Check this out...

[PredFan]

My wife sells web sites for a small business husband and wife team who make web sites for insurance companies and insurance agents. These web sites are in spanish and are aimed at Florida's large hispanic population.

A couple of days ago, she gets an e-mail from an insurance agent who rails on her about how wrong it is for her to be doing this. This is America, and English should be the official language and blah blah blah. Now, I hate the "press 1 for english" **** that you have to listen to sometimes, and i believe that you are harming yourself if you don't learn and use English while you are in this country. OTOH, hey, business is business and I'm a big ass capitalist. So I'm OK with her making money selling those sites.

So my wife, out of curiosity, goes to that agent's web site and lo and behold, this lady who scolded her for catering to spanish speakers while being an American, has at the bottom of her web site:

"Se Habla Espaniol"

[Clamp]

Too funny... :)

Yeah I always say English as primary, but speak as many as possible for business.

IBM is a global business...I don't think they got that way by saying, "sorry, English speaking customers only". Same with every other America based global corporation.

[gdoane]

I think it's worse that Hispanics are uninsured than not speaking English. Usually if there's a car wreck and the driver doesn't speak English it's a pretty safe bet the driver has no insurance either.

I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be a graduation requirement to have a couple of credits in foreign language studies. If all you know is one language then that's not really a very well-rounded education, is it?

[khigh]

I think it's worse that Hispanics are uninsured than not speaking English. Usually if there's a car wreck and the driver doesn't speak English it's a pretty safe bet the driver has no insurance either.

I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be a graduation requirement to have a couple of credits in foreign language studies. If all you know is one language then that's not really a very well-rounded education, is it?

In high school you are required to take either 2 years of foreign language or 2 years of something computer related. I took four years of German. Working in retail and living in a military town, however, I have taught myself a little Korean, German, Spanish, and French (there is a French officer and Sergeant Major stationed at Sill as a liaison for their field artillery). German and Korean are spoken more around here than Spanish because of soldiers marrying people overseas. I like being able to tell them hello, goodbye, and how are you doing in their own language.

[RadsRinCharge]

This is a pet peeve of mine. A hispanic man ran into my husband's truck, and lo and behold....he took off. Probably no insurance.

Then in January, my daughter got rear-ended. Guess what? Not a word of english from the driver. She tried for ages to try and tell him to drive to the closest parking lot...using hand and arm motions. well come to find out, he said he had insurance.....I thought it was funny the name of the company was, "Amigos Insurance". I was actually shocked she got her car fixed....but it took a long time!