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L O W L A N D S - L - 04 April 2011 - Volume 02<br>
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color:#00681C">Hellinckx Luc</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
<span class="gi">LL-L "Language use"</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Beste Ron,</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">You wrote:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You're talking about Seattle. Not exactly mainstream USA. The
situation in the Midwest is slightly
different I think.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">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.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Multilingualism comes in many varieties.
Grasping a few common words of another language is not enough to be
counted bi/multi-lingual.</li></ul>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Kind greetings,</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);">Luc Hellinckx,
Halle, Belgium</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
Language use</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
Thanks, Luc.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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. </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">And Seattle is not that big of a city, by the
way. Oh, and it’s “Seattleite.”</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Community announcements in Seattle tend to be printed
in Arabic, Chinese, Khmer, Lao, Korean, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tigrinya and Vietnamese.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Seattle, USA</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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