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Daily Bread, Language, Nativism

Daily Bread for 12.7.25: Language and Nativism

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset is 4:20 for 9 hours 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

In Britain, under the Labour Party, there will be a requirement next year that migrants speak English at a B2 level1. In America, there is a growing political2 demand for English language proficiency from immigrants. Sophia Smith Galer addresses this question for her own country and finds that nativists might be surprised to learn that they would struggle to meet the standards they’re so keen to impose on others:

Click image to play video.

In the caption to her Instagram post, Smith Galer refers to “A-level English (B2).” She’s using two common British descriptors: for academic achievement generally (that’s the A-level she means) and language proficiency (that’s the B2 level she means). For the British, a person at A-level academically should speak British English at B2 level.

But, but, but… could they? Could we do as well, either, when speaking American English?

The plain answer is that many a nativist would impose a standard on immigrants that he himself would struggle to meet.

American English is beautiful, but beauty (like love) should be embraced freely without demand.

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  1. In Europe, many institutions apply the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to assess language proficiency. The CEFR adopts a scale ascending from Basic User (level A) to Independent User (level B) to Proficient (level C). There are gradations within each level, e.g., B1 and B2, where B2 requires (by the standard of the scale) a greater proficiency than B1. ↩︎
  2. A political demand is not a market demand: ability to function in the marketplace undoubtedly requires less proficiency than a political demand, or there would be no effort to impose government regulations that require more than the existing marketplace. ↩︎

So, a baby seal walks into a bar…

A seal walked into a bar… Or to use a technical term, it galumphed. A baby fur seal caused confusion when it waddled into a craft beer bar in Richmond, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island, on Sunday. One patron tried to usher the seal out the back door, but it eluded pursuit and dashed into a restroom, where it hid under the dishwasher, which was swiftly unplugged. Salmon was used to lure the seal out into a dog cage, where it stayed until Department of Conservation rangers arrived to collect the seal, whom they were already tracking. The department spokesperson, Helen Otley, said it was released on nearby Rabbit Island, which is considered a safe location due to its dog-free status. It’s not unusual for curious young seals to show up in unexpected places at this time of year, she said, as they follow rivers and streams up to 15 km inland.

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