As much as I wish I could take credit for that quote, I can't. Those words were spoken by President Theodore Roosevelt almost a hundred years ago, and they are even more true today than they were then. When he first spoke them, he was referring to the rise in immigration to the United States from Europe, and about the idea of immigrants learning the language of their new home. As you can see, he was more than all in favor of it, and was quite vocal about it.
I hold the exact same beliefs he did, and am just as vocal about it.
The United States is the ONLY country in the civilized world that you can immigrate to and NOT be expected to learn the native language. As a military man, I had the opportunity to travel to all parts of the globe, and in every foreign land in which I was stationed, the people there expected you to learn THEIR language and were very unsympathetic to you if you refused to do so. They made the obvious concessions to military folks who were only in the country for a short time, but if you were there for any extended period of time - or if you had established a permanent residence there - they fully expected you to learn their language and do things THEIR way, not yours.
It's called "assimilation," and it's a good idea. Like the old saying goes, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." The immigrants from Europe who came here around the turn of the 20th century knew this, and taught their children two languages - the language of their ancestral home (which in most cases was Italian) and the language of their new home. English. Today's immigrants have no such intentions, unfortunately.
One of the things you'll notice when you go to a foreign land is that in a lot of places the signs are printed in two languages, the first being the native language and the second being in English. Why English? Simple - because English is the language used as a "second language" in just about every other nation on Earth, and because a lot of countries teach English as a MANDATORY subject in school. When I was stationed in Korea in 1979 I was told to expect small schoolchildren to come up to me on the street and try to talk to me to practice their English, and that's exactly what happened.
But here in the United States, you can walk into just about any store in any town in any state and see the signs printed in two languages, the first being English (of course), and the second being Spanish.
Spanish.
Why Spanish? Simple - because the large majority of immigrants to the United States in this day and age are from Mexico, and Spanish is the language of the land there.
But this isn't Mexico, and the "language of the land" HERE is ENGLISH!
There is aboslutely NO reason why I, a natural born citizen of the United States, should walk into a department store and see the signs printed in ANY language other than the language of the land - ENGLISH. After all, this is America, NOT Mexico!
I am a firm believer in the movement to designate English as the Official Language of the United States. Why? Simple - it's the language that our Founding Fathers and the original colonists spoke, and it's the language that ALL of our constitutional and legal documents are written in. And if you want to become a citizen of this great nation, I also believe in a legal requirment that you be fluent in English - that means reading, writing, and speaking it - BEFORE you are granted citizenship, and that you must meet this requirement within five years. Sooner, if possible.
There are those that would call this line of thinking "narrow-minded" or "unsympathetic," and that's fine. I really don't care what anyone else would call it.
Because I call it PATRIOTIC.
IHC
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