Thread: What is Australias Official language? Not what you think

Originally Posted by disco2hse

I couldn't disagree more. As a nation Australia needs to demonstrate a total lack of empathy towards immigrants, intolerance against those who it perceives to be racially or ethnically inferior/different, and fear of those who might at some point offer economic or political might that could possibly destabilise federal or state governments and institutions.

That way we have less competition

And that's the beauty of a true democracy we can agree to disagree without fear or bloodshed

Originally Posted by eddiec

Language doesn't create ghettos - Fear, intolerance and unacceptance of differences creates ghettos.

I don't necessarily agree with that. I think it is much less negative. People from similar ethnic or cultural backgrounds naturally prefer to congregate together because they have more in common with each other. Also those from other countries who have been in Australia longer can offer support to new arrivals.

For example, we have a large South Aftican community in my suburb. They all just seem to gravitate here because that's where their friends and family are - and they all speak English (or what passes for English in South Effrika). They also support each other through the bureaucratic maze that is immigration. It's not sinister or intentionally designed to undermine society, it's just our social nature to group with people most like ourselves.

Let me ask you this... when you travel overseas, do you often find yourself talking to people you meet from Australia? I know I do. And it's got nothing to do with me hating the locals or wanting to destroy their country from within.

Originally Posted by solmanic

I don't necessarily agree with that. I think it is much less negative. People from similar ethnic or cultural backgrounds naturally prefer to congregate together because they have more in common with each other. Also those from other countries who have been in Australia longer can offer support to new arrivals.

For example, we have a large South Aftican community in my suburb. They all just seem to gravitate here because that's where their friends and family are - and they all speak English (or what passes for English in South Effrika). They also support each other through the bureaucratic maze that is immigration. It's not sinister or intentionally designed to undermine society, it's just our social nature to group with people most like ourselves.

Let me ask you this... when you travel overseas, do you often find yourself talking to people you meet from Australia? I know I do. And it's got nothing to do with me hating the locals or wanting to destroy their country from within.

I do agree with you on that actually - It is a natural part of a progression as people slowly become part of a community. And as time goes by and the generations pass the need to support each other fades and the community becomes much more diverse...

I think my words were more a response to an accusation of long-standing, entrenched, exclusive racially homogenous suburbs, which is what 'ghetto' conjures up in my mind. As if ethnic communities fiercely resist to be part of the broader community and lock themselves behind closed boundaries. And which, by and large, I don't believe we have in Australia.

Originally Posted by solmanic

I don't necessarily agree with that. I think it is much less negative. People from similar ethnic or cultural backgrounds naturally prefer to congregate together because they have more in common with each other.

Hmm. I don't think most of the folks in Warsaw and other places would have agreed with you there although that is how Goebbels portrayed it. A ghetto implies compulsion, not choice.

Originally Posted by blitz

And that's the beauty of a true democracy we can agree to disagree without fear or bloodshed

But your democracy is not mine. Yours is federated for one thing and based on FPTP (IIRC) but ours is MMP

Originally Posted by solmanic

Oh come on! Most of the official Chinese signs around the place are put there for tourists! Go to Japan - a far more racially homogenous society that just about anywhere - and you will see that ALL their official signage is in Japanese and English. <snip>

Well why don't you come up to Sydney and over to Macau Hurstville in the St George area. Then try to explain to me whether the shops on the east end of Forest Road are Chinese restaurants, mobile phone shops or grocery stores? Then try to tell me that the signs are for tourists and have English included.

Is about time to eliminate the English language and introduce the Ozitralian
As soon it is implemented I will stop using my Spanglish

Originally Posted by blitz

And that's the beauty of a true democracy we can agree to disagree without fear or bloodshed

Hang on there.

A true democracy?

Just which country are you talking about, surely not Australia? There is no right to free speach, there is no right to defend yourself and there is no freedom to keep and enjoy your own property free from the intervention of government.

We live in a parlimentary monarchy, we only have free speach within certain government defined limits. Our only democratic right is the responsibility to vote for those who will dictate us for the ensuing period. There are laws of sedition defined and administered by the government as they choose.

Free from bloodshed: Do you remember the Cronulla Riots?

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Is about time to eliminate the English language and introduce the Ozitralian
As soon it is implemented I will stop using my Spanglish

Wot - youse kant even spel Orztraalyaan propper!