[HERITAGE-LIST] FOLLOW-UP TO: FYI: Op-ed piece on State of Maryland Task Force on the Preservation of Heritage Language Skills - in other parts of Maryland....

[Scott G. McGINNIS]

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:59:19 -0500 
From: Kim Potowski <kimpotow at uic.edu> 

Funny, not too long ago Dennis Baron posted to the 
language policy listserv about a Maryland town that 
wants to go English Only.  I'm pasting the post 
below.  This contrasts strongly with what Catherine 
documents... a clear example of two counterforces at 
work in the same state. 
_________ 
Kim Potowski 
Associate Professor of Spanish 
Director, Spanish for heritage speakers 
The University of Illinois at Chicago 
Department of Spanish, French, Italian & Portuguese 
1722 UH, MC-315, 601 S. Morgan St. 
Chicago, IL 60607 
kimpotow at uic.edu 

>>  Another of Maryland's English-speaking towns poised 
>>  (from the French) to go English-only 
>> 
>>  Thurmont, a beyond-the-beltway community in northern 
>>  Frederick County, Maryland, is poised to make 
>>  English its official language.  On June 16, Mayor 
>>  Martin Burns introduced a bill requiring town 
>>  employees to speak only English and ordering 
>>  Thurmont’s municipal paper-pushers to generate 
>>  their copious (from the Latin) paperwork only in 
>>  English as well. 
>> 
>>  Thurmont isn’t very big: its zip code, 21788, 
>>  includes about 6,000 town residents, with another 
>>  5,000 people in the surrounding 
>>  countryside.   According to Mayor Burns, the 
>>  official-English measure is necessary to ensure the 
>>  proper integration of immigrants into the American 
>>  melting pot: “It’s a way of saying, ‘We speak 
>>  English in America.  It’s the universal 
>>  language.’” 
>> 
>>  While it may seem premature of the mayor to equate 
>>  America with the universe (the Klingons aren’t 
>>  about to give up their language, not without a 
>>  fight), it’s clear that Thurmont has always 
>>  conducted its municipal affairs in English because 
>>  almost nobody in town speaks anything else. 
>> 
>>  It’s not that Thurmont wants to turn away 
>>  immigrants.  It’s just that there aren’t very 
>>  many in the neighborhood to turn away.   According 
>>  to the 2000 Census, the few Thurmont residents who 
>>  speak a language other than English (about 199 
>>  residents of Hispanic or Asian background and a 
>>  couple of high school foreign language teachers) 
>>  have no trouble communicating in English 
>>  too.  That’s only 1.9% of the 11,000 people who 
>>  make up Thurmont 21788.  In comparison, the national 
>>  average of people over five years old who speak a 
>>  language other than English at home is almost 18%, 
>>  though most of them also speak English. 
>> 
>>  Since there’s not much demand in Thurmont for any 
>>  language except English, no one was surprised when 
>>  Mayor Burns acknowledged that the city has never 
>>  received a request to do business in any other 
>>  language.  The new English-only law would just mean 
>>  business as usual for the town’s municipal 
>>  employees. 
>> 
>>  As it contemplates an unnecessary official English 
>>  law, Thurmont joins the growing number of 
>>  communities where everyone already speaks English 
>>  but feels the need to protect the language from the 
>>  barbarian hordes outside our gates (barbarian, from 
>>  the Greek, meaning ‘someone who stammers,’ in 
>>  other words, someone who doesn’t speak Greek – 
>>  note that the Greeks considered the Angles and the 
>>  Saxons, who would eventually bring English to 
>>  England, to be barbarians). . . . . 
>> 
>>  Read the rest of this post on Maryland's latest 
>>  English-only town on the Web of Language 
>>  DB 
>> 
>>  ____________________ 
>>  Dennis Baron 
>>  Professor of English and Linguistics 
>>  Department of English 
>>  University of Illinois 
>>  608 S. Wright St. 
>>  Urbana, IL 61801 
>> 
>>  office: 217-244-0568 
>>  fax: 217-333-4321 
>>