The Myths and the New Reality
When you hear "Press 1 for English" on a phone recording, does it annoy you? Shouldn't today's immigrants have to deal with English as immigrants before them did? And hasn't a common language been one of the key factors in keeping our great country united?
Yes, I do believe that every American citizen should speak English. And I believe having a common language does unite us. But I've come to believe that the rising use of Spanish and other languages in the United States is actually a good thing for our nation.
Many of our attitudes about language seem to have stopped evolving with the Eisenhower Administration. Yet we are not the America we were in 1950. In order to lead globally in the 21st century, we need to set a new course. America and Americans should become bilingual -- and aggressively so. Instead of being the least bilingual of citizens, we Americans should set our sights on becoming the most.
When you think about it, isn't it our rightful place as the nation of immigrants to be the most bilingual of nations? What's more, we can do it, if we set our minds to it, in less than a generation.
First we need to blast away two myths about language.
Myth: English is in jeopardy
English is in no danger of losing it's status as the official, dominant and at times domineering language in the United States. Indeed, it has become the dominant -- and at times domineering -- language of the world.
As nearly anyone who has traveled outside of the United States can testify, English has become something close to the world's tongue -- and the acceleration of this trend is particularly evident in the last 25 years.
We can thank the British Empire for getting the ball rolling, and then we can thank our own United States and its growing hegemony, in the years following World War II.
When the Berlin Wall fell, China turned on a dime and forced students to stop learning Russian and start learning English. (Today, it's estimated that there are more English speakers in China than in the United States.)
English is the international language of business, science, technology and education. As the official language of aviation, English is literally encircling the globe. Add to this the unrelenting American cultural tsunamis of Hollywood, television, MTV and perhaps most important, the Internet -- you have a planet awash in American English.
In Cambodia, a boy ran across his schoolyard calling to me in perfect English, "I know America, I know Washington, D.C.!" I'm sure he also knew Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson, Coke and Nike.
It was no surprise to be greeted in perfect English while doing business in India. I wasn't expecting it on factory trips in Thailand and Vietnam, however -- but that's just what I've encountered.
Rather suddenly, in historical terms, the world has it's long-dreamed-of lingua franca. English won the race, interestingly, despite being third in the number of native speakers, behind Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
Myth: Stubborn immigrants think they don't have to learn English
How many thousands of immigrants have come to America over the years not speaking a word of English, only to have their names later etched in stone on our hospitals, bridges and libraries?
What would have happened in 1933 if we had told Albert Einstein not to come until he'd mastered English?
The idea that immigrants are huddled conspiratorially in Miami and El Paso and California sipping café con leche and vowing not to learn English is almost laughable -- except it's not funny. While there are exceptions, the vast majority of immigrants want to learn English, learn it fast and learn it well. Most immigrants are self-selecting entrepreneurs who have made sacrifices to come to America. The immigrants I know are aware -- sometimes painfully so -- that their livelihoods, and even their self-worth, depend on learning English.
I've seen this pain in the embarrassed expression of a Mexican gardener I've tutored in my hometown of Delray Beach, Florida. He told me he badly wants to learn English so he can stop being a landscape worker, where he speaks only Spanish with his coworkers and "get a job indoors."
I've seen the pain in the face of a migrant farm-working mother I've tutored at the Glades Family Literacy program in Belle Glade, Florida. She told me, with downcast eyes, "I want to help my daughter with the schoolwork."
I've seen the pain on the faces of people waiting their turn for a seat in the library's computer lab, where they can don a headset and hear a nonjudgmental computer pronounce the English they see on their screens.
And I've felt the pain preyed upon in ads on Spanish television selling expensive language courses, promising easy, fast English "without tears."
So when you hear "press 1 for English," don't think there are folks out there happily living in their Hispanic cocoon. They're just trying to make sure they don't mess up something important, like paying their utilities, or wiring money to their parents.
Miami: bilingual spoken here
The local joke here in South Florida is that if you want to travel to a foreign country, just drive to Miami. This is usually followed by some suggestion that an English speaker is out of place there. But that's not true. What's true is that Miami is loaded with bilinguals.
Once when I was visiting Santiago, I was speaking (in English) to a friend who was praising Santiago as the second capital of Latin American business. "What's the first?" I asked. She immediately answered "Miami." She explained that as a Latin American businessperson, you impress your friends when you visit Miami and have truly arrived when you buy a condo.
Is having Miami the unofficial capital of Latin America a good thing for the United States? Of course it is and it will be even better economically and politically when more native English-speaking Americans become fluent in Spanish.
In the next blog: How America can get her bilingual groove back.
But first -- how do you feel when you hear a second language spoken in the U.S.? And are you one of our bilingual speakers?
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I also think that the Civil Liberties Union should take a good look at the fact that 30 states have made “English as the Official Language.
Additional just look at I cannot understand why driver’s licenses tests are given in other languages when all the road signs are in English.
Also the Hispanics argument claiming that “they will lose their background (meaning their language, cultural of the nationality from where they come from) is absolutely stupid.” There is not another group who have lost their backgrounds (that is the Italians, German, Greek, French, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Africans etc)
I believe it is disrespectful and in a slap in the face to all Americans that the Hispanics are allow to speak, read and write in any other language than English. In fact they are not Americans at all since the requirement for becoming an American Citizen is that you read, write and speak English.
Everyone is making a big deal now out of this simply idea of everyone speaking English. What is wrong with the ideal of English?
On May 28, 2008 Senator Obama used a town-hall meeting at the Mapleton Expeditionary School For the Arts in Thornton, Colorado to talk about multilingualism. "We as a society do a really bad job teaching foreign languages, and it is costing us when it comes to being competitive in a global marketplace…. Understand that my starting principle is, everybody should be bilingual or everybody should be trilingual."
Six weks later at a July 8th campaign rally in Powder Springs, Georgia, Senator Obama responded to an audience member who said “there should be a push more for our citizens to become bilingual here in America,” Candidate Obama replied: "Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English.... Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English ... you should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language."
….
"We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5, or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me."
It's not too late, we can become a multilingual nation!
Multilingual education is effective education. The research-documented benefits of dual or multiple language development include: enhanced brain capacity and functioning, higher levels of English language proficiency, higher levels of achievement in math and science, and enhanced capacity for understanding the people of this planet. For the student, these benefits lead to higher levels of educational attainment, higher income, and, a fuller, richer life. Indeed, there is uncontroverted evidence from medical research that multilingualism even prevents or delays the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
The benefits to the nation of multilingualism are also enormous. They include: greater competitiveness in a global economy, improved national intelligence and security, and enhancement of America’s image abroad and ability to collaborate with people of other countries and cultures on matters of global consequence.
The most successful education programs in the United States for bilingual students who are limited in their English proficiency (LEP) are two-way dual language instructional programs which enable both LEP and native-English students to become fully proficient in two languages. Coral Way elementary school in Florida was the first such two-way bilingual program in the nation in the mid 1960’s. Coral Way, Oyster Elementary school in the District of Columbia, Key Elementary School in Arlington, VA, and several hundred other schools across the nation are producing students who are not only college- and career-ready, but world-ready.
The United States has always been a multilingual nation. Tragically, local, state, and our national government has worked to enforce an unnatural state of monolingualism.
Slaves were forbidden to speak their native African languages. Yet, even today, Gullah -- with words derived from multiple African languages -- is still spoken along the coast of parts of South Carolina and Georgia.
Federally-sponsored "Boarding Schools" tried to strip Indian children of their languages, their religion, and their culture. Thankfully, some held on to their language; they served as “Code Talkers” and helped the United States win WWII with the only codes which Germany and Japan never deciphered!
Spanish was the dominant language of the American Southwest until the Mexican - American War . Spanish, the third most popular language in the world, is now spoken by almost half of the people who live in the Western Hemisphere and enriches communities economically and culturally.
German was the most widely-spoken non-English language in the United States until World War I when xenophobia and panic caused communities to burn books and states to criminally outlaw its teaching.
Although the United States has the world’s largest natural reserves of multilingualism, our educational system literally destroys these reserves, producing the most monolingual graduates in the world.
Yes, Steve, it is time for America to become a multilingual nation and to end our denial of something that can truly make US great!
Just to clear up my position, I advocate that the US become a bilingual nation, by which I mean that citizens should speak English and one other language of their choice. It's our linguistic diversity that can to help America lead in this century. More on this coming in my next installment. I look forward to the dialog.
Two languages? Bilingual
One langauge? An American.
Learning multiple languages definitely makes you more marketable in the business world and I don't believe any harm would be done by learning languages. I think they should start teaching it when kids are in elementary school because they'll learn and retain it much better.
I'm currently teaching myself Spanish and Farsi just because. With hopes to learn French, Italian, Japanese and a few others over my lifetime because I find other languages very interesting.
Becoming bilingual/multilingual can do no harm, just make us better.
According to Prof. Alex Saragoza, unlike Europe's geography, our inherited geopolitical arrangements would only make it more difficult for American's to foster a cosmopolitan mind set.
While my intellect agrees with Prof. Saragoza, my heart still BELIEVES otherwise (i.e. Obama).
You go Steve!
H. Martin de'Campo (proudly & practically bilingue en America!)
Managing Principal & Founder
www.Humanatek.com
http://twitter.com/humanatek
From a purely rational perspective, wouldn't it be a boon to everyone if all children, in every country of the world, were taught Esperanto (or it's equivalent) as a second language?
Trying to understand why people do what they do is hard enough, when we can't even communicate with each other, it's pretty well impossible.
Just asking.........
1. Kids learn English in a couple of years.
2. Parents learn English the best they can--at the same rate as older immigrants throughout the history of our country. The older they are, the less they make the change.
3. Most of the children of immigrants do not learn the language of their grandparents. Those that do mostly stop using it once they start school, and can't write it. (This includes about 1500 of our students--second or third generation here in the US, and most speak Spanish poorly, if at all.)
People's fears, as explained above, are unfounded. His exhortation to learn another language is wise. It can be any language. It doesn't have to be Spanish.
1) It would be unfair to new immigrants from non-Spanish-speaking cultures. These immigrants should not have to learn both English and Spanish.
2) A bilingual nation of English and Spanish would ensure that a considerable number of Spanish-speaking immigrants would never bother to learn English.
Every American student has the option of learning any language they want to learn.