Submitted by Lawrence Gulotta, Dec 6, 2007 12:02

I'm not sure which part of the US Mr. Blackwell lives in but you would think the only choices are English or Spanish.

In NYC, home to 8.250 million people, the givernment speaks in many many languages and the Stars and Strips are doing just fine, thank you.

It is time more Americans learn to speak foreign languages in this period of so-called "Globalization."

Everyone doing business today needs to learn "business English" to succeed, certainly in the USA and other English speaking lands.

But Americans need to learn other languages to better understand the peoples, cultures and economics of the world's people. It is a two way street, I believe.

For example, it is a scandal that so few American intellegence officers and diplomats can speak Arabic in a time when knowledge of Arabic is essential to our national security.

Nationalist appeals to speak only English are just plain phony patriotism aside from being practically impossible in the big cities and towns of America. The work force is multilingual.

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