Democratic Underground Latest Greatest Lobby Journals Search Options Help Login
Google

English only Web sites lose Hispanics

Printer-friendly format Printer-friendly format
Printer-friendly format Email this thread to a friend
Printer-friendly format Bookmark this thread
This topic is archived.
Home » Discuss » Latest Breaking News Donate to DU
 
lovuian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 12:59 AM
Original message
English only Web sites lose Hispanics
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=de3588a84e9ccff5

Big News Network.com Saturday 20th August, 2005 (UPI)

U.S. merchants lose tens of billions of dollars in sales a year, because their Web sites are only in English.

Hispanics have $575 billion in purchasing power, reports Forrester magazine and the research company of the same name.

The Hispanic online population grew 43 percent from 2003 to 2004, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, making Hispanics the fastest-growing online group.

Forty-two percent of Hispanics prefer to speak Spanish and 31 percent of Hispanics say they speak as much Spanish as they do English, according to Forrester.

more...

Welcome to a New America...
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
Maple Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 01:02 AM
Response to Original message
1. That seems remarkably dumb
of the merchants.
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
ugarte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 01:18 AM
Response to Original message
2. Bilingual's kind of like being bisexual
You increase your chances 100%. You would think merchants would realize that.
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
HKTech Donating Member (31 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 02:01 AM
Response to Original message
3. Reads like an Advertisement for a
Spanish Language Webdesigner.

Anyhow, you notice there's no evidence of them saying XX Percentage of Hispancs will only shop with Spaninsh Language Websites. Or Spanish language online stores sales have been growing with the increase of Hispanic web useage.

Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
alarcojon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 02:26 AM
Response to Original message
4. A new America indeed
even Bush is smart enough to try to court us!

How hard can it be to offer content in Spanish along with English? Why not include other widely spoken languages as well?

Monolingualism is a disease, but it can be cured.
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
aquart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:19 AM
Response to Reply #4
8. Ever heard of the Tower of Babel?
Every other immigrant group has entered this nation and learned the language. And we are the richer for it.

But segmenting and segregating us into separate little linguistic islands, so that we can no longer speak to each other?

Brilliant. Smartest idea ever. And which languages do you propose to print all government and commercial documents in? Spanish, of course. French? Not enough French? Viet Namese? Chinese? Which dialect? Japanese? Laotian? Hindi? Greek? Armenian? Farsi? Russian? Basque? Korean? Italian? Arabic? Hebrew? Polish? Latvian? Lithuanian? Portuguese? Swedish? Welsh? Cornish? Finnish? Dutch? Walloons? Shoshone? Nahuatl? Cherokee? Sioux? Swahili?

Which language will you approve, and which discriminate against?

Come on, let's cure that "disease" of mutual comprehension.
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
alarcojon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:37 AM
Response to Reply #8
11. Take it easy, pal
The thread is about companies helping their bottom line by offering services in Spanish as well as English. Does the thought of that upset you?

Did I say anything about the official language of government being expanded beyond English? Of course I didn't, but it is an interesting assumption on your part.

Which part of "widely spoken languages" didn't you understand? I guess you needed to skip over that part so you could hit me with the old slippery slope argument.

Lastly, you really should look up monolingualism. It means that you speak one language. I am proposing that we should all strive to speak many languages. You might notice that that includes Spanish-speaking immigrants learning English. In fact, for the record, I think that all immigrants to this country should learn English as quickly and as well as they can. But our society would be much richer if monolingual Americans learned to appreciate the languages, and by extension the cultures, of the people we share our cultural space with.

Mine is an argument for greater mutual comprehension, which you have distorted for reasons of your own.

Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
Robert Oak Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:41 AM
Response to Reply #8
13. LOL that's really true
If the US accomodated every recent immigrant (and this assumes
they are here legally) the road signs would be so long we'd get into accidents trying to find the English translation.

Could you see product labels?

Gee wiz, the US is only the melting pot and pretty much every language
has immigrated here at one time or another.

Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
Maple Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 02:33 AM
Response to Original message
5. Texas Becomes a Majority-Minority State
EL PASO, Texas (AP) - Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.

Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations - with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.

Five other states - Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona - aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050811/D8BTJN0O0.html
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
DivinBreuvage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 02:44 AM
Response to Original message
6. I never buy from merchants who can't communicate in Burgundian
Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot of stuff :(
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
Maple Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 02:50 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. Dutch people have rights too
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
DivinBreuvage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:31 AM
Response to Reply #7
10. So they do, and I love the Dutch, but what has this to do with Burgundian?
As a language it went out about 900 years before the parvenus in your link came on the scene, my pet! It is dead, dead, dead. :cry:
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
aquart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:23 AM
Response to Reply #6
9. Good. You have money in the bank.
Or, if there are no Burgundian banks, at least in your mattress.
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
DivinBreuvage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 03:38 AM
Response to Reply #9
12. Always important to look on the bright side! Thank you, Aquart! n/t
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
Mairead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 05:24 AM
Response to Original message
14. And the reason for the "grew 43%" is the destructive Hispanic birthrate
During the period 2001-2004, Spanish-culture people accounted for HALF the total US population increase, though representing less than 1/7 of the population. Their 2003 birthrate was 3.6X the non-Spanish-culture birthrate. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/09/national/main700582.shtml)

That's destructive. There's no other word for it, except maybe 'insane'. I think blame for it can be assigned with confidence to the natalist, anti-woman character of RC church dogma, and to the culture of 'machismo' with its lunatic emphasis on getting women pregnant.

We're already well over the earth's natural carrying capacity, sustaining our tightrope act with technology. What happens when we can no longer afford the energy to run sewage treatment, water purification, pumping, garbage removal, etc?

The last thing we need is more human beings!
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-21-05 05:46 AM
Response to Original message
15. It seems to be a pretty easy "fix"..
There are certainly webmasters/designers who are hispanic.. Why not just build a ",irror" site to the one they already have..only have a Spanish Language button that will take Spanish speakers to the website they can read?

I have visited websites fron foreign countries and some have an English version :shrug:
Printer Friendly | Permalink |  | Top
 
DU AdBot (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view 
this author's profile Click to add 
this author to your buddy list Click to add 
this author to your Ignore list Thu Oct 31st 2024, 05:53 PM
Response to Original message
Advertisements [?]
 Top

Home » Discuss » Latest Breaking News Donate to DU

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators


Important Notices: By participating on this discussion board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.

Home  |  Discussion Forums  |  Journals |  Store  |  Donate

About DU  |  Contact Us  |  Privacy Policy

Got a message for Democratic Underground? Click here to send us a message.

© 2001 - 2011 Democratic Underground, LLC