[Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?

[David Monniaux]

[Offtopic]

>> Come on. All official sites, all political debates, all major news
>> etc. are in English.
> Not true. See Telemundo, Univision.
Yes, there are channels catering to latinos. Similarly, there are channels
catering to Arabs in Paris. These channels are not "mainstream" in the
sense that you do not have a Spanish edition of a major newspaper like the
New-York Times. This is not the same as having a multilingual country.

>>  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.
> Why? Many ami's are bilingual, if not more. Even the shrub speaks
> spanish.
Well, it hasn't happened so far. This is not like in countries like
Belgium, where legislators speak in several languages.

> Most americans speak in many dialects
Do they? Most Americans speak English, period.

>> I mean, radios, newspapers etc. for immigrant communities also exist
>> in Europe. Go to Paris, you'll see Chinese and Arabic newspapers,
>> Arabic radios.
>
> Visit more of the US. We have the same.
Yes, I know. That's exactly what I was pointing to. You were making a
spurious distinction between the US and European countries.

> You lived in tri-city Texas, IIRC, which is like saying "I lived in
> Nice, therefore, I have seen all of Europe".
Actually, the SF bay area and NYC. And, yes, non-English content is mostly
geared for poorer immigrant communities. It's actually evident from the
fact that, say, public transportation in the south bay (mostly used by the
poor and ethnic minorities) has subtitles in, say, Spanish and Vietnamese,
while mostly everything catering to the higher classes of society is
English only.