Choosing Not to Speak

First let me clarify my statement. What was meant by me saying that not speaking English has become an advantage, was referring not the lack of power the English language now holds, but the dominance of other languages in this country (e.g. through immigration, etc…) . Billy’s comment (see above) directly refers to my point: “especially if you're in Miami”. What I derived from that statement is the amounts of Spanish speaking citizens as well as non-citizens are the dominant culture in that region - thereby making the use of the English language a disadvantage. An example of this would be a majority of American owned restaurants in or near areas where there are elevated levels of concentrated diversity. Generalizing; one would find that these kitchens are predominantly filled with non-English speaking immigrants, due to low wages and high turnover rates. Yet, (and I am speaking as a primary source) the restaurant owners and managers are more inclined to attempt to communicate in Spanish before the more logical antithetical situation would occur. Why is that? Because communities of Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and countless other groups have lost the need to assimilate to the English speaking society, and are content in their own culturally hermetic cities. If you go to china town there are stores that have no signs in English, nor people inside that speak English. I am sure now that you can see what I mean by my saying that these groups can “manipulate the system”. Also to clarify again, I do not “underestimate” being multilingual, it is most definitely a valuable asset; especially for the uses in which I stated previously. As to your first statement; I do not know if you where being philosophical in your soliloquy about forsaking protocol etc.., but I would still like to comment (Briefly). In order for there to be an advancement of ANY civilization, there must be a deviation from standard protocol, sometimes seen as anarchy; this gives rise to an eventual Dialectic, where the Antitheses of the rising power (in our case non-English speakers) are confronted by the Thesis of those within the dated method of thinking (e.g. Nationalist) . What is created is a Synthesis, which could mean more people becoming Multilingual in the United States. Which would make you very happy I assume. ; )