Assimilate or get the hell out?

[jhetley]

News reports another of the periodic spasms against multi-lingual culture -- in this case, against posting official signs in Spanish as well as in English.

Funny ancestral connection here.  My Mennonite ancestors came over from Germany around 1700.  I have, in a drawer downstairs, a New Testament printed in New York in the 1850s.  In German. 

I recall parental tales that my great-grandmother on that side never spoke a word of English.  She understood it, but would not speak it.  This would be in the 1880s or later.

I'm prepared to give Hispanics (Hmong, Sudanese, whatever) a few more generations to file off their rough edges and fit the mold.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

My maternal great-grandmother was 40 when she came to the US. She spoke three languages: Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian. She never learned more than a few words of English.

She didn't have to. She lived in a Yiddish-speaking neighborhood. Her husband, who owned a news stand, did have to learn English.

There are still people in the Twin Cities who have definite Scandinavian accents. I suspect most of them don't really know their ancestral languages -- they speak English as it was spoken in their neighborhoods.

Someone I used to work with told me that his grandfather didn't want his father to grow up speaking with a Scandinavian accent -- so the family moved to a non-Scandinavian neighborhood. As a result, the guy grew up speaking with a German accent.

[origamilady.livejournal.com]

Though I can understand somewhat of where they come from, the "everyone MUST speak English and ONLY English camp" scares the bejeepers out of me. It has always seemed to me that the folk of that particular mindview forget how America was forged.

[trilca.livejournal.com]

I'm of two minds really; yes, you should respect your heritage and enjoy the language of your birth/upbringing.. but at the same time, you should also respect the country you are living in by attempting to learn and use the language there. The "official" (technically there IS no official language but still...) language in the USA is English (or American), and it really fries me to see street signs and official buildings etc. labeled in foreign tongues because the people living in that area don't speak our language! Though, I must say, those in New England do speak a different form of 'english' since they refuse to admit the letter Ah .. erm... R ... exists.... :P (Hey I live in Maine, I can say this!)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, the Mennonite ancestors I mentioned came to this continent specifically to stay apart from the "world." Except for certain apostate grandmothers, they still refuse to integrate and be typical 21st century Americans.