Multilingual hot line for city services in Oakland [5 languages]

SF Chronicle ^ | May 29, 2003 | Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer

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Oakland, where waves of Asian and Latino immigrants have settled in the past two decades, unveiled a 24-hour hot line Wednesday that gives residents information on 500 city services in five different languages.

City officials believe Oakland is the first in the nation to offer an automated phone system in more than two languages. Two years ago, the city became the first in California to adopt a law that requires hiring bilingual staff and translating city documents.

[LurkedLongEnough]

Five down, 115 to go.

[dandelion]

No Klingon? No Elven? These people are SOOOOOO humanocentric...

[glock rocks]

no igbo?

this is so aja ana

[D. Brian Carter]

As S.O.D. (the Stormtroopers of Death) used to sing, "Speak English or Die". Well, maybe that's a bit extreme, but this BS is getting out of hand.

[just deserts]

An S.O.D. bump!

[OXENinFLA]

Welcome to America, NOW LEARN TO SPEAK F'N ENGLISH!!!

[manic4organic]

Can you imagine how big the road signs are going to be in California soon? A simple "EXIT" sign will have to be 30 feet tall to incorporate every language. Wait, why doesn't everyone just learn English instead!?

[FITZ]

They might as well save money and drop the English line. They become so politically correct when they hire bilingual types ---now they must be fluent in the foreign language but usually don't speak English well at all.

[D. Brian Carter]

I was afraid no one on this forum would know who S.O.D. was. Remember "Anti-Procrastination Song"?

[vikingcelt]

And the Oakland Public School District is bankrupt!!! I don't know how I managed to live there for over 20 years...I left when all that "diversity" just got to be too much. When just to get to Alameda I had to drive through what was starting to look more and more like Tijuana.

[ought-six]

"And the Oakland Public School District is bankrupt!!! I don't know how I managed to live there for over 20 years...I left when all that "diversity" just got to be too much. When just to get to Alameda I had to drive through what was starting to look more and more like Tijuana."

What did you expect? It's only happened throughout history in every other place on the planet where multiculturalism has taken root. It's a proven and indisputable fact: When a society no longer has a common culture but is populated with various separate and distinct cultures, it is inevitable that conflict will result between the conflicting and competing cultures. The liberals and leftists (they now call themselves "progressives") have sown the seeds of a catastrophic upheaval by their insistance on "diversity" and "multiculturalism." When the liberals and progressives took the position that assimilation into a common "melting pot," in which we all became Americans, was demeaning to the original groups, they set the stage for a civil uprising of biblical proportions. There WILL be a social explosion of violence among the various "cultures," and it is going to be very, very nasty. It has already starting to fester and grow in some areas, and when it blows it isn't going to be pretty. Welcome to the new America, brought to you courtesy of the liberals and the progressives.