For Obama, Spanish remark no landmine: The Swamp Quote:
"I don't understand when people are going around saying, 'We need to have English only.' They want to pass a law 'We want English only.' Now I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English. They'll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language. It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right?" |
Generally speaking I agree with the concept of getting American youth involved in learning additional languages at earlier ages in the US school system. But the way Obama went about the presentation of this idea was pretty piss poor IMHO. To go from talking about not forcing immigrants to learn English, to making sure our own kids can speak Spanish, to getting every child to speak more than one language is not exactly the logic trail I would have chosen to try and get this idea across.
That being said if another language was to be taught to kinds in America the logical choice would be Spanish.
I also hate the European comparisons about being multi-lingual. Of course many Europeans are multi-lingual. Many European countries are smaller than some of the individual US states. So Europeans are compelled to lean other languages based simply on proximity. If each of the fifty states all had their own language most of the US population would be multi-lingual as well. But as it it, with the exception of Spanish, most American would have to travel thousands of miles to get to a location where English is not easily used to communicate, and where they would be immersed in another language.