Aqui Se Habla Ingles!
For all you red blooded American Gringos who–shame on you–think English should be the official language of our nation, the title of my blog translates to “English is spoken here!” That should be the only spanish language billboards that immigrants see.
But I see them all the time along the sides of highways and in the cities around me. Beer ads. Cell phone ads. Home loan ads. Spanish, spanish, spanish.
It’s bad enough to always have to press a number for your OWN language when you can a customer service line. But to have to see giant messages in a foreign language is more than an assault on our senses. It is an assault on our CULTURE, in my opinion.
Now we have a car dealer in South Florida who is airing Spanish language ads for his business. So what, you might ask. Well, this has been done a million times–on SPANISH LANGUAGE TELEVISION. The difference here is that the ads are running on ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHANNELS! That’s right, on the major stations and networks.
I am a capitalist and perhaps this is just the logical direction businesses must take to chase the Almighty Dollar.
But it stinks in my book. People who do this should be ashamed of themselves. Not only is it mindless and shameless pandering, it is also an assault on our language and nation.
I only wish more people would see it that way. But the fact that we are seeing beer ads in Spanish while we are stuck in traffic, pizza chains are accepting PESOS for payment, and now car dealers are advertising in foreign languages on English language networks CLEARLY shows people aren’t seeing it that way.
Press 1 if you need to re-read this blog in Spanish.