Illegal Aliens (Part 3)

We have had some great responses to the Illegal Immigrant Gripes over the past few days.  First off I want to thank our Gripers for the intelligent responses that the have posted.  It is good to see that people are thinking and doing some research on this topic.  I want to respond to a few of these responses that I received yesterday.   I did refer to English as the "official language" of the U.S. in my Gripe.  As you stated, there is no official language of America on the books.  English is spoken the most throughout the nation but other languages are spoken as well.  You are also correct in stating that many states do have multiple "official" languages.   Louisiana offers many items in English and French while Hawaiian and English are the "official" languages of Hawaii.  There have been several proposals made to amend the constitution to make English the "official" language of the U.S. but all have failed.  As I did some research on English as the "official" language, I found some very interesting facts.

Fact:  Did you know that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the U.S.?  It is spoken by 12% of the total population.  The U.S. has the 5th largest Spanish speaking population in the world only outnumbered by Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Columbia.

Fact:  Hispanics do not make up the largest ethnic group in America.  That distinction belongs to the Germans.  They make up the largest ethnic ancestry in the U.S.  However, German ranks 5th in language spoken.   ( I guess they learned to speak English)

Fact:  Approximately 337 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 176 are indigenous to the area. 52 languages formerly spoken in the country's territory are now extinct.

Fact:  Over one million people int he U.S. speak Tagalog or Vietnamese.

Fact:  China has 50 official languages.

Fact:  The vast majority of Americans do not speak a second language.

After looking at all of the facts, I conclude that if only 12% of the population speaks Spanish then we do not need signs in Spanish.  If that % gets to 40% or 50% then I say put up the signs.  As for us Americans, we are pompous slobs who think the rest of the world should comply with our demands.  Many of us do not speak another language and I think that stinks!  We try to teach our children a second language when they enter high school which is way too late.  We offer them French and Spanish in most schools.  Whatever happened to Latin and German?  How about Chinese, Russian or Arabic?  If we want our people to be bi or multi lingual we need to start teaching kids another language in grade school.  That's when they can absorb it like a sponge.  Hell, teenagers don't give a flying you know what about another language and that is a shame.