Newt Pressed On ‘Spanish Is The Language Of The Ghetto’ Comments

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Newt Gingrich drew applause at a live Univision interview when he refined comments that had previously been reported as him saying that Spanish is “the language of the ghetto.”

“It wasn’t about Spanish; it was about all languages,” Newt told the interviewer, clarifying that he meant anyone in America who didn’t learn English risked ghettoizing themselves. A similar thing would be true of immigrants to Brazil who didn’t learn Portugese, he said. He doubted that there were any Hispanic parents in America do would not “want their children to be able to be fluent in English so they can have the chance of better futures and better jobs.”

The Spanish language itself, he concluded, is “one of the great languages of the world.”

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