<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-td-post-header"><header class="gmail-td-post-title"><h1 class="entry-title">America’s Bilingual Roots</h1><div class="gmail-td-module-meta-info"> <span class="gmail-td-post-date gmail-td-post-date-no-dot"><time class="entry-date gmail-updated gmail-td-module-date" datetime="2018-08-07T12:57:46+00:00">August 7, 2018</time></span></div></header></div><div class="gmail-td-post-content"><div class="gmail-at-above-post gmail-addthis_tool" style="clear:both"><div id="gmail-atstbx" class="gmail-at-share-tbx-element gmail-addthis-smartlayers gmail-addthis-animated gmail-at4-show"><span id="gmail-at-9430adaa-e5d2-44e8-b3df-23a541725dc4" class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">AddThis Sharing Buttons</span><div class="gmail-at-share-btn-elements"><a tabindex="1" class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper gmail-at-share-btn gmail-at-svc-email" style="background-color:rgb(132,132,132);border-radius:0%"><span class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">Share to Email</span><span class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper" style="line-height:16px;height:16px;width:16px"></span></a><a tabindex="1" class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper gmail-at-share-btn gmail-at-svc-google" style="background-color:rgb(66,133,244);border-radius:0%"><span class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">Share to Google Bookmark</span><span class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper" style="line-height:16px;height:16px;width:16px"></span></a><a tabindex="1" class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper gmail-at-share-btn gmail-at-svc-facebook" style="background-color:rgb(59,89,152);border-radius:0%"><span class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">Share to Facebook</span><span class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper" style="line-height:16px;height:16px;width:16px"></span></a><a tabindex="1" class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper gmail-at-share-btn gmail-at-svc-twitter" style="background-color:rgb(29,161,242);border-radius:0%"><span class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">Share to Twitter</span><span class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper" style="line-height:16px;height:16px;width:16px"></span></a><a tabindex="1" class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper gmail-at-share-btn gmail-at-svc-compact" style="background-color:rgb(255,101,80);border-radius:0%"><span class="gmail-at4-visually-hidden">Share to More</span><span class="gmail-at-icon-wrapper" style="line-height:16px;height:16px;width:16px"></span></a><span class="gmail-at_flat_counter" style="line-height:16px;font-size:10.2px">5</span></div></div></div><h1><strong><img class="gmail-alignleft gmail-size-medium gmail-wp-image-130381" src="https://www.languagemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/america-192x300.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="300">Dominika Baran</strong> reminds us of the history and value of America’s multilingual past</h1><p> </p><p>Every
September, or August in some cases, teachers welcome into their
classrooms students whose first language is not English. Some of these
may be immigrant or refugee children who have just arrived in the U.S.
and know not a single English word. Others may have grown up in
immigrant households and first encountered English literacy in
kindergarten, so that even as bilingual speakers in higher school grades
they are daunted by academic English.</p><p>Even in schools with robust
English as a second language (ESL) support, some teachers struggle to
meet the needs of their English language learners (ELLs)—or emergent
bilinguals. The situation is much worse in areas where bilingual
education is discouraged or disallowed. One well-known example of this
is Arizona, where the passing of Proposition 203 in 2000 eliminated
bilingual education programs, replacing them with so-called structured
English immersion (SEI) that has left many students and parents
traumatized, but Arizona is hardly unique.</p><p>So why does bilingual
education induce so much anxiety among policy makers and the
English-speaking public, even though research and classroom practice
have shown time and again that supporting students’ home languages
actually helps them learn English and leads to better academic
performance overall?</p><h2>MULTILINGUAL PIONEERS</h2><p>There are
arguably few images of young America as iconic as the pioneers. In
Westerns, Hollywood portrayed them traveling in covered wagons across
the prairies, inevitably speaking English—or, more precisely, an
unmistakably American, somewhat country-accented variety of English. But
contrast that with a different scene featuring pioneers, one taken from
the Texan countryside in 1854. A group of about 100 Polish families
from Upper Silesia have just arrived, under the leadership of a priest
from their hometown, Reverend Leopold Moczygemba.</p><p>Having expected
an established settlement, they find themselves in untouched wilderness,
overgrown with grass and brush so tall that people cannot see each
other from just a few feet away, filled with rattlesnakes, barren of
anything edible, hot, and unforgiving. In the absence of any dwellings,
they sleep in dug-out burrows. Day by day, they work tirelessly to clear
the hostile land. Eventually, they build a village: houses, a church, a
school. In the church, Reverend Moczygemba preaches in his native
Silesian Polish, and the school is taught in Polish as well.</p><p>Similar
stories can be told of Czech, Slovak, German, Swedish, Norwegian, or
Danish settlers, to name but a few—and in the American West, of course,
Chinese, Japanese, and other non-Europeans likewise settled often
difficult terrain, and built railroads and mined. Although the English
introduced by the British colonizers is now the dominant language in the
U.S., it was by no means the only language spoken by early Americans.
In fact, at the time of the American Revolution, less than 50% of people
in the colonies were English speakers or of English-speaking descent.</p><p>Today,
on the other hand, while we hear thousands of languages spoken in
America, as many as 80% of Americans are native—and often
monolingual—speakers of English. Two facts about language in America
emerge from this history: that multilingualism has always been a feature
of American society, and that English remains the dominant language
with little danger of a challenge.</p><p>Yet both of these ideas appear
to elude many people, like the angry customer at the Manhattan eatery
Fresh Kitchen whose rant against employees addressing customers in
Spanish went viral on May 16, 2018. The man’s assertion that the
restaurant’s staff “should be speaking English” because “this is
America” is an old yet common slogan. It assumes, incorrectly, both that
English is the only American language and that English is somehow
assaulted when other languages are used in public.</p><p>Another
incident that took place on the same day was the detention by a Montana
Border Patrol officer of two American citizens because, in his own
video-recorded words, they were speaking Spanish, which is “very unheard
of up here.” The officer’s actions and the reasoning behind them
reflect, again, the idea that languages other than English are
un-American and present a threat. These misconceptions underlie many
educational policy decisions aimed at immigrant children.</p><h2>ENGLISH IS NOT GOING AWAY</h2><p>Research
has consistently shown that across immigrant communities in the U.S., a
complete shift from the heritage language to English occurs by the
third generation. In other words, even if first-generation immigrants do
not speak English at all, their grandchildren tend to be monolingual in
it. Furthermore, languages other than English have a comparatively tiny
number of speakers in America. Even Spanish, the only serious partner
to English in American public spaces, is spoken only by a little over
12% of the population, and its relative vitality is mostly due to its
history as the dominant language in the North American West and
Southwest and to the Spanish language’s continuous contact with Central
and South American Spanish via ongoing transmigrations.</p><p>The lesson
here should be that English is not going away. It is not embattled or
disappearing. Consequently, it is irrational to worry about the welfare
of English when hearing or seeing other languages used in American
public spaces. When such fears inform educational policy, leading to the
elimination of bilingual or dual-language programs in favor of English
immersion, emergent bilingual children suffer, because immersion is not,
contrary to common popular belief, the quickest way for children to
learn a new language.</p><p>In fact, recent research shows that children
are not necessarily better at learning new languages than adults. When
“immersed” in English and deprived of a way to make meaningful
connections between the new L2 (second-language) input and their
existing L1 (first-language) knowledge, children struggle to comprehend
academic material, they lose motivation, and their self-esteem plummets.
And in addition, they become isolated from their communities: their
heritage language begins to undergo attrition and they may develop
negative feelings about it, while at the same time their parents, who
often do not speak English, are unable to help them with homework or
engage with school activities.</p><h2>BILINGUALISM IS GOOD FOR YOU—AND FOR SOCIETY</h2><p>As
early as 1979, University of Toronto professor and scholar of bilingual
education and second-language acquisition James Cummins criticized
immersion programs as “submersion” that runs counter to all available
research. He, and many other researchers since, emphasized the
developmental interdependence of L1 and L2, pointing out that children
who continue to develop their L1 as they acquire L2 perform better on
reading tests than children whose L1 education is replaced with L2. This
is not to say that emergent bilinguals cannot succeed when placed in
English immersion programs, but that they succeed in spite of, and not
because of, such placement.</p><p>By contrast, there is clear evidence
that encouraging the simultaneous development of L1 and L2 through
bilingual and dual-language education helps children make connections
between what they are learning and what they already know, leading to
better performance and stronger self-esteem. Researchers Lesley Bartlett
and Ofelia García describe the success of dual-language development in
the bilingual program at Gregorio Luperón High School in New York City,
noting that when Spanish is used as scaffolding to learn English, even
teenagers who come to the school with only limited English are able to
acquire it rapidly.</p><p>The fact that bilingualism benefits our brains
has been written about copiously in recent years. Bilingualism is
reported to aid brain development, enhance cognitive functions such as
prioritizing and organizing information, and help ward off early signs
of dementia. When immigrant children’s bilingualism is encouraged—when
they are treated as emergent bilinguals and not just future English
speakers—their chances of academic success increase. It is time that
these research-based facts, not irrational fears of other languages
“taking over,” informed bilingual education policy in the U.S.</p><p>America
was settled by speakers of many languages, and as long as immigrants
continue to come to the U.S., multilingualism will remain a fact of
American life. At the same time, those who fear for the future of
English can rest assured that it is more than secure. English is here to
stay. Supporting other languages is neither un-American nor a threat to
English.</p><p><strong>Dominika Baran</strong> is an associate
professor in the English Department at Duke University. She works in the
fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and her current
research focuses on the intersections of language, identity, and
migration. Her book, Language in Immigrant America, was published in
October 2017.</p></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>