A first hand account of why we all should be bilingual and multilingual. And why immigrants definitely should keep their parents' language alive. DP
By Rep. Mike Honda
REP. MIKE HONDA represents California's 15th Congressional District.
mercurynews.com: As a teen, I once told my mother to speak only English to me.
On the surface, things Japanese just were not "cool" enough for this California high school kid. Even more haunting was the stigma of World War II and the struggles my family suffered through during those years in an internment camp on account of our ancestry.
Years later, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I realized what I lost by shunning my Japanese. Learning Spanish in El Salvador opened my mind to a new world view. I also realized that in losing Japanese, I lost a window to a culture that has made a major impact on the world.
That is why I find the fear of multilingualism irrational. Some view it as though it were a disease infecting our country instead of a cure; in fact, many folks pay thousands of dollars to acquire a second language. Many foreign policy blunders the United States has committed in the past, and the not-so-recent past, could have been avoided had we not looked at the world through a mono-cultural lens. Rather than English dying, the real tragedy facing our country is the children of immigrants who lose their ancestral language. I believe that immigrants should learn English when they come to the United States - but not lose the language skills they bring with them.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
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