Go look at my census statistics and tell me about hard data. And i'm sure potential fans all check the teams online message boards before deciding to go to a game, as the posts of one fan might make/break them doing to the game. Who gives a crap.
You also missed the group of Russians, Ukranians, etc. who were born and raised in the U.S. and whose parents were born either in the U.S. or in another country like Australia, Brazil or Western Europe, and whose grandparents or great-grandparents in turn had escaped the Soviet Union shortly after World War 1 (and the Russian Revolution) or before World War 2. There are a lot more of them than you may think, though unfortunately you are correct in that most of them are (or consider themselves to be) somewhat "upper class" and look down upon sports. As a matter of fact, the largest concentration of Russians in the U.S. is in the SF Bay Area and in New York (though I heard that Sacramento's Russian population is growing as well), while the largest concentration of Ukranians (as well as Poles) in the U.S. is in Chicago. For those American-born Russians, having Spartan announcements in both English and Russian would be an amusing novelty initially but ultimately shrugged away, as while maintaining the Russian heritage is important to most of them, the U.S. is really the only home they've ever really had and English really is their first language. Still, it would be pretty cool to have a "Russian Night" at Spartan (probably if the Quakes one day pick up Igor Simutenkov?), though most of the fans at Spartan would probably start erroneously screaming "commies!" at the performers and throw their hot dogs and stuff at them. GO EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
How to get Russians to come to MLS matches? Free Vodka night. And to attract the COmmie hippies, "Uncle Joe" Bobblehead Night.
I can definitely go for that! In all seriousness, though, the Russian community I described is probably one of the most anti-commie communities you'll ever find (which may seem like a contradiction to most Americans raised during the Cold War who mistakenly believe that "Russian" automatically equals "commie", but makes perfect sense to those who truly study history). Your statement was still amusing, though. GO EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Yes. I know anti-communism, i am a Hungarian immigrant. I was talking about the American suburban hippies that are communists because they are taught and brainwashed communism in American college--not Russians. Always liked the Russian sense of humour.
It's not surprising that those who hate communism the most are the ones who actually had to live under it, and those who admire it the most are usually the ones who've lived the furthest from it - but that discussion is probably for another thread and/or another board. And the Russian vodka ain't half bad either. GO EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
A trip to both sides of Berlin and to Yugoslavia in 1971/2 was enough to convince me to my core that communism was, is and always will be a repressive system that does NOT have the good of the people at heart. My trips to Leningrad, Poland, Czechoslovakia and E. Berlin in 1986 only confirmed it. This from a Berkeley liberal. (So, which thread is this? Tremor Girls? Halftime show? The second coming of Yves?)
Well, I suppose this thread will do then. BTW, did you attend Berkeley in 1971/2 or in 1986 (just curious)? GO EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Uhh, not really. There is no such language called "Hindu". But I somewhat agree with the general content of your post. How about French and German living side by side in Switzerland? Or how about French and Flemish in Belgium? Or how about Zulu, English, and Afrikaans in South Africa? Hey, they even have their national anthem in all 3 languages.
Early eighties. I was at an impressionable age when I saw soldiers chasing kids my age through the streets of Split in the former Yugoslavia. The kids had been passing out Christian tracts.
There is one called "Hindi" which is widely spoken in northern India, however. But southern Indians tend to prefer English over Hindi.
If you didn't mean "foriegn language" then what is your point? The argument is whether we should be using a foreign language PA announcement. I pointed out that most countries do little to be more hospitable to foreign languages. Most people around the world do not speak foreign languages. In fact in places like France and Germany they have laws and intense political pressure in order to insure the "purity" of their language. You can continue to go off on semantics and try to make me wrong about most people being bilingual or trilingual. You may or may not be right about the "fact" that most people speak two or more local dialects. But the fact of the matter is that Spanish is NOT a local dialect. It is a foreign language and you really don't have a point at all.
Okay I read this entire thread and now I am more depressed than usual. I have been to France, Germany, and Denmark and in every hotel and major restuarant found someone who spoke English fluently. Although sometimes I think it was just to avoid my broken German and high school French. I wish my language skills were better (the only Spanish I know I learned from watching futbol on Telemundo) and believe that those that can speak two or more languages are going to have more opportunities in the future. And now that this PSA is over...
Ditto... I've always admired the hockey PA announcer at the old Montreal Forum who made all his announcements in a seamless transition from French to English. Of course, that's mandated by Quebec's Provincial Law, but that's another thing entirely. If I had the time, I'd learn better Spanish so that maybe I could carry it off...if the need arises. My whole argument is that the need hasn't arisen...yet. First things first.
To clarify, the rest of the world just deals w/ its linguistic diversity by attempting to communicate their message by any means necessary. And they don't go into hysteria about it. Go figure. In bilingual Catalunya, at sporting events they make announcements in Spanish and Catalan. In Switzerland, German and French, and in the areas near the Italian border, Italian. In LA, they do it in Spanish and English. And you know what, the world doesn't end. Go figure. And you know what else, I've born witness to the fact that LA has a much more diverse crowd than SJ. And this is not smack talk from a Galaxy fan. I bring ppl to games, most of them Latino. And it is disturbing the dearth of Latino fans in comparison to their overall make-up in the Bay Area and San Jose in particular. But back to your question, we've said it, numerous times: it's a message to the target demographic in a language that they can understand better. If you want them to come to the next home game to check out X player for X team, what's the harm in saying it in their primary language? We want MLS to operate as a professional business, don't we? Then let's follow what corporate America has done: learn the demographic's culture and speak to them in a language that they understand. They are more likely to consume the product.
???? Go back and review what I've said, dictionary in hand. Learn the difference between a language and a dialect; refresh your memory that bilingual doesn't mean that one is fluent in a language not native to your region. A relatively minor % of the planet is fluent in a foreign language, ie a language not autochthonous to their region. THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN BEINGS ARE BILINGUAL OR TRILINGUAL, however. There's a difference. This is relevant in that IT'S NOT A BIG F'ING DEAL TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF YOUR TARGET MARKET. And, let's go over for you one last time the dribble you said: Looks like you failed your linguistics class. I repeat: most of the world speaks more than one language. I will repeat the same stats that I said b4: The vast majority of the 1.3 billion Chinese speak at least 2 DISTINCT languages plus one or 2 dialects of these languages. Let me break it down for you further: Roughly 850 million speak Mandarin Chinese (Language #1, keep track, cuz the math gets hard) as a first or second language. Roughly 150 million speak the SECOND major language Cantonese (that's language #2). Many ppl speak a dialect of Cantonese, such as Taiwanese, we're still at language #2. I won't continue dilineating the 7 distinct languages (as different as ancient Greek is to Portuguese is to German), but it is rather common for a Chinese to speak Cantonese and Taiwanese as their primary mode of communication, plus mandarin plus defend themselves in, say, Fukonese. To a lesser extent the same goes for the Indian sub-continent: ppl speak their primary regional language (#1), perhaps a dialect of it as well, plus a colonial language (like English or Hindi [sorry about the typo earlier], that's language #2) plus a neighboring regional language (#3). In sub-Saharan Africa, most ppl speak at least 3 or more distinct languages plus dialects of said languages, plus a colonial language (such as French or English). It is quite common to hear ppl switch back and forth btw 4-6 languages in the same conversation. In Central and Southern Europe, there's the linguistic center and the linguistic periphery. Provencal, Occitaine, Catalan, Basque, Corsican, the language of Brittany, etc., all proliferated until Napolean actively pursued a policy of monolingualism, w/ French (the language of Paris) chosen as the language of empire. In Italy, ppl didn't start speaking "Italian" (the Florentine dialect) until the 19th century. They spoke the language of the city-state. And it was quite common for ppl to speak their language as well as a neighboring city's language. In Spain, over 20% of Spaniards speak Spanish as a 2nd language, behind Basque, Catalan/Valenciano/Mallorquin and Galician (from which Portugues is derived). Cantonese, Fukonese, Occitaine, Provencal, Basque, catalan and Spanish in the South West US (formerly part of both Spain and Mexico), are NOT foreign languages in the aforementioned countries. Get used to it. California by linguistic definition is a diglosia, which means that English is the dominant language but that Spanish operates alongside it. French is a foreign language here. Swahili is a foreign language here. Not Spanish.
this thread is nonsense now. would a moderator (or Yves?) please close it? there's enough junk on BS as it is.
Yeah, 'cause the Earthquakes attendance and fan support is so great, there's really no need to do anything more to attempt to bring in more fans. Spartacus, don't you think you're being intellectually dishonest? You're like the guy who has a leaky roof and won't fix it when it's raining out, and then when it stops raining he doesn't fix it because it stopped leaking. My point: once there is a sizable immigrant community attending games at Spartan, then you'll already have them as fans. We need to do something nowto bring in those fans first. When I read your lack of interest in helping the quakes put together a better product it really makes me wonder. Maybe you're right and there's absolutely no benefit to be had at all with bilingual announcements and you'd just be wasting your voice, but can the Quakes as an organization afford to sit on their arses and hope that daddy Anschutz will bankroll their losses indefinitely? What's plan b? The WUSA had one business plan. It was a crap plan. It was to generate big tv ratings and market their product to the pony-tailed hooligan crowd to the exclusion of everyone else including your average sports fan who wants to go to see a grown-up game and not feel like he's on a kiddie ride at Six Flags. Well that's me. When I go to an Earthquakes game it would help to feel like I wasn't watching a male version of WUSA. I'm only speaking for myself, and maybe there's nobody else who feels weird going to MLS games as a grown adult and being surrounded by teeny boppers, but it sometimes makes me wonder if I should find a more credible team/league to follow. The fact that the Quakes are failing to draw enough fans to become sustainable from a business perspective makes it less of a personal annoyance for me, and a pretty strong sign that something is seriously wrong. And yet the atmosphere at Spartan is all about family-friendly fun and juvenile mascots, and there's no cultural depth or attempt at creating tradition. There's not much adult content at all except for the game on the field. That's going to be enough for a die-hards like me, but it sends a distinct message, to me anyway, that the product is not really intended to be adult fare or taken very seriously. I'm not saying I want any of the kids or families like TyffanySue's to go away (or get defensive), but I think the Quakes could try to blend in more content for adults so that people like myself who don't have kids and aren't interested in bobbleheads can have our own unique experience at games. And that includes, to bring this back on topic, things like atmosphere. Of course I'd love to have a fancy new SSS with a European-style clubhouse for parties and the whole nine yards, but I understand it's not just going to happen overnight. Adding a little international flair to the PA announcements, though - yes that's something that would take all of five grand to hire someone to come in and roll some r's and complement your work for 17 or 18 games a year. It just doesn't seem that difficult to pull off. Hell, ucla carlos probably has a friend who would do it for free beer.
kudos He wouldn't. It creates the impression that, hey, your community counts to us. This attitude is one of the primary reasons why Univision and Telemundo have such high news ratings: they approach local news from the perspective that what affects the local Latinos is important. I thoroughly agree. Nor should it be a word for word translation. Just some key advertisements of upcoming events, like they do elsewhere. And like I stated elsewhere, it's not necessary to translate what happened on the field b/c the context is provided by witnessing goals, yellow cards, etc. it's the out of the blue stuff that needs to be translated. I think we could all agree that there leaves much to be desired for the 3 main targeted demographics that MLS has stated is imperative to its survival: suburban soccer mom crowd, LAtinos and Eurosnobs. All 3 demographics would be improved by marketing, ANY marketing above the bare bones we see now. It seems that as each summer progresses, the FO gets more affective in their outreach to the Bay Area. I would just like to repeat something stated in one of those sports committee threads, that if SJ were to have a league-wide average in certain demographics (25-50 miles from stadium for sure, maybe Latinos?) the attendance would double. The primary goal, of course, is to get butts in the seats. But by delivering on key demographics, it contributes to ancilliary revenue from sponsors and in the future naming rights for a stadium. I've said this b4, but head south to LA and check out the turf war btw Home Depot and Loews (?): I guarantee you that AEG got more $$ from HD bc of the Galaxy's successes w/ the Latino community. Granted, they could improve in the Mexican crowd, but they're really solid on the Central American front. I hope SJ can achieve the same. But it better be soon, cuz there's not much time...