Language is Culture; Culture is Language

September 2nd, 2007 at 10:13pm Mike McGarry 214

Language is Culture; Culture is Language
Tell it to the U.S. Government    
By Mike McGarry
 

It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual —former Colo. Gov. Richard Lamm

A common language is the glue that holds a people and a nation together—S. I. Hayakawa

It is a truism with most anthropologists that culture is language, and language is culture.  But you would never know that from the U.S. government’s forced pulling apart of Hayakawa’s nation-binding glue.  

Government Sues Salvation Army over English Rule 
    

Study Finds One-Third in D.C. Illiterate The growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who aren't proficient in English contributed to the city's high functional illiteracy level.... 

During the final days of his presidency, Bill Clinton signed into law Executive Order 13166. Under that far-reaching order, any entity that receives federal funds, including state, county and local governments, must provide translations upon demand in any language a person wishes to conduct business, with the costs of translators and translations carried by the providers, private and public.
 

Man “evicted for English”
If it were reversed and I was Hispanic and there were two other American businesses in here occupying the other storefronts and the owner of the property said to the Hispanic business owner, 'Guess what? You've got 30 days to move your business outta here because ... I want an English-speaking plaza serving the English people in the area,' there'd be a firestorm.…
 

There are 6,800 languages spoken in the world, 41 versions of Arabic, with nearly 20 percent of U.S. residents speaking a language other than English at home. The Bush administration refused to repeal Clinton’s pernicious order. Some believe out of that order we could see demands for, say, the complete works of Shakespeare in, oh, how about a Bantu dialect.  
 

Judge Drops Rape Charges Over Lack of Interpreter  
The prosecutor in the case of a Liberian native charged with repeatedly raping and molesting a 7-year-old girl said Monday that he is filing an appeal of a controversial judge's ruling that dismissed all charges because an interpreter who spoke the suspect's rare West African dialect (Val) could not be found. 

Not Even the Teachers Can Speak English
An official state inspection of Arizona public schools reveals that many students are being taught English by Spanish-speaking teachers whose command of English is so poor that the officials can barely understand them.
 

Reactivating the military draft is not a totally unrealistic possibility. Check it out in any post office: The Military Selective Service Act requires all males 18-25 residing in this country, including immigrants and illegal aliens, to register for the Selective Service.

If the draft were reactivated, would we forgive illegals their felonious trespasses and draft them? If so, given that many legal and illegal residents don't speak our language, would we be compelled by circumstances to have full brigades and divisions exclusively speaking Spanish or the hundreds of other languages and dialects spoken exclusively by millions now residing in the rapidly growing number of ethnically balkanized enclaves throughout the U.S.? Will the Pentagon's telephone system soon be asking you, "If you prefer Farsi, press 56, now; if you prefer a Hmong dialect, press 212, now"?
 
A healthy nation is like an extended family. A polyglot, international mass of tens-of-millions of strangers from all parts of the world is not a national family. We are often instructed with unchallenged, mantralike repetition, "Diversity is our strength," but too much diversity is (irreparably) dividing us.
 
Presidential debates in Spanish? Sí      
 Now Univisión plans to make its own history by airing the first U.S. presidential debates in Spanish Sept. 9 and 16 in Miami. Questions at the live debate would be simultaneously translated into English.
 

K.C.McAlpin is executive director of ProEnglish, an Arlington, Va.-based organization that advocates for, among other affirmative acrtions, laws or a constitutional amendment declaring English the USA’s nation’s official language.  Under "Our Guiding Principals," ProEnglish states,  “In a pluralistic nation such as ours, the function of government should be to foster and support the similarities that unite us, rather than institutionalize the differences that divide us.”
 

K.C. McAlpin will be interviewed on "Con Games" (KNFO 106.1) Wednesday morning, September 5, 8-AM-9AM. 

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