Barry Obama goes off script again….and it isn’t pretty.
Barack Obama stepped it in once again at a campaign stop, evidently going off script and sharing how we better make sure or children in the USA speak Spanish, though he doesn’t fully explore the concept except to say that he is embarrassed when Americans go to Europe and can’t speak any European languages.
I am actually a big proponent of people learning a second (or third) language, particularly when they are young since children tend to pick up languages easier. That being said, I don’t see Obama’s urgency in learning Spanish in particular, unless he expects that the USA will be an English/Spanish speaking nation (and we know two languages worked out so well for our Canadian friends, after all).
Obama really does confuse the issue, though. If he honestly thinks the arguments against bilingualism has anything to do with the importance of teaching children a second language, he really is a very simple and unsophisticated thinker, since they are clearly two separate issues. One can be against the idea of a bilingual nation (which I am), and still an advocate for teaching children a second language (which I am, also). One has nothing much to do with the other, no matter how poorly Obama fused the issues in his mind.
This is really an old coward’s trick -- his insights sound like he calls things like he sees it, but all he says is that kids should learn a second language, something almost everybody agrees with. The misdirection allows him to avoid the issue he raised (a bilingual nation vs an English-speaking nation) and avoid alienating multicultural fetishists and advocates from the Hispanic community.
In any event, I don’t share his embarrassment when traveling Americans don’t know the language of European nations. His insistence that European travelers visiting the USA speak English in significant numbers is silly and doesn’t match my experience at all. But listen up, America, the man who wants to lead you considers you embarrassing. If that’s what you want in a leader, you have bigger problems than I imagine.
Obama, of course, can speak Indonesian, but doesn’t have any significant command of any European languages. He has noted he can speak “a little Spanish,” but that doesn’t sound like a very strong commitment to the language, particularly after he insists that America’s children be fluent in the language.
Who can live in the USA for long and not know “a little Spanish,” after all? Maybe he should take some classes in Castellano, himself, before he tells us how important it is to learn Spanish.
Speaking of language, maybe Obama should brush up on his English speaking skills. “And….uh…wha…ah…wa….all we’s can say is” doesn’t sound very eloquent to me, and only barely qualifys as English.
What Obama is implying here is that we have an obligation to our Spanish-speaking immigrants (and let us not forget, a large chunk of them are illegals) to be able to converse with them in their native tongues out of a sense of fairness, since after all we expect them to be able to speak to us in ours.
Clearly, this is false. As they voluntarily chose to inhabit this country, many without permission, the obligation to learn a new language is theirs, not ours. Our democracy entails respect for minority rights, but respect in this case does not mean embracing differences, but rather, tolerating them. That’s the difference between becoming a bilingual country, and being a country of bilinguals.
Barry doesn’t seem to be concerned about the divisive effects of competing languages, but he should be. Of course, the only reason he’s saying these thngs is to pander to that Hispanic vote, which as I understand it, eludes him.
And, anyway, if we’re going to embrace other languages, considering the likelihood of an Obama presidency, it seems to me more prudent to learn Arabic, instead of Spanish, as after Obama will have foolishly paved the way for them, our new Muslim masters will expect us to be well-read in the Koran! At least until the Spanish translation comes out.
Jaytee, now THIS hits the nail on the head: “That’s the difference between becoming a bilingual country, and being a country of bilinguals.” Great comment.
Jaytee,
Indeed, they took deliberate and voluntary steps to cross into our nation, so any expectation on their part that we speak their language (as opposed to them speaking our language) is misplaced.
In any event, you are 100% right in all your observations, especially regarding the need for Americans to learn Arabic. And we may as well brush up on our Cantonese and Mandarin. Seems to me that those languages are more the languages of he future, and not Spanish – the language of a dead-end culture south of the border.
THIS JUST IN….
Obama seems to backtrack on prior claims that he speaks Indonesian and ‘a little Spanish.’
Check out this morsel of info in this story at ABC News:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/como-se-dice-ob.html
While the Obama campaign says that Obama speaks a little bit of Indonesian, Obama himself admits that he isn’t bilingual.
“I know because I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!” he said.
Thanks, Thelma! And if I, um, were Barry, um, I wouldn’t be too, um, proud of my command of my, um, native language!
I know most people that I talk to don’t want illegal immigrants to come to the US and make us accommodate them.
That’s fine. I can see their point of view. I’ve started learning Spanish because I want to be competitive and keep my job. I know that a lot of people will have to learn another language because jobs go internationally.
So just a tip from one fellow to the next, there’s a free English to Spanish translation site that listened to Spanish speakers’ conversations on the street and wrote them down. This makes it really easy to find out what they talk about the most. And this way it’s really easy to learn what to talk about with them since it’s common to talk about.
Good luck to all of us!