I keep hearing wingnuts proclaim: "They should all learn English."
Aside from the subtle racism involved -- Okay, not always subtle -- I can't help comparing this to the response to the idea that we should all learn the metric system.
Several times the US Congress has tried to make the metric system, already adopted by the rest of the world, the standard measurement system in the USA. Every time the response is, "But that's too hard to learn."
The difference is that mandating that they learn English is mandating that they work; mandating that we learn the metric system is mandating that we work. And any amount of their work is more acceptable than any smidgin of our work.
Concretions after the jump.
Now, the English language is one of the most difficult to learn. It borrows from everybody, which makes it irregular as hell. (I had a grammar-checker at one time; my wife used it once to see "You have used the singular word, 'children,' that takes the singular form of the verb.)
You can learn to more-or-less pronounce any prited Spanish you have in front of you in less than a day. I've mispronounced English words that I know only in writing, and I'm a native speaker. It's my only language. Try pronunciation rules on "scissors" or "women." Before Dr. Seuss went over to children's books, he wrote a delightful story on the various ways you pronounce '...ough.' Another version of that is something I read on Internet once:
Maid Marian could not but bow
at the speed with which her beau
turned a bough
into a bow.
Pronunciation is better tied to spelling in English than in Chinese, but not by all that much.
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The metric system, on the other hand, is simple and easy to learn. First of all, as a measurement system it covers only a small arena. Second, it is the simplest measurement system ever used by Europeans. How many gallons in an acre-inch? (The question is quite useful if you're doing pipeline irrigation.) A hectare-centimeter, on the other hand, contains 100,000 litres. And you need only know the preface "hecto" to know that.
Almost every country in the world has converted to the metric system. It is the language of science (and of drug dealers, not often considered a particularly scholastic group). It is too hard for Yanks.
The difference is that mandating that they learn English is mandating that they work; mandating that we learn the metric system is mandating that we work. And any amount of their work is more