A couple of years ago, I went to the grocery store with my uncle. After shopping around for whatever it was we were looking for, we ended up waiting in an unbearably long line because the store was so crowded. We found ourselves behind a middle-aged white man in front of us with a Hispanic mother with about five small children in front of him. The young girl at the register had just finished ringing up the woman's items and was trying to tell her the total and ask her payment method. The cashier was being very patient at first and spoke slowly and repeated herself a few times. But, the Hispanic mother was getting frustrated and began to yell at the girl in Spanish.
Both of them began yelling at each other and the manager of the store came over. The manager did not speak Spanish either. The man in front of us had had enough of this. He started screaming at the cashier and her manager and told them that it couldn't kill them to learn some Spanish and there was no place in the job market for ignorant people who cannot speak both languages. He turned to talk to the Hispanic woman when my uncle snapped. He started yelling at the guy and told him that we were in America and English is spoken here and there should be no reason to speak anything else while you are in this country. Is that how America should be? Should America have one uniform language throughout the nation in order to unify its people and avoid conflicts like this one? Or does having a single language in the country defy the basic principles of freedom on which it was built?.
It used to be said that America was a melting pot. Many people from many different countries came here to make America what it is today. "Our national motto is E pluribus unum-out of many, one. Immigrants of many nationalities built our nation, but the melting pot' melded us into one people- (U.S. English 10).
When this country was first built, it was uncertain what language was to be spoken here.
