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

[Stan Shebs]

Delirium wrote:

> 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