Why do US schools promote foreign languages without ever any education in native languages …

[Anonymous]

Maybe we should also teach our kids whatever languages cavemen (and of course cavewomen) used. Kids could probably become fluent fairly quickly because there weren’t a lot of words or complex sentences. Just stuff like, “Me cold,” “Me hungry,” and “I wish someone would hurry up and invent f’ing matches.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These languages are not widely spoken. Spanish is. Spanish is also, arguably a native language of the US as when the US was formed and expanded it took over Spanish territories.

Florida, Texas, most of the Southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, large swaths of California), Puerto Rico, and others were taken from either Mexico or Spain via war. Many people already living there were descended from Spanish ancestors.

Though by this logic we also should count Dutch (New Netherlands), Swedish (New Sweden), and French (the Louisiana Purchase, even if that was from Spain) as "native" languages.

Just FYI - there weren't "many people" living in former "Spanish territories" (except Puerto Rico) when the US took them over, and even fewer who were descended from or spoke Spanish. Spain (and Mexico) never had real sovereignty over this land, as the number of people were so few. There were some missions, a few trading settlements, etc. Otherwise, mostly native Americans, some Germans, Mormons, etc.