Re: OT: Six out of 10 young Americans cannot find Iraq on a map


Chief_Bi...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
wb wrote:

clever.

Same could be regarding *I ran*.

I think your need ebonics for a Afghanistan solution.

I-ran is the Southern pronunciation, like HO-tel : all two-sylable
words ALWAYS have the accent on the first sylable

sometimes we pronoune three sylables where two will do.

Heinous - HEE-nee-is
Realtor - REE-luh-tur.


Bush: "y y tambien voy a hablar un poquito en espanol"

Language became a political and an emotional issue as early as the
1750s, when British settlers in Pennsylvania began to fear and resent
the fact that a third of their fellow Pennsylvanians were German
speakers.

Since that time, American nativists have sought to eradicate minority
languages and discourage bilingualism wherever it could be found: in
Maine and Louisiana, California and New Mexico, Hawaii and Puerto Rico,
as well as in Pennsylvania. Complaints about Germans as well as other
non-English-speakers became all too common in the last quarter of the
19th century, and again during and after World War I, when the fear of
immigrants and their languages prompted protective English-only
legislation. Many Americans considered non-Anglophones to be less than
human: in 1904 a railroad president told a congressional hearing on the
mistreatment of immigrant workers, "These workers don't
suffer-they don't even speak English" (Shanahan, 1989.) Today as
well there is opposition to non-Anglophones and bilinguals-this time
not Germans but Hispanic and Asian Americans. The result is the
proposed English Language Amendment (ELA), a Constitutional amendment
making English the official language of the United States.

Despite the myth that German had once come close to replacing English
in the United States, Americans have never had a legally-established
official language. The so-called German vote did not take place in
1776, and it had nothing to do with privileging German over English.
The legend that it did, which has gone around since at least the 1850s,
was spread initially by propagandists celebrating German contributions
to American culture. It has since been taken over by those who claim
that the English language in the United States is an endangered
species. The story of the German Vote is occasionally trotted out by
ELA supporters to demonstrate the power of ethnic groups to subvert
national unity and to warn Americans that although the German threat to
English has been defused, the Spanish one has not.

In the 18th Century, there were rumors English would be dropped as the
official language
The events whose misinterpretation gave rise to the legend of the
German vote occurred in 1795, though the date is frequently changed to
the more patriotically crucial year of 1776. As is characteristic of
such stories, what actually occurred is not entirely clear. What is
clear is that Congress never considered replacing English with any
other language or giving any other tongue equal status with English. In
the 18th century there were rumors that a few Brit-bashing
superpatriots campaigned to have the new nation drop English in favor
of Hebrew, French, or Greek, considered in the late 18th century to be
the languages of God, rationality, and democracy, respectively. But the
desire to found a New Eden rather than a New Babel assured that the
United States would be united both legally and socially under a single
language, and that language would be English. Noah Webster championed a
dialect-free Federal English based on his spelling book. John Adams
rightly predicted that English would become the next world language.
And Roger Sherman of Connecticut is reported to have urged Americans to
retain English and make the British speak Greek. Despite the solid
position of English both initially and throughout American history, the
legend of the German vote persists.

On January 13, 1795, Congress considered a proposal, not to give German
any official status, but merely to print the federal laws in German as
well as English. During the debate, a motion to adjourn failed by one
vote. The final vote rejecting the translation of federal laws, which
took place one month later, is not recorded.

The translation proposal itself originated as a petition to Congress on
March 20, 1794, from a group of Germans living in Augusta, Virginia. A
House committee responding to that petition recommended publishing sets
of the federal statutes in English and distributing them to the states,
together with the publication of three thousand sets of laws in German,
"for the accommodation of such German citizens of the United States,
as do not understand the English language." (American State Papers
ser. 10, v. 1:114). According to the succinct report in the Aurora
Gazette, "A great variety of plans were proposed, but none that
seemed to meet the general sense of the House." (22 January, 1795, p.
3).

Congress considered translating federal laws into German a number of
times
A vote to adjourn and sit again on the recommendation failed, 42 to 41,
but there is no reason to believe from this close vote that more than
token support existed for publishing the laws in German. The vote to
adjourn seems to have been interpreted by the House as a vote of no
confidence both in the committee's recommendation to translate the laws
and in its recommendation on the distribution of the sets of laws once
they were published in English. While there is no record of debate on
the translation provision that day, if sentiment on the issue in
Congress was anything like sentiment in Pennsylvania, translation was
probably opposed by a substantial majority of the representatives.
On the other hand, the committee's plan for distributing the sets of
laws did provoke some strong disagreement in the House. After
objections to the latter were aired, a new committee was formed and
asked to report again, and the House agreed to adjourn. It is from the
close interim vote, not on an actual bill but on adjournment, that the
so-called "German vote" legend has been built.

One month later, on February 16, 1795, the House once again considered
the question of promulgating the laws, and among the issues, once
again, was translating the federal statutes into German. This time some
of the actual debate has been preserved. Rep. Thomas Hartley of
Pennsylvania argued that "it was perhaps desirable that the Germans
should learn English; but if it is our object to give present
information, we should do it in the language understood. The Germans
who are advanced in years cannot learn our language in a day. It would
be generous in the Government to inform those persons. Many honest men,
in the late disturbances [the Whiskey Rebellion], were led away by
misrepresentation; ignorance of the laws laid them open to
deception."

It had never been the custom in England to translate the laws into
Welsh or Gaelic...
Rep. William V. Murray of Maryland, who opposed translating the laws
into German, countered "that it had never been the custom in England
to translate the laws into Welsh or Gaelic, and yet the great bulk of
the Welsh, and some hundred thousands of people in Scotland, did not
understand a word of English." (Annals of Congress 4:1228-29) The
House finally approved publication of current and future federal
statutes in English only. The bill was agreed to by the Senate and
signed by President Washington the following month.

The January vote on adjournment is sometimes known as "the Muhlenberg
Vote," after the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Pennsylvania's Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, a Federalist who spoke
German with difficulty, so it is claimed, and who was at any rate a
member of a prominent family of assimilated Germans who favored English
as the language of education and religion (Dorpalen 1942, 178).
Although the roll call vote does not survive, tradition has it that
Muhlenberg stepped down to cast the deciding negative, thereby dooming
German in America to minority-language status. Tradition
notwithstanding, too much weight should not be given to the fact that
the Speaker was not in the chair on this occasion. It was common for
the Speaker to step down, and Muhlenburg did so on many other occasions
during the Third Congress. Even a positive vote on the adjournment
issue could not have led to approval of German translations of the
laws, a concession which the Congress has repeatedly refused to make
ever since.

Nonetheless, Muhlenberg was blamed for selling out German language
interests by Franz Löher, whose 1847 History and Achievements of the
Germans in America presents a garbled though frequently cited account
of what is supposed to have happened. Löher places the crucial
language vote not in the U.S. Congress, but in the Pennsylvania
legislature, over which Muhlenberg had earlier presided. There is no
evidence as to Muhlenberg's actual views on German publishing; no
evidence that he cast a tie-breaking vote on the matter; and no
contemporary indication that the German community was displeased with
his stewardship over the Third Congress. However, Muhlenberg later did
manage to irritate his German constituents by casting the deciding vote
in favor of the Jay Treaty during the Fourth Congress, a move which
drove his brother-in-law to stab him and which cost him the next
election in 1796. This significant tie-breaker soon became confused
with the earlier adjournment cliff-hanger, conveniently fleshing out
the myth of the German vote (Feer 1952, 401).

Official English Then and Now

Opponents of moves to make English the official language of the United
States frequently suspect that English-only advocates are motivated by
more than political idealism. This suspicion is certainly justified by
the historical record. For the past two centuries, proponents of
official-English have sounded two separate themes, one rational and
patriotic, the other emotional and racist. The Enlightenment belief
that language and nation are inextricably intertwined, coupled with the
chauvinist notion that English is a language particularly suited to
democratically constituted societies, are convincing to many Americans
who find discrimination on non-linguistic grounds thoroughly
reprehensible (see Baron, 1990). More prominent though, throughout
American history, have been the nativist attacks on minority languages
and their speakers: Native Americans, Asians, the French, Germans, Jews
and Hispanics, to name only the most frequently targeted groups.

The English-only nativists who attacked the Germans used arguments
similar to those heard nowadays against newer immigrants
The English-only nativists who attacked the Germans used arguments
similar to those heard nowadays against newer immigrants. Benjamin
Franklin considered the Pennsylvania Germans to be a "swarthy"
racial group distinct from the English majority in the colony. In 1751
he complained, "Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm
into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language
and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded
by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so
numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will
never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our
Complexion?" (The papers of Benjamin Franklin. Ed. Leonard W.
Labaree. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959. vol 4:234).

The Germans were accused by other eighteenth-century Anglos of
laziness, illiteracy, clannishness, a reluctance to assimilate,
excessive fertility, and Catholicism. They were even blamed for the
severe Pennsylvania winters. (Feer 1952, 403; Mittelberger 1898, 104).
Most irritating to Pennsylvania's English-firsters in the latter
1700s was German language loyalty, although it was clear that, despite
community efforts to preserve their language, Germans were adopting
English and abandoning German at a rate that should have impressed the
rest of the English-speaking population.

Anti-German sentiment spread along with German immigration, and the
nation as a whole resisted both the German bilingual schools that were
established in parts of the Midwest in the 19th century and the common
practise of publishing legal notices in German American newspapers. On
a number of occasions the U.S. Congress again rejected motions to print
laws or other documents in German as well as English. The motions were
often treated jocularly and were shouted down amidst racist cries of,
"What! In the Cherokee? [and in] the Old Congo language!"
(Congressional Globe 1844, 7)

Antagonism toward Germans and their language resurfaced in the Midwest
in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and again across the country during
and after World War I. Between 1917 and 1922 most of the states dropped
German from their school curricula. Nebraska's open meeting law of 1919
forbade the use of foreign languages in public, and in 1918 Governor
Harding of Iowa proclaimed that "English should and must be the only
medium of instruction in public, private, denominational and other
similar schools. Conversation in public places, on trains, and over the
telephone should be in the English language. Let those who cannot speak
or understand the English language conduct their religious worship in
their home." (New York Times, 18 June 1918, p. 12). Such attitudes
had a chilling effect on language use. As many as eighteen thousand
people were charged in the Midwest during and immediately following
World War I with violating the English-only statutes. (Crawford 1989,
23.)

The anti-German school laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1923. In Meyer v. Nebraska, the court ruled that
"the protection of the Constitution extends to all,-to those who
speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the
tongue." (262 U.S. 390). Similar anti-Japanese laws were invalidated
by the court in Farrington v. Tokushige in 1927 (273 U.S. 284). And the
high court reaffirmed the states' responsibility to educate non-English
speakers effectively in Lau v. Nichols (1974)(414 U.S. Reports 563),
though the court did not specify how this was to be accomplished.
Nonetheless, Americans remain troubled by foreign languages and their
speakers. Despite the fact that the 1980 U.S. Census showed that more
than 97 percent of the people in the nation speak English (Waggoner
1988, 69), nativist fears for the safety of English seem stronger than
ever. The English Language Amendment (ELA) has been before the Congress
since 1981. California passed an official-English law in 1986, a year
in which a total of thirty-seven states considered official language
measures. In 1989 Arizona, Colorado and Florida passed English-only
laws, and votes on the issue are likely in Massachusetts, Ohio and
Pennsylvania in the near future. Today's attempts to suppress the use
of Asian languages and Spanish in the United States are manifest in
state official-language referenda; in local ordinances mandating the
use of the Roman alphabet on signboards or forbidding the purchase of
non-English books by public libraries; and in regulations which require
employees to use English on the job and during breaks, or which force
school children to use English in school buses as well as classrooms.


Official-English is an emotional issue for many people, involving
questions of patriotism as well as racism, language loyalty as well as
assimilation. Supporters and opponents of the ELA almost came to blows
during a discussion of the subject on the "Donahue" show in Miami a
few years ago. Adding to the complexity of the issue is the problem
that language legislation, at least in the United States, is difficult
if not impossible to enforce. In 1906, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt ordered
the federal government to adopt simplified spelling in its official
publications. This move generated so much resistance that Roosevelt
softly withdrew his order. (see Baron, 1982) The New Mexico
constitution, establishing English as the new state's official
language, was ratified by means of bilingual ballots. A 1923 Illinois
law making American, rather than English, the official language of that
state was quietly amended in 1969 because Illinois residents continued
to speak and teach English in defiance or ignorance of the statute. The
English Language Amendment, if it is passed, may also prove to be more
of a symbol than an enforceable statute, though many people fear that
it could become a dangerous tool for linguistic and cultural
repression. In any case, though, the ELA seems one final, and to some
observers, paranoid, attempt to make up for the perceived humiliation
of 1795, when English reportedly came within a hair's-breadth of
losing out as the official language of the United States in a vote
which never really took place.

Dennis Baron is professor of English and linguistics at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Send comments to debaron@xxxxxxxxx

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