It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Stefan Dollinger]

Of course there's legislation to ensure mulitilingual labels on boxes. But this is legislation to PROTECT minority languages and the status of their speakers, and NOT TO marginalize them. This is the big difference between Canada (yes, the boxes are bilingual all over the country, not just in Quebec) and the EU on the one side and the US on the other side. Would one use laws to protect linguistic minorities or rather to marginalize them? This is the question. So would one promote multilingualism and cultural heritages that way or cement a quite senseless English-only law to the possible detriment of minority languages and their speakers? Each linguist and modern language person needs to take a stand.
Stefan Dollinger

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from Jim Landau's reply:

About those multi-lingual labels:

Don't forget that in Canada there is a law (I don't know if it applies to all of Canada or only just to Quebec) that consumer products must have labels in French.  Hence any vendor in the United States who wants to sell his products in Canada must add French to the label, whether or not the vendor expects to sell to any significant number of Francophones south of the border.

[...]


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Stefan Dollinger 
To: 
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: It takes more than a language to unify a nation


I am very puzzled by the call (or at least suggestion) for "English-only ballots" and "English-only cereal boxes". 
While I understand that someone can start feeling uneasy about seeing another language in a place where there used to be only the majority language, these feelings are the expression of societal fears (a culture of fear, some have argued). I strongly believe that one should celebrate any diversification of codes in a society and embrace multilingualism. In Canada, they've had English and French texts on boxes since 1969 and English is still spoken. In Europe, you find up to 12 languages (sometimes more) on these boxes. Which linguist would not find that beautiful? It's up to us to tell the non-linguist and make them see the beauty in it. And yes, especially in the States.

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