April 01, 2007
One nation?
Before the Civil War, The United States was comprised of the original 13 colonies -- and additional latecomers -- who had voted to join the Union as quasi-autonomous entities. Bound together by choice, as well as culture and language, they thought of themselves as being part of a grand experiment: the first modern democracy.
There was a change in the national zeitgeist after the Civil War; the blood and fire of battle between brothers was the foundry, the hammer and anvil that forged many states into one, stronger state.
Where Americans said "the United States are," after the war, Americans said, "the United States is...."
In the years that followed, including the massive immigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the melting pot was the guiding principle. It didn't matter where you came from; all became Americans, the sooner the better. And speaking English was the glue that served to bind the newly-minted citizens to their new nation.
While my Polish-born grandmother never lost her accent, her children -- my mother amongst them -- spoke colloquial English, without a trace of the old country. Within a few years of her arrival at Ellis Island, my grandmother had added four new Americans to the melting pot.
For generations, immigrants urged their children to speak English, to become Americans, to begin their climb up the socioeconomic ladder. While the mother tongue -- the language of the past -- might be spoken at home, everyone realized that the future was English.
Our cousins to the North, with former colonies of France and England joined together, were unable to surmount Gallic pride; Canada remained an officially bilingual nation -- aggressively, litigiously so. Commerce must be done in English and French in the Great White North.
And the rest of the world knows it. Business wants to make money, so international corporations do what they have to in order to access the marketplace.
Go to the website for Citizen watches and pick their Canadian division; you'll be prompted to select your preferred language.
Not us, though. After all, America is still the foremost English-speaking nation in the world.
Right?
Erm, not so much.
The marketplace reacts to the reality on the ground. The rest of the world perceives us as a bilingual nation.
And that's not a good thing. It represents the Balkanization of our society. Language can bind us together, or it can keep us apart. The irony is that as the rest of the world speaks English -- the international language of business, banking, aviation and science -- we increasingly cater to the self-ghettoization of increasing numbers of our own.
My grandparents would be appalled.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 1, 2007 08:50 AM
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