Monday, March 24, 2008

Second Strongest Argument

My second strongest argument would be the question of health and safety. Several health, safety, or other hazards may occur if a person does not receive the adequate information regarding health that they need in their own languages. Minorities or people who do not understand English would have a difficult time accessing health care or insurance as well.
For instance, if there were to be a law indicating that English must be used in all business/school/government-related occurences, how can someone who does not speak English get information from an English-speaking c0mmercial over how cigarettes negatively impacts one's health? How about insurance companies? They are businesses too; therefore, they would only be accessible to English-speaking people.
These aren't necessarily the case in all instances, however, they are examples that cause people to take into consideration the importance of having multilingualism as well as how it may affect people's health and safety. Also, there are many signs in multiple languages, such as how to perform CPR. If such signs are not legible in the nation's most common languages besides English, how are those thousands of people going to know what to do if such a situation ever occured.