Can You Speak it?

Last week California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger made a speech on immigration, inform of Latino journalist speaking to crowd or nearly 700. As you may or may not know this is the speech that landed him in "hot water" among Latino journalist. During his speech he said that Hispanic immigrants should turn off the television in regards to their Spanish language only stations in order to better learn English. ^This advice came from experience as he said, that was his method of learning the language. He cut all ties to his own native culture in terms of language until he learned how to speak English. Now this did not go well with the Hispanic media, as may cited his comments as being anti Spanish-monolingual propaganda.

Now I think that many of these Hispanic activist, community, and media leaders got this all wrong. It seems like Arnie is suffering from Bill Cosby syndrome, which is saying the right message but presenting it completely wrong. I do believe that the immigrants in this country should learn English. If you live in France, you have to learn French , and German in Germany etc. unless you're wealthy enough to hire your own personal interpreter you're pretty much stuck with learning the language of the country. But here in America things are a little bit different. There are two undebatable truths in this country. 1. There is no official language, and 2. English is the unofficial "official" language. No matter how you put forth an argument, English is the language of the land. Unless most Spanish speaking immigrants can live in certain areas such as various Chinatowns in this country, where you're so self contained that you don't need to learn English because odds are in you won't ever need to speak it, but the truth is there aren't many communities in this country for Hispanics, if there are any, because at this time I'm not aware of any. Now I did say that the Terminator was wrong also, and here's why.

Although you you should learn English is you are an immigrant from a non- English speaking country, you shouldn't be forced or told to give up your own culture, which includes television that has been designed to for you and others in your culture. Now I don't think that Jack Slater
meant that Hispanics should give up their own culture. I think that he pulled from his own personal experience and presented it as a why to help others, but it certainly wasn't perceived that way. Mr. Kimble has to watch what he says in his attempts to fix this immigration issue, and Hispanics living in his state of California. I don't think that John Matrix wants immigrants to give up their native language, and only speak English, besides he's a multi- lingual man himself. And isn't this what makes America so great? We have no official language written in stone, so we are legally able to speak any language we want and we do, but there is one language that towers over all others in this country, and no its not the language of love.

Until next time, turn off your TV and learn a language!!!