Tag Archives: English

national news

Here is when language becomes important

I have commented already on this blog on the idiocy of the young lawyer who rants about people speaking languages other than English to each other.

“This is America!” he has bellowed to them. “Speak English!”

This goofball apparently misses the rich irony of that moronic statement, given that the United States has no official language, let alone that English is that language.

Having said that, I want to share a brief gripe I have about non-English speakers.

It presents itself when I go to the grocery store and I need help finding an item on the shelf. More than once — indeed, I’ve lost count of the times this has happened — I have approached a store employee who’s stocking shelves and asked, for instance, “Excuse me, could you please tell where I can find the pickles?” I get that look, and a shrug, and a silent affirmation that the person doesn’t understand what I’ve just asked of him or her.

That, right there, is what annoys me. It’s not so bad that I explode with an profanity-laced tirade. However, if a retail outlet — which is in the business of serving the customer — is going to put employees in contact with presumably English-speaking customers, it seems only right to ensure that those employees are able to communicate effectively.

English isn’t the official U.S. language, but — with all due love and respect to my many friends whose first language is something other than English — it is the language most Americans speak regularly.

Is that too much to ask?

Of course it isn’t!

Gripe session is over.

national news

Do you speak Hindi?

statue_liberty_immigrants_drawing_1887_dbloc_adj

GUTHRIE, Okla. — I need to brush up on my Hindi.

That’s surely a requirement if I ever return to a certain fueling station on the east side of Interstate 35.

We stopped for fuel. Given that my wife and I were hauling our 28-foot fifth wheel behind our big ol’ Dodge Ram truck, we needed lots of room.

The Valero station we spotted had plenty of it. We pulled the rig next to the pump.

Then it started.

The pump didn’t have a card-swipe or even a meter to read how much fuel we took or how much it would cost.

I went inside. A nice lady was at the cash register. I told her I needed to fill my truck with fuel. She looked, virtually clueless as to what I had just said. She said something in return. I didn’t understand a word she said.

She appeared to be of Indian or Pakistani origin. We exchanged a few more sentences, neither one of us knowing what the other was saying. She gave up and signaled a gentleman to come over.

He was of the same ethnic origin. We talked to each other. Our understanding of what the other said rivaled my first encounter.

He came outside and rigged the pump so that I could pump my fuel, which I did. I went inside to pay the man.

My point? It is this: English is the primary language in the U.S. of A. I am as liberated and progressive as anyone on the issue of immigration. I love immigrants. I welcome them. I do not believe it is necessary to make English the “official language” of this great nation.

My grandparents, all four of them, were immigrants. They learned how to speak the language that rolls off the tongues of most Americans. They weren’t exactly fluent, but they could converse in the language of their adopted home.

My wish is that when employers hire immigrants to work in service industries — such as at fueling stations — that they ensure that their employees can communicate effectively and efficiently with their customers.

There. That’s out of my system.

Uncategorized

Bilingualism done right

I met a charming family today and I want to share what little I know about them. I sense they are plotting a bright future for their children.

Mom and Dad are immigrants from Mexico. They moved to the Oklahoma Panhandle about eight years ago. They have two daughters, one 3 years of age; the other girl is an infant. I spoke freely with Mom and Dad and as I spoke to the little girl, Mom informed me she speaks very little English.

“We speak Spanish at home,” Mom said, adding that the 3-year-old “understands” English quite well, but she just doesn’t speak it much. No need, apparently, given her age and the apparently limited exposure she has to other children.

No sweat, I thought. She’ll get that exposure in due course.

I thought briefly for a moment about my own parents. They were children of immigrants, too. Neither of them spoke English at home prior to enrolling in public school; Mom grew up in Portland, Ore., Dad in New Kensington, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. All four of my grandparents were Greeks through and through. They spoke their native language at home, period. Dad’s parents brought seven children into the world and all of them were and are as fluent in Greek as they are in English. Same for Mom and her two brothers. All of my grandparents became U.S. citizens and all were devoted patriots who loved their adopted homeland. My maternal grandmother was especially proud, as she once declared she had no interest in returning to the place of her birth. “Why should I?” she asked. “America is my home.”

Both of my parents learned English the old-fashioned “total immersion” way. They were thrust into environments where English was mandatory. You spoke it or else. You learned it or you didn’t succeed. “English as a Second Language” classes didn’t exist in the late 1920s.

They do now.

My hope for the children of the folks I met today? I hope Mom and Dad throw them into the proverbial language “water” when they’re old enough for school. Total immersion learning isn’t harmful to children, who learn to adapt quickly. My own parents — and millions of others in their generation — were perfect examples of how that system of language-learning works.

I’m glad for this couple I met today that they speak their native tongue at home. It’s good that the children will be bilingual and will grow up in a society that should encourage more children to speak more than one language.

They’re headed for successful lives.