Puerto Rico

[Firis]

Re: Puerto Rico

If it is official that will be badass.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Re: Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has every right to remain in it's current status. as the united states, we gave them that freedom to choose which direction, if any, they wanted to go in. we offer them military protection, so they contribute to our armed forces.

walker, i fail to see where you're drive to change their status is coming from.
i was visiting hawaii in late '09 and the natives hate being called american just because they are a territory. they hate being a tourist spot, and they hate ignorant haoli's (white people) who say things like "you're a part of the US" or "you're a US citizen so you should speak better english". the reality of it is that we are ignorant. we have no idea how they feel. they may be called a US territory for one reason or another, but if they don't want the title of an official state and all the bull **** that comes with it, that is their decision and their decision alone.

the fact is that they are their own culture, and they don't want to have english widely taught. they don't think that we're better off then they are. if they do, they are free to vote for it. they pay their taxes, they contribute soldiers, and beyond that the US should just mind it's own ****ing business.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Puerto Rico

And how is teaching them proper English gonna rob them of their culture?

Jeesh.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Re: Puerto Rico

And how is teaching them proper English gonna rob them of their culture?

Jeesh.

i never said it would rob them of their culture.

my point is that it should be their decision and their decision alone. why should they need english? they live on an island in central america where spanish is the dominant language. even if it's a US territory where english-speaking americans visit it's still a different region of the world.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Puerto Rico

I'd say knowing English is a pretty useful trait in this international world of ours. I can't see why anyone would oppose the teaching of it.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

Is it the flag that is officially going to replace it, or is it just you personal take?

The official one, probably, is the second. The circle design is an unofficial one, supposedly used by the Puerto Rican supporters of statehood.

Puerto Rico has every right to remain in it's current status. as the united states, we gave them that freedom to choose which direction, if any, they wanted to go in. we offer them military protection, so they contribute to our armed forces.

walker, i fail to see where you're drive to change their status is coming from.
i was visiting hawaii in late '09 and the natives hate being called american just because they are a territory. they hate being a tourist spot, and they hate ignorant haoli's (white people) who say things like "you're a part of the US" or "you're a US citizen so you should speak better english". the reality of it is that we are ignorant. we have no idea how they feel. they may be called a US territory for one reason or another, but if they don't want the title of an official state and all the bull **** that comes with it, that is their decision and their decision alone.

the fact is that they are their own culture, and they don't want to have english widely taught. they don't think that we're better off then they are. if they do, they are free to vote for it. they pay their taxes, they contribute soldiers, and beyond that the US should just mind it's own ****ing business.

No. Personally, I think commonwealth status is stupid, and I find it irritating that they're still on the UN ****list for "not free enough." I want them independent or a state. That in-between status is just... irritating to me.

Haole* is how that word is spelled, and they've been a US state since 1959. I can see why they'd be irritated by ignorant tourists.

Um, excuse me? They are our ****ing business, because they're part of us. If they were not part of us, then you could say that. But independence is the smallest minority opinion they have. English IS taught, usually as a foreign language, and it IS one of their official languages.

Personally, I would lean towards "you're dumb enough to have any official languages, you should be able to speak them" but honestly I don't care. My view on language is that people will learn what they need, and demand education in what they need, and it'll all work out in the end.

And how is teaching them proper English gonna rob them of their culture?

"Teaching them proper english" isn't so much their concern as it is, "we become a state and they'll force us to stop using Spanish as our primary language and in a hundred years we'll be just like Texas." Paranoia. I don't think we'd actually do that, but there are plenty of people who'd either want to, or who wouldn't want to admit them as a state because they speak primarily Spanish.

*Plus, it's a racial slur. Roughly analogous to to cracker.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Re: Puerto Rico

No. Personally, I think commonwealth status is stupid, and I find it irritating that they're still on the UN ****list for "not free enough." I want them independent or a state. That in-between status is just... irritating to me.

care to elaborate? the US gained Puerto Rico under terms of Spains surrender. if they've chosen to keep their current status, and pay their own tax's, and support our military as any other state would. what's the ****ing problem?

Haole* is how that word is spelled, and they've been a US state since 1959. I can see why they'd be irritated by ignorant tourists.

my mistake, at least we're in agreement thar.

Um, excuse me? They are our ****ing business, because they're part of us. If they were not part of us, then you could say that. But independence is the smallest minority opinion they have. English IS taught, usually as a foreign language, and it IS one of their official languages.

no, because we gave them freedome of choice on their status. they are going to remain whatever they want to be because we made it that way.

Personally, I would lean towards "you're dumb enough to have any official languages, you should be able to speak them" but honestly I don't care. My view on language is that people will learn what they need, and demand education in what they need, and it'll all work out in the end.

fair enough, i can side with that.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

They're getting taxed and all that **** while not getting full representation. I'd as soon they had full representation or independence.

Yes, and we should give them freedom of choice to be independent or a state. Allowing this in-between, halfassed commonwealth status to continue just isn't right. It ****es me off with DC, it ****es me off with all the tiny little territories without enough population for statehood, and it ****es me off here.

But that doesn't change the fact that it's our concern. If four million American citizens can't vote for their president (excepting primaries) and can't vote in Congress, I find that deeply disturbing. They are part of us until they choose not to be. Give them a simple binary choice and **** the status quo.

EDIT:

I'd say knowing English is a pretty useful trait in this international world of ours. I can't see why anyone would oppose the teaching of it.

And Tsuyu, the problem isn't that Puerto Ricans don't want to learn/teach English. The problem is that they're afraid becoming a US state will lead to the federal government forcing them to use English to the detriment of Spanish.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Re: Puerto Rico

They're getting taxed and all that **** while not getting full representation. I'd as soon they had full representation or independence.

yes, but what you as a resident of the main land shouldn't factor into it at all. i'm all for talking about this theoretically, but in practice you me or any resident of the main land shouldn't have any say in it.
it's their choice

Yes, and we should give them freedom of choice to be independent or a state. Allowing this in-between, halfassed commonwealth status to continue just isn't right. It ****es me off with DC, it ****es me off with all the tiny little territories without enough population for statehood, and it ****es me off here.

they have freedom of choice to be independent or a state. we have no right to force them to change. what you are describing is practically tyranny.

But that doesn't change the fact that it's our concern. If four million American citizens can't vote for their president (excepting primaries) and can't vote in Congress, I find that deeply disturbing. They are part of us until they choose not to be. Give them a simple binary choice and **** the status quo.

uh huh, but why is that a problem if they haven't voted towards wanting to vote for a president? it would be a problem if we weren't allowing them to because of some political alignment, but if they want a status that doesn't allow them voting, that's their decision.

just like how you can't force a citizen of the main land to vote if they don't want to. any citizen can opt to vote for one, the other, or neither (not counting 3rd party candidates). 4 million more who choose to vote for neither is relatively small considering how many on the main land choose that option to begin with.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Puerto Rico

EDIT:



And Tsuyu, the problem isn't that Puerto Ricans don't want to learn/teach English. The problem is that they're afraid becoming a US state will lead to the federal government forcing them to use English to the detriment of Spanish.

It was more a rebuttal to cheez than something to apply to the real situation.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

yes, but what you as a resident of the main land shouldn't factor into it at all. i'm all for talking about this theoretically, but in practice you me or any resident of the main land shouldn't have any say in it.
it's their choice

Obviously not. We annexed them without taking their opinions into account, granted commonwealth status while listening to them with half an ear, and they have no vote. Clearly we DON'T have to take their opinions into account.

they have freedom of choice to be independent or a state. we have no right to force them to change. what you are describing is practically tyranny.

No, it's not. That's like saying me wanting DC to get either statehood or voting rights is tyranny, because I want to force them to leave their current status quo.

The two places have different status, but very similar overall. Only DC can vote for president, has no worries about becoming independent, and mostly speaks English.

Tyranny would be me saying that this stupid commonwealth free association status is absurd, we should go back to a military governor, and then convincing everyone else to go along with it, forcing the military governor on them, and going.

uh huh, but why is that a problem if they haven't voted towards wanting to vote for a president? it would be a problem if we weren't allowing them to because of some political alignment, but if they want a status that doesn't allow them voting, that's their decision.

I admit that I don't have a good rebuttal to that. But it's more complex than that. There's a lot of emotional conflict bound up in it, largely about language, rather than simple calculation.

just like how you can't force a citizen of the main land to vote if they don't want to. any citizen can opt to vote for one, the other, or neither (not counting 3rd party candidates). 4 million more who choose to vote for neither is relatively small considering how many on the main land choose that option to begin with.

So, what about the last time they had a vote? 71% of their electorate came out to vote. The choices were independence, free association, commonwealth, and statehood. Statehood got 728,157 votes, 46.49% of the vote. All other options got less that 5% of the vote. Commonwealth got the least, .06% and independence got the most, 2.54%. The problem was the fourth option, "none of the above," which got 50.3% of the vote.

My point being, a significant portion of their electorate would vote if they could, but are prevented from doing so. How is that free?

John--

Okay, so you say that fear is unfounded. But you think that's a bad thing. You do not want it to be like that. You want everyone who is a citizen of the United States to speak English as their primary language, no? Seeing that, Puerto Rican guy sitting there voting goes, "oh, crap, I don't want to be a state because I'll have this guy voting to make me speak English. Sure, I'm already a citizen, but this guy'll have even more influence if I'm living in a state."

Not that that makes all that much sense, since technically speaking we have more authority right now, but whatever.

EDIT: Wait, what? John, didn't that post used to say "can?" I'm pretty sure it doesn't make any sense as "can't."

 

[FableFreak]

Re: Puerto Rico

Walker, you're not thinking big enough. We need to annex Guyana and then South America and then Eurasia and then Vulcan and then we make Cthulhu president of everything.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

John, going from personal experience? I work at a library in an area that is slowly getting more Hispanophone immigrants. Other parts of the county have more. My branch has a handful of patrons who speak really ****ty English. Guess who it is checking out our books and audiobooks and all on learning English?

From my own limited experience, I've met people learning English, I've never met anyone who isn't.

Plus, most of them have kids, also known as Second-Generation Universal Translation Devices. Which leads to awkward situations where I'm going, ma'am, you have a 15 dollar fine because you didn't return this book, and I'm either A) trying to get the eight-year-old-kid to translate or B) Screaming for my Token Carribbean Coworker to come up.

Walker, you're not thinking big enough. We need to annex Guyana and then South America and then Eurasia and then Vulcan and then we make Cthulhu president of everything.

Damn skippy. And you do realize that Guyana is already in South America, right?

And I vote we start with Micronesia for Asia, then Japan. Hell, Micronesia was already part of us, once.

And hey, once we make Cthulhu president, we can get Tsuyu on board to bring in Sweden. Not that anyone would want it, of course.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Puerto Rico

Cthulhu would be hungry after his awakening. We could feed all the Swedes to him, except yours truly of course. As a plus side, chicks really dig you when you're the last of something!

 

[FableFreak]

Re: Puerto Rico

Damn skippy. And you do realize that Guyana is already in South America, right?

God dammit Walker... Just... God dammit. Yes, I know where the **** Guyana is. We START with Guyana and then steamroller South America. Derp.

By the way, Cthulhu is already living off the tip of South America:

The BLOOP!

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

Cthulhu would be hungry after his awakening. We could feed all the Swedes to him, except yours truly of course. As a plus side, chicks really dig you when you're the last of something!

The Last of the Sea Monster Snacks. Like Scooby Snacks, but bigger and more cumbersome.

Let's swap, maybe it's a regional thing. Imagine for a moment, in order for me to be successful in the United States of America, I had to learn Spanish. It was absolutely mandatory for me if I wanted to live here.

Fun note: Everything you learn in school Spanish lessons is bullcrap. But at least I made a fun piñata.

How 'bout college Spanish? I can pick out a few isolated words when people are talking near me. But not pinata. And no, I'm not going to try to remember how to do the tilde.

Why am I imagining that? And under what circumstances?

God dammit Walker... Just... God dammit. Yes, I know where the **** Guyana is. We START with Guyana and then steamroller South America. Derp.

By the way, Cthulhu is already living off the tip of South America:

The BLOOP!

I'm glad to see that I managed to irritate you within thirty minutes of your unexpected return. And John is right. Guyana will be a good beachhead. Call the Coasties! They're great at driving amphibious landers.

NOAA is pretty awesome, too. Bring the commissioned officer corps and a few of their ships to find Cthulhu and bring him up.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

Sorry, so what you're saying is "where I'm living there's a bunch of people who don't speak English that well and it makes my life a hell of a lot easier if I can speak Spanish."

Yeah, I confuse easy. And yeah, I admit that we won't know for sure for another fifty years or so, but I'm reasonably sure that English isn't going to die out. It's too solidly entrenched as the lingua franca* for... everyone, and too much of the US majority speaks it as their first or only language.

But... I don't know. You live where there's a lot of really recent immigrants. Recent immigrants are and always have been notorious. The old farts don't speak English worth a damn, the parents are bilingual, the grandkids are almost wholly Anglophone. It's possible that our current large population of Hispanophone immigrants is different... but I don't really think so.

*I used that term very specifically. I realize it's ominous implications. Once French was the common language of diplomacy and government. Today only the French and a few former colonies speak it. The difference, I believe, is that English is entrenched among people everywhere, not just diplomats, academics, and politicians.

And wow, that is a huge tangent we're one here. But hey, Cthulhu makes everything better, I hear.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

No, I'm saying that people here aren't required to learn English at all and have no reason to even want to learn English unless they intend on leaving, and that's why they stay right here. And once they're adults, they couldn't leave if they wanted to, and their kids go through the same thing and that's why there are long family lines that have stayed in this area for as long as anyone can remember. Long enough that everyone here belongs to one of these families. They even named entire sections of the region after them. I live in the Los Villareales part of the city. They've built their own society here and they have no intention of assimilating, which means that for Americans to live here, they must become Mexicans.

Okay. While we're at it, we should go make sure all those damn Germans speak in English, too. It peeves me so much that they can sit there in Pennsylvania and southern Maryland and **** and don't need to learn English and have their own schools and all.

And those French down south and up in Maine. Need to fix them, too.

I'm not saying that English is going to die. In France, you speak French. In Spain, you speak Spanish. In Germany, you speak German. Sure, many people there know other languages too, but it'd be awfully ignorant for me to go to Germany and expect people to speak English. Similarly, it's awfully ignorant for Spanish-speaking people to come here and decide that they'll never learn English.

I have no evidence for people doing that. But hey, we have a long history of going places and never learning the language, so we might as well roll with it.

Call them what you want, I call them Mexicans. They're not recent, they've been rooted here for many generations. Fun fact: if you can find a person here that's really, really old, a great-grandparent perhaps, he or she will likely speak English and will tell of days when they were beaten in school for speaking Spanish. I don't like that they were beaten, but I do like the idea of encouraging people to learn English. It's the only way for anyone here to leave this place. They've been here so long that they're all related, seriously, marrying a third-cousin here is a common practice. I think that might have something to do with why everyone here is an idiot.

Okay, so I assume that the "call them whatever you want" bit is because I called the Hispanophone rather than Mexican? Kinda hard for them to be Mexican when they've apparently lived in Texas for generations. In fact that means they are Texans. Who speak Spanish.

Second... yeah... bad example to get me to agree with you. I'm already disapproving of the really die-hard assimilationist ****, like the Dawes Act schools and... beating kids for speaking Spanish? Yeah, that's ****ed up.

What's it matter if we have a couple enclaves of non-English-speakers? We've managed with that for centuries just fine.

 

[Walker]

Re: Puerto Rico

Thank you for providing a delightful tangent to shoot off on.

It was wild, man.