I've noticed the same thing too, Vickie.
Personally, I have no objection to businesses catering to a particular group
by providing information in their native language. It's their choice as a
business to advertise and support their customer base as they see fit.
There are parts of San Francisco where one *must* be able to read Cyrillic
Russian to understand which store is which, much less what to buy there! The
same is true in other neighborhoods in Vietnamese and Chinese. Those areas
are small, since most businesses recognize the cost of turning away the
English-only speaking majority who live around them. And even those without
English signs that I've visited have people running them who speak English.
Indeed, I can't say I ever found a shop where owners, counter people and
customers didn't speak some English and who were often eager to try their
English on a visitor.
Indeed, the single largest ethnic group who seems to have the greatest
percentage of people who do not speak English seems to me to be the Mexican
immigrants. Maybe that's a result of my being submerged in the local
atmosphere with so many Mexican residents. It's been a decade since I walked
the neighborhoods of San Francisco.
But public money is not private money. That's where I start resisting
spending money to support non-English speaking people. Although I keep
saying schools aren't what I asked about, it's clear schools are foremost on
many people's minds. I had the impression our schools were strapped for
cash, but it seems that there's plenty around to support bi-lingual
communications when the person wanting help is Spanish.
We've given governments and schools a very hard task by allowing people to
live here and access government resources, including schools, who do not
know English. I think that's the first and largest mistake.
If I had school-age kids in local classrooms, I'd be very critical of taking
money out of the classroom to "help" a minority because he/she doesn't speak
English.
The fact that businesses are deciding it's worth while to advertise to and
support non-English speaking people is a serious warning sign that we're
losing the American culture to an avalanche of people who are intent upon
replacing it with their own values simply because they don't understand the
rest of us.
Rather than stop those people with onerous laws forbidding their use of
their native language such as we've seen in many workplaces, I'd rather lead
them into an understanding of the culture we already have. I'd rather
assimilate them than be replaced by them. And I believe the first step in
doing that is for them to learn our language, the English language. That's
what other ethnic groups do regularly and eagerly, even though for many of
them it's a horrendous task.
What's wrong with the Mexican immigrants?
Ron D'Eau Claire
-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Vickie Madeoneup
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 2:25 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Habla English?
This is an interesting subject that I have wondered about myself.
The first thing I noticed a few years ago was the ATM machines giving
English or Spanish choices.
Now I see billboards in the local area that are Spanish only.
There is an employee at Tom McCall that translates all of the parent
information that goes hoime into Spanish, plus she makes the attendance
calls for Spanish speaking parents, but .... what would we do if it was
Japanese or Russian?
I too have been curious about that dilemma, and it may already exist and I
don't know it.
btw Recently we had a gang related parent meeting that was in Spanish
with English interpretations. that seemed odd to me at first but then it
was explained to me that the machines that interpret are spendy and that
because of a limited supply it was easier to translate into English instead
of trying to procure enough machines to translate into Spanish.
Good subject as translating does add an expense to the schools but on the
flip side it's important for all parents to be informed.
Vickie
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