A good discussion here on the language learning gap that exists among children born to immigrant parents in the U.S. From a strictly economical standpoint, is it more cost-effective for the U.S. to improve English education of these children, or step up bilingual education of all U.S. children in order to compete globally?

 Nashville's mayor shot down a recent initiative by the city to make English the official language. The sponsor of the bill said that it would offer an incentive for immigrants to learn English. This is, of course, hogwash. The problem in most cities is that there are not enough outlets that provide affordable, quality English education to meet the demand for it. Instead of sponsoring meaningless legislation, city leaders should try promoting and fostering more programs that provide English as a second language education. That sounds like a real incentive to learn English.

The bill allowed multilingual communication whenever required by federal rules or when needed “to protect or promote public health, safety or welfare.”

Purcell said his legal staff had advised him the measure violated the U.S. and state constitutions, and likely legal challenges would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend – “for no good reason.”

Marina Zaliznyak at Multilingual Search calls to our attention the low ratio of Spanish language websites, especially for Latin American and U.S. Hispanic populations. She speculates that the reason may be that because most acculturated Hispanics prefer to read content in English, they prefer to write it as well. A study on the Spanish-speaking blogosphere was actually done three years ago, and it pointed out:

In particular, it is still quite uncommon that news items seen or generated in the Spanish blogosphere become popular throughout it; when this happens, most of the time it’s due to the reproduction of the English blogosphere. There is also an “increasing returns” phenomenon: most bloggers (and readers of blogs) concentrate in some blogging sites (such as Blogalia or BarraPunto), and so they dominate the link space of the whole blogosphere. Finally, there is a third characteristic the Spanish-speaking blogosphere is slower than the English-speaking one: ideas, topics and links spread in a slower way.

This article illustrates the increasing demand for translators that will continue as more companies in the U.S. go global to survive. Ironically, as this article shows, the more time a person spends in the U.S., the less likely he or she is able to speak his or her native language.

Lento Maez, chairman and professor of Bilingual Education at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, said the benefits of being bilingual extend beyond simply preserving a sense of culture.

"We are a global economy, and the job market needs it," Maez said.

"When they were young, I use to talk to them both in Spanish and English," Bazan said. "If they wanted water, they'd have to say 'Yo quiero agua,' too." Now grown, Bazan's children read and understand the language, something Bazan said is important not only to the preservation of culture but to their ability to succeed in a world that increasingly places importance on bilingual skills.