You say "Palatious," I say "Palacios"
According to the latest Census, Anglos are no longer the majority ethnic group in Texas. Make that "Tejas" (TAY-hoss). Today's Times reports the latest round of skirmishing on the "We Say/Nosotros Digamos" front in the Lone Star State, where "surging" Hispanic populations see no reason not to restore the local nomenclature to its original pronunciation. "Juh-SIN-ta" or "Ha-SEEN-toe"? What caught my eye was the following pearl of provinciality, which appeared in a letter to the editors of the Houston Chronicle.
"I have no beef with whatever language people want to speak at home," wrote A. W. Mohle Jr. of Houston, "but if you're going to live here, then by speaking 'American' in public, you will have a much better opportunity of being accepted as American."
In the Sixties, red-state patriots of Mr Mohle's persuasion urged this country's native critics to "Love It or Leave It." Let's not have any more of that. To such lazy-minded patriots I reply: "Learn It or Drop It." You know perfectly well what the other guy is saying. This is a big country, remember? How do you pronounce "Houston"? Depends upon which eponym you're thinking of. Texan Sam, or New Yorker William?
The Anglophone habit of going out of one's way to murder the pronunciation of foreign languages (under the impression that the ostentatious display of ignorance is the mark of true superiority) has to be one of the greatest black marks against the culture of the Atlantic Isles.
In a conversely-related note, I learned from a table in The Economist yesterday that of the eleven major languages spoken on the planet, the number of people who speak French as a second language is greater than the number of those who are born to it. (Just in case you thought English was going global.) Far more people speak English, of course, but that's as a native language; the French work very hard to keep their language alive in former colonies and areas of influence, not, apparently, without success. For reasons that I will explain as the week goes on, I am wondering which language I might find more useful in Istanbul.
Comments
ooh, you're going to Istanbul? I'm so jealous. Istanbul is on my short list. Pretty unrelated, but in the dystopian future of Joss Weedon's cancelled TV series Firefly, the language of the known universe is a funky combination of Mandarin and English. All the swear words were in Mandarin, and there was a lot of swearing, and the swearing was um, extremely graphic. I think it's amusing that it was okay to say stuff in Mandarin on network TV that would never have been tolerated in English. As though, as long as most of the viewers did not speak Mandarin, the swearing didn't happen at all...
Posted by: Biscuit | January 2, 2005 03:07 PM
If I had school-aged children, I would be torn between French and Mandarin - and probably insist upon both. Mandarin is not as difficult to learn as you might think, but if you don't "keep it up" (like, every day), it doesn't stick. There are lots of good audio, and even a few software, offerings for learning Mandarin, and I urge everyone to give the language an interview. I myself was drawn to (a) calligraphy and (b) Tang poetry. Low-grade palsy has always made it impossible for me to write characters as they ought to be written, but Tang poetry is "there for me."
Posted by: R J Keefe | January 3, 2005 03:01 AM
I am totally in the camp that immigrants here need/have to learn English. Period. I was astonished, though shouldn't have been, to have gone to a Walgreen's in south Miami a couple of years ago and seen on the door a sign that read, "English spoken here"", and when I approached the pharmacy counter, was asked, "En que puedo ayudarte?" or, "How can I help you", the assumption being that I was Spanish or at least Spanish-speaking.
Communities in Miami can speak Spanish only and live their lives successfully but I think this is wrong. Schools can certainly help children who only speak Spanish or any other language transition, but in the end English has to be their language.
Posted by: PPOQ | January 3, 2005 08:36 AM
Biscuit baby's learning French, because Biscuit daddy speaks it. Biscuit mommy tries to learn it through French In Action but has many other things to do. Unfortunately, our French-speaking babysitter just quit, so he's not actually hearing much French lately.
Posted by: Biscuit | January 4, 2005 09:01 AM