donald trump has been president for less than a week but it is becoming clear how much love spanish speakers are going to get from his administration. the spanish page of the whitehouse.gov website has been disabled (it’s not there anymore).
on sfgate amy graff reported that
after donald trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the united states, the url for the spanish version of the site started turning up an error message stating that “the page you’re looking for can’t be found.”
was sworn in does not mention who did the swearing in. it’s passive voice (auxiliary be + past participle). swear in is the process that officially made trump president. it is an irregular verb (swore, sworn). turn up means find, present. can’t be found is passive voice too.
president trump being sworn in (ap)
trump’s team had an explanation:
at monday’s press briefing, white house press secretary sean spicer said the disappearance of spanish content is only temporary as the site undergoes a revamp.
a briefing is an informational meeting. notice that temporary is the word used to indicate that the removal of the spanish site is not permanent. it’s a common spanglish to say temporal instead of temporary. spanglish is cool, but if u are speaking english, temporal has a different meaning. a revamp is a major renovation.
fun english practice 
richyrocks english on youtube
sf gate was the only publication i found that referred to the whitehouse.gov spanish site as ‘temporarily’ down. most of the media just said that the trump administration got rid of it. this is what press secretary spicer actually said–
we hit the ground running on day one. there was a lot to do and we had done a lot of work on the website to make sure that we were prepared to get as much information up as fast as possible. we are continuing to build out the website, both in the issue areas and then that area. but we’ve got the i.t. folks working overtime right now to continue to get all of that up to speed. and trust me, it’s just going to take a little bit more time, but we’re working piece by piece to get that done.
hit the ground running means start well. as much information means the maximum. as fast as, the as adjective as comparative structure, means the fastest way possible. folks are people. up to speed means fully operational, ready to work. piece by piece indicates a slow process, one step at a time.
does the kitty motivate u to start well?
“trust me” might be a phrase that transfers seamlessly from the trump campaign to the trump presidency. trump’s opponents criticized him for not presenting concrete policy solutions or objectives and telling voters to trust him (believe, have confidence in).
but how much trust should the public have in the new president and his opinion about spanish in the united states? noah bierman at the la times reminded readers that
during a republican primary debate, trump lashed out at former florida gov. jeb bush when he spoke spanish. “this is a country where we speak english,” trump said.
lash out means strongly criticize.
madonna lashed out against trump at a women’s march in washington d.c. last weekend (ap photo/jose luis magana)
while the u.s. is a country where we speak english, it’s also a country with over 40 million spanish speakers. trump has asked americans to trust him when he says that he will be a president to all of us, but should we? what does it mean that the spanish version of whitehouse.gov was taken down (removed) as soon as trump took over? do u believe it will be back on-line soon? share your views on this topic under leave a reply
