Or so they claim, have you ever heard a puppy explicitly deny knowledge of nuclear reactors?

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Spanish has always been strong in California and the Southwest, both because most of the first wave of European-influenced settlers here came from Mexico and other parts of Spanish-controlled Latin America (California was a Spanish territory, and was part of Mexico for about 30 years before declaring independence and joining the U.S. in 1850) and because we're border states, with a lot of movement back and forth (legal and otherwise). Many native Spanish speakers here are descended from the "Californios" (the original Spanish/Latin American settlers)). It wasn't long ago that Spanish was a required subject in California public schools, and, frankly, I think it really should be again. It's part of our state heritage, and extremely useful to have, as many public-service jobs place a strong emphasis on bilingualism.

It would be very odd for a Catholic parish here in California not to have at least one Spanish-speaking priest, and that's been the case for as long as I can remember. It's less common in Anglican and other Protestant churches, but that's changing...not so much because we've had an increase in Spanish speakers, but because people who were traditionally and culturally Roman Catholic are tending to branch out a bit in the religion department.

Of course, we have a lot of other languages here as well, being as how California is one of the states that attracts a lot of immigration. Vietnamese is pretty strong here, especially in the Bay Area.

Where Spanish is growing is in states that haven't, traditionally, had a large Spanish-speaking community. When I lived in North Carolina (1990 - 1999), the state was just beginning to see an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants (most of them monolingual migrant workers who ended up staying because there was plenty of year-round work), and was scrambling to provide necessary services.

Redwolf

One should be careful about overstating the extent to which Spanish is spoken in the US, because in some ways it's a matter of this being a particular point in history when there are lots of foreign-born Spanish speakers whose families have not been assimilated fully yet. There have been other periods like this as well, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when nativist Anglo-Saxon Americans despaired for the survival of the English language in the face of mass immigration.

The American-born children can often speak Spanish (though not always fluently), but many of them switch to English outside the home, unless they live in an area where Spanish is widely spoken, and the pervasive nature of English gives it the edge in the end, especially when it comes to anything outside of ordinary family conversation. If you listen carefully to people in California who were born here and are speaking Spanish, you realize that they mix their languages heavily, in part because they only know the English words for some things, or the English is more familiar and comes to mind first. I saw the same thing in Florida among Cuban immigrants when I was growing up. By the third generation (as has been the case with all immigrant groups in the US), even if they live in a heavily immigrant area, many of them can no longer really speak Spanish with much fluency unless they try really hard to maintain it (or they live in an isolated area where it remains the daily language), and it's usually just family conversation which they can carry on even then.

English has become like a juggernaut which sweeps away all before it, as Ireland has learned. As I think I mentioned here before, among the Navajos in the US Southwest who live on the reservation, in just one or two generations the ability to speak Navajo has gone down from something like 50-80% among new school children (depending on where they lived) to about 5%. They are losing the language even before they hit school. It used to be the strongest Native American language in terms of the percentage of speakers, and now it is very much in peril.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Do we get to select the bystander?

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I doubt it


Guilt by omission...

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Yes, but in a twist it turns out the bystander was your long lost brother!

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

You mean the one who inherited the family farm and castle and the only thing standing in my way of immeasurable wealth? Oooooooh, the dilemma!

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