Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Mama for Obama

He had the temerity to say in a speech that monolingual Americans should learn another language, just as non-native English speaking immigrants should work on their English.

Well, duh! I love a politician who will actually state the obvious.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/607449.html

3 comments:

Nicole said...

He is definitely something I've never seen before.

killdeer said...

But that wouldn't really help if we weren't living in the culture of the target language. As it is we're required to take two years of foreign language in high school. But even then, We're still thinking within our American culture and trying to find out how to say American thoughts in the target language.

There'd be no real function to his idea other than to say, "See? See how difficult it is?"

But not to worry. We'll all be speaking a second language when China becomes the next world power.

P.S. - I like your blog's makeover :)

Machelle said...

This is exactly what I feel the problem is. Two years of high school language is not going to cut it. It's got to be in every year of schooling, and it's criminal that we are not successfully integrating our immigrants to the point that we have cultural and language brokers in our schools and communities. Only the most integrated of interculturalists will have anything but an "outside in" perspective, but that's okay, in my opinion, as long as more people understand there's actually a world out there to "look at!"