THE HIGH COST OF 'ENGLISH ONLY'

The LA Times has an excellent article that discusses "The high cost of 'English Only'," which you can access by clicking here. The first five paragraphs are posted below.

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This summer, a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona called for the government to stop providing ballots in Spanish, Apache or Navajo; a sign on a Baltimore Dunkin’ Donuts offered free coffee for reporting non-English use by employees; a Houston building posted an “English Speaking Only” requirement for new tenants.

These incidents are part of the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that has been swelling since at least the 1990s and that has worsened under President Trump. They reflect a restrictive view of what the United States ought to look and sound like — white and Anglophone.

Like German or Italian in earlier eras of American history, Spanish in particular now is seen as a threat to English and hence to the unity of the nation. English-only nativists seek to push Spanish and other minority languages out of the public sphere .

But knowledge of a language other than English is an asset. It makes no sense to discourage “natural” fluency and expect the educational system to pick up all the slack.

It is true that the status of English as lingua franca for business and research gives English-speaking countries an advantage. By some measures, however, China and the European Union have surpassed the U.S. as the largest economy, and it is likely this trend will continue. With the economic power and political influence of the U.S. on the wane, cracks are appearing in the global English phenomenon ...

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One final note to help formalize the last paragraph above. China's stock exchange, the Shanghai momentarily became the world's largest stock market in 2105. China is also the largest source of "financial aid" to Russia. Finally, when it comes to GDP in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars, China officially passed the United States in 2015.



Here's the case I'm trying to make. Becoming xenophobic about the world, and especially about languages that others speak, is not a winning strategy for the United States in the long term. It also makes our nation look like a bunch of bigoted xenophobes in the short term.

Again, you can read the entire "English Only" article by clicking here.

- Mark