Re: Linguaphobia and Linguocentrism

>From: nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...>
>Subject: Linguaphobia and Linguocentrism
>Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 17:18:32 -0400
>Well, I wouldn't be offended, and it seems that neither would many other
>people on the list.  See, what I think is baffling is that even though
>the US has no official language, people act as though it is English
>(e.g. Tomas's story about the subway woman).  I've heard tons of people
>say things like "They're in America, they should speak English."  The
>fact that English technically has no special status in America just
>makes it all the more ridiculous.  Another thing I hear a lot of and is
>really disgusting is that English is the most relevant language in the
>whole world and everyone might as well just learn it now because it's
>the most important language for business, commerce etc etc AHHH!!!  Of
>course this also means that everyone might as well just stop speaking
>anything else.  This attitude really really kills me.  How do people
>really believe this stuff?
>
>And of course, when people think English is the only worth-while
>language, that means they're not running out to learn any other
>languages.  Which means they'll probably never figure out how wrong they
>really are. <sigh>
Exactly. I've always been baffled to hear English-speakers talking about the
strength, flexibility, and just plain superiority of the English language.
Because I know for sure those people are monolingual. What do they know
about the nature of other languages? What would they call a monolingual
Chinese saying the same about his language? Barbarian?

Also, a stunningly inappropriate occurrence of this is in the Encyclopedia
99 CD-ROM. In the article "English language", the author unashamedly claims
that the world-wide use of English is due (mostly, he implies) to the
strength, flexibility, etc of the language.

Oskar
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