Hawaiian and English are the Official languages in Hawai'i

How does this fly on Capital hill?

on edit - Hawaii is a state? What, you wanted an even 50 ? ? ?

Mmmmmmm... snorkeling...

NGU.

Why do you think Hawaii is a state now rather than a independent monarchy???

Didn't give those brown Catholics in Cuba a state, right?

50.....you wanted an even 50.......

they just forgot the inconvenient fact that brown people lived there.

:sarcasm:

Merde!

It has no effect on the language on ballots, requirements for medical and legal translators, bilingual education programs, or anything else under the sun.

It's a symbol. People are getting upset because of what it symbolizes. But since it's mostly a statement of fact (always seems silly to me, legislating fact), it's meaningless to the extent it diverges from reality, as well as to the extent it's redundant with reality.

Like the legislature or courts. If English is the official language does that not replace or delete the use of Hawaiian?

The Senate bill--which is so far only in the Senate, not passed by the House and signed by the president, and therefore not law--would affect only the federal government; moreover, even there it specifically excludes affecting any use of any language as authorized or mandated by law.

So if there's a federal law stipulating that interpreters are necessary in federal court, that law's unaffected. If Hawaii allows Hawaiian to be used in the legislature there, that is unaffected. If Houston has ballots in Vietnamese and Spanish, that's unchanged.

And if the US legislature tried to impose English on states by statute, I'm fairly sure that states-rights folk would be up in arms, and most courts would strike it down.

along with English

Here's some interesting material from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_in_the_United_States

French is widely spoken in Maine and in Louisiana, a former colony of France, where it is still used with English as the state's de facto official language. Several states and territories are officially bilingual:

Louisiana (English and French),
Hawaii (Hawaiian English and Hawaiian),
Puerto Rico (Spanish and English),
Guam (Chamorro and English),
American Samoa (Samoan and English);
And one is officially trilingual:

Northern Mariana Islands (English, Chamorro, and Carolinian).
Until the 1950s, Pennsylvania was officially bilingual in English and German

http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/languages.html

'course, that doesn't include English........

I was just going to point that out. This whole "English is the official language" thing is just bullshit, IMO.

and the signs are now in English AND Spanish.

Pennsylvania *was* bilingual in English and German because Germans helped settle that state. And that is also why Louisiana was bilingual in English and French.

However, Minnesota was settled by the French, Germans, Scandinavians and Irish. Never the Spanish, yet that is the language now appearing as the English alternative. This is not the same as the examples you cited above.

My area, as an example, was settled by the French, Spanish, then Anglo-Americans, Germans, and Irish. Now, its almost Monolingual English, except for the Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic places that are popping up all over the place, in addition to places like Sears that are becoming slowly multi-lingual. All this means is that demographic changes are occuring, no more, no less. Don't see what the big deal is. :shrug:

Same with Puerto Rico, if they want their own language, too.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

No indigenous rights. An overthrown and subjugated people.

Don't ever forget, they were overthrown by REPUKES - from the president on down.

It's started EARLY - the rottening of the repuke party.

its another way of squashing what little hawaiian rights are left

:)

Read the legislation (which, in any event, is currently only passed by one house of Congress). No use of any language as authorized or mandated by law would be affected. Nothing that isn't under the jurisdiction of the federal government would be affected.

But it doesn't matter: The appropriate mood is conditional even for how it would affect future claims of linguistic rights against the federal government, since the legislation is only one-third of the way through the process.

seems to have fallen into the archives, though.

I had forgotten that French was official in La. That makes two bilingual states -- and I've lived in both!

So that makes at least 3 states affected.