"GeeDubb" wrote in message
m...

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

"Stoutman" .@. wrote in message
...
He and his child were not given a choice. In the states we've been
hearing a lot about bilingualism for many years. And I can't stand it.
Why? Because bilingualism is semi-officially English/Spanish. It's
ubiquitous: ATMs, on-line banking, phone help lines, ad nauseum give us
the
choice of English or Spanish. NotGerman, Swedish, Russian, etc. Why
only
Spanish?

I am also intrigued by this. Why Spanish? I am also disgusted by the
English/Spanish choice at the ATM and grocery store U-Scan.

The Dora the Explorer show really ****es me off. When I was a kid (I'm
35) we were never exposed to a foreign language at that age. Maybe very
infrequently on Sesame Street. The Explorer show he watches teaches
Spanish every other phrase. Why is there such a big push to force feed
Spanish to American children?? So they can communicate with Jose down
the street who can't speak English?? Why shouldn't Jose learn English
instead of our kids Spanish? Now he is getting force fed Spanish in
preschool! Why not Yiddish? Oy Vey!

My biggest fear is that he might get words mixed up and start speaking
Spanglish!

Statistically 82 percent of Americans speak English at home, 10 percent
speak Spanish, and the next most common is Chinese (all dialects) with
less than 1 percent. That being the case, if one is going to encounter a
person who doesn't speak English in the US the most likely language to
encounter is Spanish. You'd rather they teach Hungarian, which is spoken
by only 0.045 percent of Americans?

I just don't understand your hostility to Spanish--if one speaks English
and Spanish one can make oneself understood anywhere in North and South
America except Brazil, where they speak Portuguese. Why is that a bad
thing?

As for a choice at the ATM, why does that anger you? For what it's
worth the local ATMs support something like 8 different languages, one of
which is Spanish.

If this was costing you something I would understand your ire, but it is
not and there just plain is not any downside that I can see.

good points right up to the last paragraph. In Arizona it does cost us
since everything government and school is printed in both spanish and
english (with the exception of street signs). My kids school has more
mandarin chineese kids than hispanic kids so why doesn't the school supply
mandarin documentation as well? Answer, the chineese take the initiative
to learn to speak english......

I was addressing my comments to Stoutman, who is distressed by "Dora the
Explorer", the day school his kid attends, and automatic teller machines,
not about documents printed by the government.

Because there is a big push to eliminate the American Mexican border. Cheap
labor you know. Anything for buisiness.

"Stoutman" .@. wrote in message
...

Why is there such a big push to force feed Spanish to
American children??

wrote

Max wrote:
"Doug Miller" wrote

Just like I never said that all Indians I've met speak perfect English,
or
that Indians who don't speak perfect English don't exist.

Regards,
Doug Miller

I've met very few Americans who speak perfect English.


As a multilingual person explained to me, "It is easy to
learn to speak English, it is difficult to learn to speak English
good."

--

FF

LOL. He doesn't speak it well either.
--
Want change? Vote out the incumbents.

On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:18:01 GMT, "dadiOH" wrote:

Puckdropper wrote:

I'd like to point out that this is also true of machine programming
languages. Something expressable in 3 Lines Of Code in one
language may take 30 or 50 in another.

¡Que viva assembler!

He said 30 or 50, not 300 or 500. ;-)



+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Stoutman wrote:
I don't understand how teaching your kid Spanish keeps Jose
from learning English.

Do you think Jose would learn English more quickly if he was spoken to in
Spanish or English? When I was a graduate student, I worked in a lab with
students from several different countries. The foreigners were forbidden
from speaking their native language to each other while in the lab in order
to build their English speaking skills. Much like the foreigners in my lab,
I think Jose would learn English faster if he was 'forced' to learn English.
There would be more motivation for Jose if my son couldn't speak Spanish.
Comprende?

I'm not sure I do.

Are you saying that teaching American born children foreign languages
interferes with foreign born children learning English?

...
My biggest fear is that he might get words mixed up and start speaking
Spanglish!

Does that happen?

I'm not sure, yo think it is possible.


I expect it has been studied.

You can probably get an intelligent discussion of the issues over
in misc.kids or sci.lang.

Much as I appreciate it that you value my opinion, if you don't post
there, should I not conclude that you really are not interested in
having
an intelligent discussion with knowledgible people?

--

FF

in 1319439 20061005 050831 Mark & Juanita wrote:

¡Que viva assembler!

He said 30 or 50, not 300 or 500. ;-)

In my 360 days I could solve a problem faster in assembler than could a colleague in PL/1.
And the resulting program ran 10 times faster.

Bob Martin wrote:
in 1319439 20061005 050831 Mark & Juanita
wrote:

¡Que viva assembler!

He said 30 or 50, not 300 or 500. ;-)

In my 360 days I could solve a problem faster in assembler than
could a colleague in PL/1. And the resulting program ran 10 times
faster.

Ditto. *Much* tighter code too (therefore, faster). Not to mention
device control...

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

wrote in message
ups.com...

GeeDubb wrote:

...

good points right up to the last paragraph. In Arizona it does cost us
since everything government and school is printed in both spanish and
english (with the exception of street signs). ...

So it would be cheaper if Arizona had never switched to English, right?

--

FF


Probably but we'd be speaking Navajo and Apache........and possibly a few
other native american dialects.

gw

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

"GeeDubb" wrote in message
m...

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

"Stoutman" .@. wrote in message
...
He and his child were not given a choice. In the states we've been
hearing a lot about bilingualism for many years. And I can't stand
it.
Why? Because bilingualism is semi-officially English/Spanish. It's
ubiquitous: ATMs, on-line banking, phone help lines, ad nauseum give
us the
choice of English or Spanish. NotGerman, Swedish, Russian, etc. Why
only
Spanish?

I am also intrigued by this. Why Spanish? I am also disgusted by the
English/Spanish choice at the ATM and grocery store U-Scan.

The Dora the Explorer show really ****es me off. When I was a kid (I'm
35) we were never exposed to a foreign language at that age. Maybe
very infrequently on Sesame Street. The Explorer show he watches
teaches Spanish every other phrase. Why is there such a big push to
force feed Spanish to American children?? So they can communicate with
Jose down the street who can't speak English?? Why shouldn't Jose
learn English instead of our kids Spanish? Now he is getting force fed
Spanish in preschool! Why not Yiddish? Oy Vey!

My biggest fear is that he might get words mixed up and start speaking
Spanglish!

Statistically 82 percent of Americans speak English at home, 10 percent
speak Spanish, and the next most common is Chinese (all dialects) with
less than 1 percent. That being the case, if one is going to encounter
a person who doesn't speak English in the US the most likely language to
encounter is Spanish. You'd rather they teach Hungarian, which is
spoken by only 0.045 percent of Americans?

I just don't understand your hostility to Spanish--if one speaks English
and Spanish one can make oneself understood anywhere in North and South
America except Brazil, where they speak Portuguese. Why is that a bad
thing?

As for a choice at the ATM, why does that anger you? For what it's
worth the local ATMs support something like 8 different languages, one
of which is Spanish.

If this was costing you something I would understand your ire, but it is
not and there just plain is not any downside that I can see.

good points right up to the last paragraph. In Arizona it does cost us
since everything government and school is printed in both spanish and
english (with the exception of street signs). My kids school has more
mandarin chineese kids than hispanic kids so why doesn't the school
supply mandarin documentation as well? Answer, the chineese take the
initiative to learn to speak english......

I was addressing my comments to Stoutman, who is distressed by "Dora the
Explorer", the day school his kid attends, and automatic teller machines,
not about documents printed by the government.

Apolgies, sometimes it's difficult to separate everything. What you pointed
out does not add cost.

Gary

GeeDubb wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

GeeDubb wrote:

...

good points right up to the last paragraph. In Arizona it does cost us
since everything government and school is printed in both spanish and
english (with the exception of street signs). ...

...


Probably but we'd be speaking Navajo and Apache........and possibly a few
other native american dialects.

I'm sure there are some there who still do.

--

FF

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 07:34:32 GMT, Bob Martin wrote:

in 1319439 20061005 050831 Mark & Juanita wrote:

¡Que viva assembler!

He said 30 or 50, not 300 or 500. ;-)

In my 360 days I could solve a problem faster in assembler than could a colleague in PL/1.
And the resulting program ran 10 times faster.

My first assignment out of college was writing TI-9900 Assembly code for
embedded test equipment control. My last contribution to that assignment
was the hardware and software design for a specific test box; so I do
understand the speed efficiency and the ability to do device control
quickly. However, after becoming an analyst and systems engineer, I have
decided that speed of execution for many applications is way low in
importance relative to speed of coding. For example, at a higher level
than even Fortran or C, how long do you think it would take to program the
following in assembly code?

fid = fopen(filename, 'r');
y = fread(fid);
fclose(fid);

x = length(y);

figure(1);
plot(x, y, '-xr');
title('Data Plot');
xlabel('Data Point Number');
ylabel('Data');

After doing that, I decided I really don't like writing "for" loops





+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Mark & Juanita (in ) said:

| My first assignment out of college was writing TI-9900 Assembly
| code for embedded test equipment control. My last contribution to
| that assignment was the hardware and software design for a specific
| test box; so I do understand the speed efficiency and the ability
| to do device control quickly. However, after becoming an analyst
| and systems engineer, I have decided that speed of execution for
| many applications is way low in importance relative to speed of
| coding. For example, at a higher level than even Fortran or C, how
| long do you think it would take to program the following in
| assembly code?
|
| fid = fopen(filename, 'r');
| y = fread(fid);
| fclose(fid);
|
| x = length(y);
|
| figure(1);
| plot(x, y, '-xr');
| title('Data Plot');
| xlabel('Data Point Number');
| ylabel('Data');
|
| After doing that, I decided I really don't like writing "for"
| loops

Hmm. Two minutes? I'm assuming that the functions invoked have already
been programmed - if not, then add an hour.

Just by accident, I happened to have these on-line:

http://www.iedu.com/mrd/c/plot_pkg.c

and

http://www.iedu.com/mrd/c/PCHR.ASM

The first will plot your graph on an Epson FX-80 (the title and label
functions are in another file, not on-line), and the second is for a
CP/M putchar-like function. fopen(), fread(), and fclose() are
similarly quick and easy. g

You didn't specify what figure() does, so I didn't include it in the
estimate.

Optimizing compilers have pretty much eliminated the assembly language
performance advantage...

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto

In article ,
Mark & Juanita wrote:
...snipped...

....................................... For example, at a higher level
than even Fortran or C, how long do you think it would take to program the
following in assembly code?

fid = fopen(filename, 'r');
y = fread(fid);
fclose(fid);

x = length(y);

figure(1);
plot(x, y, '-xr');
title('Data Plot');
xlabel('Data Point Number');
ylabel('Data');
...snipped...

Does calling the same functions from assembler code count?
(and what's with the single quotes?)

--
No dumb questions, just dumb answers.

Larry Wasserman - Baltimore, Maryland -

Dios Mio!

Talk about an off-topic thread going off-topic!

Stoutman (in ) said:

| Dios Mio!
|
| Talk about an off-topic thread going off-topic!

Sometimes these things just SNOBOL out of control vbg

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto

In article ,
Morris Dovey wrote:
Stoutman (in ) said:

| Dios Mio!
|
| Talk about an off-topic thread going off-topic!

Sometimes these things just SNOBOL out of control vbg

Yeah, forget the smalltalk and get back to woodworking!

--
No dumb questions, just dumb answers.

Larry Wasserman - Baltimore, Maryland -

wrote:
In article ,
Morris Dovey wrote:
Stoutman (in ) said:

Dios Mio!

Talk about an off-topic thread going off-topic!

Sometimes these things just SNOBOL out of control vbg

Yeah, forget the smalltalk and get back to woodworking!

Assembly isn't part of woodworking?

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 00:53:25 -0500, () wrote:

In article ,
Mark & Juanita wrote:
...snipped...

....................................... For example, at a higher level
than even Fortran or C, how long do you think it would take to program the
following in assembly code?

fid = fopen(filename, 'r');
y = fread(fid);
fclose(fid);

x = length(y);

figure(1);
plot(x, y, '-xr');
title('Data Plot');
xlabel('Data Point Number');
ylabel('Data');
...snipped...

Does calling the same functions from assembler code count?
(and what's with the single quotes?)

I think the fair rule is that you only get to use the commands that are
intrinsic in the language being used. :-)

Single quotes are Matlab's string delimiters.

Same thing in C or C++ would have required developing the plot functions,
and a significant number of "for" loops.



+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

In article njsVg.7351$If3.3370@trnddc07, dadiOH wrote:
wrote:
In article ,
Morris Dovey wrote:
Stoutman (in ) said:

Dios Mio!

Talk about an off-topic thread going off-topic!

Sometimes these things just SNOBOL out of control vbg

Yeah, forget the smalltalk and get back to woodworking!

Assembly isn't part of woodworking?

--
I suppose it is. We should compile a list.

--
No dumb questions, just dumb answers.

Larry Wasserman - Baltimore, Maryland -