According to Sarah Palin, immigrants need to speak “American.” I have never heard of “American.” I have heard of American English but not the language “American.”
It stands to reason that “Spanish” and “French” and Navajo would all be considered American since Mexico, and all of Central America are part of America. Perhaps Sarah Palin doesn’t realize that the United States of America is a country within North America. There is also a South America. I would wager that they speak “American” also.
According to MSN.com:
Immigrants to the United States should “speak American,” former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said on Sunday, adding her voice to a controversy triggered by Donald Trump’s criticism of fellow Republican White House hopeful Jeb Bush’s use of Spanish.
“It’s a benefit of Jeb Bush to be able to be so fluent in Spanish, because we have a large and wonderful Hispanic population that is helping to build America,” Palin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“On the other hand, you know, I think we can send a message and say: ‘You want to be in America? A, you better be here legally, or you’re out of here. B, when you’re here, let’s speak American.’ I mean, that’s just, that’s – let’s speak English,” added Palin, Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate in 2008.
Palin, who is popular among some U.S. conservatives, said that “a unifying aspect of a nation is the language that is understood by all.” Most of the illegal immigrants in the United States come from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.
When will she ever stop speaking? She now wants to be Secretary of Energy so she can do away with the Department. I think she might have to involve Congress for that maneuver.
And she still would have been a better president than Obama.
Oh dear God. You are deluded. You certainly don’t have a high bar for presidents.
She didn’t have the guts to run for president. She couldn’t even finish her term for governor. Thank God she quit. Even Fox canned her. She is the ideal candidate for our nation’s quitters and losers.
And a model patriot…she resigned as Governor to pursue personal interests on the 4th of July!!!
Some people are just party blind – all choice of course.
She quit because of fraudulent lawsuits. She had to pay for the defense, not the state. She went broke defending herself.
I heard that lame excuse. Why were there more lawsuits on her than any other governor? Perhaps her personal behavior?
She was real broke. Her wealth increased greatly. Basically she is an attention seeking glory hog who relies on sound bytes and her personal appearance to flummox the people who are attracted to her. Seriously, there is no intellect there.
Do you honestly think if she was homely she would have traveled this far? We KNOW Faux News wouldn’t have picked her up. I doubt if McCain would have selected her either. What if she was 70 instead of 45? Ha! Not a chance.
Party blindness.
FALSE – She CHOSE to not have the state pay for her defense. Cite your source, I have cited my source in the past.
I wonder what language the American Citizens by Birth speak in Puerto Rico – I guess that is American.
Good one, Pat.
@Pat.Herve
Apparently I didn’t see that source.
As for my source, it is over a decade old and it stated that state law forbade it.
@Cargosquid
Well, that Lie get repeated over and over again, until people start to believe it. Even after being corrected, the Lie is living it’s own life.
Page 2 – “A contract for legal services was issued by the State of Alaska” “No invoices were submitted to the State”
http://doa.alaska.gov/dop/fileadmin/PersonnelBoardReports/ChatamReport-2010-06.pdf
Her legal defense fund that she set up was actually against Alaska’s state ethics laws – but no harm done, the RNC and others came in to bail her out.
Part of Palin’s problem is that she tries to be cute. 51 year olds shouldn’t try to be cute. It’s unbecoming. Once Obama is out of office, then who will she hate?
@Moon-howler
Hopefully, she will go back to Alaska and see what climate change is doing to her beloved State – and then go on to do something about it.
She needs to raise her kids also. Climate change isn’t being that kind to her beloved Alaska.
When I watch Ms Palin these days, it seems like a somewhat unskilled comedienne doing an over the top imitation of Tina Fey doing an imitation of Sarah Palin. She’s shrill, she says extraordinarily ignorant things in a very loud voice with the timing off and the emphasis in all the wrong places. I think part of the decline must be the absence of writers/staff to put words in her mouth. I find it very hard to watch and a little skin crawly.
Totally agree. The shrill screeching is horribly unpleasant and creepy. I think your theory is right. Her timing is off and what she says is mostly nonsense.
I find her absurd and at the same time scary.
Here we go again. Is there no limit to the liberal attempt to down play America and make fun of anyone who is not on board with their progressive, big government? First, however, I must congratulate you all for not falling into the humor pierce put out on Palin re return to Nativia. That it was published and re-published is a testament to the willingness of the progressive to accept the stereotypes that have been carefully built up about Palin to help justify their political agenda by making fun of the messenger.
Ok, first lets be clear, look under your bonnet and you will find that we do not speak english in the US, WE SPEAK AMERICAN. Making fun of Trump’s NY state of mind and Palin’s Alaskan is just another example of trying to kill the messenger. And Americans get it but the self described sophisticated, euro centric, guilt ridden socialists in this country will never understand. And yes, many of us would suggest that while on the Presidential campaign trail, speaking American should be the expectation and not pandering to one group or another. Technology and all kinds of ADA translators can handle the wide range of languages spoken here, why pick spanish as an exception? I want to hear and understand the question and the answer and I want to be sure that the answer is not another example of pandering to one group vice another. That is hard with a 30 second TV news clip in spanish. In reaction, Bush on the other hand, said more than just the clip about speaking spanish whenever he wants. Bush also rejected the notion offered by Trump that people should speak English in the United States. American is our language of business, currency, law enforcement and, yes, politics. Those of you who want a bilingual currency, regulatory policy and business environment need to justify its impacts, and then what about the chinese, germans or arab speakers.
I am going to try my best to not be snide. The language that most Americans speak is English. Each region has its own particular vernacular and dialect. We sometimes refer to the English we speak as American standard English. Palin speaks it only marginally.
The English people have variations and different dialects also. Examples might be cockney, Cornwall dialect, dialect from Wales, Scottish dialect, etc.
We don’t speak frigging “American.” Please don’t dumb us down any more than this woman has with her shrill shrieking. For the record, I don’t want a bilingual currency. I do think government forms should be available for major transactions. I will never forget being at DMV about 20 years ago, trying to help a couple of Hispanic men fill out the forms to get a car tag. Its just stupid and bad business not to make forms available to them if the end result is them paying their taxes.
What about the Chinese, German and Arabic speakers?? Just what about them. Go to http://www.pwcs.edu and check out the various forms. The only one I am not sure of is German but I expect its there.
Hmmm. I was under the impression that you right-wingers wanted everyone to speak English. Get your line of propaganda straight. My English profs were unaware that they were teaching American 101 or American 303…
@Censored bybvbl
Snarky but yes, speaking for all conservative and all patriotic Americans, we want all business, judical and regulatory procedures, all currency and all politics to be in American english not in spanish and American english or Chinese and American english or French and Canadian English…
But with that in mind, check out some of the differences that that aready exist between your English lit and American lit professor, Just google it; to include: http://www.effingpot.com/slang.shtml
@blue
Those differences were not with the language but where the literature originated.
Not sure what Blue is talking about in # 18, but I have never met anyone who speaks American. I did see a movie once about the Army recruiting a bunch of Navajos who spoke American to use them as code talkers in the Pacific Theatre in WWII. A true story.
Unfortunately, American languages have largely died out. European languages, particularly English, have largely supplanted them. That Mrs. Palin is a big fan of indigenous languages is a good thing, I guess, and living in Alaska may bring her in closer contact with American. However, she is not a native, and, given how much trouble she has with the predominant European language in North America, English, I’d be very surprised if her mastery of American languages is particularly impressive.
I just read that the very last code talker has died…I think last month. How sad. Those guys sure went above and beyond. I would like to see a monument to them on the mall, maybe as part of the WWII Memorial.
I agree. The legend at the base of the monument could say: “They spoke American to protect the freedoms of those who spoke European”
I know Palin is dumb. I would have figured that by now, seven years later, she’d have finessed her approach or at least educated herself somewhat. But she made a statement. She thinks that immigrants should speak our language.
This blog entry focuses on a stupid slip of the tongue or a stupid use of one word “American” instead of “English”. But the fact is that Palin makes a point. Immigrants who want to live here should learn the language and speak our language. I agree. In fact, most immigrants agree.
I’m homeless right now. In the hotel at which I’m staying, there are some Latinas who work the complimentary continental breakfast. They speak enough English to communicate with the guests. They wouldn’t have those jobs if they couldn’t speak English. In our ESL classes there are dozens of people wanting to learn English. Most immigrants agree with Palin that they would be better off learning to speak our language.
But this is how the election coverage will be. Instead of considering the candidates’ policies and ideas, gaffes will be exploited, and from a 20 minute speech, one five second comment will be reported and anlyzed. I was hoping for better from this blog.
I don’t think it was a gaffe. I think Palin meant exactly what she said.
I agree that immigrants should learn to speak English. English is a language of empowerment, world-wide. It has huge economic implications for those immigrants who take the time to learn it.
If Palin wanted to not be made fun of, she should have said ” Immigrants should learn to speak English.” Unfortunately, that isn’t what people say. Most of them don’t even like hearing a foreign language and often get pissed off over signs in Spanish or if told to push 2 for Spanish.
EG – the data indicate pretty strongly that modern immigrants learn English faster than our forebears did. I still remember elderly relatives who preferred to speak German, but would struggle to speak English in a social setting.. But by the second generation, English was the language of choice. Because of modern media, the adoption of English in immigrant populations is accelerated over what it was in our ancestors’ day. This tends to take care of itself pretty naturally.
I’m not sure Ms. Palin gets a pass for a “slip of the tongue.” The phrase, “speak American” is not only a reflection of ignorance about where our predominant language comes from, it is a kind of dog whistle appeal to ignorance and hostility in the population at large. I fshe said it subconsciously, it tells us one thing. If she said it on purpose, another. Both scenarios are pretty disturbing, frankly.