The English Language

The United States is one of the few countries that does not have an official language. Even though it does not officially have one, the English language is one of the most frequented languages within the country. Pertaining to whether or not businesses should be allowed to require customers to speak English, I think it really depends on the circumstances. If it is a restaurant where it can be easily communicated what the person would like to order, or a store where the person can simply check out items at the cash register, I think there is no great importance for the customer to be required to speak the English language. However, I feel that employees should speak English if they are going to be associating with customers, because at least in Wisconsin, the majority of people seem to speak English.

As far as dealing with businesses in which employees do speak English, but do so poorly, I think it is very aggravating for the customer. For example, a lot of issues arise with new technologies and devices, and when you call the 1-800 number, most likely, you are talking to someone in another country. At least with computers and cell phones, this seems to be India. Personally, I have a very hard time with accents of other countries, so I get very frustrated, and when a person purchases a product and it ends up having problems, at the very least all they want is to be able to understand what the person on the phone is saying so they can attempt to fix the problem. Language definitely is a barrier between communicating.

Besides in the business world, I think that schools should not be required to provide multi-lingual education. I feel like that is a lot to ask of a school, at least in regions where the majority, if not all students, already speak English. Seeing as though there have been so many budget cuts, specifically in gym, art education, and music education, I don’t understand how any school could be expected to provide a multi-lingual program as well. If they did, I feel like other classes would end up getting cut in addition to those already eliminated, and those classes would probably benefit a lot more students than the multi-lingual program would. I feel that the school could probably provide a family with resources to help their child learn to speak English, but should not be forced into providing a multi-lingual program. If schools were required to provide one, I think a lot of tax payers would be very upset, because most likely, a lot of their children would not even benefit from the program, yet here they are paying higher taxes toward their child’s education when gym, art, and music are being cut.

In school, children often have the opportunity to learn Spanish, French, and sometimes German and Japanese. I think that if young students can be open to learning another language, can’t people who live in the United States be open to learning English as well?