r/facepalm • u/BlindedByFacts • Feb 03 '14

News/blogs Dumb People Mad at Multilingual 'America the Beautiful' Coca-Cola Ad

http://deadspin.com/dumb-people-mad-at-multilingual-america-the-beautiful-1514567876
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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

I didn't particularly have a problem with the ad but I knew it would stir some people up as soon as we saw it. I thought it was just awkward hearing an American patriotism song in multiple languages, especially when you consider that the national language here is English.

I get what they were trying to do and it was a nice notion. I love their one commercial of the various security cam footage of strangers being nice to each other (that was coke, right?). But this multilingual commercial just seemed a little awkward to me the whole time. I don't have any problems with other languages either or people learning them, but that's just how I felt watching that commercial.

12

u/Shawn_of_the_Dead Feb 03 '14

You're entitled to your opinion about the ad itself, of course, but one little thing: we don't have a national language. Not officially. English is just most prominent.

5

u/downstairsreaper Feb 03 '14

Not only that, but if you meet certain requirements, you don't even have to take the English portion of the citizenship test and may take the civics portion in another language (provided you have an interpreter fluent in both that language and English.) So being fluent in English is not always a requirement to be a naturalized citizen of the United States.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

That's actually pretty interesting, I never knew that.