Posted On: November 12, 2005, 9:59 pm CST

Posted By: Veteran

Truth, I think that you missed something along the way. You are the first person to say anything about "English only". Typical over-reaction of a liberal is what I sense here.

My original contention is that we need to have English as an official language.

As for the Hispanic immigrants, I won't argue about the speed with which they learn English, but I do wonder about the person in the original article. To quote "Rocio Ayala, who has lived in Naples for many years" was unable to understand news about the storm unless it was in Spanish.

This is what we are talking about. Not only Rocio, but the friend also didn't understand English well enough.

The problem seems to be that we the citizens must learn the Spanish of the immigrants to make sure that some folks who haven't bothered to learn English are protected against their own unwillingness to learn the lingua franca of the United States - English.

One of the most telling comments was from someone who said that their children must take Spanish in public schools, but that the Spanish-speaking students were under no requirements to take English. Don't know if that is true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.