New Jersey: Dover's language angst

[Harold Schiffman]

Dover's language angst

Posted by nvmontal March 08, 2008 10:45AM

The offer of a local pastor to translate portions of the Dover's web
site into Spanish has sparked a controversy in this fast-changing
town, where Hispanics -- most of recent immigrant background -- now
comprise a majority of the town's 18,000 residents. Three council
members spoke out with passion on the subject, arguing that English is
our national language -- the glue that holds us together as one people
despite our differences - and that any accommodations to language
differences would undermine the goal of linguistic unity by making it
easy for people to get along in foreign language and avoid learning
English. Mayor James Dodd, also an opponent of translation, asserted
that previous generations of immigrants, including his ancestors, had
to learn English, and that he sees no reason to change that policy
now.

Although Dover's mayor and council members are right about the need to
promote unity, to forge a common American identity that transcends but
does not disallow group identity, and to maintain the great American
equilibrium of peoples and cultures, there are much better ways to
pursue that goal. Indeed, a multi-lingual communication policy can be
considered one of those ways -- an approach that not only promotes
public safety and fairness, but has ample precedent in American
history. It's simply not true to say that past immigrants embraced
English without resistance and that local officials consistently
followed an "English-only" policy. If anything, conditions were such
that people, especially women (including my Sicilian immigrant
grandmother who lived in this country for 60 years without ever
learning English), could hold on to their languages longer and live in
self-contained ethnic communities, untouched by the communications
revolution that has altered modern life and catapulted English into
its current preeminent world status.

Moreover, governments at all levels, as well as civic and charitable
groups which in those days bore the major burden of caring for the
needy, routinely reached out to immigrants in foreign languages, not
only to inform them about their rights and responsibilities as new
Americans, but also to ease their transition into their new homeland.
After World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, security concerns
amplified this need to communicate with millions of immigrants in
languages they could understand.

In a pre-internet era, print media, in the form of pamphlets and
newspapers, and bilingual outreach workers, speaking languages like
Italian, Polish, and Yiddish, were the preferred strategies for
reaching the immigrant population. During World War I, the federal
government set up the Foreign Language Information Service to feed
useful information in foreign language to immigrant organizations and
to the thousands of foreign-language newspapers and periodicals that
flourished at that time.

Other public institutions also got into the act. A "foreign language
movement" in American libraries resulted in major investments in
purchasing books and periodicals in foreign language for the enjoyment
of immigrant patrons. Providing reading materials in foreign languages
was not seen as subversive of the goal of integration, but rather as
facilitating it. As the Chief Librarian of Newark said in 1915, "It is
easy to believe that they (the immigrants) find their new home still
more homelike, and become sooner attached to it, when they find one of
its public institutions giving them a welcome in their native
tongues."

Schools also, both public and private, made vigorous efforts to enable
the second generation to learn the native languages of their parents.
In New Jersey, where Germans were a major population element
throughout the 19th century, German was taught widely in the
elementary schools up to World War I. In Hoboken, the most German of
New Jersey's cities, German was used commonly in business and public
affairs.

In an influential pamphlet published in 1919, providing general
guidance to "Americanization" workers, the following advice was given:
"Remember that the language of the immigrant is dear to him for home
and religious purposes and the intimate relations of his life. Respect
his language and he will learn ours more willingly" - not a bad piece
of advice for today.


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