White House Website: English Only

[tinydancer]

I respectfully disagree. Now I am multi lingual. But others are not and English is really a desperately hard language. I want someone from Nigeria to be able to read our most wonderful documents and news. Right? I would want some soul from Somalia to be able to go America rocks.

See where I am coming from on this?

I, too, am multilingual and I have no problem with someone using a translation app to access my English language. It's time the newcomers assimilated to their adopted country.

My apologies. I have not been to the website. If they have a translation app that's awesome. I'm still on dial up. Take a look at a place called Sundown Manitoba. My one daughter on her last trip was bitching about lousy service out of Bangkok. I'm sitting here going I finally have 48 kps.

 

[tinydancer]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

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Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

 

[OKTexas]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

 

[Omiyaru]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[theHawk]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Because that is just more money they have to spend on hiring translators for accurate translations. Not worth it. Most of the world speaks English as a second language, at least the civilized ones do.

 

[OKTexas]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

See the last paragraph in post #23, dip. Besides picking one or two would be discrimination.

 

[Gracie]

Come to our country, take whatever you can whether you are legal or illegal...Learn the damn language!
There would be more housing, health care for citizens that have paid taxes ALL THEIR LIVES if the money was there to house US and healthcare was available to US instead of these bums sucking US dry because a schmuck gets it before WE do. Learn our language!!!

Next thing I hope Trump does is take away drivers licenses from illegals! And schooling for illegals. And healthcare. And food being handed out while they live here, vote here, eat here, get medical help here, have a roof over their heads here and send all their money to Mexico instead of paying taxes.

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[Gracie]

In short...We will be dead before we get housing on that waiting list. Why? Because some illegal with kids get one before we will, that's why. Homeless soldiers will die too...Because that asshole here illegally got a driver's license and has a kid and needed a house.

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[Omiyaru]

Yee haw!!

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

See the last paragraph in post #23, dip. Besides picking one or two would be discrimination.

Other websites have a plethora of languages to read them in

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[Omiyaru]

In short...We will be dead before we get housing on that waiting list. Why? Because some illegal with kids get one before we will, that's why. Homeless soldiers will die too...Because that asshole here illegally got a driver's license and has a kid and needed a house.

Sent from my Z981 using USMessageBoard.com mobile app

One does not cause the other, there is no correlation to someone getting their license and a homeless veteran, dying,

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[gallantwarrior]

Yee haw!!

They took down everything maobama had up and are repopulating the site. Nothing strange or unusual about that. I guarantee the new site won't come close to resembling the old one. If someone wants to read it in another language they can use their browser translator.

They shouldn't have top

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but frenchSur as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Sure thing, like the commonly used language of ENGLISH!

 

[OKTexas]

Yee haw!!

Why, we have people speaking more than 150 languages in this country are you going to accommodate them all?

All you have to do is put in a translator site. I speak of course fluent english but french as well, ukrainian, a touch of italian and spanish and am working on german. Oh and canuck.

Damn, seems I've heard that somewhere, oh right, I said it in this very string. lol

The fact is all US Government business in conducted in English, if people want to read it in another language, fine, we have no obligation to translate it for them.

But why not have it in commonly used languages.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

See the last paragraph in post #23, dip. Besides picking one or two would be discrimination.

Other websites have a plethora of languages to read them in

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

And? Others don't.

 

[Gracie]

Yeah. Right.
All comes from the same liberal tree.

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[Omiyaru]

Yeah. Right.
All comes from the same liberal tree.

Sent from my Z981 using USMessageBoard.com mobile app

This is essentially like forcing someone to convert religions, it's saying speak English or you aren't welcome here.

We are the land of the free

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[Gracie]

We are the land of handouts while ignoring the CITIZENS. Spin it any way you want, but those are the facts.

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[usmbguest5318]

If one speaks English and White House content is provided in English, what does one lose from the the same content being presented in another language?

It's hypocritical for the nation that prides itself on freedom of expression and inclusiveness to refuse to provide it's Executive Branch's official statements in only one language. Even China provides its government's official statements multiple languages, one being English, which isn't even among the languages primarily spoken in China.

The matter of multilingual presentation of official U.S. communications today is nearly no different than it was in the 1800s. Then it was German; today it's Spanish. Opponents of moves to make English the official language of the United States frequently suspect that English-only advocates are motivated by more than political idealism. This suspicion is certainly justified by the historical record. For the past two centuries, proponents of official-English have sounded a multiplicity of themes, some rational and patriotic, others emotional and racist. The Enlightenment belief that language and nation are inextricably intertwined, coupled with the chauvinist notion that English is a language particularly suited to democratically constituted societies, are convincing to many Americans who find discrimination on non-linguistic grounds thoroughly reprehensible. More prominent throughout American history, however, have been the nativist attacks on minority languages and their speakers: Native Americans, Asians, the French, Germans, Jews and Hispanics, to name only the most frequently targeted groups.

The English-only nativists who attacked the Germans used arguments similar to those heard nowadays against newer immigrants. Benjamin Franklin considered the Pennsylvania Germans to be a “swarthy” racial group distinct from the English majority in the colony. In 1751 he complained, “Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”

The Germans were accused by other eighteenth-century Anglos of laziness, illiteracy, clannishness, a reluctance to assimilate, excessive fertility, and Catholicism. [1] They were even blamed for the severe Pennsylvania winters. Most irritating to Pennsylvania's English-firsters in the latter 1700s was German language loyalty, although it was clear that, despite community efforts to preserve their language, Germans were adopting English and abandoning German at a rate that should have impressed the rest of the English-speaking population.

Anti-German sentiment spread along with German immigration, and the nation as a whole resisted both the German bilingual schools that were established in parts of the Midwest in the 19th century and the common practice of publishing legal notices in German-American newspapers. Variously, the U.S. Congress again rejected motions to print laws or other documents in German as well as English. The motions were often treated jocularly and were shouted down amidst racist cries of, “What! In the Cherokee? [and in] the Old Congo language!” (see also: 3 defending the native tongue - Welcome to English Pages 1 - 19 - Text Version | FlipHTML5)

Antagonism toward Germans and their language resurfaced in the Midwest in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and again across the country during and after WWI. Between 1917 and 1922, most of the states dropped German from their school curricula. Nebraska's open meeting law of 1919 forbade the use of foreign languages in public, and in 1918 Governor Harding of Iowa proclaimed that English should and must be the only medium of instruction in public, private, denominational and other similar schools. Conversation in public places, on trains, and over the telephone should be in the English language. Let those who cannot speak or understand the English language conduct their religious worship in their home. Such attitudes had a chilling effect on language use for some 18K people were charged in the Midwest during and immediately following World War I with violating the English-only statutes

The anti-German school laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923. In Meyer v. Nebraska, the court ruled that “the protection of the Constitution extends to all,—to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue.” The court in Farrington v. Tokushige in 1927 invalidated similar laws. And the SCOTIS reaffirmed the states' responsibility to educate non-English speakers effectively in Lau v. Nichols, though the court did not specify how this was to be accomplished.

Nonetheless, Americans remain troubled even today by foreign languages and their speakers. And for what? To what end? To gain what? What share of our population doesn't speak English? Official-English is an emotional issue, one involving questions of patriotism as well as racism, language loyalty as well as assimilation. It is borne not of reason but of unreason. As Americans we are not made better by speaking English, but we stray farther from our core welcoming principles by forcing English's use. We are after all a nation formed of and for immigrants.


Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
― Emma Lazarus


Notes:

1. How does one in the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s deign to link Germans and Catholicism? The Reformation, the failed Counter-Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia, the Thirty Years War, the decline of the French Monarchy after Louis XVI, the German secularization movement...none of those things suggested there was a rational basis for out of hand linking Germans with Catholicism. Then as now, people were keen to jump upon whatever bandwagon of straws they could find to make their case for perpetuating divisiveness.

 

[owebo]

I respectfully disagree. Now I am multi lingual. But others are not and English is really a desperately hard language. I want someone from Nigeria to be able to read our most wonderful documents and news. Right? I would want some soul from Somalia to be able to go America rocks.

See where I am coming from on this?

Then why was it only in Spanish?

 

[tinydancer]

I respectfully disagree. Now I am multi lingual. But others are not and English is really a desperately hard language. I want someone from Nigeria to be able to read our most wonderful documents and news. Right? I would want some soul from Somalia to be able to go America rocks.

See where I am coming from on this?

Then why was it only in Spanish?

Wow. I never paid attention when I logged onto the site aka Home of the Whopper. I never noticed the other language was Spanish. And only Spanish.

Like others are suggesting couldn't a translator be put in? Where I'm coming from on this is that anyone from around the world will be able in a click of a key see what Trump and his administration are doing and be able to go "Trump rocks".

I'd turn the site into a bragging rights site.

This allows people from other nations to not have to go around their very own medias who are seriously anti American in parts of the world. For crying out loud there's probably some kids in the Congo or Zimbawbwe sp? who believe we still have slaves and Trump whips them daily tied to a hitching post in front of the White House. And wanting more slaves from their countries.

If you listen to BLM my heavens we still have people picking cotton.

 

[bendog]

No more mixed signals about assimilation.

White House English-only website nixing Spanish content | Daily Mail Online

Well, the Mexicans probably don't want to read it anyway. (-:

 

[gallantwarrior]

No more mixed signals about assimilation.

White House English-only website nixing Spanish content | Daily Mail Online

Well, the Mexicans probably don't want to read it anyway. (-:

That assumes that they are capable of reading even Spanish.