National Language(s)
This was fascinating for me to hear. This clip is Mark Steyn commenting about the nature of dual language countries and his personal confusion over why any country would choose to become such a place. I teach English as a second language in an area of Japan that honestly doesn’t see much value in English. This leads me to sometimes wonder if I’m actually teaching useful language or merely indulging a quasi-fetishistic view of foreign languages. I’m still not really sure one way or the other and I sway from day to day on the topic. Also, as an immigrant here, I’ve learned Japanese to the best of my ability so that I can go about daily life and have adventures and whatnot. I very rarely feel upset when something is not translated into English (which is actually considerably rare in most of urban Japan) - the only recent exception being a survey for foreign people. But that was no big deal, really. For those who aren’t quite sure what Mr. Steyn’s referencing, Senator Obama was taking questions from the crowd in Georgia recently when someone asked about bilingualism in America, implying that they’d like to see the country move in that direction. Here’s Senator Obama’s reply.
I don’t understand when people are going around saying, ‘We need to have English only.’ They want to pass a law ‘We want English only.’ Now I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English. They’ll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language. It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right?
(YouTube)
Now, I’m really not attempting to get into a political brawl here, so let’s just leave the presidential politics at the door. Instead, I’m curious about your thoughts on bilingualism. Or rather, a country’s purposeful transition to multiple mainstream languages. (In other words, I know most of you, like me, are totally thrilled with learning new languages, and we see the value in that as individuals. But what’s your take for society as a whole?) This question also leads into topics like immigrant assimilation and involved communities versus linguistically segregated ones. So…thoughts?
) Ha ha. “See, you love it, it’s Spanish!” Nice. I am incredibly skeptical about all three of the dolls’ languages. Not one of them sounds accurately pronounced. Then again, they are just prototypes. By the way, does anyone else get the feeling that they took this movie way more seriously than they should have? 
