Thank you Veterans.

Thank you Veterans:

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God Bless America, Bill O|||||||Omailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III
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"Only one standing is the guy with the wheelchair." It looks like downtown San Francisco, I'm surprised he's not the only one even out there. At least without a protest sign.

Cheers, - Jeff G

67 Kaiser Jeester Commando 50 Willys 4x4 StationWagon
Reply to
Keep YerSpam

Bill,

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Always a Brides Maid and never a Bride

Reply to
Coasty

You're welcome. Glad I could help.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

Yes, thank you all!

Andy

2001 TJ Even though it's not a MB, I saluted it!
Reply to
Andy

Amen!!!!

If you can read this, thank a teacher...

If you can read this in English, thank a Veteran!!!

Reply to
Brian Foster

Reply to
Rich

A special thanks goes out to those that have lost their lives to allow us to be here today. And another to those who can't be with their families today because they are in a distant land.

ERIC J. BAILEY, 2d Lt, USAF

Reply to
Eric

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

Any time, Bill. Someone has to make sure there are still "real Jeeps" in the world... ;-)

Reply to
Eric

Thank god sanity seems to reign at least somewhere. Why is it that when I go to an ATM in Podunk, Ohio I have to CHOOSE a language? Specifically Spanish. Why the hell is that? Why do I have to watch (well, actually "I" don't) TV shows that seem hell bent on teaching kids Spanish? Excuse me but shouldn't that be the other way around? Shouldn't the shows be striving to teach ENGLISH to those who can't (or won't?) speak it? It wouldn't bother me if I had to choose from a list of languages i.e. English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, etc. That at least I could understand as trying to be a convenience to international travelers. When the only choices are English or Spanish, now we are trying to cater to a specific ethnic group that for all intents and purposes is not just a bunch of "visitors", and I think that is plain old wrong.

I wouldn't expect to move to Japan and have them provide everything to me in English. It would sure be nice, but I wouldn't EXPECT it as some sort of god-given right. I wouldn't expect to put my kid in a Japanese public school and demand that they make accommodations to teach my kid in English. The best I would hope for would be English assistance while they went about teaching my kid JAPANESE.

This country was founded by English speaking Europeans which is good enough for me. Later there was a HUGE influx of immigrants from nations all over the world, whose sole interest was to come here to be an AMERICAN, not a "fill in the blank"-American. Not Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Polish Americans etc, but just plain old Americans. These people promptly got about the business of pursuing their dreams AND learning the language of the host country which just happened to be ENGLISH.

This country truly was a melting pot as back then the immigrants wanted to FIT IN and be Americans, nothing more. Therein is the issue at the root of a huge portion of today's racial problems in this country. People coming here don't want to fit in any more. They want to come from whatever little hell hole they were born it to someplace nice, and then try to convert it to a carbon copy of the hell hole they just left. Why are people today so hell bent on applying labels to themselves? African-American, Mexican-American, XYZ-American and whatnot.

Isn't it enough to be an American anymore?

Reply to
Tom Greening

Ditto and best wishes!

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

If you went to Japan today you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't speak English.

Reply to
Billy Ray
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Clarification: The immigrants who came over in the late 1800's/early 1900's had for the most part a difficult time assimilating, and they ended up settling in large numbers in specific regions (think of the predominantly ethnic neighborhoods of NYC). By and large the immigrants tried to keep their "old world" ways while making a new life here. Hence, a lot of them even then didn't learn English, but they didn't really have to since they lived in neighborhoods where their native language was spoken. There were exceptions of course, but I'm talking about the vast majority.

The children of the immigrants, however, were the ones to embrace assimilation and "cast off" the old world ways, attended school here and learned English, and saw America as their true home.

My father's mother moved to this country in the early 1900's (she was very young then, moved here with her parents). My grandfather's family moved here and he was born here around the same time. They all settled in the Pittsburgh area where most of the Italian immigrants worked in the steel mills. Since they were mainly Italians, the mills had Italian foremen who could communicate well. I don;t think my great-grandfather's generation ever learned to speak English well, but my grandparents spoke both English and Italian, since they grew up in the American schools but at home Italian was spoken. Growing up in my immediate family, we only spoke English in the household, but I grew up in southern Arkansas...not many last names ending in vowels there.

There were a lot of English/Irish in the Pittsburgh area too, and that was my mother's background. But her family emigrated prior to the Revolutionary War and originally settled in Virginia, if memory serves.

To get back on topic, my great uncle (grandfather's brother, son of Italian immigrants) served in the US forces in North Africa during WWII as a tank driver. He lost most of his hearing and his hair turned white before he finished his tour.

Wifey's dad was in the 7th Infantry in Korea, serving initially in Inchon. His best memories during the war were driving around Marilyn Monroe for a few days.

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult -- for example, cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased program of changes to iron out these anomalies. The program would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therfor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

Received from Carrie Burroughs.

Reply to
Billy Ray

Now that's funny.

Reply to
Matt Macchiarolo

Es hat mich in die Hose zu pissen bewegt.

Earle

Reply to
Earle Horton

Not if a vetran has anything to say about it ...

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

There are any number of countries you could go to and be hard pressed to find no spoken English (India comes to mind), but that's not really the point. The point is that if you are going to emigrate to a country you should have the good graces to adopt the predominant language of the country you intend to call home. Btw, I have been to Japan on a number of occasions (going again in Dec. for about a month), and while you do find a lot of people that can speak at least SOME English, it's not like everyone is fluent, or even remotely competent. English is taught grades 7-12 (generally) but most people don't continue or keep current after.

Reply to
Tom Greening

I may be all wet in my view, no doubt, but I was thinking more along the lines of those who showed up from the 20's on (which may or may not make a difference) but I'm guessing you see my point regardless.

Reply to
Tom Greening

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