Much ado about nothing.
A group of Puerto Rican hams petitioned the FCC some time back to require
voluntary examiners to make a Spanish version of the exams and question
pools available. The FCC declined, pointing out that a rule change wasn't
necessary, since volunteer examiners are already free to publish question
pools in Spanish and give the exams in the Spanish language if they so
desire.
ARRL asked the voluntary examination committee to come up with a Spanish
translation of the current question pools so that examinations given in
Spanish would be uniform nationwide. The VEC's declined to go to the
trouble.
Ham radio examinations have been given in Spanish in Puerto Rico since the
beginning of the voluntary examination program. I'm not sure if the FCC had
a Spanish-language version when exams were FCC administered.
Puerto Rico has been a US possession ever since 1898 as an outcome of the
Spanish-American war, and its amateurs are under FCC jurisdiction, but the
native language of the people living in Puerto Rico is a dialect of Spanish,
not English. Puerto Rican hams simply want to be able to take their ham
radio exams in their native language, which they are already allowed to do.
This was NOT intended to be a proposal to make it mandatory for all ham
radio exams in the US to be printed in both languages, as has been widely
reported over the internet.
Q: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?
A: Trilingual.
Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.
Q: What do you call a person who speaks only one language?
A: American.
Don, k4kyv
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