I exploded at someone today.
Felt great at the time.
Now I wish someone would talk to me at least long enough to say “fuck off” to.
From a bilingual person learning a third language…
It absolutely disgusts me how many people ignorantly refuse to learn another language because “this is America and they need to learn our language.” You know what else is America? South America. Central America. North America includes Canada AND Mexico.
We are the fucking United States.
Saying “learn the language spoken in America” is ignorant because taking the aforementioned facts into account means that English, Spanish, French (Nova Scotia and Quebec), Portuguese (Brazil; second language in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela), and Dutch (Aruba) are all acceptable. As far as the United States are concerned, we are one of the only industrialized countries in the world that doesn’t teach its children a second language mandatorily in elementary or middle school… But that does not mean our official language is English. Speaking English is a de facto practice. There is no law stating that you MUST speak it to live or work here.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t at least attempt to speak English here. What I am saying, however, is that no one “should have” to learn English to be here.
There is nothing wrong with speaking more than one language. Loads of us do it. It’s an awesome feeling. I believe that if we were to raise our kids to be bilingual, then tomorrow’s generation will be something to hope for. How can a world incapable of communicating ever agree on anything?
