Common ground and the English-only movement (fwd link)

[Richard Zane Smith]

Great article...and good writing!
 Colonizers idea of the term assimilation was/is strange.
English,French and Spanish fought against the idea of assimilating
here among the existing aboriginal peoples here on turtle island.
Eastern cities here are remakes of their homes left over seas.

The melting-pot-soup-spill-over from europe to turtle island required
indigenous people to melt into the dominant mess or get out of the way.

Strange, how descendants of "the takers" are calling for "assimilation!"
Once the grip of taking traditional lands relaxed into ownership status,
there arises an attitude ...sounding almost "native"
"why don't these invading aliens assimilate and talk like us?"

why is it hard for people to see the irony in their own hearts?

Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte, Oklahoma

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:55 PM, phil cash cash
<cashcash at email.arizona.edu>wrote:

> Common ground and the English-only movement
> by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
>
> The United States is not what it was 200 years ago. It will not be in 200
> years
> what it is now. It does not belong to the English, the Italians, the Irish,
> the
> Africans, the Hispanics. It belongs to all of us who are American citizens
> at
> this moment in time. Our American patrimony cannot be bought, nor can it be
> sold.
>
> Posted on December 8, 2008
> El Paso, TX
>
> Twenty years ago, enroute to the Arizona Capitol during the Oct. 22, 1988
> march
> against the English Only Proposition, I was struck by the fallacies and
> inconsistencies persistent in the arguments of those pressing for its
> adoption.
> The English Only law was passed but later declared unconstitutional on
> First
> Amendment grounds And here we are in the year 2008 still beset by those
> same
> arguments for English Only laws by the likes of state Rep. Leo Berman
> (R-Tyler)
> who has "filed a series of bills for the 81st session of the Texas
> legislature
> aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants and the predominant language
> they,
> along with millions of Texans, speak" (NPT, Nov. 19, 2008). What are the
> proponents of English Only afraid of? Recently, a Floridian opined that
> "Spanish may be the native language of many Americans, but it is a language
> that includes only some, and alienates most." This is a puzzling utterance
> because there are more speakers of Spanish in the Americas than there are
> speakers of English.
>
> As a professor of English (now retired), I am not surprised by how little
> Americans really know about their language and its linguistic roots.
> Unfortunately, many Americans believe that the linguistic foundation of the
> United States is English. In the strictest sense of the word it's not
> English
> that we speak in the United States but "American," as H. L. Mencken
> correctly
> described it more than 75 years ago.
>
> Access full article below:
>
> http://www.newspapertree.com/culture/3162-common-ground-and-the-english-only-movement
>



-- 
"if you don't know the language you will only see the surface of the
culture..The language is the heart of the culture and you cannot separate
it."
Elaine Ramos, TLINGIT
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20081208/14e07ded/attachment.htm>