To Whom It May Concern

No Comprende?

English needs to be the national language of the United States.

I read recently that certain counties in Florida have voted to make thier 'official language' spanish, a concept that just makes my stomach turn. Now, I'm not racist against hispanics or thier culture and I'm not trying to oppress them by any means, but I feel if you are in this country than by God you better damn well learn to speak English, or you can leave. I don't mind if you speak whatever language you want at home, or teach your kids any language at all you want them to learn, but they need to learn English for a good reason.

This particular topic became apparent to me about 10 years ago or so. I was a young army private, on a bus in Colorado Springs, we were on our way to Ft. Carson, Colorado, and the bus was running on fumes, just about out of gas. So luckily we found a Texaco station, at that time one of a few that we knew accepted government credit cards for refueling. But when we went inside to get that all worked out, the guy at the counter couldn't understand english worth a shit and we spent close to 10 minutes trying to explain where you put the mileage and where you sign the receipt and such before we gave up and took off. We were very lucky to have found another gas station before we ran out of gas, but this incident perfectly illustrates the problems that arise when you don't come up with an official national language, mainly that communication becomes a tricky situation in some instances.

Let's say I was to ask you this question: What is required for anyone to get along with someone else, what is the number one most important necessity to reaching mutual understandings with someone you don't know? Communication, that's what. Certainly I'm a typical American, I never learned another language, it wasn't that I am egotistical or that I hate other cultures, it was just one of those things, for me, in which I always figured I'd have time to learn one later on. Actually I wanted to learn German, I know a little, das blogger ist gut??? Ja? Heh. But I never got around to learning one, something I'm sure I'll regret. As far as why it should be English as our national language, majority rules, when 95% or better of the United States speaks it, that should be enough to see why.

One of the biggest reasons for major areas in our biggest cities that gain the name "China Town" or "Little Havana" etc, is because a lot of the people there have no ability to survive outside of that niche, mainly because they cannot communicate the language. With that you get mistreatment of those people on a grand scale. Who can they complain to if a landlord is ripping them off, or not repairing the property at all? How are they to know what is legal or illegal when they cannot read or understand what they hear on television or the radio? Just for the sake of fairness and equality, requiring citizens to speak English is the best thing to do. And where would you draw the line if individual counties in states were allowed to pick thier own 'official language'? Would we have Dutch speaking areas, German speaking areas, Japanese speaking areas? All official, and all building unseen walls between each other based on the complete inability to communicate with one another, a disaster in the making.

But if everyone speaks English, then you wouldn't have a lot of those problems, and next time, our bus would be able to refuel with relative ease. OH THE JOY!!!