HAL TATAKLAMMA AL-LUGHA AL-ARABIYA?
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Habla Espanol? Parle Fracaise? Hal tatakallma al-lugha al-arabiy-ya?
Most Americans have to answer "no." Never mind the more esoteric questions.
We don’t speak Spanish or French or Arabic, and we aren’t trying to master
those languages. We are speaking English, broken, Ebonic, fractured. We are
clinging to our national origin. We are hissing and fussing at the faintest
lilt of an accent. No habla espanol!
Still, there is good news. According to McClatchy reporter David
Westphal, the percentage of Americans speaking English only fell to 82
percent – which means that nearly one in five of us speak another language.
Most speak both English and Spanish, but speakers of Asian languages brews by
more than 50 percent, to nearly 7 million, in the 1990s. In all, 45 million
people spoke a language other than English.
But most speak languages other English by chance, not by design. The
K-12 curriculum in the United States does not make foreign language
proficiency a requirement. While colleges and universities used to require
foreign languages, today language requirements are optional and deemed
unnecessary. In contrast, everyone else in the world requires those
described as educated to speak some English. Some countries require English
classes through secondary school graduation. In others, it is a K-12
requirement. Western European countries, requiring English, see themselves
as cultivating multicultural world citizens. We in the United States are
prepared to stand on our hegemony, demanding that others bend themselves to
our will.
In the wake of 9-11, we are learning that the world has not taken to our
dominance. Many resent the notion that they must bend to us, while we won’t
bend to them. Folks want to be met halfway, and the United States isn’t into
that kind of meeting. Our attitude toward language speaks to that. We don’t
think we have to learn other languages. We barely speak our own. We get
crazy about bilingualism, developing defensive "English Only" movements,
myopic about the fact that everybody else, everywhere around the globe speaks
English and then something else if they want to do business with us.
We aren’t even consistent. While our popular culture trumpets and
"English Only:" exclusion, our public policy encourages dual language
programs. Just a year ago, Education Secretary Richard Riley announced a $48
million increase for bilingual education. He was joined by then-Commerce
secretary Norman Mineta, who grew up speaking Japanese in a bilingual
household, and by Army Secretary Luis Caldera who prefaced his remarks with
an eloquent statement in Spanish. In many cases, our government realizes the
importance of bilingualism. Our citizens are quite another matter.
In the wake of 9-11, we are learning that foreign language proficiency is
more than adherence to a multicultural message. It may be a matter of
intelligence and survival for a nation that has spent two decades with its
head in the sand. WE say that we want globalism, and we trade as if the
world is our oyster. But we speak as if we have our heads up our collective
rear ends, ignorant of the fact that we are not facile with other cultures or
languages. Not enough of us speak or can translate Arabic. Not enough of us
can be active in intelligence work. Too many of us would employ rogue
intelligence workers because we don’t know enough to do translation as usual.
A Ghanaian colleague recently reminded me that language is culture. When
people cease to speak a language, they cease to lift a culture up, to
celebrate its life and its accomplishments. People speak fewer languages
than they did a decade ago. For example, the Australian continent supported
200 tongues in 1788, but only 20 tongues now. What have we lost with those
lost dialects? More than a billion people speak Mandarin Chinese, while half
as many speak English. By asserting that English is the world’s language,
what do we lose. Language is culture, and we see the American cultural
hegemony manifested every time we go to a developing country and see the
golden arches of the universal McDonald’s burger.
If we ever get past the golden arches, we’ll realize that globalization
has to be something ore than an economic phenomenon. We have to be willing
to habla espanol, parle francaise, and get into the world’s linguistic mix.
More than that, we have to project a multiculturalism that makes it clear
that we can translate it all – Arabic, Ghanaian Twi, Haitian patois, and
other languages. When we say that our nation lost every nationality in the
World Trade Center, might we also say we valued them so much that we know
their language, their culture and their energy? Can we claim the mantle of
multiculturalism without dealing with its mechanics? Habla espanol? Habla
engles?
It is not clear that we would have been able to avoid the events of 9-11
with more foreign language proficiency. It is clear, though, that we’d be
ahead of the intelligence game if we knew how to communicate in other
languages and other cultures. Instead of being aware of others, we have
insisted that the world revolves around us. Our insistence has produced a
reluctant acquiescence. It has insulated us and isolates us, in a way that
is alien to any other nation.
We trumpet "English Only" to assert our dominance, but an English only
movement works only to our detriment. If we are willing to accept the
economic benefits of globalization, we must also accept the economic costs of
pluralism. This means that we have to be clear about the ways our words mix
and mingle with those of others. Informally, we call it patois and
intermingling. Formally, we call it foreign language proficiency. Between
the two, we hope there is ease and understanding, and a move toward common
language.
African Americans are at the periphery of this language debate because we
have attended schools that have fewer resources than others do. We don’t
have access to the international goodies, even though we have the
requirements to elbow our way into the international stratosphere. If one in
five Americans speak a language other than English, it is likely that just
one in ten African Americans have foreign language proficiency.
There are layers of lessons to learn from 9-11. One is that we have to
speak the values that we preach. If we don’t speak pluralism by learning
other languages, we handicap ourselves in the ongoing global conversation.
Educators play a key role in removing the handicap. Whether language
proficiency is required or recommended, we equip our students for
multicultural futures when we encourage them to explore the world through
travel, culture, and language.