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News and Editorials Let’s Hear It for Multilingual Skills! November 7, 2007 Hooray for our Congressman, Rep. Mike Honda, whose 11/5/07 editorial in the San Jose Mercury News made one of the more cogent and balanced statements I’ve seen in years about language in America. English is the language of opportunity, not just in the US, but in much of the world. It’s as close to a “universal” language of business, science, travel and diplomacy as you can find today. Despite the fact that it’s nowhere near the largest native language on the globe (think dialects of Chinese or Russian or Hindi), you’ll find large countries where the only common tongue is not one of many local native languages, but English! India is a good example. It certainly functions as the common parlance for most US citizens today. (It didn’t always, and we’d be wise to remember that history.) Full access to American opportunities really does require some ability to understand and speak English here. Yes, you can live your life sequestered in a community where English is not spoken, and that’s been common for immigrants here for centuries. But you won’t be able to progress far outside of that without English. So it does behoove our immigrants to try to learn English. I don’t want to belittle the difficulty involved. Learning new languages is anything but easy and not everyone can do it well, if at all. The jury is still out on the best way to teach kids in school whose home language wasn’t English. But learn it they eventually must. However, as Rep. Honda notes, it is equally of immense benefit for our immigrants to maintain their language of origin. It not only gives them a sense of pride in their native cultures, it enriches the American culture for the rest of us. And yes, that includes enriching the language too, because English is really a composite of many different tongues. Where he stopped short and I want to throw in my hat is that Americans (US variety) need to take up multilingualism just as much as their new neighbors. We teach other languages rather poorly here. We inculcate our kids with an attitude that English is superior, the only language really necessary, and you don’t have to go any further than passing school language exams in that regard. That’s just nonsense! Language is the door to understanding. It conveys and it even defines cultures, values, styles, desires – without it communication and commerce are just about impossible. So if US citizens are going to compete in an ever globalizing market, we’d better start learning how to communicate in languages other than English ourselves. I’d like to recognize two sides of the current language debate that infect the conversation about immigration in the US today.:
Neither is a functional attitude when taken to extremes. Isolation does not facilitate opportunity nor understanding and acceptance in the former case; xenophobia in the latter only inflames irrational responses and can lead to real hatred and violence. Unless you are a Native American, you and I are essentially descended from immigrants or refugees ourselves. Please recognize that this is one of the great strengths of America: we derive from people who selected themselves to survive and thrive in a new and strange environment. That kind of adaptability is the real power of our country, its true great natural resource. We bring to the table the ideas, gifts and cultures of the entire world. To keep that advantage we’ll need to nurture both our common communication and the richness of our origins. Thank you, Rep. Honda, for making the point so well, and for carrying the torch for multilingualism into Congress. Bart A. Charlow, President |
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