GOP introduces bill to make English Minnesota’s official language

[marmar]

from the Minnesota Independent:



Among the first bills introduced in the Minnesota House this session is one aimed at establishing English as the official language of the state. Republican Reps. Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa, David Hancock of Bemidji, Sondra Erickson of Princeton, and Roger Crawford of Mora introduced the bill on Monday.

HF 64 would make English the official language of Minnesota: “No law, ordinance, order, program, or policy of this state or any of its political subdivisions, shall require the use of any language other than English for any documents, regulations, orders, transactions, proceedings, meetings, programs, or publications, except as provided in subdivision 3.”

The bill is nearly identical to previous bills that have been proposed under a DFL-controlled legislature.

Exceptions to the English-only rule include teaching languages other than English in educational settings; complying with the Native American Languages Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; promoting trade, commerce, and tourism; and promoting state or agency mottos.

Minnesota’s state motto is in French: L’Etoile du nord. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://minnesotaindependent.com/76115/gop-introduces-bill-to-make-english-minnesotas-official-language

[provis99]

1. that ought to have the Norwegians up in arms!

So what are they going to rename the Vikings, since Viking is a Norse word?

[Starbucks Anarchist]

2. Are they going to change the name of their state?

It's a Dakota word.

[CurtEastPoint]

3. Well, those frozen-heads better jettison that French motto, then. Jeez. What crap. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I may be frozen, but I love foreign languages

and I'm tired of these idiots who put forth these bills just because THEY flunked high school Spanish.

[Lucian]

4. This makes me embarrassed to be a Minnesotan.

Don't blame me. I didn't vote for any Republicans.

This bill they're introducing isn't going to accomplish anything. It's just going to piss a lot of people off, especially me.

[Angry Dragon]

7. I am embarrassed also

I read not too long ago that the state at one time wrote things out in about ten different languages.......
how far we have gone backwards

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

5. They were going to do that in Alabma too.. but well, y'know... ha.

[rucky]

6. Does "dontcha know" count as English?

[Berserker]

8. WTF I wanted Ojibwe

is that not the native language?

[kestrel91316]

9. Somebody's got a problem with Norwegian???

[Nye Bevan]

10. Excellent news.

I'm sick and tired of not being able to communicate with people when I visit Minnesota.

[Odin2005]

11. How bout Ojibwe? or Dakota? They were here first.

Racist dumbfucks.

[Hugabear]

12. and the hate rolls on...

These "English-only" movements are nothing more than kneejerk anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic propaganda.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Compounded by the fact that most Americans can't say two words in another language

Some of them even live in foreign countries for years and make no effort to learn the language. (One of them is a cousin of mine, retired in Germany with his German wife, and totally unable to speak German after thirty years. I also know some long-term American residents of Japan who told me, "You don't really need to know Japanese to live here." The sad thing was that their CHILDREN, born in Japan, didn't speak Japanese.) Recently, I looked in on a board for people interested in teaching English overseas. In response to a question about learning the language of the country you're teaching in, a dismaying number of people said proudly that they had lived in China or Saudi Arabia or Thailand for years and didn't speak the language and didn't intend to.

Yet most Americans expect immigrants to speak English instantly. Well, adults don't learn that way.

Israel provides intensive Hebrew classes for new immigrants. America could do the same with ESL programs, but then the Republicans would complain that it cost money. (It's much more fun to have a population of non-English speaking immigrants to bash.)

We have ESL programs, sometimes even free ones, but as I discovered when my church in Portland was sponsoring refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo, you may have to already speak English (or know someone who does) to find out about where and when they're held, how much they cost, and what supplies you need. Even so,

[Hugabear]

15. Typical American attitude - rules apply to everyone else, but not us

Foreigners move to the US, we expect them to acclimate to OUR culture, learn OUR language, etc.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. Today I watched an interview with Chalmers Johnson on Netflix instant view,

and he was talking about the imperialist tendencies of America. That part about requiring other countries to adjust to US is a typical imperial trait.

The Japanese imperialists required the Koreans and Chinese to learn Japanese but didn't learn the languages of the conquered, for the most part.

The Russians, under both the Tsars and the Communists, required conquered people to learn Russian but rarely learned the local languages. This caused a lot of resentment in the Baltic States, for example, where independence left them with up to 40% of their population being ethnic Russians shipped in by Stalin to dilute nationalist sentiment, Russians who had never learned Latvian, Lithuanian, or Estonian, despite living in those regions for forty years.

The whites in South Africa rarely learned African languages beyond what they called "kitchen Kaffir," a kind of pidgin used to give directions to servants. Yet all Black African schools required English.

And of course, with our own Native American population, the whites deliberately tried to destroy their languages and cultures by taking children as young as six off to boarding school for years at a time and never letting them go home.

[Bosso 63]

16. Uff da!?!

[TygrBright]

18. Oh, Cripes, not this shit again...

They tried this back in the 1980s, I think. Maybe it was the early '90s. Yer average Minnesotan's reaction: "Huh? So whaddaya think we're speakin' then, Mr. Smarty...?"

With a disdainful shrug thrown in.

Of course, the state was not quite so far down its slide to libertarian lunacy, then.

sadly,
Bright