Barack Obama, who speaks no language other than English, scolded Americans the other day for not being able to say more than “Merci beaucoup” when they go to France. His remedy: All Americans should learn Spanish. I kid you not. That’s what he said.
I have no problem with people learning other languages. If I were dropped by parachute into Paris, Frankfurt or Moscow I could get by pretty well, though not fluently. However, I don’t look down my nose at anyone who has never had a reason to learn another language. My reason? I lived in Germany and France and traveled to Russia several times, making a point of learning some of the language before I left. If I were to go to Italy, for instance, I’d be just as inept at Italian as Obama is in any language other than English.
Many liberals seem hellbent on making this a bilingual culture, that “bi” language being Spanish, of course. In response to these pressures, many conservatives want English made the official language of the United States. I think there’s a sensible midpoint: We conduct business in this country in English. If you want to know what’s happening, learn English. Simple as that.
Play with multilingual fire and you’ll get a conflagration. Just ask Belgium:
At the National Botanical Gardens, office windows are cracked, doors are broken and two greenhouses have collapsed in recent years.
The reason for the decrepitude is that the gardens lie in a Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and French-speaking lawmakers won’t approve the money for improvements.
It’s just one of many signs that Belgium’s perennial language time bomb is again approaching critical mass. It has plunged the country into a constitutional crisis that makes some wonder if Belgium can—or should—survive in its present rancorous jigsaw-puzzle shape.
