David Monniaux wrote:
Not true.
We (the USA) lack an *official* national language. Depending
on the state, 1-5 languages are used. Compare to the EU.
Come on. All official sites, all political debates, all major news etc.
are in English. Can a latino legislator do a speech in Spanish in the
Capitol US? I doubt so; at least, I doubt it could happen in practice.
Not true. The official website of Texas <http://www.state.tx.us/> is
in both Spanish and English, and this is true of many states with
large Spanish-speaking populations. Every ballot I've ever used to
vote in an election (I'm from Texas) was printed in both English and
Spanish; in the last election, my absentee ballot came with a
Vietnamese version as well. All government buildings have their signs
in both English and Spanish. Basically, there is no official piece of
communication you can get from the Texas state government that does
not have every word of English translated to Spanish, and in the
Houston area Vietnamese is often included as well.
In fact, various interest groups that hate all this multilingualism
have repeatedly pushed for legislation to declare English as the
sole official language of the US, and (so far) have been
unsuccessful. No pol wants to lose the entire Hispanic vote! :-)
Stan