That one's funnier than the McShit from earlier.

But she's wearing a shirt made out of tiny American flags! That means she's more patriotic than you, you damn pinko!

Those flags were illegally desecrated to make that shirt.

She should go back to Europe and speak her own langage.

...or teach us all proper how to speak like A-mer-kins.

ho ho ho. damn flyover states...

Sheesh, what a moran...

Shit yeah man. English is what makes this country great. All our great ideals are expressed in English, from the constitution to the Magna Carta.

Few people believe me when I say this, I've had some people back me up ...

But there was a brief period of time after the first wave german immigrants where GERMAN was going to be the national language. The bill was defeated by like 3 votes.

Somehow we are still speaking English? Why? Making a national language here is meaningless its an interesting phenominon that the market is what drives the spoken language in this country. If you want to get ahead, YOU HAVE TO SPEAK ENGLISH. And writing some bull shit symbolic bill won't change that ... and it never really has.

Urban Legend, OR Matt.
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp

How do you say "schadenfreude" in Texan?

Hey, the Bible is in English. And if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me...

More to the point, that flag-shirt was almost certainly made in a sweat-shop factory by workers who know little or no English.

The real question is, who put up that Snopes article and WHY?

English is the de facto official language of the U.S. already. What more do you want?

Snopes has a liberal bias. But so does the truth.

@10 ...

holy crap, I guess history greatly exagerated that one. I guess my AP US History teacher was fooled too.

And I kicked ass on that test too. Still, you can't argue that English is pretty much ruled by a language free market of sorts.

@17

I'll argue. Considering white, rich, Christian men controlled the press, the government and the schools, I wouldn't call it a "free" market of language. Tell it to the kids who were forced into the white man's school and beaten when they spoke their own language.

So, sure, English won, but it didn't win in a free market. It won the old fashioned way.

@18 ... no market is ever truely "free"
Just like dubya gets to be a millionaire because his parents got a head start, whereas if he was left to his own devices, would probobly be driving a dump truck, In this country, white English speaking people got a head start in establishing the national language.

It perpetuates, because with each wave of imigrants have to learn the language in order to succeed, get a decent job, hell get properly educated. Yet nobody has ever been able to usurp the "national language"

Right or wrong.

I love how her ignorance is underlined for emphasis.

@18 ... besides. People with "good intentions" do fucked up things all over the course of history. These same nuns that thought they were doing a service to humanity by taking native American children, forcing them to speak English after shaving their heads for lice and removing them from their family. People believed native americans were white enough and that they should "kill the Indian but save the man". Half assed humanitarian efforts raised funds in front of churches to buy slaves and ship them back to Africa, only to create a the fucked up and ethnically conflicted country called Liberia.

Not to mention all those Christians going to Africa to push abstinance only education in the wake of the AIDS crisis.

I'm all for equal rights, peace, love and feeling good ... but still

Oh, I know. Just like the Iraqis were going to thank us for giving them a constitution and democracy and a shiny new infrastructure. Of course since I know that was only a story we told ourselves because we wanted revenge for what people who looked like them did, and wanted cheap oil, I have this cynical belief that all those priests and monks and nuns were in it for something else. It has turned out that in the case of the inland Northwest Jesuits they were really there to (literally) fuck the native American boys they were "helping."

I guess I'm saying if you're thinking of helping somebody, and they say no, and you help them anyway, you're probably on the wrong side of history. No means no.

@8,

I hope you're joking. The Magna Carta was written in Latin.

I agree with @17.

There was a point when most citizens (not the word there) spoke German. And most Public Education was in German.

Just ask Mr. Penn.

But, hey, it's not like the English-speaking population would have a reason to pretend it was Englishers that ruled - just ask the inhabitants of half of Mexico which we pretend is the USA.

Americans are boob phobic and bilingual phobic!

Spanish AND English are the official languages of New Mexico.

@26 ... is it an actual state law? Or is it just something that happened?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: fluency in another language takes several years of full-time study, longer if part-time study. Do we want to require immigrants, no matter their origin, to learn fluent English for 5-12 years after they arrive, or do we want to make it possible for newcomers to settle in, work hard, make decent lives for themselves and their families? That's the logical end that the "English only" crowd will bring about. Because you can't just miraculously learn English over night, whether it's the official language, or offical language, or not.

i just noticed the sign behind her, which appears to say "TEXAS IS NOT A MEXICAN COLONY"

There was a point when most citizens (not the word there) spoke German. And most Public Education was in German.

@27 -- it's written into the state consitution. Since about half of the state is 'hispanic' any federal English-only legislation will have a major battle. The state constitution would have to be changed and we all know how hard THAT is to accomplish.

It reminds me of a big sign the "Christian" protesters at our Gay Freedom Day parade had that read "Is it DNA or a choice?" I told everyone that passed them in the parade
"These morons don't believe in evolution, but they believe in DNA?" The sign came down, never to be seen again!

#6 Gary Seven-
Let's face it, it's political suicide to ignore "ho ho ho. damn flyover states..." There are a hell of a lot of jack-holes just like this one, 62 million of his idiotic brethren voted for W in 2004. Ho hum about that all you want, it scares the hell outta me.
Furthermore, I think most Texans (if they understood the term) might object, being home to the fourth and sixth most populous metros in the nation. [sarcasm] Of course, Seattle and (to pick another great city) San Francisco (numbers 15 ad 12 respectively) are much more influential than nearly twice as many Texans. [/sarcasm]
Face it, "Flyover Country" matters. Nobody asks You which presidential candidate You would most like to have a beer with, but who some yokel from southeastern Ohio thinks is a better snooker partner is apparently more important than all other criteria.

@20 That made my morning.

Is that North America, Central America, or South America?
Shouldn't it read

"Make English the official language of the United States of America".

Surely she does not want to try and change the language of all of the Americas.

Keep in mind, English is still a very powerful language. I publish my papers in English speaking journals (even the German Chemistry Journals publish in English, wasn't always that way.) We ALL have friends that traverse the glove to sit in front of a class of Italians or chinese, and they speak English, to try and help them brush up on their English speaking skills. English is just the language of power now.

Nost Americans (and British) shamefully know little of any other language. I took spanish for four to five years in high school, was decent at it. Ironically SPANISH was the most useless language in my field, I see way more French than I do Spanish (Heard way more French from Hatian immigrants in the kitchen from beautiful Montreol girls ... )

I wanted to take Russian, but my advisors discouraged that as a distraction to my research ....

@36: One of the problems for Americans learning other languages is that we're separated from most of them by the two largest oceans on Earth. So aside from Spanish and Quebecois, if you don't have $10,000 or so to spend on a program you're pretty much up shit creek when it comes to learning languages by immersion. This isn't Switzerland where you can take a 2-hour train ride and suddenly be in a totally Italian-speaking area.

@37:
http://www.livemocha.com/

Free, with lesson plans and social network designed for you to meet folks learning English and native in your language. I love it!

If you can't correctly spell the words on your own damn sign (offical?), then you don't deserve to protest!

Another reason why Spanish was ironically one of the most useless languages for me to learn.

http://www.elsevier.fr/html/detrevue.cfm?code=CI