I have a question... RE: Spanish & English

[mojowork_n]

I spent an hour last night watching a TV re-broadcast of a local school board sub-committee meeting.

There was a resolution that our local Public School system should boycott Arizona -- to whatever extent is possible, practical, and won't drain resources away from the education budget.

People were really getting pretty agitated.

Anyway, one of the people who walked up to the mike had a great point to make. In Europe, it's the norm -- not the exception -- for people to speak at least one other language. The speaker mentioned that it's been proven to be especially helpful for the intellectual growth/brain development of children, to be exposed to multiple languages. (Not to mention, from what I could see during the testimony at the meeting, it might also be helpful to adults, for any number of other reasons.)

...So why are we mostly missing out on the best, cheapest way to help people learn another language -- the multiple audio (second language) option on television broadcasts?

I have my TV set to always display English sub-titles whenever I tune to a Spanish station. But they're rarely there. The local PBS "VME" station is the worst. They show quite a few films and documentaries that I'm sure were originally produced in English, with Spanish audio, but no option for English sub-titles or English second audio.

Why is that? How does it make sense to pass up the opportunity to allow people to expand their vocabulary, learn new idiomatic expressions, and tune in to Latino broadcasts for something besides fleeting curiosity, or prurient interest?

Am I missing something? I once called the local PBS outlet and asked how come VME was always 100% Spanish-only, and was told, "that's THEIR channel."

What a butt-load. I'd like to write a letter to the FCC, or start some sort of petition, but I'm not sure what would be the best approach to take.

[Xipe Totec]

1. My town in MA has a French immersion program

It is one of the reasons Milton MA is considered one of the top 10 American cities to live in.

[RKP5637]

2. I had to learn Latin and German. In my earlier years I wish I had had the

opportunity to hear programs in German.

[mwb970]

3. What's German?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkKqihEUmH4

[RKP5637]

8. Yep, the new American intelligency! I was just mentioning yesterday that

one would think we might get just a tiny bit of MSM news about Canada or Mexico once in awhile. This country is so inbred it's revolting.

[librechik]

4. my sat tv's Spanish captioning is so bad I doubt anyone could understand it

it's half spanglish, too.

They don't care.

[JuniperLea]

5. My daughter took immersion Spanish for five years...

During elementary and middle school. She went on to pass her Spanish AP exam with flying colors... the instructor giving the exam accused her of being a native speaker looking for an easy good grade, that's just how well she learned the language. In fact, her scores in English class went up remarkably when she started the immersion program. I think it made the sentence and grammar structure terminology easier to understand.

We should ALL know more than one language! It's ridiculous that we don't. If you want to become a Norwegian citizen, you must first prove you've attended two years training in the language. I kid you not. Go to any Norwegian Seafarer's Chapel, they can be found in most port cities around the world, and you will find Norwegian language instruction.

We are so far behind Europe in this regard... embarrassingly so.

[DFW]

6. In small countries over here, TV and films are always in the original

It's no accident that in places that stress learning other languages, like the Netherlands and Sweden,
that with TV and cinema always showing films in the original, even the most besotted drunk on the
street speaks better English than many American sixth graders.

Bigger countries, like Germany, France and Spain dub foreign programs into their own languages, and it
is again no surprise that people in these countries are not anywhere nearly as universally fluent in
at least one other language.

We raised our kids from birth to be used to hearing my native English and my wife's native German from
each of us respectively, and we were rewarded with two fully bi-lingual children now. They always favor
German, as they grew up in Germany and they were nursed by their mother, but they can go weeks without
hearing a word of German and not be fazed by it at all.

My nephews in the States, whose mother in Japanese, were not raised bilingually and now remind their mother
constantly what a mistake she made by not always speaking Japanese to them from birth. Bilingualism is
an precious, wonderful gift, and it's a shame for some to put it down just because of their own language
deficiency. Hiding behind the fact that English is our official language is a ridiculous cop out. No one
is disputing that. But the gift of fluency in another language is such an open door to people, culture,
music, literature, and just new friends (not to mention expanded job opportunities!), to put it down just
because it's not Dick and Jane seems like a very limited way to look at things.

[Karenina]

9. Americans in their myopia MISS SO MUCH FUN!

All I can say about their resistance to linguistic "integration" ist "ICH HAB FERTIG!" ;-)

[DFW]

12. And what all they miss out on is:

"SELBER SCHULD!"

("your own fault")

[KonaKane]

7. Learning other languages makes you smarter and more compassionate to your community

That's a proven fact. Continuing to learn languages as you grow older keeps you more mentally sharp and able to retain information. Why on earth people wouldn't see a virtue in that, is a question for the ages.

[RKP5637]

10. ... IMO because America has an insatiable ego. And ignorance is now our

#1 product!

[Odin2005]

11. IMO learning Spanish should be a part of ELEMENTARY education.

[lunatica]

13. The stubborn belief in Manifest Destiny and Jingoism

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h337.html

Manifest Destiny was a term used in the 1840s to justify the United States' westward expansion into such areas as Texas, Oregon, and California. There was a widely held underlying belief that Americans, the "chosen people," had a divinely inspired mission to spread the fruits of their democracy to the less fortunate (usually meaning Native Americans and other non-Europeans).

The idea of an almost religious Manifest Destiny was a common staple in the speeches and newspaper articles of the time. Most of the exponents of expansion were Democrats, but some Whigs (and later Republicans) were also supporters.

Manifest Destiny was later applied to American interests in the Caribbean and the Pacific, sharing much with the practice of imperialism.

Critics, both at that time and today, saw the Manifest Destiny rationale as a thinly veiled attempt to put an acceptable face on taking lands from other peoples. Motives were often described as well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of backward masses, but in truth the motivators were greed and control.