Voters decide today if English is it for Metro (Nashville)

[sabra]

Source: the tennessean

After all the television, radio and print ads on either side, after all the phone banking, canvassing and e-mailing, the English-only special election is here today.

An estimated 50,000 of Metro Nashville's 382,000 voters will decide whether English will be the only language for Metro government business, with council-mandated exceptions possible for health and safety.

...

Missouri and Iowa voters have passed measures making English their states' official language. In Tennessee, a legislative action did the same thing in 1984.

But if the Metro measure passes, Nashville will be the largest city in the nation with a charter amendment stating English is the official language and requiring official actions, communications and publication of Metro government literature to be in English.

Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090122/NEWS0202/901220367?loc=interstitialskip

[tekisui]

1. A majority restricting rights of minorities....again.

[county worker]

3. I don't agree with the measure but I don't see how it is restricting rights of minorities.

If that were true and you did not want it to happen you would have to conduct business in every possible language that the citizens spoke.

I think it is xenophobic but not a restricting of rights.

[Hepburn]

4. What civil right is restricted?

Anyone who speaks another language is not forbidden from still speaking the language, right?

:shrug:

[tekisui]

7. They have a right to understand and communicate with their government.

How can they have a real and equal voice, if they are limited in their communication?

[Hepburn]

9. Then they should learn English, OK?

I have seen the bad results of NOT learning English when I taught in the Barrio. It is not good. Instead of everything being translated into a ba-zillion languages, how about spending the money to bring everyone up to snuff on English? Speaking English is one reason some groups had a far easier time becoming part of the great American melting pot.

Speaking a language which puts out out of the loop and being dependent on others to translate of having documents in other languages sets people apart and does not integrate them into society in general.

My family spoke a second language at home ~~ but everyone also read, spoke and wrote English no matter where they were born or how old they were when they came to the States. Trust me ~~ nowhere were they any Romanian as a second language classes for anyone. When one has to learn, one does learn.

If I moved to another country where English was NOT the official or primary language, I would expect that I would need to learn that other language and learn it well to participate and survive effectively. In no manner would I expect others to provide English translations or translators for me. So why should it be any different here?

:hi:

[tekisui]

11. If that is to be the case,

and I agree that, ideally, it should be, language programs should be accessible. I worked in DC with some immigrants. They didn't have access, time or money for language programs. It wasn't that they didn't want to learn, it was they didn't have the means to.

I think we should have community based, possibly federally funded, programs to facilitate that objective. If language education was accessible, I am in full agreement with you.

[Hepburn]

15. I totally agree....

...instead of habitually translating EVERYTHING, some of that money could be well spent to hire many, many teachers to get those who do not speak English to the point where they do not need to have translations of everything.

[toopers]

21. Sorry, the immigrants came here by choice . . .

if they choose to come here then they should choose to understand the dominant language spoken in the US -- English.

[tekisui]

22. And, we should help them in that choice, every way we can.

It will make it a lot easier for us and them. It's a win/win. It will also help build and integrate them into our communities.

[toopers]

36. We do help them by having such an open society . . .

Most countries do not allow the type of immigration that the US has allowed.

[struggle4progress]

23. That why so many Tennesseans today speak Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Yuchi

[DBoon]

19. The English used for government communications is a specialized language

Even someone with excellent day-to-day English skills would have serious problems understanding ballot propositions and the text of laws.

[xxqqqzme]

25. Wow, how fortunate Nashville has NO non-English speaking

tourists visiting their city. People outside the US expect there to be public transportation that is accessible and easy to use - I know it is a stretch. Here @ the beach I run into visiting foreign students using public transportation, especially in the summer. Our public transportation system is not convenient or easy to understand.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

31. No one says that immigrants shouldn't learn English, but

there aren't nearly enough ESL classes for all who want to learn. I'm speaking as one who has tried to register refugees for publicly funded ESL classes. The waiting lists are huge. It's extremely hard for an adult to just "pick up" a language.

There have been ESL classes for immigrants in this country since the 1920s, if not before. I know, because my grandfather taught one in Minneapolis. It's a myth that all immigrants in previous generations just magically learned English. Their children learned English, but people like my great-grandmother, who came from Germany at age 19 and never worked outside the home, ended up speaking a strange mixture of English and German that was unintelligible to anyone who spoke only English. She didn't "refuse" to learn English. She just never had any formal instruction.

Until people do learn English, it is only a matter of practicality to provide necessary information in the languages of local immigrant communities. In Portland, information about the transit system is printed in six or seven languages, so that immigrants can ride the bus to their English classes when their name finally comes up on the waiting list.

Japan--of all placs--has no trouble providing English-language signs and government literature, and in areas where there are a lot of "guest workers" of Korean, Chinese, or Brazilian-Japanese descent, they seem untroubled by the need to provide public signs and government documents in Korean, Chinese, and Portuguese.

[county worker]

10. The government did not limit their communication.

[tekisui]

12. They are not facilitating, either.

[county worker]

16. They don't have to and if it is a funding issue it may be a wise move.

It does involve extra costs. We have employees who are bilingual and we pay them extra because of it when their job requires translations. That would not be if this law passed.

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. Should a gov't of 200 people support 187 languages

While the target in these cases is typically Spanish. The precedance goes far beyond. To what extent must a municipality employ translators and have all documents translated? Should that be done for a single individual? Does it depend upon size and resources of the government?

Translating documents is a time consuming and expensive process. Particularly so when trying to translate legal and/or technical documents. How much should society have to adapt to accomodate a single individual? Should the entire Code of Federal Regualtions and Federal Register be Translated into Latin because one individual claims it's their preferred/sole language.

[fed_up_mother]

28. We have dozens and dozens of languages in my city.

It's not practical to accommodate that many languages, although, obviously, certain exceptions must be made - like court proceedings.

[Hepburn]

2. I think that English should be the official language everywhere in the U.S.

I say this as a former SoCal Continuation HS teacher who taught in the Barrio in the Inland Empire. IMO, we are NOT doing our non-English speaking students any favors by teaching them in their native language. BTW: I am speaking about the primary grades. Children can and do pick up languages easily, but allowing them crutches of a translator until they are in HS only segregates and does not integrate them into society. Speaking English, reading and writing English and doing all of this well is essential to success.

I also say this as coming from a foreign family where another language was spoken at home ~~ Romanian. Trust me, there were no Romanian as a second language classes anywhere when my mother ~~ who spoke no English ~~ went to 1st grade. She managed to learn English, do 4 years of HS in 3 years, 4 years of university in 3 years, graduate with honors from both, and then go on immediately to get a masters in psychology. She was born in 1924 and even for an English speaking female of that generation, her accomplishments would have been unusual.

IMO, if a primary student has troubles with English, then get him/her a tutor, but do NOT assume that EVERYONE who is not English speaking needs that crutch all the way through HS.

JMHO

[county worker]

8. This is what I don't understand. How is it impacting your lifestyle?

I mean is it only because you care so much about the immigrants that you want them to succeed. I really don't think that is the case. I think that it is more fear of cultural change that these things come about.

So far, and I live in on the central coast of CA, I have not had my life impacted negatively by immigrants and the language they speak. Most of them know two languages but prefer to use their native language. I have no problem with that.

Many products we buy have instructions printed in 4 languages. We just don't use the other language instructions but because they are there doesn't impact us one bit.

I think it is the same with this issue. I don't really give a shit about what language someone chose to use. I rather like the diversity and the multiple languages spoken around me.

[Hepburn]

13. Thanks for the unwarranted psychological profiling of my feelings.

Experience teaching in the barrio has taught me that teaching children from lst grade and allowing all to use a crutch ~~ whether needed or not ~~ is not the way to go.

My experience from teaching in the barrio is that there often were several generations ~~ some born in the U.S. ~~ who did not speak English at all or well enough to get along without the 2nd language crutch. This is NOT good.

I still speak my second language and I do so at my OPTION and not out of necessity. That is the difference. I still have my ethnic background ~~ and that will never change ~~ but I am able to get along and succeed with the primary language of commerce and education.

Now, please excuse me, but I need to go check on the Mamaliga Cu Brinza I am in the middle of making.

:hi:

[county worker]

17. You know I expected that. It is tactful indeed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. I wish I had enough time to write about the poor results that

come from the "sink or swim" language immersion classes that yuppie parents are so fond of, where a roomful of English-speaking children are taught in a foreign language all day with no explicit teaching. They develop a "classroom dialect" that bears no resemblance to anything spoken in the real world. This was documented in the earliest experiments in French immersion in Canada and caused them to change their teaching methods.

Unless there is a critical mass of native speakers of the target language, the children have only their teacher and one another's imperfect attempts for a model.

Portland has (had?) a Japanese immersion program, and I was NOT impressed with the results. The high school students spoke with worse grammar than second-year college students, despite ten or twelve years of immersion, but of course, their parents didn't know that. they just wanted yuppie bragging rights.

(On the other hand, young English-speaking children under the age of puberty who go to a school where all the students are Japanese quickly pick up the language, because they have a wide variety of native inputs.)

Bilingual education is a pretty recent phenomenon and has existed only since the 1970s. Has it ever occurred to you that some of the grandparents who speak poor English despite having been born in the U.S. were taught by the sink or swim method, which was universal in their day?

Even if you spoke Rumanian at home, you were in a different situation from the average Latino child. Most likely, you did not live in an all-Rumanian neighborhood. When you went to school, the majority of your classmates did NOT speak Rumanian. You were in the situation of an American child going to a Japanese school, not in the situation of a Latino or Navaho or Korean student from a community where nearly everyone in school is of their ethnic group.

[gauguin57]

5. I'd be pissed at having my tax money go to running a special election just for this.

Running elections is expensive.

Not to mention that this is just a way for all the racists to get their ya-yas out in the voting booth.

[WriteDown]

6. A good step...

Most countries have official languages. It builds unity and helps make sure that citizens can communicate. I would not move to Japan and expect govt business to be performed in English.

[robish518]

18. Clearly....

Tennesseans are on the ball with the real issues we face today.

[KamaAina]

20. Vote No*

*-this message is in both English and Spanish. The imperative form of the Spanish verb votar is pronounced "VOE-tay"; in some dialects, the V-sound is moved halfway toward a B.

[struggle4progress]

24. English-first backer tied to alleged hate groups (The Tennessean)

Michigan financier of Metro effort says claims are off-base
By MICHAEL CASS • Staff Writer • January 18, 2009

The man who founded the Virginia nonprofit paying for the push to make English Nashville's official language also is behind several organizations that have been labeled hate groups.

Dr. John H. Tanton, a retired eye surgeon, started both ProEnglish and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified FAIR as a hate group last winter based on its acceptance of $1.2 million from a white supremacist organization, employees' ties to other such groups and a history of "anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes" ...

Tanton ... lives in Michigan ...

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090118/NEWS01/90118003

[depakid]

29. Now that's a big surprise

:sarcasm:

[mitchum]

26. I very rarely hear correct English spoken in Nashville

[struggle4progress]

27. There must be a great comedy skit lurking there somewhere:

After "English-only" passes, folk brought from the UK staff all city offices to enforce the law

[mitchum]

35. "If Howdy! is good enuff for Minnie Pearl, it's good enuff for them furriners to learn!"

[KamaAina]

30. Here's a look at the pro-amendment campaign rally

:P

[leftofthedial]

33. great, now all those Nashvillains will have to learn how to speak English!

:eyes:

[Tanuki]

34. The English-only measure was defeated, 57-43% n/t