ENGLISH OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE?

Congress was having a little fun last week debating whether the English language should be formally ensconced in our legal system as THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

The resultant flurry of emotional opinions ranged from calling such a move RACIST by the Democrats to PROTECT OUR HERITAGE by the Republicans.

I don’t exactly what stirred all this up but I have a suspicion that the immigration protests by Hispanics and the singing of a Spanish Star Spangled Banner had something to do with it.

Canada has two (2) official languages and every label and sign has to be in both English and French – a real pain in the ass and in the pocketbook. France has laws that forbid the use of non-French words; they even translated Mickey Mouse into French. I remembered that Poland had similar rules but even they realized that saying OPEN 24 HOUR was better than OTWARTE DWADZIESCIACZTERY GODZIN – they need huge signs to hold all those words and letters.

I also realized that many ancient languages really had no translations for words such as “weekend”, “computer”, “Internet” and many, many other modern words.

The world is quickly becoming used to the fact that ENGLISH is the universal language. When a German goes to China and an Italian goes to China, they communicate with each other and the Chinese in ENGLISH.

In the United States, the melting pot gave us countless ethnic enclaves that spoke their native languages but communicated with other groups in English – it was the natural thing to do and is practiced today. In Michigan we had a town near Detroit called Hamtramck. It was so Polish, you did not need to know English; even the cops were Polish. That town has changed dramatically with children of those Poles, Americanized and moved out. Today, the same town is full of Albanians and the circle continues.

I remember growing up and learning English in school and Polish at home. It was easy and natural for a little kid to pick up another language. My kids always complained that I did not teach them Polish but BOTH parents have to speak the same language for that to happen. In my case, my wife spoke only English.

Growing up in the 1950s, my mother wanted me to be a medical doctor so in high school I took LATIN – boy what a waste – a dead language! French in the 50s was the language of diplomacy, so I took a few months of that. German was the language of science – I only lasted a few weeks in that class. Today, to be successful in our global economy, you need to know English!

Our military is sitting on millions of captured documents in Arabic but no one to translate them. They have captured many illegal “combatants” but have no one to interrogate them in their native tongue- all we can do is strip them naked and take pictures of them in funny positions. We need people that speak other languages!!!

I think having our students learn another language is a good idea but they must be FIRST, proficient in English! Teaching primary school in a language other than English should be against the law.

Requiring instructions, signs, labels……………….in languages other than just English should be against the law – this should be voluntary for business or marketing purposes.

Requiring a working knowledge of English to obtain citizenship should be the law. I don’t care if the applicants for U.S. citizenship know much about our history; our own high school graduates don’t know our history or how our government operates! They don’t know our geography either.

So what am I getting at? I think the natural way this country has developed through the ages by absorbing ethnic groups and their languages and customs and forming Americans out of them has worked out very well WITHOUT declaring English our national language.

I guess I am confused about what a bill declaring English as our national language is suppose to accomplish. I think English is and has always been our de facto national language. Is someone suggesting we make Spanish our national language or is this so-called issue a lot of noise about nothing? Or, is a law needed to at least guarantee those points above that I suggested should be part of our laws.

Janusz