Sunday, August 09, 2009

U.S. needs to expand support for bilingual citizens

This opinion piece says our country should encourage bilingual citizens, not allow people to push for monolingualism. We need more of our people to know more than one language. We should encourage our children who already speak a different language at home to keep that language, not lose it, like our ancestors did. - - Donna Poisl

By Domenico Maceri

The push for English monolingualism will not make anyone feel safer.

More than 47 million American residents age 5 and older use a language other than English at home, according to the latest figures of the U.S. Census. That translates into nearly one in five Americans, while 10 years ago one in seven Americans spoke a foreign language at home.

This information has been widely publicized in the media. For some Americans, the "large" number of non-English speakers causes problems since the fear is that these new immigrants will not integrate and dilute the fabric of our country.

However, another way to look at it is that these "non-English speakers" make not only valuable economic contributions but linguistic ones as well.
Click on the headline to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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