This Drives Me Insane

Christ on a bike. The phrase "only in America" is overused, but seriously I can't think of any other developed, democratic country where immigrants singing the national anthem would be considered a bad thing. Let alone a country entirely founded on immigration and citizenship. Or a country so blind to its past and eager to be whipped into hysteria that it forgets there was a Spanish rendition of the anthem at the president's own inauguration.

And the most crazy-making part:
...it is needed in the wake of a new Spanish version...

New? I guess no one told these guys the recordings were based on the official State Department Spanish translation of the anthem.

Actually, the most crazy-making part is simply that anyone thinks language regulation of any kind is a good idea. I was recently involved in an argument about this on a right-wing blog and was of course accused of being some kind of tolerance-obsessed ultra-leftist. Sorry, I'm just a linguist and I know what I'm talking about when I say language laws are ridiculous.

I wish to friendly amend that you may only put your right hand over your heart while involved with these activities. Sorrrry amputees!

Seems to me that this is going to get overruled in a court eventually. I don't know... something about freedom of speech.

Did any of these super-patriots protest when the national anthem was sung in Spanish at Bush campaign events in 2000?

Ginger: The phrase "only in America" is overused, but seriously I can't think of any other developed, democratic country where immigrants singing the national anthem would be considered a bad thing.

Although I think that this resolution is pointless I must point out that the issue is not immigrants doing anything, it is illegal immigrants. The constant repetition of "immigrants" rather than "illegal immigrants" in the current debates is an Orwellian attempt to control thinking on the subject by controlling the language used. No one, except maybe a couple toothless Klan members somewhere, has any problem with immigrants; it is the many millions of illegal immigrants that are the problem (that our corrupt and incompetent government created by not enforcing the borders and laws already on the books).

Also this new version of the anthem is not simply a new Spanish language version but is in fact a rewrite of the song. You can read the English translation here.

I don't really have much of a problem with their having created this new version myself but I do see it as a political miscalculation. It is something like re-making the American flag only in the colors of the Mexican flag. You have a right to do it but you're probably not going to make a lot of friends in this country by doing so.

bourgeois: Seems to me that this is going to get overruled in a court eventually.

Since "...the legislation would be advisory and not enforceable by law" that would never be necessary.

Does that mean I can't sing the Star Spangled Banner in Canadian anymore?

Si, creo que los Americanos hablamos solamente en Ingles, nunca Espanol, porque Espanol no es la lingua de los Estados Unidos. :-) Oh, wait, isn't the United States now the largest Spanish-speaking country on the planet? Oops.

Of course, I am now probably under investigation by the NSA for immigrant-friendly beliefs. I can't wait until we are not allowed to order burritos or tacos (maybe we can call them "true American" sandwiches) for fear of using the evil Espanol.

I propose a new amendment that you can only burn the flag if reciting the lord's prayer, in English while throwing bricks at the Stonewall Inn's windows and urinating on a first edition copy of The Origin of Speicies.

If Congress wants to attack using foreign languages, my vote would be to eliminate all those confusing Latin phrases and mottoes, starting with E pluribus unum. The Republicans, and for sure W., don't understand what it means, anyway.

Vale,
wheatdogg

Let's dig up Jimi Hendrix's bones and burn them for playing the Star Spangled Banner through reverb.

We know who you are now, Ed. You and your cloven hooves stand revealed. You're just like those atheistic comsimp fellow travellers during WWI who kept ordering saurkraut instead of "liberty cabbage" like God intended.

Nobody expects the english-only inquisition!

Look on the bright side Ed - time spent by congresscritters passing legislation for shallow, pointless, purely symbolic political gestures is time not spent passing legislation for economically ignorant, counterproductive, and expensive political gestures.

Burritos: Freedom Rolls
Taco: Large Stuffed Freedom Chip
Nachos: Freedom Chips with Cheese
Guacamole: Freedom Goo

Sorry, the Taco one is kinda' lame.

I fail to see how celebrating the United States of America, in any language, is something to discourage. I am sooooo ready for a change in the ideology of our leadership. This neocon thing is getting old.

Most americans only knows a quarter of the national anthem and butcher it every time they sing it. If these posers can't sing all four stanzas of the national anthem perfectly, they should not be passing laws regulating how others could or could not be sing the national anthem. The pledge is another butchered text, twice sliced open and words stuffed into it, where the author never intended.

As an immigrant, I know that whatever that is done to illegal immigrants will be done to legal immigrants. We don't wear a big tatoo on our forehead that says I am a legal immigrant, don't lynch me. Just because I am a citizen doesn't mean that the nativists will think I am anything but a no good sob of an illeagal immigrant that should have been deported yesterday.

Of course one would think the right should be a little more careful since some of them was once illegal themselves. Arnold the governator was illeagal for a while himself, as well as michelle malkin's parents. Being illeagal did not mean they are worthless, and in true american fashion they made something of themselves. And chance would have it, they did become legal.

Pushpak: Nobody expects the english-only inquisition!

Funniest thing I heard all day. :)

Is the Pledge of Allegiance some legally binding oath now, with its integrity tied to exact vocabulary? Does the connotation change if you swear lealtad to the concepts of libertad and justicia??

myheadexploded: I am sooooo ready for a change in the ideology of our leadership. This neocon thing is getting old.

Huh, half the Republicans in Congress and President Bush, are (on orders from their corporate masters) amnesty/open borders supporters , so...

randomdna: As an immigrant, I know that whatever that is done to illegal immigrants will be done to legal immigrants. We don't wear a big tatoo on our forehead that says I am a legal immigrant, don't lynch me. Just because I am a citizen doesn't mean that the nativists will think I am anything but a no good sob of an illeagal immigrant that should have been deported yesterday.

This is such hysterical nonsense. Who is calling for lynching anyone? Who is calling for legal immigrants to have anything done to them? And of course only "nativists" (code for "racists" I'm sure) can be for controlling our borders right?

Being illeagal did not mean they are worthless, and in true american fashion they made something of themselves.

More hysteria. Who is saying that someone who is an illegal immigrant is worthless (I assume you mean "worthless as human beings")?

And chance would have it, they did become legal.

"Chance would have it"? People who immigrate legally to this country do not become citizens by chance, this is something you as an immigrant (legal I hope) should well know.

While I agree that this proposed resolution is absurd, the possibility of an increasingly bi-lingual nation is not. Though I'm a "New York liberal", I am very concerned about the left's nonchalance on this issue of language. I understand that the anthropologists will tell us that "language is culture" and the linguists will tell us that language is not an absolute frozen artifact, but is in fact evolving all the time, and that that's good and "natural". But what is natural is not always good. I think that people are overlooking the sheer communication problems that result in multi-lingualism.

When I lived in Thailand for 3 1/2 months, I studied the language, and took on the responsibility of joining the culture in that most rudimentary way. If I packed up my belongings today, and decided to become a Thai citizen, I would understand that learning the language would be part of the very difficult assimilation process. However, it would be the height of arrogance for me to lobby for the privileges of becoming a Thai citizen, yet continue to speak English, fly an American flag, and to change the Thai national anthem to suit my personal preferences.

I don't think that today's immigrants are arrogant, but I think that the current political discourse expressed by American liberals ends up subtly encouraging an unhealthy, and ultimately handicapping, lack of assimilation. Yes, it's really hard to join a new and different culture, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't help our immigrants do it, and language is the primary tool with which to enter and participate in a culture.

And yes, it is really, really, really hard to learn another language. To speak in a non-native language is to feel like a baby. It is humiliating- to not possess ease and flow and comprehension in something as basic as speaking. It take years, if not decades, for most people (of average ability) to ever learn anther tongue. However, when we don't ask that immigrants learn the language, and we place ever more assistance in place (ie. dual language signs at Target, language options on the telephone key pad) we are enabling perfectly intelligent people to not embrace the single most important assimilation tool available to them. We are in essence saying- it doesn't matter if they participate in and contribute to mainstream political discourse, and it's okay if they don't become sophisticated voters. We are essentially encouraging them not to bother educating themselves in the communication currency of the land, indicating it's fine to just make do with the low paying jobs at the bottom of the economic ladder.

When a country gets fractured by language, our country becomes even more divided than it already is.

Troy Britain | May 4, 2006 11:58 PM

I interpreted what randomdna posted as somewhat rhetorical--yes, nobody that we know of would lynch immigrants--but if you look at right-wing web sites over the last few weeks (particularly around the time of the demonstrations and boycotts) you would see that many people posting there were assuming that all the demonstrators and boycotters were illegal immigrants. They may have been, but that is highly unlikely.

And, as randomdna mentioned, how would one tell the difference between a legal immigrant and an illegal immigrant just by looking at him?

Lizzetta,

Language evolving over time is really unrelated to increasing bilingualism. The thing is, though, the prospect of real bilingualism in the US is pretty far from the realm of probability. The real reason a linguist will tell you language laws are pointless is that language is more market-driven than you would think, and therefore works best unregulated. You will choose the language that is most profitable for you to speak -- I know that sounds weird, but it's true, unless you're forced not to.

Immigrants to the US may not learn English very well, but really we can hardly expect adults to become remotely fluent in a new language, it's almost impossible. But their children will, because a)they go to school in English and b)they'll go to work in English when they're older. And even if they didn't go to school entirely in English, they would still learn English because they would know that English is the language of economic opportunity, and not only in the US. This means for the time being, English will have the advantage everywhere.

There are lots of situations where a government has tried to encourage bilingualism and failed, for example in Ireland. Lots of people don't realize the effort in Ireland hasn't worked, but it quantifiably has not, because no matter how many kids study Irish in school, they all know that English is the language of economic opportunity.

Then on the other side you have Quebec. In order to keep the bilingualism they had, they had to take extremely drastic measures against English in order to outweigh the inherent economic benefits of speaking English. Not only do they prevent almost any child from going to English schools (including many children of anglophone parents), but they also mandate that all businesses must operate internally in French only. There were enormous economic impacts of these laws (for example, in the seventies, they projected the population of Montreal today to be over 8 million; it's 3 million - almost half the population disappeared immediately after language laws were enacted). And now you're left with a large plurality of the population (especially immigrants to Quebec) disgruntled with the situation, because they know they can only get ahead with English.

The point is, English doesn't need our help. And if a change does come naturally, it will be good, because it will be based just as much on economics as on culture. Meaning, it won't happen until English has fallen from importance worldwide. If you try to resist a real linguistic change, like Quebec has, you're going to lose a lot of people and money to preserve your culture, but we're very, very far from that situation at the moment.

Elites have to be maintained in this totalitarian society, don't you know. Free enterprise and free markets threaten real market dominance, real wealth and the shareholding class. The neocons wanted the new Gilded Age.
Real commercial rivalries without protection scare them to death.

The link took me to an article about farmers, excuse me.
Yes, the law is chauvinistic and stupid. I think the reason for our linguistic poverty now is our suppression of other languages during the Progressive Era.
Greater tolerance of foreign languages will encourage greater learning of foreign languages. These are skills Americans need and too many educational authorities ignore.

This seems to be in a similar vein, if on a different issue:

http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=2482

Does that mean I can't sing the Star Spangled Banner in Canadian anymore?

There's a French version!?

raj:...but if you look at right-wing web sites over the last few weeks (particularly around the time of the demonstrations and boycotts) you would see that many people posting there were assuming that all the demonstrators and boycotters were illegal immigrants. They may have been, but that is highly unlikely.

Of course the crowds were not exclusively made up of illegal immigrants, no one with half a brain would believe that. They were illegal immigrants and their supporters among the citizenry and legal residents, but so what?

And, as randomdna mentioned, how would one tell the difference between a legal immigrant and an illegal immigrant just by looking at him?

Of course one cannot tell a citizen from an illegal immigrant just by looking at them and only an idiot would suggest otherwise. What does this have to do with anything?