It shouldn’t be odd that people speak more than one language. Many who arrived here, and all who were originally here, spoke a language other than English.
We’ve a multicultural community, and beyond it trade with all the world, yet use of other languages seems odd to us.
I remember being initially surprised when former District Administrator Suzanne Zentner encouraged Mandarin. I thought at the time that Spanish would have been the more practical choice (to her credit, Zentner also began listening sessions in Spanish).
But my early reaction was narrow: Zentner’s goals were ambitious ones, worthy American ambitions. Why should we each not manage a few languages well? We are a people of great accomplishment in science, technology, medicine, law, the arts: just about every field of study has Americans among its most proficient.
If we can build astonishing machines – and we can – we should be able to master languages equally remarkable to our physical creations.
But we don’t try, and we settle for English only.
In my own case, I have French, and am studying Brazilian Portuguese. That’s my version of Zentner’s interest in Mandarin: a bet on something for the new century, and an intellectual challenge, too.
God knows that I have tried to learn Spanish, but with only mediocre results. I cannot explain why French seems easy yet Spanish so difficult, but it’s a quirk I’ve yet to overcome.
(It’s not from fluency in Spanish, but as a recognition of Whitewater’s demographics, that I think the city should embrace its multicultural opportunities.)
There is no intellectual reason that students in our schools couldn’t be genuinely proficient in both English and one other language. Looking at it as too odd or too hard sells this community short, and imposes a cultural impediment to genuine intellectual accomplishment.
That’s deeply unfortunate, as both intellect and cultural benefit from fluency in other languages.