{"id":38889,"date":"2019-09-17T23:58:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T23:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38889"},"modified":"2019-09-17T23:58:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T23:58:31","slug":"wondering-about-bilingual-signage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38889","title":{"rendered":"Wondering about bilingual signage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

MEDICINE HAT, Alberta — <\/b>It was somewhere east of Kamloops, British Columbia, when I noticed them: Highway signs began appearing with text written in English and French.<\/p>\n

West of there it was all English.<\/p>\n

I haven’t spent a lot of time in Canada. I went to British Columbia briefly in 1980 and made the acquaintance of some rough-and-tumble loggers who greeted me as I sought to learn about the circumstances of my father’s death in a boating accident.<\/p>\n

I noticed then that the signage was in two languages. The loggers didn’t like it. Indeed, they didn’t think much of their countrymen and women of French ancestry \u2026 and they made their feelings clear.<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

On this journey through the western half of Canada, my wife and I took note of the appearance of the twin-language signage.<\/p>\n

They don’t bother me in the least. Then again, I am just a visitor from the States. However, this linguistic oddity does make me wonder: When do you suppose some of our states are going to enact laws requiring twin-language highway signs. You know what I mean: signs in English and<\/em> in Spanish.<\/p>\n

Texas, where my family and I have lived for 35 years, contains a heavily Latino minority. Latinos comprise the second largest ethnic group in the state — and their percentage is overtaking the Anglo majority.<\/p>\n

I don’t know when Texas will become a Latino-majority state. I do believe it will occur eventually, likely after I have checked out permanently.<\/p>\n

Does this mean the state, along with other states around the country — particularly those that border Mexico — will be forced to follow the trail blazed in Canada, which decided some time back to accommodate its French-speaking minority?<\/p>\n

It makes perfect sense to me.<\/p>\n

I am aware that such a thing, were it to become a reality, likely won’t go over well with many Americans. Some of us think English should be the nation’s “official language.” I disagree with that notion.<\/p>\n

However, as I have noted already, I likely won’t be around to engage in that brouhaha were it to erupt.<\/p>\n

It could be worse, you know. A decade ago I spent a month in Israel, where I noticed that in the much of that country the highway signage was in English, Hebrew \u2026 and Arabic.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s an eyeful, man!<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEDICINE HAT, Alberta — It was somewhere east of Kamloops, British Columbia, when I noticed them: Highway signs began appearing with text written in English and French. West of there it was all English. I haven’t spent a lot of time in Canada. I went to British Columbia briefly in 1980 and made the acquaintance … Continue reading Wondering about bilingual signage<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8929,8928,2744],"class_list":["post-38889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-french-canadians","tag-highway-signs","tag-latinos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38892,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions\/38892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}