It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Dave Wilton]

>If I buy a consumer device, I have to find the English section of the
>owner's manual, and when I'm looking up something, I've got to flip past
>the Spanish and French pages to find what I want.

This has nothing to do with immigration; this is a consequence of global
trade. Manufacturers make their products to sell in any number of countries,
and the manuals reflect this fact.

And most of the issues listed here would not be affected one whit by
English-only laws, which affect only the government. Merchants and business
people will continue to do business in whatever language maximizes their
profits. If someone is uncomfortable with this, they'll just have to learn
to live with it because it ain't gonna change.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 3:51 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: It takes more than a language to unify a nation

A couple of thoughts.

1.  Sometimes, laws get passed to express a popular sentiment rather than to
solve a real or imagined problem.  For example, I can't figure out why laws
should treat beer and marijuana as differently as they do -- there seems to
be no good medical or sociological reason to do so -- but people want it
that way, so there you go.

Likewise, I would imagine that Hispanic immigrants of today assimilate at
something like the rate of European immigrants of the 19th century, and that
English-only laws wouldn't do much to change that process.  But Anglo people
feel uneasy about the world, and want to use English-only laws to express
that uneasiness.

2.  Previous waves of immigrants would conduct their lives in their native
languages probably like Hispanics of today do.  You had German local
newspapers, Yiddish theater, Italian markets, etc.  There were Lutheran
churches here in Huntsville, AL that conducted services in German to
accomodate the German rocket scientists that moved here in the 1950's.   But
a modern difference that strikes me (and I could be wrong), is that English
speakers used to be able to conduct their affairs without having the foreign
languages pushed onto them.  Now, the Lowe's Home Center near me has signs
in Spanish and English.  If I buy a consumer device, I have to find the
English section of the owner's manual, and when I'm looking up something,
I've got to flip past the Spanish and French pages to find what I want.  The
Nashville I grew up in had a dial full of English radio stations, now there
are some Spanish speaking stations.  If I'm looking at the specifications of
a TV at Circuit City, as often as not I've got to turn the box around
because the side facing me is Spanish rather than English.

All this is to say that probably some of the underlying desire for
English-only laws is not so much to make immigrants conduct themselves in
English, as it is to allow "natives" not to have to deal with foreign
languages (primarily Spanish).


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org