Se Habla Ingles?
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in ImmigrationShould English be our national language? Yesterday, the Senate voted yes. Of course, they also voted that English is our nation’s “common and unifying language,� a different phrasing meant to be less restrictive than simply calling English our “national language.�
As usual with the Senate, rhetoric trumps practicality as both statements could now become law without either having any clearly defined intent. But let’s look at this issue anyway as it’s likely to stick around and generate a good deal of controversy.
The issue here is not whether our national language is English (it already is and will remain so) but whether we need to do something to keep Spanish from also becoming a national language. Already, throughout much of the Southwest, bilingualism is common. Just about every product on the shelves at my local grocery store has labels printed in both English and Spanish. Store signage is often in both languages. And there are many billboards printed in nothing but Spanish.
A Spanish-speaking immigrant could quite easily move to San Antonio, never learn English and live pretty well. They’d still run into more than a few problems, but there simply isn’t a significant incentive for immigrants to learn English down here.
But before we react too quickly, we must remember that first-generation immigrants refusing to learn English is not a new phenomenon. My mother-in-law tells stories of her Irish grandmother who spoke nothing but Gaelic�this worked for the old lady because her English-speaking children took care of her.
Much of the same happens today. I have yet to meet a child of Mexican immigrants who could not speak fluent English. And as long as the second-generation Americans speak English, I fail to see a major issue here.
The key, I think, is not to make sure every immigrant learns English but that every child of every immigrant grows up fluent in our language.
Sometimes I feel as if the entire issue of immigration (legal and illegal) is being approached with no sense of history. Do people really think that the nation’s Chinatowns and Little Italys and Irish districts and such were always cute little places to eat a good meal or have a cold beer? Most of those neighborhoods and regions are the vestiges of immigrant groups who refused to assimilate.
But in every case, the immigrant children, the natural-born citizens, pulled away, learned fluent English and melted into America.
The current wave of immigrants might be unprecedented in their numbers but I fully believe they are subject to the same forces of assimilation that have always been at work in this nation. It’s not a frictionless process. But as long as English is the language of our schools, our business, our entertainment and our politics, the children of Spanish-speakers will become English speakers.
Passing any laws, except perhaps pertaining to public schools, seems pointless.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 and is filed under Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 19th, 2006 at 11:19 am
I’m so glad the Senate doesn’t have anything better to do. Latter today Sen. Bill Frist is going to introduce legislation make Krispy Kream the national pastry. What a joke. For all you government lovers out there, that thinks all the world needs is another federal program, a little more money, a little more control over this and that and the other thing…please take note. Conservatives move to Washington D.C. thinking it is a cess pool (which it is) and by the time they leave, they think it is a warm bath.
May 19th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
ASC - Thoughtful post. I agree.
Dos - Thoughtful comment. I agree.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I find the whole “English as our national language” thing to be quite rude, considering what is going on with immigration issues right now. It’s like they want to rub it in that spanish-speaking people are not welcome. Everyone knows that we speak English in the US.
Whether or not we like it, the whitebread majority in this country is slowly decreasing. It only seems smart and practical for us to start learning, and teaching our kids, other languages, since our population is becoming more diverse. For one thing, if you speak Spanish, you might make yourself more marketable in the job market because as the hispanic population increases, we will need more and more people who can communicate with spanish-speaking people. I just had a conversation yesterday about the possibility of enrolling in a Spanish class for that very purpose. (I took French in high school because I thought that was more sophisticated - turns out there is not much use for French around here).
May 19th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
[...] Donklephant asks this about Spanish: The issue here is not whether our national language is English (it already is and will remain so) but whether we need to do something to keep Spanish from also becoming a national language. Already, throughout much of the Southwest, bilingualism is common. Just about every product on the shelves at my local grocery store has labels printed in both English and Spanish. Store signage is often in both languages. And there are many billboards printed in nothing but Spanish. [...]
May 19th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Meredith — you should be scolded for taking French. What the hell were you thinking? Sophistication. I find deodorant sophisticated, as well as, clean shaven women. Why would anyone want to learn the language of the surrender-monkeys? There isn’t much use for that language anywhere, everyone knows that if you want to communicate in France, you learn Algerian.
Okay, I feel better now. It’s Friday.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
So if we’re going to make English our official language in order to insure that people assimilate into the American culture, why not take it a step further? Why not ban St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day, Kwanzaa, and all other events that celebrate other cultures or any other foreign heritage? It appears that many believe that Mexicans should not to be allowed any celebration of their heritage which to my thinking simply demonstrates a bias and a prejudice that is hijacking the immigration issue. Those who think that race has nothing to do with the immigration isue might want to take another look.
It is completely shameful that politicians are willing to exploit existing prejudices in order to garner voters. Can someone explain to me why we have time to craft, debate, and vote on two bills to define English as our “official” language while we have spent over 20 years ignoring any meaningful immigration reform? Unbelievable!!
more observations here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
May 19th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Meredith doesn’t quite get it. Native Spanish speakers are not required to forego speaking Spanish. There is no obligation to speak only English. The idea is that they learn to use English in a country that primarily uses English.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Actually, EEEEEEnglishSpeeeeeeekur, I do get it. I am aware that Spanish speakers are not required to stop speaking Spanish. I think that would be pretty violative of the Constitution, not to mention completely racist and resembling Nazi Germany.
I think it is a good idea for spanish speaking people to learn English, but I also think it’s a good idea for us to learn their language. In other countries where there are several large groups of people who speak different languages, typically everyone knows how to speak all the languages. This is also true for small countries that neighbor one another, where the nieghboring countries speak a different language. It’s just common sense, and it would be very educational for everyone. It would also help us to not look like such arrogant assholes.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
…Just so EenglishSpeakur feels safe and welcome.
May 19th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Meredith please — vendejo arrogante.
May 19th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Dos,
en francais?
May 19th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
For the record, I have met adult and especially older adult immigrants (Romanian, Russian, Asian) who CANNOT learn to speak English, well or at all. I know a Romanian lady of close to 80 whose daughter, son-in-law, and grandson are all American citizens, who cannot become a citizen because she is unable to pass the language test. Her English is rudimentary after 20 years here, and she gets frightened and flustered when she has to take the test. It is easy for children and young people to learn a language, progressively harder the older you get.
I know that this was true of my Yiddish-speaking great-grandparents. They could not learn much English, or learned just enough heavily accented, ungrammatical English to make change and sell things in their tiny grocery store. Their children were fluently bilingual and acted as go-betweens. (They were also embarrassed by the way their parents spoke.) One of my grandfathers came here at age 10. He also quickly became fluent in school, and went on to law school.
So I agree with Alan: require the children to learn English. They can and will. My nephew teaches in a school in Chicago where virtually all the children are Mexican, and he teaches them in both Spanish and English. Most problematic is that these children do not interact with Anglo and other children who don’t speak Spanish, so they don’t have any social motivation to speak English. They probably do learn it from television, though.
I also think that all English-speaking Americans should learn a second language in school — for our own sakes, it’s good for the brain — and Spanish could certainly be the default.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
“Meredith â€â€? you should be scolded for taking French. What the hell were you thinking? Sophistication. ”
Indeed. Meredith, if you want to be sophisticated, learn Chinese - better, literature, richer poetry, better food and it just sounds more grown-up. French sounds like a stroke victim on her seventh martini.
Seriously, I agree that it is important to learn other people’s languages, but why would that lead you to settle on Spanish of all langugaes? It’s a big world, and Spanish-speakers don’t count for much in it - either hopelessly poor and powerless, or else feckless, spoiled and rich. You might do better to put the effort into Arabic or Japanese or Chinese.
Spanish is obviously important in North America, but you might be surprised how many Mexicans coming to this country only speak Spanish as a second language, with English a very close third for them.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Jim, I agree about the French thing. I was a teenager though, so obviously it was a dumb decision. I wish I had made a different one.
As to the rest of your comment, “Spanish-speakers don’t count for much in it - either hopelessly poor and powerless, or else feckless, spoiled and rich.” That sounds pretty racist to me. Yes, my point was that in North America, where we all live for chrissakes, spanish-speaking people are rapidly growing into a majority in this country. Therefore, maybe we could learn the language. I would not advocate for everyone to run out and learn Japanese because most of us, at this point, will never need it. Perhaps though, as China becomes replaces us as the super power, we should all learn Chinese.
It just seems like a lot of people are being purposely hostile to spanish speaking people lately, I guess due to immigration issues. They’re not terrorists, people.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
“It is easy for children and young people to learn a language, progressively harder the older you get.”
Good point, and normally this is true…and then you go on to show exactly why,even in younger people:
“Most problematic is that these children do not interact with Anglo and other children who don’t speak Spanish, so they don’t have any social motivation to speak English.”
Motivation is the key. Young children are highly motivated to learn a language perfectly, because their peers are crule little children and they are merciless with anyone who stands out in any way. But the oplder we get, the less we care what people think ofus, and the les we care to accomodate the by being intelligible, and the motivation just drains away.
I know from my own experience of managing language training in adults thet their are motivational differences between languages, People learning Chinese or Arabic or Russian benefit form the chauvinistically positive attitudes their teachers have towrds the langugaes, and the students fall in love with the lanague and flourish. It’s very different with Korean or Tagalog, just to cite examples from langaugues where I had this experience. In the case of English, people worldwide are highly motivated - English is the language of cool and power and money.
Langauges run their course. there was a time when English-speakers learned Gaelic, and had to, both to study in monastic schools, and then later as immigrants in Ireland. Then later it took a miracle to bring Gaelic back from the abyss of extinction. Times change.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Meredith,
There is nothing racist in pointing out that in the world at large Latin American countries have huge masses of poor, powerless people with sdmall, corrupt elites running them. Just ask Evo Morales or Chavez, or just about anone coming out of any of those countries. It not news. And it’s not racist to point out that someone is getting screwed, or that their language is not a high prestige language.
I agree that there is a growing hostility to Spanish-speaking people. That is misplaced What is reasonable is hostility based on the correct perception that a lot of Spanish-speaking people expect (English-speaking) Americans to adapt to Spanish. That is simple colonialism on the part of Spanish-speaking people, especially considering the history of the Spanish language in the Americas; it is arrogant and silly, and bound to provoke thoroughly deserved resentment.
May 19th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
I hope to make a practical comment on the need to people to learn English. Let me say first, I have lived in other counties and tried to learn enough of the local language to be polite and able to function. I always carried a phrase book/dictionary and my poor attempts at pronunciation were offered with a smile.
I worked for many years in an OB-GYN dept of a large HMO here in CA. We had women from many cultures and languages as patients. In all other cultures, someone from the family would accompany the person to translate. Many of our non English speaking Mexican patients would just come and expect one of us to fill out all their paperwork (medical history, etc.) even if we provided all the form in Spanish! Often a Mom would bring a young child to translate… you’ve got to love asking a 7 year old about his mother’s menstrual history or vaginal discharge! Phone calls to patients take on another challenge. Once again, in many homes, it is a young child who is the only semi English spearker in the house. Many of us have taken Spanish classes with emphasis on medical terminolgy but that can only go so far. We are expected to provide all of this and you wonder about the rise in medical costs?
There are several questions here:
Safety for patients and nurses (since no one wants to make an error0
Protection of young children
Medical costs
What if my Spanish is not quite good enough? Is that my fault?
Would the French put forth as much effort as we are required to do in Southern CA if I were living there?
Thank you
May 19th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Medical care! I totally agree. You can be real fluent in English or whtever, but when you go into labor, you need your own language. I know what it is to get by in another country in another country, and th burden can become too much in a crisis.
Expecting you to fill out paperwork - often that is not just a function of a working in a strange language, but of not being used to bureaucracy or whatever. Remember, a lot of people come here from nearly abject poverty, and there is so, so much to adjust to. You may ot think that filling out some forms is very intimidating, but for someone who isn’t literate even in their own language, it’s frightening.
There can be other barriers. I work in immigration, and often I work with Chinese migrants who get apprehended. They are very familar with bureaucracy - sadly - but they have no sense at all of civil rights. So when you explain their Miranda rights (in brain-melting detail) to them, they just smile politely. They simply don’t believe you. They think you are entrapping them into uncooperative behavior so you can use it against them later.
Back to your last observations - that kind of situation is humiliating to a parent, to be dependent on their child to talk to another adult, and having to ask such inappropriate, personal information just makes it awful. Now I understand what you mean about needing, really needing, to be able to speak Spanish. Medical terminology - and what do you do when you know the term in Spanish and the patirent doesn’t? That the kind of barrier I was talking about above.
May 19th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
No federal paperwork should be in any language other than English. No ballots should be in a language other than English. No student should be able to get a diploma from an American high school unless they are fluent in English. No person should gain citizenship without being fluent in English. It’s that simple. This is an English speaking nation. These people who are here ILLEGALLY are trying to force us to conform to their culture. That’s not the way things work.
May 19th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
My grandmother struggled with the language while she made a new life and family in the US. At the same time, she was bidding good-bye to six of her sons as they left to fight in different armed services during WWII.
Traveling on a packed train to see one of the boys off she was ridiculed for her rudimentary english as she stood in the aisle for mile after mile. A returning soldier got up, pointed out the six stars pinned to her jacket to her tormentors and offered her his seat. Dad was in the Pacific at the time this happened but he choked up every time he told that story and my, how he loved to tell a story!
Ten American citizens, six servicemen and combat veterans, a life of worship and work. Those were the contributions of a German immigrant whose english would never have passed muster with the far right voters who are being courted with these silly damn laws “enforcing” the primacy of the english language in the US.
In other countries people impoverish themselves to get into language classes and learn the language which, world-over is an entry to better jobs and a better life. Dog-tired migrant workers get themselves to language classes after working ten hour days at impossibly difficult jobs. Language aptitudes are, like math abilities, unevenly distributed. They don’t determine the strength of an individual’s committment to this country.
May 19th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
We’re so culturally pathetic we have to give ourselves a linguistic handicap in the form of an ignorant federal law (which is more in the form of a resolution) to make a point. I know illegal immigrants in this country that can read and write Spanish 50X better than most inner city poor kids know English. I think our mental resources should be towards education and that certainly won’t be at the expense of other languages. The fact is, we should be pushing our children to learn Spanish, because your better off in this world if you know more than one language. It is easier to learn your 3rd language after your 2nd. Instead, we let fear manifest in a meaningless statement. If a nation can act as a child, we just threw an idiotic tantrum which will only serve to historically mark our ignorance. The absolute FACT is that translators are abundant. They are only contract with all the federal court houses and U.S. Attorney’s office. So while the Chineese migrant might not understand the concept of Miranda, he is hearing words that he understands. A every major hospital employees translators or hires people that can speak Spanish. I am not buying the human necessity for everyone to speak the same language. The Mexicans already have an economic incentive to learn English. We would then take away the incentive for Americans to learn Spanish. Shouldn’t we simply encourage communication…this “law” has shit to do with communciation and a lot to do with pandering politicans to the lowest denominator.
May 20th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Alan Stewart Carl wrote “But as long as English is the language of our schools, our business, our entertainment and our politics, the children of Spanish-speakers will become English speakers.”.
But let’s be honest and admit that there are those who want to be able to teach in Spanish, giving only secondary importance to using that instruction to further their students skills in English. The increasing signage and packaging in Spanish blurs how much of the typical person’s business is being done in English. Entertainment? With the growth of Spanish language television, radio and newspapers how much of an issue is that? Whether politics being in English is a motivator depends entirely on the immigrants motivation for moving here. Let’s face it, the motivation for a huge number of the current tsunami of Spanish-speaking immigrants has nothing to do with love for the U.S. but everything to do with getting a job that pays better than anything they could get in their homeland. They see no reason to adapt to this country’s beliefs and values. One reason the Republicans thought they would find allies in the Hispanic community is a belief that the social conservatism of their cultures that don’t particularly respect diversity would make them vote for anti-choice, anti-gay politicians. They often come from cultures where machismo is valued and spousal abuse is fairly common, even more so than here. Like most cultures, there are things to be admired and things deserving of criticism.
Meredith, honest criticism of a group of countries that share a common cultural and linguistic heritage that for some reason I don’t claim to understand seem to also share a set of bad problems is not racist. It is no more racist than criticizing the current administration’s ineptness makes one anti-American.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:45 am
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