Elaine Meinel Supkis
My distant ancestors spoke English. But they fled to Holland to escape the fury of the last Stuart King. They came up the Hudson Valley and still spoke English only they also talked to the Dutch alot, were friends of the van Rensselaers, indeed, when that family arrived up here in the Albany area, we put them up in our frontier home! America has always been multilingual, ask the natives who greeted us here!
First, Bush tried to kill Social Security, now this:
By Dan Whitcomb 42 minutes ago
HOUSTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush has long opposed making English the country's national language, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Friday, the day after the Senate voted to do so.
The vote came in an amendment to proposed legislation overhauling U.S. immigration law and directed the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English. Opponents said it could affect the status of some multilingual services offered by government organizations.
Adding to the confusion, the Senate also adopted a softer amendment calling English the "unifying language" of the United States. Senators take both versions into negotiations over a final bill with the U.S. House of Representatives.
Gonzales did not directly address Bush's position on the controversial amendment because the Senate has not yet voted on the whole bill. But he said that Bush has in the past rejected such efforts.
"The president has never supported making English the national language," Gonzales said after meeting with state and local officials in Texas to discuss cooperation on enforcement of immigration laws.
Of course, Bush doesn't like any language known to us. He talks like an alien from outerspace, groping to understand the concept of "grammar" and "syntax." Politically, this is probably part of his "we just flew off the cliff so why not throw all caution to the wind" impulse. Namely, he is so unpopular it doesn't matter anymore what he does. So why not just do what he wants! This is probably why Laura blurted out that she doesn't want to see the gay marriage issue used as a weapon, for example.
Next, Bush and Laura will come out for abortion. All the right wing positions they held were totally fake. Bush isn't a Christian, either. So I expect him to put on a black robe, and run around a church widdershins screaming, "Jesus is dead!" next.
A lot of Hitler's public stuff was fake, too. Many of the really horrible, twisted, Freudian messy sex and magical belief stuff was top secret and carefully hidden from view until the bitter end. We take it for granted as if this was what all Germans saw. Sort of like today, the entire reason we have propaganda lies all the time is to put forth a fake facade.
Like Bush's war record. He went AWOL. This was kept top secret until a bunch of us online critics uncovered it and forced it into the open. So then the propaganda machine tore down real war heroes so they wouldn't get in Bush's tax cutting way.
Well, like Nixon, Bush is falling down, down, down.
And like Nixon, he will do as he pleases until Congress hands him an order to resign or be impeached. Clinton was popular when Starr and the GOP tried to sully his name using a stupid sex act that 90% of the men on this planet want, heck, make it 99%, and the fake fury over this simply made our nation look foolish. In Bush's case, if he and Cheney were asked to leave, most Americans would cheer heartily and push him out the door.
This whole flap about language is funny. My first husband's granny was a Yiddish speaking Kiev Jewish lady. Because I know medieval German which is very close to Yiddish, with a dictionary of Yiddish slang, I could talk to her. She spoke maybe ten words of English after living in America for 75 years! But all her older neighbors spoke Yiddish! I was the one who had to learn their language.
Her son spoke Yiddish, German, Greek, Latin and English. He was the first one in the family to earn an university degree. He become a publisher (fairly famous in his circles). Not one of his sons spoke fluent Yiddish, they had only a few sayings.
And so it goes! My father's great grandfather spoke only German. He married a Yiddish lady and had to leave Germany because his father disowned him. My father speaks and reads German and I had to take lessons to learn to speak German. So many Germans came to America, back in the 1890's there was fear that German would displace English! Most science texts were in German! One had to learn German if one wanted to be a scientist. Many professors were German speakers.
The Italians frightened English speakers, too. Ditto, Polish. And the Norse languages! The pastor of our Lutheran Church in Wisconsin spoke Norweigan and English. His sermons were in both languages. It was fun listening to him.
Because of our international travels and dealings, we hung out at home in between trips, joining immigrant community affairs in preparation for the next trip. So I got to appreciate Indian food and language, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, whatever, including Mexican.
I love Mexican cuisine. When I lived in Germany, kids would ask me to cook Mexican dishes and my mother would ship me boxes with refried beans and other ingredients. I love Mariachi music and Spanish dance. I love so many things in that culture and I think people bringing it here are enriching America.
Ditto for everyone. I love Greek food and I am friends with a family running a Turkish diner and I love sushi and visit a Japanese owned sushi diner, etc. I also love Wisconsin Norwegian food, jello! HEH. Inside joke.
Anyway, every group that comes here gives us a lot and I really like this fact, this is what makes our country a fun place to be! By far and away!
Once, after my son and I read some stories about Africa, I had to take the bus to Bedford-Sty to do some business. Soon, everyone on the street was of African ancestory and there were colorful flags and signs and the smell of that continent's cuisine filled the bus. Some Muslim women came onto the bus and my son shouted, "Mommy! We're in Africa!" The ladies laughed to see his enthusiasm and cooed over him.
Much of the world learns English as the dominant language. It is sad watching people here run around in fear of losing English especially when so many of them really don't master any language at all at this point. Pathetic.
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Elaine Meinel Supkis
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