By Request: Convention in Spanish

Longtime troll TLB wants me to write about the announcement that the Democratic Convention will be simulcast in Spanish. Unlike anti-immigrant obsessives, I don't necessarily regard this kind of thing as a huge deal, but I actually do think there's something lamentable about the trend toward a greater volume of Spanish-language political communication.

It's just common sense that many jurisdictions provide services in Spanish or whatever other languages may be commonly spoken in any given area. But to me it makes a lot of sense to say that we should work to maintain a monolingual political conversation that expects citizens to be able to deliberate with their fellow citizens in English. Many countries have no realistic alternative other than to try to make bilingualism (or more) work but it's really difficult in practice (Will Kymlicka says some smart things about this in Politics in the Vernacular as I recall) and we shouldn't move in that direction.

Comments

My standard response to that sort of sky-is-falling outcry is to point out that the US has no official language. Clearly some people think we should have one, and that's fine, but let's have that argument.

Posted by Andrew Dupont | June 30, 2008 12:24 PM

Any thoughts on whether, regardless of whether "we" should move in that direction, the DNC should move in that direction to grab some Hispanic voters? Is it an effective way to do their job which is electing Obama this cycle?

Posted by phil | June 30, 2008 12:26 PM

For what it's worth one of my hobbies is collecting ephemera from the era of German-English bilingualism ca. 1870-1910. Pretty thorough coverage of what one needed to be an American.

For what it's worth my great-grandfather immigrated to avoid fighting for Bismarck, so he was pretty clear on the difference between commitment to a language and commitment to a country.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | June 30, 2008 12:26 PM

monolingual political conversation

Post for the next request thread: can you please review for me when this monolingual political conversation started. My understanding is that immigrant as well as other "other-languaged" communities have been politicking in those other languages for quite some time.

Posted by hoipolloi | June 30, 2008 12:26 PM

We should establish English as the official language. There, I said it. That doesn't mean we have to outlaw Spanish or ban forms from being printed in it. Encouraging monolingualism is not a bad thing!

Posted by Andrew | June 30, 2008 12:27 PM

We should establish English as the official language. There, I said it. That doesn't mean we have to outlaw Spanish or ban forms from being printed in it. Encouraging monolingualism is not a bad thing!

Posted by Andrew Wagner | June 30, 2008 12:28 PM

Even today, it would be a considerable advantage in my home town if a candidate could manage to express a few choice sentiments in Dutch or Polish . . .

Posted by rea | June 30, 2008 12:30 PM

Did the parties really fail to provide a Spanish translated feed for SAP-channel audio in 2004? That's a super cheap way to appeal to Spanish-speaking Americans... even more ridiculous now that GWB pulled 40% of the Latino vote.

I found some contemporary press releases about a debate being broadcast in Spanish w/ a Spanish track on the SAP channel for the Dem primary in 2004 (was a Univision debate; makes sense), but nothing about the convention. It seems really unlikely that the big-audience events like Kerry/Bush's speech, Clinton's speech, Obama, etc wouldn't have any SAP content, though, even if the translation was funded by the networks covering the event.

Posted by Zach | June 30, 2008 12:30 PM

Did you really have to link to the guy's crappy blog?

Posted by hum | June 30, 2008 12:31 PM

I have another request - please explain why immigration opponents are such enormous pussies. English has thrived to become a language of business for every country in the world. It makes no sense for anyone to be afraid of English losing its status as the dominant language in the U.S.

Posted by Gabriel | June 30, 2008 12:34 PM

If someone wants a multilingual political conversation, simulcasting conventions is a silly and formalistic place to start. Who cares about what happens at conventions, except in the very rare years in which the nominee is not already a done deal? That's like saying we should forge a multilingual conversation about the local government by translating legal notices in the newspapers.

The most useful things to simulcast would be those MSM shows that, like it or not (and I don't), set the playing field for our national politics.

Posted by Rich | June 30, 2008 12:34 PM

Everywhere in the world English dominates and is squeezing out other languages. Literally everywhere. You can't escape English, every damn waiter from Katmandu to Patagonia knows some English. Every aspiring businessman or entrepreneur in any god forsaken corner of the planet is trying to learn English. Even the Chinese aren't strong enough to resist and are tossing 4000 years of tradition down the drain. It's pretty clear that we're headed within 200 years to a Star Trek type world where English is the only commonly spoken language on Earth. So if Spanish speakers want to fight a desperate rear-guard action, and we do see a small blip in Spanish speakers for a few decades, I for one will enjoy it.

Posted by vanya | June 30, 2008 12:38 PM

i'll go ahead and stick my neck out too. nothing against spanish or any other language, and not that i'm waspocentric, and not that there has ever been a time in this country where everybody spoke english all the time - but still, the ability for all to converse to all would be a civic virtue and it's worth bearing that in mind. we should accomodate, tolerate, and respect functional language differences, but we should not encourage them.

Posted by Nobi Yuno | June 30, 2008 12:39 PM

"hum" is right.

Those of us who frequent these comments generally do our best to ignore TLB - whose contributions are usually nothing more than a quick, silly insult hurled at Matt, coupled with a clumsy attempt to get more traffic at his web site. Matt does TLB a big favor here by directing attention his way.

Posted by LaurenceB | June 30, 2008 12:41 PM

I could not disagree more. My sister teaches teachers of English as a Second Language. Her husband was born in Mexico but speaks flawless English (and has a Master's from Harvard). He's perfectly capable of following English political conversations. I'm very in favor of people learning Enlgish when they are in this country, because it is necessary to be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But I also live in Los Angeles, and have worked in an environment with people who have limited English capacity, but who were proud American citizens. As adults, they are past their prime age for learning English, and they will never be able to follow political conversations in English. But they are Americans, and should be treated and respected as such. Their voices are every bit as important as mine. To deny them the opportunity to participate as full equals and partners is to disrespect them as individuals, and to repudiate the great American tradition of encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process. It is not difficult for a candidate to translate their campaign materials into another language, and, by doing so, they demonstrate respect for the diversity of communities in this country. The costs of doing so will, presumably, be more than covered by the donations received from the targeted audience. If a candidate doesn't want to incur that cost, they are free not to try to outreach to those communities. But it's probably not a good idea.

I worked on a campaign in 1992 in Southern California, for a Democratic candidate who spoke fluent Spanish but who rarely said a word of Spanish in public, and never in any ads, despite the presence of a large Hispanic population in the district. She lost badly.

Posted by John Halbert | June 30, 2008 12:44 PM

I don't see any reason that "we" need to take any official action to encourage the adoption of English. Obviously, any immigrant has enormous natural incentives to learn English, and immigrant populations invariably do adopt English within a generation or two. Our latest wave of Spanish-speaking immigrants is no different and will be no different.

As others have already said here, English doesn't need any help. English isn't going away.

Posted by Jake H. | June 30, 2008 12:45 PM

I could not disagree more. My sister teaches teachers of English as a Second Language. Her husband was born in Mexico but speaks flawless English (and has a Master's from Harvard). He's perfectly capable of following English political conversations. I'm very in favor of people learning Enlgish when they are in this country, because it is necessary to be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But I also live in Los Angeles, and have worked in an environment with people who have limited English capacity, but who were proud American citizens. As adults, they are past their prime age for learning English, and they will never be able to follow political conversations in English. But they are Americans, and should be treated and respected as such. Their voices are every bit as important as mine. To deny them the opportunity to participate as full equals and partners is to disrespect them as individuals, and to repudiate the great American tradition of encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process. It is not difficult for a candidate to translate their campaign materials into another language, and, by doing so, they demonstrate respect for the diversity of communities in this country. The costs of doing so will, presumably, be more than covered by the donations received from the targeted audience. If a candidate doesn't want to incur that cost, they are free not to try to outreach to those communities. But it's probably not a good idea.

I worked on a campaign in 1992 in Southern California, for a Democratic candidate who spoke fluent Spanish but who rarely said a word of Spanish in public, and never in any ads, despite the presence of a large Hispanic population in the district. She lost badly.

Posted by John Halbert | June 30, 2008 12:45 PM

I could not disagree more. My sister teaches teachers of English as a Second Language. Her husband was born in Mexico but speaks flawless English (and has a Master's from Harvard). He's perfectly capable of following English political conversations. I'm very in favor of people learning Enlgish when they are in this country, because it is necessary to be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But I also live in Los Angeles, and have worked in an environment with people who have limited English capacity, but who were proud American citizens. As adults, they are past their prime age for learning English, and they will never be able to follow political conversations in English. But they are Americans, and should be treated and respected as such. Their voices are every bit as important as mine. To deny them the opportunity to participate as full equals and partners is to disrespect them as individuals, and to repudiate the great American tradition of encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process. It is not difficult for a candidate to translate their campaign materials into another language, and, by doing so, they demonstrate respect for the diversity of communities in this country. The costs of doing so will, presumably, be more than covered by the donations received from the targeted audience. If a candidate doesn't want to incur that cost, they are free not to try to outreach to those communities. But it's probably not a good idea.

I worked on a campaign in 1992 in Southern California, for a Democratic candidate who spoke fluent Spanish but who rarely said a word of Spanish in public, and never in any ads, despite the presence of a large Hispanic population in the district. She lost badly.

Posted by John Halbert | June 30, 2008 12:46 PM

O Grady raises an interesting point. My home town kept all its records in German until about 1900. And it was still a successful town, mainly because of its steel mill. That steel mill brought in workers from all over the world and our schools faced the daunting challenge of coping with about 20 different languages. Yet we survived and prospered. And America's German-English bilingualism didn't prevent it from growing into a world power. I agree that monolingualism makes things easier and that the language should be English. But multilingualism shouldn't be considered to be a major obstacle to growth. Now, one could argue that multilingualism hasn't helped India (23 official languages), but I think India faces challenges far greater than its language issues. It's not like corruption and incompetence will suddenly end if everyone started speaking Hindi.

Posted by fostert | June 30, 2008 12:48 PM

[sobs] I've been commenting on MattY's blogs for five or six years, and for this all I am is a "longtime troll"?

While I'm heartened that MattY is, to a certain extent on the right side of this issue, he didn't take my full suggestion which included him spending some actual time on this post. If he had, he wouldn't have used "anti-immigrant obsessives" but instead would realize that "obsession" is actually concern about an issue repeatedly being lied about when not ignored. And, he'd realize that "anti-immigrant" is usually false about those who oppose illegal activity. And, for extra credit he might have asked the Convention why they're trying to include Latin America in what should be an internal conversation (see the quote from their spokesman).

Nevertheless, I look forward to MattY tackling the twelve other requests, some of which are a bit more "problematic". For instance, I wouldn't suggest coming out against the FederalReserve's program, since those who profit from that scheme probably know those who run The Atlantic or know others who know them.

Posted by TLB's Twelve Other Requests for MattY | June 30, 2008 12:48 PM

I could not disagree more. My sister teaches teachers of English as a Second Language. Her husband was born in Mexico but speaks flawless English (and has a Master's from Harvard). He's perfectly capable of following English political conversations. I'm very in favor of people learning Enlgish when they are in this country, because it is necessary to be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But I also live in Los Angeles, and have worked in an environment with people who have limited English capacity, but who were proud American citizens. As adults, they are past their prime age for learning English, and they will never be able to follow political conversations in English. But they are Americans, and should be treated and respected as such. Their voices are every bit as important as mine. To deny them the opportunity to participate as full equals and partners is to disrespect them as individuals, and to repudiate the great American tradition of encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process. It is not difficult for a candidate to translate their campaign materials into another language, and, by doing so, they demonstrate respect for the diversity of communities in this country. The costs of doing so will, presumably, be more than covered by the donations received from the targeted audience. If a candidate doesn't want to incur that cost, they are free not to try to outreach to those communities. But it's probably not a good idea.

I worked on a campaign in 1992 in Southern California, for a Democratic candidate who spoke fluent Spanish but who rarely said a word of Spanish in public, and never in any ads, despite the presence of a large Hispanic population in the district. She lost badly.

Posted by John Halbert | June 30, 2008 12:50 PM

What foreign language do you speak, Matt? It's pretty damn easy to insist other learn that which we already know...

Posted by abject funk | June 30, 2008 12:51 PM

I get so tired of repeating this, but here we go again:

Why do we need [fill in the blank] in Spanish?

1. Older immigrants are unlikely to ever learn English well. This has always been the case and will always be the case. (And, yes, they can, and do, become citizens.)

2. Puerto Rico. (And, yes, Puerto Ricans votes do count at the Democratic National Convention.)

3. The public good. The choice is between informing people and not informing them. An informed public is a better one.

Thank you. Feel free to copy and paste.

Posted by LaurenceB | June 30, 2008 1:01 PM

I could not disagree more. My sister teaches teachers of English as a Second Language. Her husband was born in Mexico but speaks flawless English (and has a Master's from Harvard). He's perfectly capable of following English political conversations. I'm very in favor of people learning Enlgish when they are in this country, because it is necessary to be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But I also live in Los Angeles, and have worked in an environment with people who have limited English capacity, but who were proud American citizens. As adults, they are past their prime age for learning English, and they will never be able to follow political conversations in English. But they are Americans, and should be treated and respected as such. Their voices are every bit as important as mine. To deny them the opportunity to participate as full equals and partners is to disrespect them as individuals, and to repudiate the great American tradition of encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the democratic process. It is not difficult for a candidate to translate their campaign materials into another language, and, by doing so, they demonstrate respect for the diversity of communities in this country. The costs of doing so will, presumably, be more than covered by the donations received from the targeted audience. If a candidate doesn't want to incur that cost, they are free not to try to outreach to those communities. But it's probably not a good idea.

I worked on a campaign in 1992 in Southern California, for a Democratic candidate who spoke fluent Spanish but who rarely said a word of Spanish in public, and never in any ads, despite the presence of a large Hispanic population in the district. She lost badly.

Posted by John Halbert | June 30, 2008 1:02 PM

I think asking Matt what foreign languaehespeaks is beside the point - in the US, English is not a "foreign langage". It is a bit of semantics to statethat english is not an official language - clearly it is (conventions often have as much power as law).

The debate is the difficulty of havng multiple political conversations. Canada is an interesting case for this, obviously. We have at least two discussions going on, but enough Enlish speaking Canadians also speak french (and vice versa) that neither conversation is carried on exclusive of the other (for example, if a French politician makes a statement about the nature of the country, it will be pretty quickly reported in the English media).

Posted by Chris B | June 30, 2008 1:04 PM

LaurenceB is, as the record would show, quite incorrect. While some of my comments are one-offs, and most of my comments are "highly critical" of MattY, most of them point out issues with the posts. And, the only responses are as content-free as LaurenceB's comment.

As for Halbert's multiple comments, then perhaps we need to raise the bar on citizenship. English proficiency is a requirement for almost all immigrants, and if they can't follow along then perhaps we need to decide - based on factors including the numbers of languages spoken by immigrants - where the fault lies. A workable solution to Halbert's issue might be providing a BasicEnglish translation. Unless he has something else on the agenda, surely that would solve his issues, right?

Posted by TLB's Twelve Other Requests for MattY | June 30, 2008 1:06 PM

I'm not sure simulcasting is the issue. The problem with the multilingual thing is that it makes it more likely groups will develop niche conversations, concerns, and interests that others in society know nothing about, leading to a breakdown in comprehension and understanding.

Posted by Brian Ulrich | June 30, 2008 1:08 PM

Sorry about the multiple posts - I kept getting server errors, and assumed that I wasn't posting. Guess I was!

Posted by JohnTEQP | June 30, 2008 1:09 PM

I agree with all 4 copies of John Halbert's post. My maternal grandparents were Croatian. All the extended family were citizens, but only the men spoke fluent English (with pretty intense accents). The 1st gen women spoke very little English because they worked in the home or from the home (accumulating a little real estate and renting it.) That didn't mean they were uninvolved in the city they lived in or unaware of politics. Of course they had to get their information indirectly, since Texas was certainly not publishing anything in Croatian in the 30's or subsequently.

All the second generation of this family spoke flawless unaccented English and several couldn't communicate in Croatian. The whole "too much Spanish" meme is bogus. We don't have a single "monolingual political conversation" even among the English speakers. Check out the article on Findley OH in the NYTimes if you disbelieve this.

Posted by bemused | June 30, 2008 1:09 PM

You prove my point, Chris B. Seems like a lot of us should be learning Spanish while we insist the Spanish speakers learn English.

In Canada it is a two-way street, here, not so much. Yet those who speak the "dominant" language don't seem to tire of telling those who speak Spanish how they must learn English (regardless of the already existing incentives, and in the face of the fact that learning a new language later in life is pretty damn difficult). No one really thinks that learning Spanish or some other language is something that we should do.

If you speak three languages, you are tri-lingual.

If you speak two languages, you are bi-lingual.

If you speak one language, you are American.

Posted by abject funk | June 30, 2008 1:11 PM

My problem with ballot access without language requirement is that in many case, the population is so small, there are it's not viable for diversified point of view. (Spanish media in southern California is a different case.) And they often are subsidiary of foreign media that may or may not have government ties.

I don't understand why "progressives" are pushing for those translated ballots. As those medias are usually not very progressive, and reactionary in term of social values.

Posted by Kanchou | June 30, 2008 1:15 PM

It bears repeating that those who are agitated about the use of Spanish in public life and advertisements should have thought twice before located the USA on the border of a huge spanish speaking country in a largely spanish-speaking hemisphere, not to mention taking ownership of a large Spanish-speaking colony with millions of people.

Many foreign countries content with the same encroachment of English upon their daily lives when they live thousands of miles away from english speaking countries. We can deal with a comparably smaller and less threatening presence of spanish.

Posted by Tyro | June 30, 2008 1:22 PM

Matt,

I had to re-read your post thrice to make certain that I was reading it correctly. It is ridiculous to object to simulcasting on the SAP channel. It literally has no effect on the main broadcast and makes the information available to people who are more comfortable (and perhaps only able) listening in Spanish. There are certainly hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of such voters, many in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and other swing states.

To the extent that you are lamenting it is necessary to broadcast in Spanish, why? My great-grandparents listened to WEVD in Yiddish, but raised children who were fully English conversant. I can understand concerns about ENTERTAINMENT being produced in Spanish, because that lessens the impetus for Spanish-speakers to learn English, but the idea that next-generation children of Spanish-speakers will be discouraged from learning English because they are watching the DNC in Spanish is frivolous.

Posted by Ephus | June 30, 2008 1:23 PM

But to me it makes a lot of sense to say that we should work to maintain a monolingual political conversation that expects citizens to be able to deliberate with their fellow citizens in English.

It makes sense? Why? Anything more thoughtful than just "well, it stands to reason"?

I agree with John Halbert et al. For the Democratic Party, it's good politics with little or no downside, because people who obsess about the southwest being being conquered* by Mexico — sorry, an "illegal activity" that's about as common and dangerous as smoking pot probably weren't voting Democrat anyway. And as a matter of government or social policy or cultural trends, it also seems harmless. The cost of translating public documents isn't prohibitive in areas where a second language is common enough that it's needed. There are already plenty of insular communities in America where English isn't the first language. People said the same things about the Irish and Italians in their day and it turned out that they were mistaken or just full of shit, so I see no reason to think the same won't be true of Hispanics.

Also, anyone who deliberately and frequently combines words for no apparent reason can't be trusted.

* I confess I didn't follow that link because I don't want to give him traffic, but it came from a comment he posted elsewhere talking about Aztlan, so it's probably relevant.

Posted by Cyrus | June 30, 2008 1:23 PM

I refer back to Maciej Cegłowski on this topic: local politics is not monolingual, and the 'debate' of national politics portrayed by the media is more of a monologue. So, the issue is one of scaling.

As opposed to Wacko Kelly, who is a monomaniac, the Heidi Fleiss of blogwhores, and a great big fucking coward.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 30, 2008 1:23 PM

I dread the day when you feel compelled to answer some query from Chris Ford or Hector Dauphin-Gloire.

At any rate, you say a multilingual political conversation would be a bad thing, but you don't really explain why. Why?

I can think of some reasons. It seems that having politicians making ads in different, mutually unintelligible languages makes it easier for them to lie without being caught. It also seems to increase the potential for mistranslation-based ratfucking, with some GOP hack, for instance, willfully mistranslating a Spanish Obama ad into saying "Vote for Obama and you can have the lost territories of Guadalupe-Hidalgo back and cleanse the filthy anglos from your lands!" when it actually says no such thing when read in Spanish in good faith.

Is that what you had in mind too, or do you have different reasons? What do you regard as the benefits of a monolingual political conversation, and the drawbacks of a multilingual one?

Posted by Julian Elson | June 30, 2008 1:26 PM

Of course, the shared language is English, and any American who doesn't know the language is at a tremendous disadvantage. BUT (capital letters for big BUT), there are many Americans who, while having a working knowledge of English, are not sufficiently proficient to deal with the complexity and nuance of serious political communication. We have a long and not particularly distinguished history of linguistic bloc voting in New York, Chicago, and Miami, just to cite a few instances, in which the on-the-ground retail politics is conducted in languages other than English, and participants have no opportunity to participate in any so-called "national conversation."

Posted by Etaoin Shrdlu | June 30, 2008 1:27 PM

I am all for equipping citizens with the best tools to succeed.

As such, I encourage people to learn English for their own benefit, but also believe the citizenry should be actively engaged and would rather have a bilingual conversation than one that bypasses many (and growing number at that) of its citizens.

Engaged/informed citizens are a vigilant bulwark against tyranny and monopolization.

Or we could just continue our decent into a plutocratic banana republic. It would be like bringing the Spanish-speaking Americans back to their old countries where few people have access to the political system and the money is wholly concentrated at the top.

I never thought about it like that. Maybe keeping them out of the dialog is our way of saying "welcome home."

Posted by jeff | June 30, 2008 1:29 PM

Wow, I once read a George Will piece in which he made the exact same argument. Of course, his was fleshed out a bit more.

Anyway, why exactly does it make sense to have a "monolingual political conversation?" I assure you (this seemed to be G.Will's fear) that other languages are chock full o' words that accurately represent the political issues and ideologies that we discuss in English every day. I know, it's not just mumbo jumbo! If your concern is literally that we can't all sit down and deliberate with each other...well, that just seems silly.

Posted by Jennifer | June 30, 2008 1:40 PM

Isn't TLB the same idiot who knew for a fact that "the whitey tape" existed because some blogger staked his reputation on it? (Do bloggers have reputations now?)

Posted by JS | June 30, 2008 1:51 PM

Right, Matt. Clearly it was all that Yiddish-language politicking and the political coverage in Der Forvarts that kept American Jews marginalized in the first half of the 20th century. Of *course* it didn't increase participation by 1st-generation immigrants!

Posted by Melinda | June 30, 2008 1:56 PM

Somebody should tell TLB that if his last name ain't "Pocahontas" he should just STFU.

God, I hate nativist, xenophobe, racist assholes.

Posted by Brautigan | June 30, 2008 2:00 PM

Unlike anti-immigrant obsessives, I don't necessarily regard this kind of thing as a huge deal...

It is a huge deal for American politics. By flipping the bird to the country's largest minority, the GOP is doing its level best to insure its own multi-decade status as a minority party.

The fact is English is not in trouble. As as a number of posters have pointed out, it is the rest of the world's tongues that are in danger of extinction.

So, since there's no real problem maintaining the viability of the country's de facto official language, and since the bad guys seem so insistent on giving the good guys a a hugely beneficial political issue on a silver platter, I see nothing but upside in positioning ourselves as defenders of Spanish-speaking Americans against the xenophobia and political idiocy of the right wing. Bring it on, suckas.

Posted by Jasper | June 30, 2008 2:01 PM

The question raised upthread seems relevant: will the GOP convention have a closed-caption SAP feed? If so, then what's the big diff between someone typing the translation, and someone reading it?

Posted by kth | June 30, 2008 2:06 PM

It seems that having politicians making ads in different, mutually unintelligible languages makes it easier for them to lie without being caught. It also seems to increase the potential for mistranslation-based ratfucking, with some GOP hack, for instance, willfully mistranslating a Spanish Obama ad into saying "Vote for Obama and you can have the lost territories of Guadalupe-Hidalgo back and cleanse the filthy anglos from your lands!" when it actually says no such thing when read in Spanish in good faith.

Oh god, I hope you're right. It's totally worth it.

Posted by Cyrus | June 30, 2008 2:24 PM

It's nothing against you, but this kind of ignorant messages when you are sitting in a comfortable lounge and not canvassing like thousands trying to get Hispanics out to vote is ridiculous. Let people speak their Spanish and cut the nationalist crap, embrace the new cosmopolitanism identity in America, and understand the important of access to political process to all, not only to a few privilege kids who have access to the internet and get Tuesdays free when voting day comes.

I am a Spanish speaking American resident, and I support Spanish language political conversation, have you forgotten the demographics? The electoral process in this country is already messed up, to still leave people out. I admire you Matthew for a lot of things, but this is certainly a very Eurocentric view of things, and I am sorry but I disagree with you 100%

Posted by Luis Avila | June 30, 2008 2:28 PM

It's a lot harder to ignore the trolls when the host keeps on feeding them. Villages don't go throwing infants at cannibals to satisfy them.

Posted by Reality Man | June 30, 2008 2:28 PM

It's nothing against you, but this kind of ignorant messages when you are sitting in a comfortable lounge and not canvassing like thousands trying to get Hispanics out to vote is ridiculous. Let people speak their Spanish and cut the nationalist crap, embrace the new cosmopolitanism identity in America, and understand the important of access to political process to all, not only to a few privilege kids who have access to the internet and get Tuesdays free when voting day comes.

I am a Spanish speaking American resident, and I support Spanish language political conversation, have you forgotten the demographics? The electoral process in this country is already messed up, to still leave people out. I admire you Matthew for a lot of things, but this is certainly a very Eurocentric view of things, and I am sorry but I disagree with you 100%

Posted by Luis Avila | June 30, 2008 2:29 PM

It's nothing against you, but this kind of ignorant messages when you are sitting in a comfortable lounge and not canvassing like thousands trying to get Hispanics out to vote is ridiculous. Let people speak their Spanish and cut the nationalist crap, embrace the new cosmopolitanism identity in America, and understand the important of access to political process to all, not only to a few privilege kids who have access to the internet and get Tuesdays free when voting day comes.

I am a Spanish speaking American resident, and I support Spanish language political conversation, have you forgotten the demographics? The electoral process in this country is already messed up, to still leave people out. I admire you Matthew for a lot of things, but this is certainly a very Eurocentric view of things, and I am sorry but I disagree with you 100%

Posted by Luis Avila | June 30, 2008 2:31 PM

And, he'd realize that "anti-immigrant" is usually false about those who oppose illegal activity.

LOL! Then why are you so upset about Spanish? Do you think illegal immigrants speak less English than legals? Do you have any data to back this up outside of your own imagination

I grew up in a border state and have known quite a few undocumenteds in my day. Believe me, the ones I knew spoke English QUITE well. You don't make it far on the lam without being able to adapt quickly.

Posted by scythia | June 30, 2008 2:32 PM

jeff wants to prevent a "decent [sic] into a plutocratic banana republic" by... encouraging people to break into easily-controlled linguoethnic-oriented communities. Truly, "liberal" "thinking" at its finest.

Meanwhile, do a find for 'Quebec' in this article from this very site written by someone who knows about that history stuff.

And, while I normally ignore things like JS's comment, he misrepresents my position on "the whitey tape". Compare my comment to his version:

matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/the_whitey_video.php

Posted by TLB's Twelve Other Requests for MattY | June 30, 2008 2:37 PM

I'm somewhere between TLB and Steve Sailer in my love of unchecked immigration, however I agree with the above commenters that a Spanish (or any other language) SAP feed is not the worst thing in the world.

Besides that, getting new citizens to understand and feel a part of our system of government is more important than getting them to speak and understand English.

Going forward, Where we should be pushy about learning English is when immigrants first arrive. Israel requires new immigrants to go through pretty intensive assimilation/Hebrew classes. The length of the course depends on the student's starting place. Ethiopian Jews who were illiterate in their nave tongue, spent 25 hours a week for 10 months learning to read, write and interact in Hebrew. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_2001_Sept/ai_79007216

Newsflash, a lot of illegals who show up here aren't literate in Spanish or any other language. They should be required to go through similar training if they want amnesty (inevitable under either Obama or McCain). Too bad the idea of favoring immigrants who learn English in their home country and then wait their turn to immigrate here legally is absurd and trollish.

Posted by beowulf | June 30, 2008 2:41 PM

Matt sometimes you are such a pathetic little Cubano Arrepentido.

Go through your cable dial in August and of course you'll see the huge Spanish networks covering the convention in Spanish...but you'll also see it n Tagalog, the Italian channel, the Indian channel, the Chinese channel. Those are relegated to cable, but so will most of the American English coverage of the convention.

Posted by Stav | June 30, 2008 2:46 PM

Analogizing the Southwest to Quebec, which experienced no population upheavals and where the French-language population remained in control of the economic infrastructure throughout history, is fucking retarded.

On the other hand, if that's your worst-case scenario, that because of illegal immigration Arizona and New Mexico become a kind of American Quebec and make the gov't print the signs in two languages, I think I speak for all Americans when I say who the fuck cares?

I felt kind of nervous yesterday when you called me out. I thought to myself: Wow, am I really out of step here? Have I gone too far? Am I the on acting like an idiot?

Thank you for setting my mind at ease. Continue your trolling.

Posted by scythia | June 30, 2008 2:46 PM

Where we should be pushy about learning English is when immigrants first arrive

I think the problem with that is that people lose the ability to learn languages later in life. Even the ones who do often speak with several linguistic markers that make them sound "foreign" to us. Unless they're highly educated, the opportunity costs are often too high to spend the kind of time learning a new language--especially with no guarantee for renumeration for their efforts.

IMO, It's much better to focus on the second generation, and teach them English while they're young. Of course, to do this, we'll need to make sure our schools are adequately funded, particularly in the poorer districts where immigrant reside. We'll have to place special emphasis on ESL, and we'll want to discourage the draconian, Gestapo-like identity checks that cause many immigrant parents to keep their kids away from public services.

Y'all are on board with that, right? For the sake of assimilation.

Posted by scythia | June 30, 2008 2:52 PM

If you speak one language, you are American.

People generally only learn foreign languages out of necessity -- other than members of highly-educated elites. For a variety of economic, cultural, and political reasons, it just hasn't been necessary for Americans to learn foreign languages. So they don't.

Plus, I would assume that the millions upon millions of bi-lingual Hispanics, Asians, Russians, etc. in the US are "Americans." So I'm not sure how those Americans fit into the "American = one language" formulation. Maybe you mean native-born whites and blacks or something.. and not "Americans."

Posted by jim | June 30, 2008 3:07 PM

Scythia - I think you have two aspects of Quebec wrong. First of all, the French speakers had NO control over the economy up until the 1950's/60's when they launched what was termed teh Quiet Revolution to retake the levers of the economy (using the state to do so, hence why Quebeckers ar emore enamoured of the government than any other jurisdiction in NA).

Second, it is not the case that the upshot of official bilingualism is that the signs in Quebec are in French and English - in fact they are ONLY in French, and even individual businesses have to put the french in their signs/menus etc. at east twice as large as the english. Quebec is unilingual. Canada is bilingual - so our government operates in both languages. Everythign we print has to be in both, government employees above a certain position have to be bilingual and any Canadian can receive government service in either language.

Posted by Chris B | June 30, 2008 3:37 PM

I think you have two aspects of Quebec wrong. First of all, the French speakers had NO control over the economy up until the 1950's/60's when they launched what was termed the Quiet Revolution to retake the levers of the economy

I figured as much, because I a) know zero about Canada outside of a few road trips and b) couldn't really imagine a scenario where the dominant ethnicity in the national gov't didn't control the means of production, esp. in the minority provinces.

That being said, though, Francophone Quebeckers [sorry, couldn't resists] still maybe up the majority of the population, no? And they still owned most of the small businesses, shops, etc., I imagine.

That's a FAR cry from the way things are in the Southwest today, where most immigrant-owned businesses, insofar as they exact, are owned by those that assimilate most effectively into American culture. Given the way capital is now distributed, I can't see that changing any time soon.

Quebec is unilingual. Canada is bilingual - so our government operates in both languages.

I see. HTF did that happen? Aren't there English speakers in Quebec?

Posted by scythia | June 30, 2008 3:50 PM

Sullivan quotes some interesting facts on the usage of English throughout the world.

Having worked in Switzerland for a while (where they have 4 official languages), I can tell you that being able to pick up the phone on one coast of the U.S. and converse fluently with somebody thousands of miles away on the opposite coast is an ENORMOUS economic advantage. There's a reason why so many countries are using English to intercommunicate.

BTW, does anybody remember the attempt to create an international language called "Esperanto"?

Posted by LFC | June 30, 2008 3:53 PM

Vanya: star trek isn't english only. They've got the universal language converter.

Posted by CHoward | June 30, 2008 5:08 PM

I forgot who said it first, but someone pointed out a few years ago that the only three languages basically ensured to survive to the year 2100 are English, Spanish and Chinese. Having a whole bunch of people who can speak two of those is far from the worse thing that can happen to make the American economy competitive.

Posted by Reality Man | June 30, 2008 5:13 PM

does anybody remember the attempt to create an international language called "Esperanto"?

Ne.

Posted by rea | June 30, 2008 5:15 PM

scythia fails to note that the MexicanGovernment currently has a great deal of PoliticalPower inside the U.S., through things such as having links to Democratic politicians, non-profit orgs, etc.

And, in the scenario outlined at The Atlantic link I left above, that situation would be even worse, leading to some form of power-sharing arrangement with a foreign government over part of our territory.

Needless to say, there are a lot of traitors (why beat around the bush?) whose only thought would be how they could profit from that arrangement.

Posted by TLB's Twelve Other Requests for MattY | June 30, 2008 6:03 PM

I really don't see why we can't carry the discussion to people who have been previously disenfranchised because of their comfort level in another language.

As long as the federal government is run in English, shouldn't any other situation be an issue of local "rights." I'm quite amused that the "states rights!!11" people are the assholes who want to federalize our language.

Posted by brenna | June 30, 2008 6:53 PM

It's pretty clear that we're headed within 200 years to a Star Trek type world where English is the only commonly spoken language on Earth. So if Spanish speakers want to fight a desperate rear-guard action, and we do see a small blip in Spanish speakers for a few decades, I for one will enjoy it.
Posted by vanya

Pretty dipshitty post from an otherwise intelligent gal. With a global economy, there has to be a lingua franca that has a spine of one language best suited to be the "spine" a globally interconnected world runs on, and the best of other languages.

English is easiest and most flexible.

Japanese and Chinese have wonderful picturegraphs, kanji that say in a glimpse what a paragraph or two on a page of English purports to say, but suffer from serious issues of tone and inflection in written and spoken (on airwaves) messages. Which means Asians on flat radio audio disguising sing-song - or text absent context in print, have no clue of meaning without interpretation.

Romance languages have the whole masculine/femine context of 1500 years ago force-fit into modern context - inappropriate, but with the best short phrases that explain a whole speech or book in English delving into the same context.

Malay, pre-civilized India, hind-end action verb backwards German, butt-fuck Africans boondocks have even worse languages for universiality.

So English is the way - though I would love 300 Nipponese kanji used that say a whole section of thoughts and communicatios in one inkstamp instead of ploughing ahead English...And great Spanish, French, Mongolian, Congo-chimpanzee hunting language howls should stay intact.

Posted by chris ford | June 30, 2008 9:12 PM

I wish there were more high-quality political commentary in Spanish. I love reading and listening to political content, and I need to practice my Spanish. I would truly welcome more opportunities to do both at once!

Posted by Jeff R | July 1, 2008 6:31 PM

star trek isn't english only. They've got the universal language converter.

I thought vanya was referring to the way that there's usually only one language per planet, or even per species. All Klingons speaking a common language, for example.

And please, TLB, for the love of God and all the saints, start using your spacebar.

Posted by Cyrus | July 2, 2008 11:07 AM