An interesting conversation concerning language is taking place in the comment thread to Bruce's post Para Estupidezes.. The language mainly involved in this conversation is English, and its importance as the official language of this country. As someone whose job for quite a few years has been teaching English to immigrants from many different countries, I have some thoughts on this issue. No solutions, just musings.
No one is more aware of the importance of English in the United States than those who have recently arrived here. Please know the truth of that statement, as I do from long experience. However, language is more than a set of vocabulary words, the grammar to string them together, and learning the correct pronunciation to do it well. Language is the vehicle of culture, and as such is difficult both to acquire and to leave behind. Many recent immigrants have a good deal of difficulty with this new culture, and a great fear of losing their own familiar one. It is the children who will bring both the language and the culture into their homes and the lives of their people.
Many of the recent immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries - Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras in particular - have had very little education in their own countries, a couple of years of elementary school at the most. Many of them already speak two languages: an indigenous language and Spanish. Neither learned through schooling. The young unmarried men learn survival spoken English in the street, on the job, through free programs in churches and schools, but are utterly unprepared for learning academic English, that is to say, to learn correct grammar, to read and write in English, to use tools such as computers.
There are GED programs in Spanish, though far too few of them, which can help these younger people (and older ones with gumption - I had a student pair, father and daughter, who had earned their GEDs in one of these programs. The daughter is now about to graduate from junior college with a human services degree.) acquire the tools of learning and go on to learn the English skills needed for jobs other than unskilled labor. It takes both time and money to get to this point, and in fact statistics show that learning another language to fluency requires seven to ten years.
Most women in this group are not only uneducated, but are already burdened with small children and the care of a household which often includes non-family members, for whom they cook, wash, and clean. They make few inroads into the English-speaking world. The program which has been helping these women learn English, as well as the importance of literacy for their children - EvenStart - has been cut from the 2007 budget. This program provided transportation to evening English classes and PACT (Parent and Child Time) during which they did guided literacy activites with their small children. After this year's sessions finish, they're on their own. Back into the kitchen, with side trips to the laundromat.
Those immigrants whose class background has enabled them to be educated within their own languages and cultures are a whole different story. Asians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans from wealthier backgrounds, these folks dive right into the academic learning of English, in order to be able to get jobs using other skills they already have. And, here's a fact worth considering - it is my experience that my Asian students begin to study Spanish, as soon as they have a decent grasp of English. Realizing its importance for communicating well with a large percentage of those they will encounter in their jobs (medical fields, law enforcement, human services, etc.), they see it as essential. Hmmmmmmm.
It's easy to say "Let them speak English," in a regal sort of tone. Never has there been such a large influx of people speaking another language into this country at one time. We need to consider the changes this will bring to this country in many ways besides language. How our culture will be influenced and changed by this hispanic wave. As it has been by every wave of immigrants that has washed over our shores. English is the official language simply because the English colonists had a revolution and called this continent a new nation, their nation, therefore English speaking. The Spanish colonists were actually here first - the inspiration for our fear of reconquista. I think it is really our fear of another culture making such inroads that scares us so badly. The realization that Spanish might easily have been the "official language" of both Americas.
If we need to call English our "official language" for official stuff, okay. Not a problem. But let's not fear a future that we cannot stop. It accomplishes nothing. Let's not cut programs that help acculturate our new arrivals, and let's open our minds and hearts to welcoming what new cultures will bring to this country. If Irish flags fly in New Jersey (and Boston), Italian flags are visible on bumper stickers all over Philadelphia, St. Louis has great German food, if we'd all go nuts without a good Thai restaurant closeby, clearly this is not a monoculture.
