Jorge Ramos Calls English-Only Movement ‘Ridiculous’

Univision.com, Posted: Apr 15, 2007

MIAMI – One week after Newt Gingrich apologized for comparing Spanish to the language of the “ghetto,” Univision anchor Jorge Ramos called the movement to make English the official language of the United States “ridiculous.” In his syndicated column, Ramos calculates that the United States has the second highest number of Spanish speakers in the world, next to Mexico. Nine of 10 Hispanic families speak Spanish at home, he writes, and more and more people prefer to communicate, read and listen to their news in Spanish. “The United States is the only country I know where people are convinced that speaking only one language is better than speaking two or three,” Ramos writes. But Americans aren’t the only ones who feel threatened by the number of Spanish speakers in the United States – many Latin Americans and Spaniards call Spanish spoken in the United States lazy and uneducated, he writes. U.S. Spanish has a tremendous influence on the Spanish spoken in other parts of the world, he adds, due to the economic power of the United States. “Our northern Spanish is only threatening to those who don’t understand that languages, like imagination, grow in unusual ways,” Ramos concludes.


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