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Graphic Queen

Teddy was a newb.

Let's go back to Ben Franklin, who said: "Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?"

That phrase haunted him. He regretted it, and his stance, once he really saw the plight of these people, and their spirit. Later in life he retracted this view point, leaning much more towards the views of his contemporary, Benjamin Rush. Rush was a proponent of bilingual higher education.

Let's go back further. John Adams wanted to establish an "American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language". Congress shot him down. They said that a democratic government had no business telling the people how to talk, that language choices should be left to the individual.

Teddy's ideas on language were precursors to McCarthy. If you don't eat apple pie, you're a commie! If you don't speak english, you're a commie! Etc etc. The cold war hadn't yet stiffened views enough to make Teddy's remarks a true loyalty test... but that was to come in the 1950's. At the time, the effect of his words was to ban the teaching of other languages in K-8. Yes folks, a policy that actually made us dumber and more xenophobic. Hard to imagine, yes?

Oh, and immigrants are learning English faster than ever, by the way. Calvin Veltman (1988) concludes that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. are now approaching a two-generation model of language shift--that is, of becoming dominant in English--as compared with the three-generation model typical of immigrants at the turn of the century.