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Barack Obama: your children should learn to speak Spanish
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Big, big truth. At last one American president says aloud that American people should learn another language instead of simply expecting everyone else in the world to learn their own language.

I- I don't understand when people are going around worrying about: we need to have English only. They- they wanna pass a law: we want just... uh... we want English only. Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But, but understand this: instead of worrying about whether... uh... immigrants can learn English (they'll learn English), you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish! You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing when- when... uh... Eu- when Europeans come over here. They all speak English, they speak French, they speak German... and then we go over to Europe and- and...u-u-o-oo, all we just can say is, "mercy beaucoup". Right?

PEOPLE ARE GOING AROUND= It's just a way of talking about what most people (or many people) do, a generalization, usually to criticize them. For example, if I think that most people can only think of money, I can say: "Today, everybody's going around thinking about money all the time".

WANNA= (coll.) Want to.

PASS A LAW= If a government passes a law, it creates a new law. A law is an official instruction to regulate something (in this case, the language people should speak). In a demo.cratic country, if people want to pass a law, they want their government to pass a law.

IMMIGRANTS= Notice that in English double consonants are there to tell you how to pronounce the previous vowel, not how to pronounce the consonants. Double consonants are pronounced as just one single consonant, but the vowel before them is (usually) pronounced as a single vowel and not a diphthong (like two sounds):
- mate /meɪt/    matter /mætə*/
- filing /flɪŋ/   filling /fɪlɪŋ/
- cute /kju:t/    cutting /kʌtɪŋ/
- diner /dnə*/   dinner /dɪnə*/
- coma  /kəʊmə/   comma /kɒmə/

WHETHER= If... or not.
We can use the conjunction WEATHER or the conjunction IF in non-conditional situations when we are talking about two alternatives: yes or no. So, the test to know if you can use "weather" is adding the sentence "or not" at the end. If you can do it, you can use "weather", if you can't, you must use "if":
- Don't forget to close the back windows if it rains (wheather)
- Tell me if you are going to come = Tell me if you are going to come or not = Tell me weather you are going to come (or not).
The phrase "or not" may be there or be implied.

YOU KNOW,= It means nothing, this is just a phrase we very often use when talking. We use it to emphasize an idea (to make it sound more obvious, as if you and everybody would agree with it) or simply as a conversation filler, to get a couple of extra seconds to think.

EMBARRASSING= A situation that makes you feel very uncomfortable because you look silly or other people look silly in front of you.

MERCY BEAUCOUP= (French) Thank you very much.

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