I suspected that, which to me makes your early comments just red herrings, and maybe even self serving in some way.
Indeed, my comments was deliberately worded and can be called baiting, because my point was to get everyone to think twice that it doesn't always fit the molding. I hope you won't think it as self-serving, though, because I just want to give a different way of looking at things.
Any intelligent person realises that the Official Language is just that and people with certain disabilities will not be able speak, read or write that language.
So what point were you trying to make?
Brian
I wish that were the case, but this is not. I'm a minority in the minority with regards to education of Deaf- the current mainstream opinion is hours and hours of speech therapy, loads of medical devices, and placement in special education is a consequence of the general thinking that English should be the language to speak/write/read at exclusion of all other languages. It used to be quite common for educators to tell parents that if their child didn't learn to speak and lipread, they would be inferior and left out, yet because they put so much importance on speaking & lipreading, they fell behind in general education anyway and were just as much ostracized, if not worse.
Nowadays, it's now a bit more common for them to advocate "total communication" or similar pattern, where they do allow limited sign vocabulary in hope of ultimately learning to speak & lipread well.
Furthermore, there are numerous studies out there that demonstrate that kids who speak more than one language are more likely to excel in school than not. The idea that having more than one language will confuse the kid is a myth, but is largely perpetrated in US.
How many languages do you want spoken and therfore written in your country, having worked in a charity I've seen the cost of producing information in a miriad of langugeas and the difficulties in providing help to those who don't communicate in English.
Brian
Well, I think that regardless where you go, you'll always find a
lingua franca in any location even where there are hundred of languages spoken. I do not think anyone should be obliged to print out languages for everyone, and as late, people has gotten creative in meeting various languages needs. For example, there's a telephone lines where any service agencies can call to get an interpreter for any given language for their clients.
So, I'm really advocating for no official languages *and* no obligations on anyone to provide the translation. I still read and write in English because it is the language used in US, though I don't speak it at all. I'd imagine there are community somewhere where Spanish is predominant, and if they flourish, more power to them. They already know that if they wanted to get access to broader range of services available in US, they may need to speak English, and it's entirely their choice to across the line or not.
