Tower Of Babel
NO NO NO NO NO The time has come for English as the official language of the USA. We don’t need African-like tribalism or new Balkan enclaves in the USA.
This nibble at the multicolored yarn of the woven fabric of our nation will lead to the unraveling of that fabric, reducing our nation to separate bits of rags and letting in the winds of chaos.
I can hardly wait to imitate the Canada Model. England is bad enough with Upper/Lower Class dialect.
Twenty years ago, I knew a German immigrant who had a bumpersticker: ENGLISH ONLY! He knew that bi-lingual countries weren’t unified societies. He was in favor of giving new immigrants special consideration and help with learning English. Me too.
Immersing in a new language &/or helping a foreigner become fluent English is an eye-opener. I realize 1. I’ll never totally master my native tongue 2. my language is intimately tied to the way I think and act.
The value of being able to talk things over is hard to overestimate.
Posted by Oink
11/08/2005 at 12:54 PM
Oink I fully agree. I recently watched a program about problems with moooslims integrating into British society. They had a man that came to Britain in the 60’s yet he was unable to speak English. What chance is there of integrating immigrants if they won’t learn the language of the country they have come too? I think the (non French) Canadians are sick of the cost and aggravation of maintaining a dual language. Give people help to learn English by all means, but allowing people to live in enclaves where they continue to exist as a separate entity is a mistake.
OT When I lived in Iowa I was often told I spoke “pretty good English for a foreigner” This was usually followed up by “What language do they speak in England?” I usually declined to answer that one! (don’t get me wrong, there are some wonderful people in Iowa but it could be a bit insular!)
Yes, Lyndon, we ARE a people separated by a common language.
My “German Son’s” mom was in tears when the cashier at the Cloverdale IN truck stop could not understand her. Her English is accented but fluent. I comforted her, hell! that chick couldn’t understand Winston Churchill!
Posted by Oink
11/08/2005 at 02:42 PM
It’s past time for English to be our official language. Otherwise it will become Spanish by default. I too had a choice of languages in school: French, Latin, Hebrew (yep, we had a lot of Jews at our school), German and Spanish. I took three years of French. My choice, not anybody else’s.
We didn’t have Polish or Hungarian despite a healthy representation of immigrants of those varieties in our neighborhood. Some of my friends spoke one or the other of those at home with Grandma. While I did pick up a little Hungarian, mostly curse words, we all had English in common. Otherwise there would have been no communication.
Yep, we have regional dialects here. I once got a quick contract job in North Carolina and drove there one night. When I got to a gas station-convenience store where I didn’t understand the clerk I knew I had arrived.
I find that most people will bend over backwards to understand someone trying to speak their language. I had the benefit of this in France many years ago and I see it almost daily here in Ohio when Japanese are trying to make themselves understood in the stores.
We have Japanese auto plants and suppliers here in Ohio and the management and engineering folks bring their families with them. People who don’t or won’t make the attempt of understanding are few and far between and are deserving of contempt.
Funny thing; one of the Vice Presidents at the Japanese factory I worked in understood English perfectly but didn’t speak it well. The translators only had to work one way; Japanese to English, for him. I happened to see his notebook one day. He kept notes in English as well as Kanji but would only speak simple English when he did need to speak to us on the floor: “move weld”, “change all goosenecks”, and the rare compliment “you teach good”, this after I moved a robot weld. I did hear from a guy who went to Japan with them for a new line that the drunker they got when partying the better their English became.
"Equally proficient in Spanish and English by the fifth grade” = not proficient at all in either of them. Hell, they can barely teach the kids English at all.
And they are doing this for only 8% of students. Why not have them learn Chineese or Japanese instead of Spanish? Whith those languages you could at least get a decent job. What kind of job can you get with Spanish? Some low-paying thing where you help out those who won’t learn English.
Not to say this is neccessarily a bad thing in itself. In Japan almost all the kids take English (most of Western Europe does this as well). To learn another language is a major advantage, especially when that language is very different from your own - opens up pathways in the brain for other subjects to work better.
These folks are doing it for the wrong reasons though. And they will almost definitely screw these kids royally.
I guess when we close the borders after the next terror attack, we will need some gardeners. What better to replace Mexicans than our own kids that can’t use our language?
Both true. If I moved to Pakistan I would not try to get a job real soon as an emergency dispatcher. Some colleges are actually demanding that teaching assistants speak recognizable English—not un-accented, just decipherable. Remember Sam Kinison’s bit about dealing with the convenience store clerk? “Marlboro MARLBORO SMOKEY-SMOKEY! How the f--- did you get this job, anyway? I shoulda shot your ass in DaNang when I had the chance!”
The US has more than its share of language hicks. Most people in France were patient and polite with my French; a few politely refrained from using their much better English. I don’t think I’ll go there this year. How do you say “Burn Baby Burn” in French and Arabic?
Posted by Oink
11/08/2005 at 03:58 PM
Try this test. A neighbor went to the local community college. They spend most of the semester figuring out what their India(n) TA was saying. Big HINT—the following phrase is spoken with no accent and in one breath. It refers to standardized testing
WERBELS’N MATHUS A TEASE
Posted by Oink
11/08/2005 at 06:55 PM
NFI what he’s supposed to be sayin’. Be sure to let us in on it after a while, Oink.
Hint: contains the English word “math”.
Posted by Oink
11/08/2005 at 08:07 PM
Actually, I’m inclined to support teaching multiple languages from the first day a kid is in school and all through high school. If you start early, children can pick up language skills like you wouldn’t believe. Even if we make English the official language (which I support) you’d still have people coming here unable to speak it and you’d have spanish as the country’s de facto 2nd language anyway. It’d be better to have strict border controls and force immigrants to learn English, but that’s not a fight we can win anymore. There’s nothing wrong with kids learning a 2nd language in school, they learn their first at home even before they start school (and aren’t too bad at it.) Just because kids don’t understand all the grammar rules on paper doesn’t mean they can’t speak english well enough anyway. Learning a 2nd language makes it easier to learn a 3rd and 4th language, which would be beneficial to someone growing up in a world where people in other countries refuse to learn and speak English as their first language. The sticking point is that they’re forced to learn spanish, if they had a choice which language to start learning in 1st grade by this method would it be different?
Sorry, I rambled
I’m all for making other languages available in school, and you’re right, Elliot, that the younger they start the more success children will have. When I got to high school I got my first chance to learn another language. We had five to choose from in our school as I noted above. Other schools had a different variety. Still mostly European languages at the time.
I found that studying French helped me with English. Go figure. Not that I’m fluent, but I got the basics of the language and some vocabulary. It stood me in good stead when I was in France and enabled me to eat in French family restaurants that didn’t cater to tourists and helped out a great deal when I needed to find the toilet. Just attempting to speak their language melted a lot of ice.
I can see the need for including Asian languages as well as Arabic and some other mideastern tongues as electives for students. I doubt that any of these are available anywhere before the college level.
I too will insist that anyone who wants to become American be proficient in English, at least to the level of being able to make themselves understood and understand others. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
This is some interesting stuff. And it intuits with what we have all observed. About kids and language. A baby babbles French ‘N’s and German ‘R’S—but can’t do it ‘naturally’ after he learns English. My Thai dau-in-law is brilliant and extremely competent, but I doubt if she’ll ever be able to do a newspaper crossword puzzle, in English. I’ve read that, for example, if my son & her want their kids to be bi-lingual, Mom should only speak Thai to the kid—Dad only English. Truly bi-lingual people are a trip. Sometimes they have to stop and think which language they are speaking.
In my #10 posting, the teacher was speaking of Verbal and Math SAT (scores).
Posted by Oink
11/09/2005 at 02:39 AM
Phobos, that’s basically what I was talking about, yes, language acquisition. Although my rambling is caused more by tiredness rather than a mental disorder. I don’t see the problem in children learning spanish too if it means that the Spanish speakers will be forced to learn English. The parents are going to have a hard time learning English as they don’t appear to make much of an effort to teach it down south, but the kids learn it because that’s the language the country speaks, thus assimilation happens without force. Unfortunately, you’re not going to find enough politicans in the senate/house with the testicular fortitude to push for making English our official language. Hispanics will assimilate, it starts with the children being in school or even just watching tv. We should not have to cater to them, but it doesn’t hurt to try to help them along (ESL programs, for example.) I’ve never actually learned if the period comes before or after the closing bracket.
Anyway, Spanish does make sense as a language people should know, it’s spoken in quite a large part of the world. Arabic is becoming a language to know as it is the language of our enemies.
I personally have found that when you don’t do things like ESL and all that crap, just teach in English, all the kids grow up to know it just fine (well, as fine as the PUBLIC schools teach it - mine did rather good jobs with myself, but many don’t, esp where I am from, SoCal). It is the parents and older ones that are the problem in this area. They would learn English well enough - in fact, I am sure most would be more than happy to - if it was not so easy to get by without it. THAT is what has to change, in my opinion.
11/08/2005 at 02:28 PM
