Canthook

There's been a lot of talk, for the last couple of years, that we should require that immigrants learn English as a condition of permanent resident status.

This has seemed like an absurd notion to me. We don't require that native-born Americans learn English, and if anyone thinks that we're writing our laws in English, it's not proper English. Our lawbooks look like they were written by illiterates.

And there's really no reason why English would be a better official language of any country other than England. Here in Lancaster County, PA, we have 60,000 Amish who have a dialect of German as their first language, the language they speak in the home. They do better in school and in commerce than those who speak English in the home.

We have a large number of hispanics as well, here in the city of Lancaster. In fact, Lancaster has one of the highest percentages of hispanics in the entire US. They are mostly native-born citizens of the country, rather than immigrants; they typically were born in Puerto Rico, which is part of the US.

If you want to pass a "speak English if you want to stay" law, it wouldn't affect them.

However, I made a quick trip to the Bausman post office this afternoon; I had to mail a letter to downtown Lancaster, and it was cheaper to drive out of town to the post office in Bausman than to circle the block 47 times in downtown Lancaster, trying to figure out where the letter was going, and where I could park.

On the way to Bausman, I stopped at the Burger King to get a drink; normally, I'd just drink my own iced tea, but the icemaker in the freezer is struggling to keep up, and yes, it would be a few cents cheaper to buy a bag of ice, but that would have involved getting out of the car. Oh, idling the engine in the drive-thru is expensive, too? Well, you got me again.

I waited, and waited, and waited in the drive-thru. When I got to the pickup window, Mrs. Thomas, the shift manager, apologized for the wait, saying that the prior customer could only speak Spanish, and there'd consequently been some delay.

Mrs. Thomas was nice - which isn't always the case at Burger King. The best way to describe it is to say that Two-Ton Enterprises, the franchisee, is in need of adult supervision. But Mrs. Thomas was pleasant, and friendly; if you wear a big smile that says "thank you", customers tend to be awfully forgiving. Maybe things are looking up at Burger King.

In any case, there's been a lot of criticism hurled at Barack Obama for suggesting that we should all learn a foreign language. Apparently what's sauce for the gander isn't sauce for the goose.

I'd have to agree. Immigrants should learn English. We should learn other languages as well. I wish I knew German, because of the Amish population, and Spanish, because of the hispanic population, and Vietnamese, because I think it would be useful in Vietnamese restaurants. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn other languages, and the more you exercise your mind, the more it forestalls Alzheimer's Syndrome, Old-Timer's Syndrome, and just plain senility.

And I've always wanted to learn Portuguese. I don't know any portuguese people, as far as I know, but ever since I read about Brazil, when I was in the third grade, I've wanted to go live there. Or maybe Denmark or Iceland. They seem awfully cold, but by any other standard, they seem like awfully nice places to live.

Do we need to pass a law telling immigrants to learn English or else? No more so now than we did in earlier times. You probably know someone whose grandparents moved here from some other country, and their grandparents have not succeeded in learning the new language.

That's hardly a surprise. They tell us that learning a new language as an adult is incredibly difficult. And if you're trying to get yourself established in another country, you don't really have time to study linguistics. As the old posters used to say, when you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp. It's always been the kids who learned English, and helped the parents learn the new ways.

But don't you suppose that Mrs. Thomas is going to hire employees that can speak multiple languages rather than stupid employees, given a chance? Can you think of any employer that is going to do otherwise?

Passing a law demanding that you learn a new language is overkill. You might as well pass a law telling people that if you use a large denomination bill to pay for a purchase, and the cashier hands you smaller bills and coins in change, it's your money, and you should pocket it. The ability to speak multiple languages is money in your pocket, and in this economy, we don't need to encourage anyone to feather his own nest. They'll figure it out sooner or later.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Alzheimer Syndrome - Amish - Burger King - foreign language - hispanics - illiteracy - immigration - language skills - post office