Arizona referendum makes English the states official language.
- Thread starter Balbi
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Donna Ferentes
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By contrast, this source (which may or may not be reliable) estimates the precentage of Arabic speakers in Spain at 0.5 and of English speakers at "0.1 and increasing". In either case, a tiny proportion of the number of Spanish speakers in Arizona, rendering JHE's argument devoid of merit.
Now here's a more interesting question. In which states or countries around the world is a language spoken, as a first language, by one fifth (or more) of the population and yet is not recognised as an official language? Given that it is quite common for states to recognise more than one language as official (South Africa, for instance recognises nine) is there really any need to recognise one sole language in a place like Arizona?
Now here's a more interesting question. In which states or countries around the world is a language spoken, as a first language, by one fifth (or more) of the population and yet is not recognised as an official language? Given that it is quite common for states to recognise more than one language as official (South Africa, for instance recognises nine) is there really any need to recognise one sole language in a place like Arizona?
JHE
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Donna Ferentes said:
I'll look for some figures later - after I've done some work and rebooted my painfully slow PC.
They won't be bang up to date and they won't be directly about the number of people who speak Arabic and the number of people who speak English. They will be of the number of Britons and Arabs (or perhaps just Moroccans) who have moved to Spain. They will therefore be lower than the numbers for English-speakers & Arabic-speakers.
I'll make a couple of predictions now.
English-speakers > Basque-speakers (or soon will be)
Arabic-speakers > Basque-speakers (or soon will be)
According to David Crystal, there are about 580,000 Basque-speakers in Spain.
chilango
Ha! Ha! Armageddon
Donna Ferentes
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Even if this is so - and I am sceptical - I doubt that they will be remotely close to the proportion of people who speak Basque as a first language in those areas where Basque is recognised as an official language.JHE said:
To slightly amend my question earlier: what proportion of the population would normally have to speak a given language as their language of choice, in order for it to be recognised as an official language? My guess is that one in five (as with Spanish in Arizona) would normally be more than adequate, but it's not an entirely rhetorical question.
Donna Ferentes
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Where it says there are local varieties - apparently, they differ quite substantially even from valley to valley.chilango said:
Donna Ferentes
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In graffiti, yes! Matter of fact there's some just round the corner. To my knowledge I've never heard it spoken, but given that my ability to understand spoken Spanish is still pretty limited, I'm not really in a position to say for sure.chilango said:
Shreddy
Truth Through Character
axon said:
I suppose in any country "official language(s)" could be taken to mean "federally, across the board".
For example, here in Canada, there are two official languages: English and French. (And rightfully so. Quebec has a population and land mass that is equal to, or larger than, the average European country. In fact, on it's own it's larger than any European country. Quebec could be it's own country, but that's another story). There was a time, about 60-70yrs ago, when Canada was almost 50/50 English-to-French, but that's changed a bit recently with new immigrants, etc.
So, that said, everything "federal" is offered in both languages. Income tax returns, federal government forms, websites, etc...even fed employees who answer phones in fed offices are required to be bilingual.
On the regional/provincial, "unofficial" level, however, services will be offered in response to their local populations much like you described in Florida...but they're not neccessarily "required" to do so. They do so because it's the pragmatic thing to do (eg. in Vancouver, with it's huge Chinese population, one might see services offered in five or six different Chinese dialects, because it's the prudent thing to do given the local population...)
Make any sense?
Shreddy
Truth Through Character
Yuwipi Woman said:You forgot the other ballot initiative in Arizona: a gay marriage ban. Which failed.
Yes, but gay marriage bans were passed in those half dozen other states where banning was on the ballot.
And in Arizona it failed only because, according to last night's Stephen Colbert, gays are a little "different" in Arizona. They're "dry gays".
JHE
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Donna Ferentes said:
The INE (the Nat Inst of Stats) site http://www.ine.es/ is not available at the mo' and I couldn't find what I was looking for on El País.
The best source I've found is Spanish Wiki. Apparently, their figures are taken from the INE. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmigración_en_España#Origen_de_los_inmigrantes
1. Re. Arabic-speakers
North Africans in Spain in 2005: 561,639
Not all Arabs in Spain are from North Africa. Not all North Africans or other Arabs are going to appear in official figures. The figures are also unlikely to include the Spanish-born children of Arabs.
So there probably are already more Arabic-speakers than Basque-speakers.
2. Re. English-speakers:
Britons in Spain in 2005: 227,187
North Americans: 28,697
I don't know the figures for Irish people or people from all other English-speaking countries. Let's forget all the foreigners (and Spaniards) who have English as a second language and just make a very conservative estimate of 270,000 native English-speakers in Spain in 2005.
According to the INE/Wiki figures, the number of Britons in Spain increased by 112% in the four years from 2001 to 2005. Other people guesstimate the number of Britons moving to Spain in recent years at 50,000 a year.
So there are probably not yet more English-speakers than Basque-speakers, but there soon will be.
Indeed. The concentrations are different - but there are concentrations of English-speakers. Think of all those little British coastal colonies, which I imagine you have the good sense to avoid. Arabs (and other immigrants) are also far from evenly distributed throughout Spain - they are mostly in the coastal regions and in Madrid & Barcelona.
In Navarra most people do NOT speak Basque. In Avala, the southern-most of the three provinces of the Spanish Basque Country, few people speak Basque - or so I'm told by people who live next door in La Rioja.
The official status of Catalan, Basque and Gallego is not just about this or that proportion of the population speaking that language.
Nor is it about people not being able to cope in Spanish. With the exception of infants and a some very very old people, they all know Spanish. There are, on the other hand, foreigners who don't. (Allegedly English-speakers are the worst.)
The official status of Castilian and, in the relevant areas, Catalan, Basque and Gallego is about whose country (or region or nation or whatever) it is and about what is expected of other people.
That's why language has been such a hot political issue in most (if not all) of the areas we're talking about.
Where there are lots of people who don't know the language of the country - whether it's our compatriots infesting the coastal areas of Andalusia, Valencia and Catalonia or in the Balearics or other people, um, 'culturally enriching' east London - allowances have to be made, but to try to give other languages as big a role as the native languages would not be welcome to many English people or Spaniards.
The English-speaking people of Arizona are trying to maintain English as the principal language. They want a common language and they want that language to be English.
If you're pissed off by their decision, look on the bright side: demography is against them. Their policy is probably unsustainable.
Yup.Shreddy said:
I guess seen as the official language of Florida is English, I would expect if such a thing exists that the official langauages of Miami-Dade to be English, Spanish, and Creole. And I further declare the official language of my apartment to be English. And that the official language of my bedroom should be the language of love
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
Of course they want that, but they have no real reason to. English is not going to be swept away because another language has equal status. It's heard to see that there's not a large amount of resentment involved here, in which Hispanics are seen as immigrants who are getting too much and getting away with too much. There are some dubious politics involved.JHE said:
Of course that's not all there is to it and there are rational reasons for saying there should be an official language. But given that many countries do have more than one official language, and manage that without disintegrating socially or economically, it's not really justified.
I think we can conclude that the proportion of Arabic speakers (or English speakers) in Spain or in any region of Spain remains far smaller than would be sufficient to justify the adoption of those languages as official. To compare with the number of Basues in Spain overall is of course irrelevant since their language is only an official language in areas where it is widely spoken - in Galicia or Extramadura or, for that matter, Aragon, it has no more status than Sanskrit. Of course in Navarra, which for a hundred years and more has stood apart from the Basque country proper, most people don't speak Basque, but the proportion who do remains considerable. Far higher than the proportion of Arabic speakers in Madrid, I'd say.
The question remains: where, in the world, does a language lack official recognition, despite being the language of choice of a fifth of the population?
JHE said:
Not all of Navarra. it's only official in the bascophone area of the north western mountains. in 2004, the council of europe said it should be extended to the mixed basque/castillian speaking area, including pamplona.
source: Le Monde Diplomatique of November 2006, pg6.
JHE said:
I don't know who he is, but according to my source quoted above, there are 816 000 euskera speakers in spain and 81 000 in france. it's unclear in the aticle whether they all actually speak it, or just understand it. the word used, "locuteur", suggest they speak it.
Algeria's official language, Arabic, is spoken natively in dialectal form ("Darja") by some 80% of the population, and, as in the entire Arab world, used in the Modern Standard Arabic variant in the media and on official occasions. Some 20% of the population, identified as Berbers or Imazighen, are native speakers not of Arabic, but of some dialect of Tamazight. Many Algerians are however fluent in both languages to some degree. Arabic remains Algeria's only official language, although Tamazight has recently been recognized as a national language alongside it. The Ethnologue counts 18 living languages within Algeria, splitting both Arabic and Tamazight into several different languages, as well as mentioning the unrelated Korandje language.[7]Donna Ferentes said:
the closest I can come up with so far. so, not an official language but at least some recognition.
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