It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Jonathan Lighter]

This is fundamentally a matter of conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, government should stay out of people's private lives and not mess with their minds.  If they wish to maintain their native language, the government ideally has no business pressuring them to do otherwise. On the other hand, more immigrants (I believe) would rather learn English than not, and a shared language is enormously helpful in maintaining national coherence in the face of numerous competing minority languages. (Yeah, I know both sides spoke English during the Civil War; I said "helpful.")

  I haven't considered the nuances and implications of the current bill and don't know whether an officially legislated national language would do good or harm, but I must confess a commitment to the now less-than-fashionable Melting Pot ideal since second grade. Like, E Pluribus Unum, dudes and dudettes.

  JL





Judith Marie <Judith_H_Marie at COMPUSERVE.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Judith Marie
Subject: Re: It takes more than a language to unify a nation
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Hi all,
When I voted in November in Berkeley, California, I first had to choose
which language I wished to use. The choice was between Chinese, Korean,
Spanish, English or Tagalog [sic].
It seems to me not unreasonable that since only U.S. citizens vote, and
that one has to pass an English language test to become a citizen, the
ballet should be in English.
Judith

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