LL-L "Language use" 2011.04.04 (03) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 04 April 2011 - Volume 02
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Language use"



Beste Ron,



You wrote:

But, yes, Elsa, I agree with your point that these days the USA are far more
unabashedly multilingual than most people elsewhere assume they are.



I agree that many non-Americans may not be aware of the huge number of
languages spoken actively these days in the US. However, a couple of
remarks:



   - You're talking about Seattle. Not exactly mainstream USA. The situation
   in the Midwest is slightly different I think.
   - Hearing loads of foreign languages does not necessarily mean that
   citizens automatically become multilingual. Swiss people may get to hear
   less languages every day than a Seattletonian (Seattlian?), but on average
   they are more multilingual than Americans.
   - Multilingualism comes in many varieties. Grasping a few common words of
   another language is not enough to be counted bi/multi-lingual.



On another level, how multilingual is president Obama? In many ways, he is
the face of the nation, he could set a real fine example. How many former US
presidents were able to speak Spanish fluently?



Kind greetings,



Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium



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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: Language use


Thanks, Luc.



I dare say that much of what I reported applies to most large cities in the
US, though I admit that diversity is greater on the West Coast, on the
Northeast coast and in the Chicago and Detroit areas. For example, you will
hear more Arabic and languages of Muslim-dominated countries. In Los Angeles
you will hear more Farsi. East Asian languages are particularly widely heard
in the San Francisco Bay Area. In San José (not a large city) you hear
particularly much Vietnamese, besides Spanish. Add to this relatively small,
multilingual “college towns,” such as Palo Alto, Ann Arbor, and Iowa City.
As for Spanish, you will hear it in small and rural communities as well.



And Seattle is not that big of a city, by the way. Oh, and it’s
“Seattleite.”



Community announcements in Seattle tend to be printed in Arabic, Chinese,
Khmer, Lao, Korean, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tigrinya and Vietnamese.



I don’t know for sure, but I understand that President Obama has some
proficiency in Spanish and also at least used to know Indonesian as a child.
George W. Bush has fairly good Spanish, I hear. Condoleezza Rice is fluent
in Russian. Rahm Emanuel has Hebrew as his paternal language.



Anyway, I didn’t understand this thread to deal with individuals’ language
proficiencies. I understood it as dealing with more than one language being
used within communities. But it is true that many immigrants know languages
besides their native ones and English. North and West Africans tend to know
French besides their native languages, some North Africans Berber languages
as well. Almost all Tigrinya and Oromo speakers I know here also know
Amharic, some of them also Arabic.



Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

Seattle, USA



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