Apples and oranges.
Playing loud music is against the rules on public transit; speaking in a different language other than English is not.
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Wait… the “toupee” fallacy? Have to look that one up.
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But headphones would mean she couldn’t PrivPester!!
I’m not sure that you meant to reply to me there. I haven’t yet weighed in on my opinion of people in the USA being labeled “Americans” and excluding any citizens of the other countries in North America from the term.
Honestly, enough baggage has been slathered on the “American” identifier, especially under the latest and “greatest” administration this country has ever seen, that I can’t imagine anyone outside of the USA’s borders would want the term applied to them. Even in the 80s, when I was stationed in England, the term “American” was not something you wanted people to see you as.
When I traveled back then we were advised to do as much as we could to look Canadian.
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Are there truly rules about that sort of thing?
If so, where do they end? Is singing loudly against the rules? Talking on your phone loudly? Having a shouting match with the person sitting next to you?
Staaaaaap, plz
Your topic is off topic.
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I must have clicked the wrong arrow for “go to reply below”!
I too remember being told to put Canadian flag pins and decals on things to make it clear what country I was from.
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OK… Like the one did by some shops at Florida that takes brazilians as thieves…
But, you have a point, to be fair.
Maybe the definition should be that many Americans (specially those not accomplished on international travel) expects that people in other countries speaks with them on English, to the point of not even try some basic, lifesaving phrases like “Quanto que custa?” (How it costs?) or “Quero isso aqui.” (I want this one)
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Despite being a longtime user of the term USAnian, I’ve not noticed any eye-rolling. But maybe that’s because I invariably spell it with those three upper-case letters and don’t see what presumably would be eye-rolling emoticons.
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Ugh, this is like #notallwhitepeople. Is it, let’s see, #heyotherpeopledothestupidshitwedotoo?
If I had time, I’d look for studies, but I’ll just toss out anecdotal evidence for now: No, it’s not at all “common” for POC to complain about that. I have no doubt that racist white people do it a LOT more, because complaining that others need to “Speak English, this here is Amuricuh!” is just another manifestation of their racism.
Another valuable study would be of how much these white bigots do it to people who apparently aren’t white, versus say, white-looking people speaking French or German. I again have no doubt that the former happens a LOT more than the latter (which, I’d bet, hardly ever happens at all).
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Not that anyone needs to modulate it, but I’ve noticed that when people are speaking in a foreign language where I understand a little bit, even two or three words – Spanish, German, French, even Russian or Japanese – I can quickly tune it out. But a language where I know none of it, it’s lot harder for me to. Weird how the brain works.
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Well it ain’t South America. What other category of the American continent are they supposed to consider Canada a part of?
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Hah. My Canadian mother used to occasionally express vexation about the term American.
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The racist woman is in the wrong, but personally, her ignorance doesn’t bother me quite as much as everyone else’s haste to join in booing her. (But I have pretty extreme views on group emotion).
All racists demand that people speak English, but not everyone arguing that a nation requires a common language is being racist. For community to mean anything more than people occupying the same physical space, you do need some kind of common language. So it’s not constructive to just dismiss that point.
The correct response to “everyone should speak English” is that, yes, we do all need a common language, but:
- for that very reason, there already are significant penalties for not speaking the majority language. It excludes you from social activities, employment, emergency services, etc. If people don’t find even that motivation sufficient, you have to wonder if language is really the only bias working against immigrants in America.
- it’s possible to speak more than one language. If someone has broader horizons than you, that’s not their problem.
- If all the best jobs / parties / TV shows were in Spanish, then yeah, you’d be missing out. But that’d make the case for Spanish as the national language.
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Super-North, obviously.
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The Canadian one, hur durr durr.
You’re missing the point of my question. If Canadians are glad to cede “American” as a descriptor for people in the U.S., that seems contrary to also placing their own country in “North America,” which would make them, you know, “Americans” too. I was trying to point out that contradiction, sorry if I wasn’t clear about it.
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Ya but that’s not her point. The people who weren’t speaking English were doing so with each other. Had they been talking to her, they very likely would have used English.
I think your point about needing a common language makes sense. Indeed, it’s flatout obvious. But it does not mean that it’s okay to demand that people who speak another language instead speak English even to each other.
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Got it (now). Had you said…
If Canadians do NOT consider Canada part of North America, I could see why they WOULDN’T object to the US monopolising the term…
…then I’d have got it.
Stating it the other way round was not, to my mind, a corollary of the version in italics above. I’ve polished my Pedant Pendant badge for today, so you’re good to go, now. 
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I hope that was sarcasm and not a genuinely serious query.
Of course there are.
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I recall a big push in the early 80s (at least at my High School) for everyone to learn Esperanto, because it was going to be the language that unified us all.
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