ingléspañol

Al Principio explained a little further

First my apologies to anybody who tried to post and couldn't - I'd had the blog closed to outside posts by any non-member, but I've changed the access to "anybody" so if you're reading this please feel free to comment. I really would like any comments.

Especially some of the comments that I've had about the first post. Several of my friends/amigos have expressed some consternation over the "America must learn Spanish" quote - all of them in complete disagreement. Interestingly enough this includes both my English-only and bilingual friends. Each ond every one of you (OK - the five of you), if I understood your comments, could be summed up as this:

Keep English as the one "central" language enjoyed by all Americans. Hispanohablantes can keep their cultural identity/language, but must learn English in order to communicate and further their personal and professional success within the borders of America.

De acuerdo. I like the idea of keeping one unifying language - a central springboard for communication. However, when I said that America needs to learn Spanish the point I was trying to make was this: That los estadounidenses (Americans born in America) need to shed their linguistic xenophobia. Americans are raised on a diet of "English is the ONLY language worth speaking," and thus their minds are closed. To be able to speak a foreign language opens up a world of possibilities. To be able to speak/communicar con los otros permits a person to see that they are not the center of any universe, that there are other people out there.

Simply put: to speak to foreigners lets us see that they want the same things we do: a nice safe place to live - and to be happy and content.

For example: I saw on Univision last week about a young Chicano in LA who was thrown off a bus. As he related the incident, he had been speaking to two other women in Spanish, and the African-American female bus driver said something along the lines of, "Hey just because you might think I don't speak Spanish doesn't mean that I don't understand when you're talking about me!"

To which the young man replied something like, "Well, if you understand, then you'd know that we weren't talking about you."

At which point the bus driver stopped the bus and had him leave.

In all honesty, the exact dialogue is not as important as the social implications expressed here: One person felt threatened because that person couldn't understand what was being said.

You might feel that if the hispanohablantes would give up their language and conform and not speak Spanish in public, only English, then this would be a non-issue. I take the other side of the coin - in that, if the ingléshablantes would take the time to learn another language (whatever language in their particular community, no me importa! Spanish, French, Arabic, Tagalog, whatever group you've got living in YOUR part of the country!) then there would be LESS fear, LESS misunderstanding, and consequently, FEWER incidents like the one on the bus.

I hope that kind of fleshes out the idea there. Again, let me know what YOU think!!

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 8:11 AM