Monday, August 27, 2007

A "Duh" moment leads to a question on issues

I was on a little shopping spree Saturday. I headed into Marshall's downtown. Now - to fully understand my upcoming "duh" moment, you need to know that I live in a very multi-cultural town. There is a large South American population. Walk down the main drag and you'll see restaurants with cuisine from almost every South American country. So - I walk into Marshall's and see a sign for one of the store sections. It says "Ladies" on top and underneath "Damas". I stood there for a moment trying to think what the heck damas are - like some kind of clothing! Then my five years of Spanish kicked in and I realized that it was "Ladies" in Spanish.

So - having had my little moment - it raises a question for me. Should we have all our signs in two languages? Why not 3? There are a lot of Brazilians here and they speak Portugese. What about assimilation? Should immigrants to America learn to speak English proficiently? If they do, are we killing off their language and culture - harming their children? My grandfather was a first generation American. His parents came here from Quebec. French was spoken in his home growing up, but also English. When PopPop married my grandmother, a first generation American born to Irish immigrants, he chose to speak only English in their home because my grandmother did not speak French. I think that it's really a shame that my mother and her siblings did not learn to speak French. So - I think it would be a bad thing if today's immigrants did not speak their native language in the home. But are we doing them, and our nation, a disservice by making it easy to get by without English? Or is it time we decided that this nation needs to be a bilingual nation?

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