At least, that seems to be what he's saying when he agreed with a guy in Iowa who made the following statement when Perry asked for questions from the audience:
"I don't know how the rest of the conservatives in the room feel, but personally, I'm fed up with seeing the directions on every single product on every single shelf of every single store written in four languages," said the man, who didn't give his name.
Perry replied, "That is a statement, that's not a question, and I can agree with it."
http://news.yahoo.com/...
These fools can't even can their xenophobia long enough to realize that the same products that are sold here are also sold in places like Mexico, France, Germany, China, etc. So even if everybody here spoke fluent English, product directions would likely be in multiple languages. Should Italians or Peruvians be insulted that I was able to buy products there that also had instructions in several languages, including English?
It's bad enough that Americans are about the most monolingual people in the world, but is it really so terrible to simply SEE other languages? Do we not want to recognize that other languages exist, or what?
English is by far the language most widely spoken as a second language, and study after study has demonstrated that immigrants are learning English at about the same rate as they ever did, with the first generation basically speaking enough English to get by on their job, their kids who are born here speaking both English and their ancestral language, and their grandkids basically knowing only a little of their ancestral language, if that. But from the approving comments to the linked article, you'd think immigrants were flatly refusing to learn English. If that were the case, there wouldn't be waiting lists for English classes in areas with lots of immigrants all over this country. The problem is that when you're trying to work two jobs and raise a family, it's difficult to perfect your ability to learn a new language at the same time.
A joke:
Q. What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
A. Tri-lingual, or multi-lingual.
Q. How about a person who speaks two languages?
A. Bi-lingual.
Q. And what do you call somebody who speaks only one language?
A. An American.