Greetings one and all,
With this influx of Spanish-speakers to the United States, the issue of language comes up from time-to-time. There are some people who are for English-only while there are others who say that people should speak their own language. This issue of language in the United States is nothing new. Let’s look at a Wisconsin case where the problem of speaking another language and understanding it had consequences.
That was the case in Stratford, Wisconsin roughly 100 years ago with the high influx of German immigrants. According to the Stratford Centennial book, the second priest at St. Joseph’s Church virtually said that since people were in the United States, they should use German sparingly and learn English. He would hear confessions in German only for the sake of the older people of the congregation. When my grandfather was growing up, there were a large number of nationalities such as the Germans, Polish, and a few Russians at the parochial school. I remember him telling me that the little Russian child (who didn’t speak English) had to use the restroom, albeit only in Russian. The nun couldn’t understand him, so he pooped in the corner because 1) he couldn’t speak English or understand it and the nun 2) couldn’t speak Russian or understand it. Some people within the United States have the mindset that one a person or group of people come (or comes) to here that they (him or her) should learn English. With that mindset, there is a considerable segment of people in the United States who think that way.As I did my research, I began to realize that not everyone within the Hispanic/Latin public uses Spanish. Yet, for those that do, there are some agencies that are in existence to connect companies or organizations to this public. One was TeleNoticias, which uses a wide array of companies such as Western Union or General Motors to connect to this public. You can see their link here => telenoticiasusa.com I also learned more about how the younger segments of this demographic is connected to the internet and each other through various forms of social media. You can check them out here. Some of the more highly-used websites for this demographic are holamun2.com or MySpace Latino.
