Those Nasty Bilinguals

If you speak three languages: You are trilingual.

If you speak two languages: You are bilingual.

If you speak one language: You are an American.

--Variously attributed, at least one such to Obadiah Youngblood

 Tonight, staring out at me from the TV Stephen Miller, President Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff, said that President Trump wants to arrest 3,000 "bilinguals" a day with hopes of deporting all these undesirables.

Not even Professor Google, nor his closest aide, Mr. AI, knows whether Mr. Miller speaks any language other than English.

All this brought to mind a woman who worked for me some years ago. 

I had always felt quite abashed that, despite 5 years of French in school, I can barely manage to order in French at a restaurant, not to mention being unable to converse in French. Whenever I go to Europe or watch my beloved Nordic Noir TV programs every evening, I marvel and feel more and more feckless as I observe these Europeans shifting effortlessly between English (which everyone seems to speak in Northern Europe) and Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, even Russian, whatever. The Irish may speak Gaelic, the Welsh speak Welsh, but they command English as well.

But not all people envy, or even applaud multilingualism.

A woman who worked in my office years ago leapt to mind as soon as I heard Stephen Miller intone "bilinguals."

This woman was in her late 50's when I hired her, and she learned our new computer system way faster than I was able to. She was not intimidated by learning stuff she did not previously know about. She thought she could learn anything. She was very bright on many levels. When our photocopier broke, she found a sticker on it with a 1-800 number, called it and got directions to fix the machine, all without my suggesting it. (Would never have occurred to me to look.) She was a musician and sung professionally, and she knew all the different keys and she and she  could read music and while she had never taken a music theory course, she hadn't needed to. She knew what she needed to know. She was observant and funny and just plain smart.

But she had grown up dirt poor in West Virginia, lost all her teeth by age 30, and never got past the 3rd grade. She stole canned marmalade from local grocery stores to feed her sister and brother and herself when her parents absented themselves, which was not infrequently.

She was self taught and she refused to consider herself intellectually deficient, and she was correct about that. She could learn anything. 

On the other hand, she complained about going to the McDonald's near her home where the adolescents behind the counter chatted with each other in Spanish, before turning to take her order in perfect English.  And she was enraged to hear customers eating at tables there, speaking Chinese. She would imitate how they sounded, with her good musical ear, and it did sound like Chinese to my American ear, but she did that to deride and denigrate those Chinese speakers.

"Why are these people allowed to speak Chinese or Spanish in there?" she asked indignantly. "This is America, Goddamn it! Speak freaking English!"

I told her, "You know, with your great ear for sound, I bet you could learn Spanish or Chinese in about a week. Then you could blow them all away at McDonald's."

She was horrified, "Why would I want to do that? I'm American. I belong here. It's them who should be learning English!"

So, if she was watching Stephen Miller tonight, I know that somewhere out there in America, Mr. Miller has found his audience.