Donald Trump will not be ‘El Presidente,’ judging from the website his White House launched on Friday.
The new whitehouse.gov, unlike the online home of the Obama administration, has no Spanish-language content.
Visiting the old White House website address for content ‘en Español’ brings Web surfers to an error page.
The newly minted president made a point during the Republican primary season of his preference for immigrants to learn English, mocking former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail.
ENGLISH ONLY: The new White House website has only an error message where the Obama administration’s Spanish-language content used to be
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EARLY DAYS: President Donald Trump, shown Monday after signing executive orders, hasn’t yet weighed in on making English the official language of the United States
‘We have a country where to assimilate, you have to speak English,’ Trump declared during a September 2015 debate.
‘We have to have assimilation to have a country,’ Trump added. ‘We have to have assimilation. … This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.’
Then-candidate Trump told ABC News weeks earlier that ‘while we’re in this nation, we should be speaking English.’
Trump uttered only Spanish word during the 23 debates and televised forums in which he participated, and it didn’t help him.
‘We have some bad hombres here, and we’re gonna get ’em out,’ he said in an October debate with Hillary Clinton, referring to illegal immigrants who remained in the United States despite convictions for violent crimes.
The chairman and CEO of U.S. English, the nation’s most vocal advocate of making English the official language of the United States, told DailyMail.com that the Trump administration shouldn’t give Spanish-speakers any special dispensation.
‘Maybe if they’re going to do it in Spanish, they should also use all 323 languages spoken in the United States, right?’ asked Mauro Mujica. ‘Why just one and not the other 322?’
‘ASSIMILATION’: During the Republican primary season, Trump urged immigrants to learn English in order to take full advantage of their adopted country
NO MÁS: The Obama White House’s website can still be viewed on a government archive, complete with its Spanish-language pages
Mujica cautioned that while ‘we have no problem with it,’ the English-only White House website might only be temporary as the new administration comes up to speed.
‘I would assume they’re deciding in how many languages they want to do it,’ he said, but ‘English is the de-facto official language of this country.’
‘I know many of those people including the president, but nobody has asked us what they should do,’ Mujica acknowledged.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer directed questions about the English-only website to media affairs director Helen Aguirre Ferré.
Spicer took a question about Spanish-language website content during his first official press briefing hours later.
‘We are continuing to build out the website both in the issue areas and then that area,’ he said.
‘But we’ve got the IT folks working overtime right now to continue to get all of that up to speed. And trust me, it’s just going to take a little bit more time but we’re working piece-by-piece to get that done.’
Much ado about nothing. I watched the first Whitehouse press conference and the beaner version of the site is forthcoming. Spicer said that the website peeps are just overwhelmed trying to keep up wif da gringo version but the beaner version will come later. Why would Trump alienate da beaners anyway?
As if the “beaners” aren’t already alienated.
Americans, regardless of ethnicity, speak English. Foreign nationals speak foreign languages and their respective embassies should provide them translators if they need them or if they want to permanently reside here without learning English.
Yup, people getting excited that this means something are setting themselves up for a let down. There is going to be a Spanish translation eventually.
Why would Trump alienate da beaners anyway? Why the hell not? Speak the language.
Trump should make the no-Spanish web site permanent. Trump should also finally make English the official language. I realize this makes me a raayyycccisss.
Neither of my parents had schooling beyond 5th grade. Yet, both learned English well enough to get by, even take a driving test, within a couple years. Why? Because, back then, they (and immigrants from other nations) had R.E.S.P.E.C.T. for this country. No one ever expected the nation to conform for them, or make special rules for them. They knew they were guests. And they behaved appropriately, by conforming to the host nation.
Are Spanish speakers in America today (cuz that’s who we’re really talking about) dumber than immigrants from yesteryear? I don’t think so. So, what exactly is the problem with so many of them not speaking Eenglish? Disrespect? Hatred? Laziness? What??
The government should take it at least one step further. No driver’s licenses for them. If you can’t speak/read the language, then you have no damn business on the road!! No citizenship either. Back in our day, there weren’t any Citizenship Lessons In German printed by the government. You either learned the language, or you were shit out of luck. Auf wiedersehn, arshloch. Why has that changed?
Private business should follow the lead. Remove all that “press 2 for Spanish” shit! Stop coddling these people. Stop making it so damn easy to not learn English. Stop making WE THE PEOPLE conform!! Dammit.
I’m cunnilingual. Never needed an interpreter.
My wife, now for more than 50 years, was born and raised in Europe. She came to this country as a young adult not speaking a word of English. With experience as a legal secretary in her home country she decided to follow the same career here; so she went to secretarial school, learned English, shorthand, and all the skills needed here which were different from those of her former training. After our marriage, when we were expecting our first child, I said to her that we were presented with an excellent opportunity to bring up our children bilingually. We could teach them her language at home, while they learned English in School. Her answer to me? “Oh no; I am an American now, and in my house we speak English, the language of my country.” We did, however, encourage them to take foreign languages as part of their education, which they have done. All of us are proud of our heritage and have studied and learned the languages of our ancestors; hers German, mine Irish. But we are Americans first, and in our house we speak English.
Nice story! Mine (above) is similar.
One slight difference — and I’m NOT saying you are wrong —- in my parent’s house, they still speak German. I have absolutely no problem if Spanish speaking folks wish to continue speaking Spanish at home, or even when they are out and about, … and, of course, the same holds true for any and all other foreign language speakers.
My beef is with what happens in the public sphere ….. as stated above, where others must conform to them.
NJ – who the hell knows what language you people are speaking.
And we still speak German with my wife’s family when we visit.
I don’t have a problem with immigrants speaking their native language at home, but if you have children in the US I would advise speaking some English at home as well. One of my co-workers and his wife spoke their native language exclusively at home. Now his son is having some learning problems which I think were at least exacerbated by the drastic change of starting an English speaking school without knowing the language.
Bravo times 1,000, Annie.
Sorry to bring in my own experience in again. When I entered first grade, I didn’t speak a WORD of English. They passed me on to second grade anyway …. even though I had no fucken idea what the fuck was going on. By second grade things got a little better (I think I learned the word ‘fuck’), but things were still often foggy. Of course, by then other kids could already read ‘See Dick Run’ (a book about venereal disease) and I fell far behind. I really never recovered until high school … where I graduated in the bottom third, so I made a remarkable recovery, indeed.
Well finally, THAT explains it! Sell that house yet, sucker?
“…where I graduated in the bottom third….”
how surprising
This is rather ironic, because childhood is the easiest time for a child to become bilingual. Had this family done it “right” – a mixture of English and native language added to English by immersion simply by living in America outside the home – the boy would be doing well at school.
MY GOOD FRIEND IS AN IMMIGRANT WHO SPENT TEN YEARS AND SOME MONEY TO BECOME A UNITED STATES CITIZEN … HE SPEAKS AND READS ENGLISH OK … HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN WITH HIS FAMILY …
HE WAS CALLED TO JURY DUTY LATELY AND I THINK THAT SOME NUANCES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WOULD HINDER HIS UNDERSTANDING OF SOME OF THE TESTIMONY …
I OFTEN HELP HIM TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE DOUBLESPEAK IN THE LETTERS HE GETS TRYING TO SELL HIM SOMETHING …
HE IS A PATRIOT OF THE UNITED STATES, NOW ….
I live in a relatively large (pop. 40+ million) South American country in which you either speak Spanish or struggle, because the gov provides NO assistance to speakers of other languages. Can’t speak for the capital, but at the immigration services office in the country’s second largest city, you have to bring (and pay) your own interpreter if you don’t speak Spanish. Granted, there are not many English-speaking immigrants here, and it wasn’t until recently that children could be given names that weren’t on an official list in which very few English names qualified. My older grandson is named James, which in Spanish would be pronounced “Hah-mays”, but at his nursery school (private), everyone pronounces his name as his parents and I pronounce it and we didn’t need to ask them to do so, which I found encouraging. It was a different story 35 years ago in Spain with my daughter, who has a name with unaccustomed sounds, but in the end they learned to pronounce it.
Being bilingual or multi-lingual is useful anywhere, but English is and should remain the language of the US, official or not; better that it be official.
That’s in part because many of the immigrants to Argentina are natives of other South American countries whose first language is Spanish. Accent and slang variations notwithstanding (and some different words, perhaps), these immigrants can communicate freely. There are Brazilian immigrants and expats, but these people speak Portuguese and with little effort and work, Spanish is easily learned.
In any case, there’s no problem that English be made the USA’s official language. Spanish is the official language of Argentina, but Italian, German, and other languages (such as Japanese and even some indigenous languages) are spoken around pockets of that country. English is not the only language spoken in the United States, and while there are many pockets where other languages are used (Spanish being the most obvious and common), America is still an Anglophone nation. I want it to remain that way.
This has been a remarkable, thoroughly enjoyable 5 days.
I’m sure he’ll do plenty I don’t like, but this I do.
Go Speed Racer!
Great start. Now I want to read a story about how many people have been laid off of the federal payroll as a result. Or at least moved to a vacant position in another department rather than hire any new federal employees. They can get in the unemployment line with the climate alarmists who have been trying to convince me that 50 years from now the weather will be catastrophically warmish (And we need to spend trillions of dollars to stop it). If they really wanted to scare me they should have stuck with the planet is getting colder propaganda.
The libs scoffed at the prospect of deporting the 11 million (?) people unlawfully in this country. The illegals will deport themselves if our tax dollars are not used to encourage them.