasons the Irish or the Germans came 100 to 150 years ago: lack of opportunity in the home country. They thought that the United States offered a better life for their family and seized the the opportunity. The main difference is that the Italians and Germans could come without papers and without quotas.
While Ireland during the famines and years of British feudal domination and Italy in the era of city states and angry factions were also "war zones" the real motivation to come to America was the same as it is for most today: a better future.
In fact, those that take this attitude are mostly a small group of latter generation Mexican Americans, often self-described as Chicanos, who believe that they are part of neither Mexico nor the US, and want a separate nation to be given to them. Even the majority of second generation and beyond Mexican Americans don't belong to that school of thought.
(To clarify, not all Chicanos are Aztlanistas... just a few. And first generation immigrants, with or without documentations, are essentially never Aztlanistas)
Just like those earlier mass migrations, immigrants today come here for the most part, to work hard and build a future for their families. That's why only a small portion of first generation Italians and Germans became truly bilingual, but their children and their children's children became more and more assimilated and lost their usage of Gaelic and German and Italian and other tongues.
Hopefully, we have. The era of the Monroe Doctrine and viewing the Caribbean basin as America's "pond" are long gone, although there are still occasional intrusions into the internal affairs of Hemisphere nations. It's what should separate us from Putin and his government of thugs.
The history is relatively factual but is so far in the past that most of today's Mexican immigrants don't think about it or, more likely, even know about it.
From what I know of my father's side of the family, migration occurred from the home near Limerick due to opression by British landowners and the ongoing cycle of famine. Those ancestors were not particularly well educated, did not contemplate the "Rule Britannia" mentality of the English and knew nothing about treaties, wars, economics or politics. They understood empty pockets and empty bellies.
Nobody ever thought much about the legal ID requirement at Spanish language stations. Since most of those stations used names, and not the call letters, to identify, whether those 4 letters were spoken in English or Spanish or done in Morse code mattered little. But, as the FCC relaxed enforcement, stations... mostly by accident and out of ignorance... started identifying in Spanish. The FCC accepted that, and today some stations do the ID in Spanish and some don't. It's a really minor point and to read any cultural significance into it is, I believe, over thinking the whole issue.
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