Europe has some nerve not speaking English
I think it would be a great mistake not electing Obama POTUS. He constantly offers us material for jokes and blog posts. His latest is suggesting that Americans should be more concerned with teaching their kids Spanish than with immigrants learning English (1).
Read blog post Obama: Your kids should learn Spanish.
It happens I agree with Barry Barack on teaching our kids other languages. Had he not juxtaposed it with our concern that immigrants are not learning English, this would have been a non-event.
We should make English the national language; even more, we should insist that Europeans teach all their children English as well. Certainly the world should require that all pilots speak English fluently. That many Europeans are bilingual is worthless unless one of the languages is English. Take for example Alcoa's $3 billion Hydropower Project (2) in Iceland: because of language differences the project was delayed at great cost in time and money. What good is it if Italian welders also speak French but not English when the project leader speaks English? One of the reasons that India does so well in scientific and other fields is precisely because so many of them speak English. The lingua Franca of the world should be English, not just for business, science, technology, aviation, and diplomacy but for travel, entertainment, news, blogging, and education.
After WWII when we saved Europe from certain death and destruction, all European nations should have had the decency to learn English in gratitude. That most European pilots, businessmen, and scientists know English isn't good enough. The rest of their populations should learn English as well. In time, not knowing English will be equivalent to not knowing how to read in one's native language and will damn the speaker to a life of poverty and ignorance. The Tower of Babel was never completed because everyone did not speak one language.
By the way, World, you can speak English standing up. Arabic, on the other hand, is best spoken on your knees, begging for your life.
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ENDNOTES
(1):
Hot Air, 9 Jul 2008, Obama: Your kids should learn Spanish
Barack Obama addressed the issue of official languages yesterday by endorsing one: Spanish. Instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, he told an audience, America should be teaching its children Spanish. Every child should be bilingual, Obama said, but listen to the language he chooses later:
It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.Well, which is it — should we teach them Spanish or French? Maybe we should teach them Chinese, or perhaps Arabic. Immigrants come from around the world to live in America. Perhaps Obama doesn’t realize this, but they don’t all speak Spanish. If our children have to learn foreign languages so that immigrants feel at home here, then we’d better plan on keeping them in school for about 30 years.
(2):
Site Selection Online Insider, Alcoa, Iceland Ink Agreement for $3B Hydropower Project
REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Alcoa and Iceland are moving forward on a US$3-billion project that's generating a fierce and familiar clash: job-generating economic development vs. environmentalism.
At the center of the contretemps is the giant Karahnjukar Hydropower Project. Alcoa, the Icelandic government and the national power company this summer signed a memorandum of agreement in Reykjavik to cooperate on the multi-pronged Karahnjukar venture, which would include a low-emission aluminum smelter, a hydropower plant, eight dams, a harbor facility and various infrastructure improvements.
The project looms large on Iceland's economic landscape. Its estimated total cost of $3 billion equals almost one-third of the nation's entire gross domestic product. And the Karahnjukar venture would create as many as 1,000 permanent jobs in economically depressed eastern Iceland.
