It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Lynne Murphy]

You're making the assumption that anyone who speaks a language other than
English had to be naturalised as a citizen.  There are born-citizens in the
US for whom English is not their first language, and the right to vote is
their birthright.

Lynne

--On 24 February 2007 11:27 -0500 Judith Marie
<Judith_H_Marie at COMPUSERVE.COM> wrote:

> Hi all,
> When I voted in November in Berkeley, California, I first had to choose
> which language I wished to use. The choice was between Chinese, Korean,
> Spanish, English or Tagalog [sic].
> It seems to me not unreasonable that since only U.S. citizens vote, and
> that one has to pass an English language test to become a citizen, the
> ballet should be in English.
> Judith



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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