Boston City Council Wants to Learn Spanish to Communicate With Constituents

The Boston Globe reports:

Saying he and other city councilors need to learn to speak to a changing Boston, the City Council president, Michael F. Flaherty, is arranging to hold weekly Spanish classes at City Hall for council members and their aides.


''I'm encouraging everybody to take advantage of this opportunity," said Flaherty, who has hired a tutor to provide instruction for two hours each Thursday in a City Hall conference room. Flaherty, who speaks rudimentary Spanish and who plans to take the classes himself, said he sent a memo this week to the City Council's 12 other members.

''The 2000 Census data puts Spanish as the second-leading language spoken behind English," he said. ''If residents are linguistically isolated, then they're not getting involved, they're not telling us how to make things better for them. We need to open up the lines of communication for everyone's benefit."

How far away are we from SAT's in Spanish? Separate courts in Spanish? Road way signs in Spanish? What about all those other ethnic groups through out American history that didn't get special "use" for their native tongue?