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!

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.

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.

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.