Quote of the Day on the hypocrisy of Americans who demand an English-only society

[thatcrazycajun]

Cunningly cribbed from debgeisler:

"The problem with defending the 'purity' of the English language is that the English language is [about] as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."—James Nicoll

Honestly, these nativist twits who are so overwhelmed by alien-in-my-own-country feelings just because government and business make a little extra effort to accommodate those for whom English is not a first language never cease to amaze—or annoy—me. (Especially when they seem not to have bothered much about learning to use and/or spell English correctly themselves; see the sign graphic in Deb's journal.)

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"Oh, rubbish, Ernst. We’re not speaking Greek; we’re speaking Lingua Terra. You know what Lingua Terra is? An indiscriminate mixture of English, Spanish, Portuguese and Afrikaans, mostly English. And you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids in the Ninth Century Pre-Atomic, and no more legitimate than any of the other results. If a little Greek suffix gets into a mess like that, it’ll have to take care of itself the best way it can."
--H. Beam Piper (Fuzzy Sapiens)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Bravo!!!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

The photo is at http://pics.livejournal.com/debgeisler/pic/0004dw65/s320x240 .

It can as easily be read as "... NO EXCRETIONS".

No shit?

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

I have occasionally used the phrase, "Linguistically speaking, English is the son of a thousand fathers."

[cellio]

I love the Nicoll quote (an old favorite).

You will, I hope, grant that there are other, non-bigoted, non-deluded-about-"purity", reasons to want English to be considered the (single) official language? Personally speaking, I think it's a bad use of tax money and a disservice to the folks involved to allow kids to go through public schools without having to learn English, for instance -- so I oppose Spanish-only, or French-only, or Swahili-only, or whatever curricula. It builds, rather than tearing down, walls. As for adults, well, at some level, if you go to a place where you don't speak the language, maybe it's on you to learn?

(Granted, many so-called native speakers don't know English either...)

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

The real problem is that there are people in this country who are using "English only" as a surrogate for "we don't like brown and yallow people" or "we don't like immigrants." It's a pretty short step from "English should be the official language" to "English should be the only language."

Myself, I have no problem with having more than one language available. Up here where I live there are significant Asian and Russian communities in addition to a Hispanic community. I don't feel it's a misuse of their tax dollars to provide them with important information. If I pick up a pamphlet on poison control that's written in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreah, Russian and Cambodian, for instance, I might just get a chuckle out of looking at all the squiggles over the letters in the Vietnamese words. To someone whose English is limited to 1000 words or so, something like this could be a life saver.

I'm not saying every road sign has to be written in seven different languages. I'm just saying that in an area where you have a significant number of speakers of a minority language, it seems only fair to make reasonable accomodations.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

The real problem is that there are people in this country who are using "English only" as a surrogate for "we don't like brown and yallow people"

It's a queer sort of racism that would exclude most Northern Europeans, while including a billion Indians, Pakistanis, and other South-East Asians and Pacific Islanders.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Brown and Yallow. You know, the English confectioners?

OT, racism against Northern Europeans wouldn't be anything new. We are not that far removed from "no Irish need apply" and similar statements.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

But Irish are English-speakers, and so would be admitted. But all those Scandinavian, Dutch, and northern German types would be excluded. Doesn't sound very racist to me.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

That's why I included "and similar statements." At various times and places you could fill in "No ________________ need apply" with any of the above, or Poles, or Jews, or Italians, or any number of others. Or maybe I just don't know where you're going with this.

[cellio]

The real problem is that there are people in this country who are using "English only" as a surrogate for "we don't like brown and yallow people"

People use all sorts of excuses for all sorts of things. If we avoid any issue that the wingnuts have used as an excuse for their wingnuttiness, then (1) we've limited discourse and (2) we've given them way too much power to control the discussion.

All things being equal, I'd like us as a society to be as open and helpful as possible. Some things (like your poison-control example) are more important than others (like the daily comics). I think we agree that the English-challenged need to meet us partway (not doing the road signs etc). And we do have to be mindful of the entitlement mentality that has led to folks in some parts of the country demanding full support for everything in their native languages. I don't think we can really do that and I don't think we should; there's such a thing as too much hand-holding. We should be trying to build a productive society, not isolated communities that can't interact with each other.

So, to come back to languages, I fully support teaching foreign languages in public schools. I didn't have the chance to take such a course until high school; that's a real shame.

OT

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Is The Foremen's stuff still in print? I think Roy Zimmerman is a hoot and I get a chuckle out of songs like "Firing The Surgeon General."

Re: OT

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

So far as I know, The Foremen's albums on CD and tape cassette are still in print (though hard to find unless you invest a bit of time searching the comedy and/or folk music bins at the stores, or online). And Roy is still cranking out solo recordings; see his website (designed and maintained by my friend darrenzieger) at roysongs.com.

Re: OT

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

his solo recordings are disappointing compared to the stuff he did with the foremen :(

Re: OT

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

He still does some good stuff. "Chickenhawk" is one of my favorites.

Re: OT

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

i tohught chickenhawk was more angry than clever. he's lost that effortlessly funny, lehreresque touch that songs like 'hell froze over today' and 'ollie ollie off scot free' had.

Re: OT

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Then I definitely need to hear more of his early stuff. One of the things I found out while researching the Wikipedia article was that the Foremen did the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in the same year. Anyone who can pull that off has to be good.

Re: OT

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

I've been to his website many times. In fact I wrote the original Wikipedia entry on Roy -- partly as a reaction to some editor who wouldn't let me post a link to "Chickenhawk" on the Wikipedia "chickenhawk" page. He argued that Roy wasn't "notable" enough. I argued that the song did a better job of presenting the leftist side of the debate, in three minutes or so, than any longwinded essay could. He wasn't convinced. The editors over there seldom change their minds on that stuff.

[filkferengi]

Funnily enough, I found out about the Foremen from one of our local filkers, who left a tape at a housefilk. They've been staples on roadtrips for the better part of 10 years now.

The newer stuff has good moments, but isn't as consistently excellent. Also, paying full price for a 27-minute album rather torqued me a bit, but I figured the artist deserved the money for the excellence of the earlier albums.