On Oct 12, 2005, at 21:56, Martha Krieg wrote:
Except that in Dearborn, you might have to learn Arabic rather than Spanish. To some of us, this isn't particularly frightening - my husband and I speak and read both Spanish and French in addition to English, and I wouldn't mind learning Arabic (one of my daughters is) -- but to a very large percentage of "average" Americans, it is intensely threatening.
Possibly because I love Language (any <g>) so much, I'm very much aware of its power; the "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me" is, IMO, one of the stupidest (most stupid <g>) rhymes ever written, besides being untrue. So I can - to an extent - sympathize with people who feel threatened by being plunked in the middle of an environment where they don't understand the language flowing all around them. Not being able to communicatee pulls all the props needed for one's self-confidence from under one...
I experienced it (most recently) in Denmark ('01), where I had problems understanding the written language (such as in shop and street signs), and spoken was totally beyond me. The Czech Republic last year was easier, because I could understand about 1 in 3-5 words (Polish and Czech having some common roots). Before that, a visit to Boston's China-town felt very disorienting (though visiting China-town in San Francisco last spring was OK; it's a tourist part of town, and everyone spoke English). Before that, just being in US felt threatening, even though I'd spent 15yrs studying English - I had to "tune out the noise" a lot of time, or I'd have gone totally nuts. Lack of language is one of the reasons I've always been afraid to visit France; the French are famous for their insistence that one shouldd speak French and speak it correctly (unlike the Italians, who were able to"process" my Latin and take it in stride)
Being engulfed by a foreign language (and that includes teen slang) feels more threatening than any other sign of "otherness", such as clothing, body-piercing, etc.
I'll never forget a friend in Denmark who, through most of my stay there, bitched about the recent Muslim immigration. Their women wore those weird clothes, which made them look like criminals. They came and signed up on welfare rolls, making life difficult for Danes. The crime rate had tripled and quadrupled since they came. And, the worst sin of all - they never bothered to learn Danish; if they want to speak whatever, why don't they stay wherever? The Jews who came during WWII and after '68 were never like that; they assimilated...
My argument that the "funny clothes" were required by their religion and, as such part of religious tolerance was considered dubious at best. But I was there with her, when she had her personal Epiphany... :) We were standing at a platform of the train/metro station, when a group of of black-clad (some fully veiled, some not) teenage girls swept in. One of them (veil and all) was speaking on a cell-phone as the group went past us. My friend turned to me with amazement: "she was speaking Danish. Perfectly, without a foreign accent at all". I never heard
So, perhaps, there is a bridge to be forged to acceptance. But it'll be forged through language first, IMO
The real problem is that bilingual education was considered for many years an ideal way of appreciating and respecting Hispanic culture. But often the result has been that is has allowed Hispanics in some areas not to become natively-fluent in English, remaining in what is in effect a Hispanic ghetto, where the opportunities to advance out of poverty are relatively limited.
That -- a self-imposed ghetto through language barrier -- has been true about every wave-immigration; I know some Poles and some Jews in US whose command of English is "sketchy" at best, and non-existent at worst. But, with the exception of Polish Jews who came here after the '68 purge (and those came equipped with the knowledge of Polish and English both, though not Yddish), they all came in less PC-times, when the school system required English, on the principle that that was the official language of the US; cultural heritage was something to be kept in the home environment, not in public (though there's a guy here in town - a little older than I am - whose parents were discouraged by the school from using Polish even at home, to make his transition into the US mainstream easier. Which policy accounts for lots of Poles who speak "Polish" that no Pole can understand, and all laugh about <g>)
Some Hispanics themselves now say that it is better to speak Spanish at home and learn English to deal with the outside world, because it opens many, many more doors. Having originally been in favor of bilingual education, I tend to agree with them now.
Quite so. Except that I never approved of bilingual schools, unless and until Spanish was declared the *official* second language (like French/English is in Canada, French/German/Italian in Switzerland, "semi-French"/Dutch in Belgium, Croatian/Serbian in erst-while Yugoslavia, etc). I suppose, once I grew up and removed the "flowers in my hair", I gut-knew (like the Prex <g>) the idea of not pushing -- while PC, and soft and fuzzy and what not -- wasn't doing the recipients any favours (for the record, I'm against Eubonics, too <g>); indeed, it was likely to marginalize them forever.
Besides... It's unfair, undemocratic.... Why *Spanish* and not Mandarin (or, indeed, the many Chinese dialects), Vietnamese, one of the Indian dialects, Arabic, Polish, etc...? Given the current mix (my son's girlfriend is half black -- no record of of language culture -- and half white, the white being equally divided between Irish anad Polish), we're better off sticking to a single language as the unifying factor, than giving into "language pockets", which would fracture us even further.... At least until the Hispanics are at least 51% of the US population... :)
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
