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Apr. 13, 2007 Today Hispanic people in the US number about 41,000,000, of whom about 10,000,000 are illegal immigrants. So there are 31,000,000 Hispanics who are legitimate citizens or residents of the US. This is still a very large segment of the population, which by the strength of sheer numbers, entitles it to some sort of consideration. For years, I've heard Americans complain about the possibility of being obligated to attempt to learn Spanish. I remember one Swedish American lady years ago who analogized that immigrant Swedes have to learn English, and so should immigrant Hispanics. I suppose there is a grain of logic in that, except that are probably 100 times as many Hispanics as Swedes in the US. If you live in Canada, even if you're Anglo-Saxon, you must study French. French, not Spanish, Russian or Hindi, is the second language there. This is a matter of geography. I heard another man say contemptuously, "I will not speak Spanish," as if he could if he had wanted to, but the fact of the matter is that he knew nothing about it all. If he had been able to speak Spanish, but disdained to do so as an expression of his aversion, it might have been impressive. But since he couldn't speak Spanish, his words seemed like an idle rationalization. I started speaking Spanish, after a fashion, when I was in grade school in New Mexico, 1948-1951. New Mexico was already bilingual. I regarded Spanish classes as a challenge and an opportunity. I continued Spanish in high school in Arizona, but in college I took other languages. Even if the Hispanic population of the US were much smaller than it is, I would have welcomed the instruction, because I knew that Spanish is an important world language, spoken in around 20 countries in the world. Knowledge of Spanish has been helpful to me as I visited 15 of those countries. Even in the United States, among Puerto Ricans in New York, Cubans in Miami, and Mexicans in the southwest, it was gratifying to me able to communicate with them in their language, if they could not do so with me in mine. Whether they were legal or illegal immigrants didn't matter to me. I was merely trying to be polite. The core problem is that most Americans are intellectually lazy. They would rather watch television comedies, movies, quiz shows and ball games than sit down with a book for a few hours a week. They hate anything resembling study. Even if they are college graduates, once they have received their degrees and gotten the jobs that they wanted, they usually no longer have any inclination to study. Americans are always boasting about how superior they are to all other people, and I don't want to argue that point, but I say that if they are superior, it is all the more reason for them to be gracious about it all, instead of always justifying the contempt that they often feel. As for the legality of the residence of many Hispanics in the US, I can't help recalling that most of the Southwest belonged to Mexico at one time. The US seized these lands in the Mexican War of the 1840's, a war which was really hardly more than a land-grab. Today that is water under the bridge I suppose, but sometimes one's sins come back to haunt him later. Right now, I'm in Santiago, Chile, and am proud to be able to go about my activities just as if I were a native, no guides, no guide-books, no hemming and hawing, no stammering and stuttering. Who'd ever think I was American? ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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