English for Mexican Immigrants

Hola and bennivenito, estundiantils. I am be your perfesser of speaking American, President George W. Bush.



Now, some of you may be wondering, "Hey, shouldn't that guy be off somewhere making important decisions? Or clearing brush or something?" I just realized, though, you're probably wondering that in Spanish, so it would sound all messed up and funny. Actually, how can you say that in Spanish...How do you say "the big tough strong cowboy-like President clears a lot of brush on his ranch?" Uh huh...

What? "Vaquero"? Whassat mean? That can't be your Mexican word for cowboy! Vaqueero? But it sounds all gay! I an'tr no vaqueero, I'll tell you that much. Never mind.

Anyway, I thought I should show up here to teach y'all how to talk more good, cause if you want to be Amuricans like me and my pappy, you got to know how to talk English real good.

I had heard the other day that some of you all foreigners has been translating our national song, "O Say Can You See," into other languages. And I want you to know that I think that is really bad and super-duper-wrong, okay, mis amigos? It's like I said the other day...

"I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

I know that might seem hyper-critical of me...Whassat, Juan? It's "hypocritical?" Um, excuse me, Juan, but I am a white man who was born in this country. I think I know the different of me being hyper-critical and me being hypocritical. I didn't say nothing about hippos, anyway, you dumb illegal!

Anyway, I know some people might say that, just cause I don't always speak English all that good myself, that it's silly for me to lecture others about their language skills. Also, unless they don't sell newspapers in front of the Home Depot where you wait for daily employment opportunities, you'll probably remember that I spoke alot of Meixcan myself when I was running for President and even walked around waving Mexican flags. (Also, I love burritos!)

To be fair, I didn't know that was a Meixcan flag. Check out all these flags I'm standing next to right now. I can't recognize a damn one of these things accept the Amurican one. Check out this stupid flag with the leaf on it. What kind of sissy country puts a leaf on their flag? How you gonna march your soldiers into an unneccessary foreign war under a leaf flag? I bet, whatever country that flag's from, they speak French and let dudes marry each other. Am I right?

What I'm trying to say is you should all try to be more like regular, real Americans and blindly accept everything I say and do without question. Just know that, now, I have decided you foreign-types ought to learn to read and write Amurcan, cause otherwise you can't understand nothing. And I'm the Decider, so it's up to me.

So let's get started with the lesson! Everybody, take out your silly buses.

Lesson #1: The Alphubet

This is pretty much the last thing I remember learning from school, so I should be able to walk you through it real quick.

More of our Amurcan alphubet is like your Mexican one, except we got a few less letters. Like, you know that n with the squiggly thing on top of it you guys use...What'd you say, Guillermo? It's called a "tilday"? That ain't a real word, it's two words. Like in this example:

"Hey, Dick Cheney, how long into my presidency do I have to pretend to give a shit about Mexican people?"

"Till Day 100, Mr. President."

See, that's what I'm talkin' bout, you guys got to start using only real words, like me and Dick Cheney.

Lesson #2: Vocabulary

Vocabinarial skills are important because it means you know a lot of long words. Like, it turns out, when you say "mission accomplished," it means you have finished the thing you set out to do and not just that you got to fly in an aeroplane. As you learn more about speaking proper American, you'll learn how important it is to be vocabual.

Sometimes I'll say words that don't exist like "misunderestimate" and "strategery," and people make fun of me because they think me English is bad because they don't know that the President has the legal authority to make up new words. Watch, I'll do it right now...Fudgitate. It means "to make more fudgy." Like, "these brownies I made taste good, but they are not chocolately enough so I will now have to fudgitate the whole mess of 'em."

That's a word now. I'd say you should look it up when you get home, but because you are all dirty poor people, I'll go ahead and assume you don't have any books, even for decoration like at my house.

Lesson #3: Grammers and Sin Tax

I don't really remember that much from high school, cause I was involved in a lot of, um, "extracurricular activities" that kind of messed with my short-term memory and ability to remain awake for more then 15 minutes at a time. But I know one thing my English teacher talked about all the time was grammers and sin tax.

I think this means where you put stuff in your sentence. Like, in the phrase "Jesus in just alright with me," which comes from one of my favorite pieces of classical music, it sounds good but it's actually not correct. If you had proper grammers, you would say "With me, Jesus is just alright," because that way you don't end the sentence with a precipitation.

Or, to give you another example, instead of saying "I'm going to request that the CIA go over to Stephen Colbert's house and murder him, making it look like an accidental death," I would say, "Request that the CIA go over to Stephen Colbert's house and make it look like an accidental death but actually murder him, I'm going to." See how easy it is to talk good?

I don't know what any of this has to do with taxing sin, but as a Christian, I'm anti-sin anyway, so I say go ahead and tax it if it's going to make immigrants speak English.

Final Lesson: Using English the Right Way

It's important you guys know that just speaking English ain't gonna be enough to succeed in the "Estates Unidos" of tomorrow. You've also got to be careful not to say the wrong thing or to say stuff to the wrong people.

There are just a couple of simple ground rules. Think of them like The Ten Commandments in that I'd like to put them in every classroom in America, but legally I'm not allowed to.

(1) Don't ever say anything I did was wrong

I'm the Decider. Not you. If you want to decide things, you should get elected President. Although you guys were born in Mexico, so you should probably try to marry someone who gets elected President.

Anyway, since I get to decide everything, there's no good reason to complain about it after it has already been decided. (And I don't really like changing my mind, either). So why bring everyone down? Just go with it, man. Buy the ticket, take the ride, that's what it's all about on the Bushmobile. And it's a one way trip.

(2) If someone else says something I did was wrong, yell at them

It don't really matter what you yell. So so long as you yell loud enough to distract everyone until they've shut up and gone home.

(3) Don't ever say what you mean

The secret to being a great communicator, like Ronald Reagan or me, is being able to blather on meaninglessly for a really long time. Like, let's say we're in a press conference, and someone has asked me about why the troops have been going into battle using old Chevy hubcaps as protective armor. I wouldn't just say, "because we totally screwed up and didn't send armor, and most of them refused to use the plastic cutting boards we had originally sent."

I would say: "Well, that's an interesting question, young lady. Let me think about that. You see, I don't just make all the decisions myself. I mean, I do, I make decisions. I make a lot of important decisions all by myself, and it's really hard work, and I'm usually so tired that I get back to my room, watch "Spongebob" for a little while and pass right out by 7, 7:30 pm. But a lot of the time, after I make the decisions, I turn the job over to other people who then have the responsibility to actually do all the things I told them. And then they become accountable for all the stuff that I had just thought of, before 'Spongebob.'

"So, what clearly happened here was that, I told Rumsfeld or one of those other old guys to buy some armor, and then they delegated the responsibility and the troops got plenty of armor and everything turned out fine. And that's the situation on the ground that the media doesn't report."

But, I'd only say that if a young lady asked the question. Otherwise, that would seem weird.

(4) Unless you work for me, don't ever talk to reporters

Talking to reporters is wrong, because unlike me, terrists sometimes read newspapers. So if you tell stuff to reporters, terrists might learn things indirectly-like. You don't want to teach terrists things, do you? Then you can't talk to reporters.

Unless you work for me. Then it's okay, because you know what things it's alright to tell terrists and what things it's not.

Well, I guess that's all I got for you. I've worked through all my notes from my time at Yale with you, so you pretty much have the equivalent of an Ivy League education. And you didn't even pick up a trendy coke habit! No hay de que, you know whut I'm sayin'?