So are the southwest and California going to have to change

[Cleita]

all their name places and streets signs? How is Arnold going to handle that? In my county alone, San Luis Obispo, just about everything is mostly in Spanish from towns to streets to shopping malls. Santa Barbara County south of SLO has even more Spanish place and street names to change. How is that going to work? Does Arnold have enough in the budget to cover this?

[feistydem]

1. Batten down the hatches for the backlash!

[Cleita]

3. What were they thinking?

If English is the official language then everything government has to be in English. No?

[feistydem]

10. Si. Maybe it's just another cost cutting effort. Less $ for translators...

and for all of those Spanish-only speakers seeking public assistance, drivers licenses, etc. Too bad they didn't think about all of the nonprofits who will provide language translation and form completion assistance services.

On edit, I thought you meant the government forms & docs. Not street signs, names, etc. I don't think every street named for Cesar Chavez or the City of San Francisco will be going through a name change.

[AndyTiedye]

15. And BALLOTS and VOTER REGISTRATION FORMS

They wouldn't be trying to DISENFRANCHISE anybody, would they?
Guess which way most of them vote?

[Igel]

31. No.

An 'official language' has to be declared to be official, and the uses for the official language have to be defined.

It has no definition: it's official, but there are no restrictions on where Spanish or Nweh or Malayalam may be used. Just a restriction saying that unless a particular language is authorized or mandated for use in a specific situation, its use cannot be demanded. That's a rather different thing.

Moreover, the definition of what's "English" depends rather on usage. If 'tortilla' and 'pierogi' are used in English and understandable by monolingual English-speakers, they're English, regardless of where they came from. Linguistic 'purity' isn't required to identify a language as a language and to put fairly good boundaries around it. But if I want to call something tvaroh, and something else I call yasli, then we have a problem: English speakers don't know the words, even though most know the referents (farmer's cheese and a cradle).

New words, apart from words and expressions brought into English specifically to be trendy or impart a cachet(like 'duck l'orange' once was), tend to come in with new referents or distinctions. We didn't have (or have words for) ravioli and pierogi, tortillas and atlatls, curry ('kari'); nor, at one point, did we have words that were useful for distinguishing between an animal and the meat from the animal. Like beef, pullet, mutton (versus cow, chicken, sheep). Much of the 'cultural knowledge' and 'cultural specificity' of languages that much is made of deal with a small number of words that can be easily borrowed; worth keeping in mind.

[Warpy]

34. No shit, Sherlock! It's already happening here in NM

because the local Hispanos were here and speaking Spanish while the ancestors of our fine Congressmen were still in hovels in Europe, picking bugs off each other.

Today, they teach their kids to speak Spanish at home and English out in the schools. People with family here for 450+ years are generally bilingual in this state, and probably 80% of the place names ae Spanish.

Then you have all the local tribes who all speak their own languages, thank you very much, and only use English to talk to white folks. Many of them are trilingual, speaking Spanish, also.

I hope there IS a backlash against lazy and ignorant suburban WASPs. I hope there is a backlash against a Congress that fattens the rich and passes silly legislation like this rather than DOING THEIR JOBS for US.

This is the kind of crap that makes me want to throw every incumbent in Congress out on his ass. The fact that it was brought to the floor at all is an indictment of how frivolous they've made themselves.

We won't have change until ALL those old boys are OUT.

[napi21]

2. Don't you think you're really stretching the reality here?

I assume you're talking about the national language thing. Nothing would change names!

[Cleita]

5. What I'm questioning is what is the reality?

If they can't explain how to deal with it then the law is basically nothing but hyperbole.

[napi21]

8. Deal with what? Nobody said there can be no foreign words

or words of foreign origin in the English language. What you're saying is impossible because almost every word in the English language has an origin from another language. Most are from latin, french, italian, german, and spanish.

You're being silly insinuating that place names would have to change.

[Cleita]

9. Your explanation just proved my point.

There is no possible way to pin down the English we would need to use to make it a legal, official language. To do that we probably would have to use the English the Constitution was written in. Therefore targeting Spanish, which is what this is about, is also attacking the history of many of us.

[napi21]

12. You're wrong. English is a language, the same as spanish,

german, french, russian, and several hundred others. There are many different dialects of each language, usually dictated by an area, but they are specifically different. I studied 3 years of russian, but if I said something to you in russian, you probably wouldn'at understand me. If someone is from NY, they have a different dialect than someone from NC, but they still understand what each other is saying.

Comeon, you're pushing the nonsense here.

[Cleita]

13. I'm not really.

If memory serves me, England tried this once and found out it was an impossible task because even on that tiny island there were so many dialects and even different indigenous languages that it couldn't be done. I'll see if I can find some documentation on this. But I remember something about this back thirty for forty years ago.

[niyad]

28. just as a matter of curiousity, why are you so adamant in defending this

absolutely ludicrous, time-wasting, attention-diverting piece of legislative garbage?

[alittlelark]

4. 1/4-1/2 are already named w/ history

We do not need to re-budget.

[Cleita]

6. Yes, but much of the commercial use of the names are not.

For instance many businesses use the names of the streets that they are on.

[MercutioATC]

7. Welcome to "The Angels", California....

[tyedyeto]

11. My town in So Az would be a candidate for name change

under the new and improved guidelines. Damn, it'll take me a while to let everyone know that I live in 'Small Cactus'.

[Raster]

39. Where in So. Arizona? I grew up in Safford...

Sorry Vista?

[uppityperson]

14. Can't wear pajamas at night anymore either as that is a foreign word

Hindi, Persian, near/middle eastern for loose pants

[documaker]

16. Polarizing. Hispanic voters new chess pieces

Us against them efforts.

[Cleita]

17. Any hispanic votes that the Republicans picked up in the last

elections with their family values garbage, they have lost with this.

[documaker]

24. I'm confused about what's really in play here

Don't you get the feeling that there's an agenda underneath the visible one? I've been giving a lot of thought to this. I think these recent actions are putting something else in play, but I haven't come to firm conclusions about just what that is.

[Cleita]

25. I ran across an article about countries that try to put in an

official language. I should have saved it. But it basically said that fascist governments do this as a way of controlling the population.

[yardwork]

35. I see it as the same old politics of the right-wing, like flag-burning

When things start to go sour for the right-wing (as they inevitably do), the good ol' boys in Congress drag out the old reliables. "English is our only language!" and "we're a Christian nation" and "respect the flag!" and so on and so forth.

Very tedious. Very racist. Very un-constitutional. It whips up the base.

[radio4progressives]

18. The majority of the Cities in California are Spanish names..

Hell, California is Spanish! So is Texas for that matter. and

Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico... hmm... any others?

[Cleita]

19. Yes, and I think this is what the RW Mayberry Machiavellis are

trying to destroy. They are afraid of us because they can't control us until we all look, speak and think alike.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. "Mayberry Machiavellis" - very apt.

[Cleita]

32. It's not a name I coined myself, but is applied to that group

of neo-cons who back Bush and formulate much of the policies we are seeing pushed on us. They are very much behind what we call Rovian tactics and hide behind the think tanks of Melon-Schiafe and the PNAC. I was doing a lot of research on them back during the 2004 election and dropped it because my eyesight was failing at the time. I should finish the research.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. I've often thought that the Republican goal was to create Mayberry USA.

Lily white (except for the hired help), partriarchal, "safe and secure", and incredibly bland and lifeless.

Bush is the epitome of such "ideals". Or, as Mencken said:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” - H.L. Mencken

[Cleita]

40. Like ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, it only

was democratic for male landowners of the right tribe or ethnicity. Anyone else was a woman, a slave, a serf or a foreigner with few rights and no say in the government.

When our founding fathers embraced democracy, it again was for a specific group of Americans and excluded everyone else. Although it wasn't the intent of the Constitution that it would remain that way.

The founding fathers knew that the country would have to evolve and change and they made provision for that for future generations, but you are right, today's neo-cons want to take us back to the way are nation was at the end of the eighteenth century.

[radwriter0555]

20. I demand you rename "NEW MEXICO"... Any suggestions?

Oh heavens, I DARE someone to petition their state senator to do that, and see how far we could take it. JUST to show how utterly STUPID this whole thing is.

[radio4progressives]

21. It's so stupid it's frightening.

We, the people have allowed these fascists fear mongering white supremacists take over our GOVERNANCE!

We the people have to throw these bastards out. Every last one of them.

[Cleita]

23. I'll second that. I hope the coming election will be a start. n/t

[Cleita]

22. Isn't New Mexico actually English?

Nuevo Mejico would be Spanish. However, how about Santa Fe and Las Vegas? Also, what will happen to the pueblos Amerind names of Albuquerque and Taos? Of course you have to rename the pueblos, villages I guess.

[radwriter0555]

27. The name New Mexico, From Mexico, “place of Mexitli,”

an Aztec god or leader...

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0854966.html

[radwriter0555]

26. Oddly, the name "California" appears to be MUSLIM in origin!!!!

The name California already existed prior to the European discovery and exploration of the area. The first appearance of any form of the name was in the Song of Roland, an 11th century epic poem from Brittany, which refers to the defeat suffered August 15, 778 in the retreat of Charlemagne's army at the hands of the Saracens in Battle of Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees. On line 2924 of the poem, which is in verse number CCIX (209), the word Califerne is used, without indicating its meaning. One possibility is that it refers to the domain of the Caliph, that is the Muslim world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_name_California

[Cleita]

30. I heard another version.

According to this, California was an Amazon queen in a pulp novel that was popular with the Spanish conquistadores of the time and they named California after her.

I don't know if anyone really knows. The Spanish weren't big on Muslims or Moros as they called them. As far as they were concerned the only good Moro was a dead one.

[radwriter0555]

33. Europe was influenced heavily by muslims... even mardi gras has its

roots in the muslim religion.... the greatest older architecture of spain was moorish/muslim.

[yardwork]

36. Of course it is. Spain was settled by Arabs.

The Spanish language has many similarities with Arabic.

[Hugin]

37. Isn't going to be pretty..."Arid Zone", "New ENGLISH-ONLY", "Red Place"

Isn't all bad tho... I now live on "Bull Fighter" street and that's
exactly what I intend to do.

[Retrograde]

41. and Texas and Colorado and Massachusetts and

and Baton Rouge and Minneapolis and Florida and Mississippi and all the other non-English names in this country. Maybe we could get something easier to spell than Coneti - uh, Connectcut - uh, Connetic - whatever that state next to New York is :-).

We'll just call everything Bushburg or Reaganville.