Quote:
Originally posted by SATX*APhi
You got me thinking though, and this is for all the "pro English" GC'ers. There are is a good amount of people here that would like for non-English speakers to learn English. Not that I agree with that, but to compromise, if non-English speakers are going to be forced to learn English, then all English speakers must be forced to learn a foreign language. What do you think about that?
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Well, why do you feel this way?
If you can come up with a compelling argument, then perhaps I'll agree - but simply stating it as put, I am pretty indifferent.
I hate to tell some of you this, but English is the de facto "Official Language" of the USA - forms are in English, the vast majority of news and broadcasts are in English, everything defaults to English. Compare that to other nations w/ "official" languages, or even the UN (french), and it is a very similar system.
Every effort should be made to make every person able to communicate effectively.
I'll posit this as a rebuttal - what about, instead of putting money into duplicating things into other languages and keeping up efforts to avoid an official language, we put the money into teaching non-native speakers English? If you want to include as part of this teaching native speakers another language, fine.
As far as the benefits of knowing another language, I find them to be fairly self-explanatory and numerous - as far as requiring someone to be fluent, that may be a bit too far, but again convince me.
Realistically, it is to the advantage of any person to learn to communicate in the language spoken by the majority of people, regardless of where you are or what that language may be - everyone would agree with that, no?