National Weather Service no longer translating products for non-English speakers
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I don't think anyone would debate that point (feel free to swap France for any other country).
While for some reason it does feel more borderline in the case of Spanish in the US, I'm not sure why?
TIL.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-wo...
It's pretty hypocritical to unironically use an Italian idiom for a Mediterranean pidgin that literally means `language of the Franks`, i.e., French, in a comment supporting neo-reactionaries' attempts to shut minorities out of the government services they deserve per the democratic social contract not to mention pay for with their taxes.
I've always thought it meant more "language of the francs (old french currency)", ie "the language of doing business"
Learn something new every day
>i.e., French, in a comment supporting neo-reactionaries' attempts to shut minorities out of the government services they deserve per the democratic social contract not to mention pay Shut out? They came of their own volition to a nation known to primarily speak English, did not learn English or have a means to communicate in English, and that's on us if we don't bend a knee? I can tell you any american living in France, they're gonna find situations where businesses say straight up (in French), speak French or I won't help you. I guess those poor Americans were just getting shut out
The US has an official language. It is English. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/desi....
"To promote unity, cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens, ensure consistency in government operations, and create a pathway to civic engagement, it is in America’s best interest for the Federal Government to designate one — and only one — official language. Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society.
Accordingly, this order designates English as the official language of the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States
> On March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14224 to symbolically designate English as the official language of the United States for the first time.[2][23] The U.S. Congress has never passed legislation declaring an official language at the federal level,[24][25] but English is typically used by the federal government and in states that do not have an official language.
However, the order opens with the line “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,” and I know of no law or constitutional clause that grants the President the power to designate an official language.
I could easily be mistaken, as there are a lot of laws on the books and this isn’t my field of expertise. Usually, though, an executive order will cite the relevant authority so that everyone understands where the power comes from; this one doesn’t.
It’s also mostly symbolic, aside from rescinding a previous order— None of the executive agencies are directed to halt producing or processing non-English documents, for instance.
In Netherlands they'll translate things in various languages. If you get stopped by the police and they need to communicate they'll get a translator; pretty much doesn't matter which language you're speaking (within reason). Easily 50+ languages.
The French are really particular. The USA often used the phrase "melting pot". So I find the comparison with France quite odd.
To stay on the topic of weather, after a quick scan of https://meteofrance.com, I don't know how to have it show a different language.
E.g.:
Finnish/Swedish/English: https://www.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/, https://sv.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/, https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/
Italian/English: https://www.agenziaitaliameteo.it/, https://www.agenziaitaliameteo.it/en/
A dozen or so languages (full forecasts available in about half): https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/kokusai/multi.html
To better inform everyone their are plenty of French laws and announcements that are translated to English ( I moved there right before Covid and had to rely on said services at first ).
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R2771?l...
And they provide state news services in various languages including English
https://www.france24.com/en/ https://www.rfi.fr/en/
More complicated for your argument is there are parts of the USA that have had Spanish as the primary language since they joined the USA. San Antonio, Texas for example I don’t believe has ever been majority anglophone and it doesn’t become more anglophone the further south you go. My wife’s family has been in Texas since it was Spain, and they only in very recent generations switched to English primarily.
I’m not sure if you find any of this convincing, but I hope at least realize it is a bit more complicated than you may have realized.
This is not the point. The point is that there should not be an expectation. French is the language of France. Moving there and expecting people to communicate you in English is not something we should be celebrating.
> San Antonio, Texas for example I don’t believe has ever been majority anglophone
This is not true. 2/3rds of San Antonio households speak English at home. Then you add in people who speak another language at home but still speak English.
https://satxtoday.6amcity.com/most-common-languages-san-anto...
France is in a league of its own in this regard, since French is not just the official state language (and has been for some time, not a few weeks like in the US), but it's also the mandated language for commercial and business use. However, the French state doesn't just mandate that, it also creates the conditions for it, for instance by providing (and requiring) free, universal French-language elementary education for all its citizens.
And even so, they're still not universally French-only, even though they're probably the most centralist of all EU countries in this regard.
Citizenship and residency have both benefits, but also obligations. GP moved to France without a good grasp of the local language.
Note: I'm importantly not talking about the native minority languages in France.
A good grasp of French language is not a requirement for French residency. Some visas require it, but not all, and if you can travel and reside in France without a visa, you don't have to know it. For EEA and Swiss citizens, all you need is a valid ID and a clean record.
> Note: I'm importantly not talking about the native minority languages in France.
Why not? NWS translated languages in minority languages of the US, that's exactly what this is about.
English was mentioned above the GP, which is why it was brought up, but European institutions commonly provide English translations along with regional languages in part because a lot of the EU population is bilingual. That actually helps a lot, especially since state regulation is a little slow to catch up with society at times. E.g. where I'm from we have a sizable Turkish population, and while Turkish is an officialy-recognised minority language, some local institutions are slow to catch up with population dynamics, so a lot of Turkish residents end up perusing the English version instead and they're fine with it.
It's an interesting one. I guess it's a requirement to learn French to naturalize as a French citizen, but there isn't an obligation to speak it if you already are a citizen. It's pretty subtle difference.
On the other hand citizenship in question is not really French citizenship, but European citizenship. It's polite and makes total sense to learn French when living in France, but not a legal requirement. As a citizen of another member state I can just move there and have the same rights as citizens with the sole exception of not voting in the national elections.
Re San Antonio, they actually are counting the metro area which brings in a lot of white suburbs and throws the numbers off a lot but in the interest of being balanced, let’s say I’ll concede the point.
There are still a lot of US citizens in San Antonio that speak Spanish primarily, I think you’d be surprised by this, I know I was the first 200 times I met someone like that, lots of people there with roots back several generations still speaking with English with an accent.
So I guess I just misunderstood where you were coming from but I’m interested as I also see in another thread you commented on this :
> Citizenship and residency have both benefits, but also obligations. GP moved to France without a good grasp of the local language. Note: I'm importantly not talking about the native minority languages in France.
So can you elaborate a bit on your comment about minority languages? I believe there are way more multigenerational Spanish speakers in the former Spanish/Mexican parts of the USA than there are Basque, Alsacien, or Breton speakers, so if I understood you correctly you’re ok with some carve outs for the Alsaciens, Catalans, Bretons and Basques of France. If you disagree with the above statement or if I just misunderstood I’d be interested too.
PS yes I moved without perfect French, but it wasn’t for lack of trying and experience in learning similar languages, in the end, I just wasn’t willing to bail on my employer last minute who’d put all this money and planning into this, so I just muddled through. It worked out after all.
How many French cities have English names?
Thousands of American cities have Spanish names because they were founded by Spanish explorers. 20% of U.S. states have Spanish names.[1] I'm not arguing that this is reason enough for government announcements to be in English, but I think that comparing the use of Spanish in the U.S. to the use of English in France is invalid.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Spanish...
Taking an extreme example, if I go to North Korea, I don't expect to criticize Dear Leader and not be disappered and sent to labor camp.
...Did I swap it right?
In fact, taking your extreme surprise even further, you'll find things in Southern France translated into languages you've never heard of, too, simply because there are a lot of French citizens who speak them.
> While for some reason it does feel more borderline in the case of Spanish in the US, I'm not sure why?
Because:
1. English has only recently (as in, about a month ago) become the official language of the US at a federal level. It's not necessarily super controversial (since it's singularily spoken by roughly 78% of the population) but six weeks isn't exactly tradition.
2. English is either not the official language, or has co-official status, in 18 states, and the NWS is a federal agency, so it does need to provide services to those 18 states, too.
> I don't think anyone would debate that point (feel free to swap France for any other country).
Practically all democratic countries debate that point, actually. State-level services are obligated to cater to their citizens, not the other way around.
Swapping France for my country, yeah, it's been a settled debate for more than 25 years now (and we've been late to the table): state institutions have to provide their services in whatever language the citizen who requests them primarily speak, and under specific circumstances (law enforcement, judicial, health etc.) in whatever language a foreign citizen who is detained or in need of assistance speaks. If they need to, they can hire translators, but they can't say no, because they're the ones providing a service to the people, not the other way around.
Putting peoples in harm's way just because they don't speak the language is petty, especially for a country as rich as the US, even more especially when they make such a big thing of their superior technology and Silicon Valley and AI...
Artificial intelligence can't beat human stupidity, apparently.
When I went to Norway I was a little disappointed that I hardly needed any of the Norwegian I took the time to learn. Though it did come in handy when I was able to read the sign stating the tram stop we were waiting at was actually closed and to go to a different one.
If I was in Brittany, I would also have a Breton translation, and in Perpignan, a Catalan translation.
The reason is just basic respect.
That's what we do in Germany. Many of our services on a city, regional and national level provide at the very least English translations.
Case in point: https://www.stadt-koeln.de/index.html
Click on the button at the top with the translation icon and it'll show you tons of languages. Are any of these official languages in Germany or in Cologne? Nope. But we generally care about people who visit or might not be fluent in German, so we provide it anyway. It's the right thing to do.
But I guess wanting to help people, or in general being helpful to others, is a dying value in many places.
It has an executive order from the Chief Executive directing all federal government services be conducted in English only. Congress has enacted no law declaring English as the official language of all states, nor can it do so without a constitutional amendment unless it does so as a further amendment to the interstate commerce act.
But then again, I noticed that in the last few years more and more offerings were in other languages, too. During covid, many announcements or the app paid for by the government supported multiple languages. There might not be a right to perform official duties in languages other than German, but more and more it's a possibility. Sibling comments found similar examples.
My point being: much of the western world seems to move towards openness, inclusiveness, and accessibility, whereas the US currently moves backwards, as exemplified by the OP.
US doesn't just move backwards, it has a very specific behavior mode -- one of a culture that perceives itself to be under a threat of disappearing.
It's usually a behavior of a diaspora community that doesn't want to give in to assimilation or a country resisting colonization. Thus a focus on token symbols -- ash crosses, fetishization of language, grandstanding on the most nonsense and minor token issues.
The group that exhibits this behavior struggles to put up boundary between "them" and "us".
Needless to say I moved here from a region where that would be shocking and offensive, and I don't really fit in culturally. But the land was cheap.
But that's the thing about America. We don't have ein Volk. Or to put it another way, what does foreign mean to a nation like America? Lots of languages are spoken natively in America. That most people speak English is an accident of history and a matter of convention reinforced by bigots trying to "other" their neighbors. Americans could have just as easily ended up mostly speaking German.
its very likely that plenty of US citizens have never spoken no read anythjng in english in their life
In the end it is pure xenophobia. Pure, cruel xenophobia, putting people in harm's way because you couldn't care less about them.
It does seem like the plan is to slash that number too, and they're succeeding.
A significant number, or possibly a majority of, adult native English speakers in the US actually speak English significantly below their formal education level: around 90% of them have at least graduated high school, but 54% of them read English below sixth grade level.
Standard English competency testing for the citizenship test is a joke (you have to read and write one of three sentences in a manner that demonstrates basic comprehension and familiarity with the language). But even so, there's a sizable number of native adult English speakers who would fail it.
So while they may have had to learn English in school or used it to pash their citizenship test, that's no guarantee that adults still speak it well enough. That's not particularly surprising, given that there are large, non-English speaking communities in the US. Someone who's passed their citizenship test in the 1980s and has spoken English maybe once a week afterwards in a shop or a restaurant is likely to have forgotten most of it.
inb4 "but you have to know it to come here": kind of (adjusting for the barebones testing), but the largest group of low-English literacy adults is actually white, native-born Americans, and most low-English literacy adults are native-born: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
do you expect this to be the sole example you've failed to consider?