Broad Background is Healthy - Learn a Foreign Language
Something Other Than Taxes
| Everett W. Gross tells how he encountered -- and recognized -- the value of languages other than one's native language. |
by Everett W. Gross
This column is not about taxes. Are you surprised? It is about language. I want to express my pleasure upon reading the elegant literary style of the letters recently in the Crete News [Nebraska, U.S.]. I refer especially to those from Maricela Flores and Carmen Castaneda and Josie Filipi. They seem to support a belief I have long held, but cannot prove. It has always seemed to me that a fair knowledge of more than one language (say two) has a beneficial effect on style of usage in both, especially English.
Excuse me if I bring my own family's language history into the picture. All four of my grandparents came from Europe as adults, or nearly so, With little or no ability in English. Czech was their language at home. And yet all seventeen of their children (yes, seventeen) grew up handling both Czech and English very well. My mother's eldest sister and brother had a barely detectable Czech accent in their English. Their father learned English well enough to become the neighborhood orator, and gave the holiday orations in both Czech and English. Though only a farmer, he was one of eight men who founded a mutual insurance lodge called Woodmen of The World, commonly called WOW and now based in Omaha. But, he died when I was only four and so I have only the faintest memory of him.
Now for my own language history. My parents used both Czech and English when my older sister and I first learned to talk, and so we could speak both, and knew the difference. But when I was two-and-a-half our family moved to a farm south of Ord where none of the neighbors spoke Czech. Thus the Czech language was largely dropped except between my parents and their parents. And so I heard it enough to retain the pronunciation. My sister can speak it well enough that she could be understood when she made a trip recently to the Czech Republic. I still feel disappointed that my parents did not keep both languages active in our home. But I am so thankful that many customs, including the foods, were not forgotten.
I studied a couple of years of German in college and I found it reasonably easy. My friend with whom I studied had no acquaintance with any other language, and he found his first taste of a second language extremely difficult. In most other areas, he could outdo me.
I still feel that I slighted my own children by not teaching them what little Czech I know so that they would at least have the pronunciation in case they would want to study a Slavic language. But I did encourage them to pursue some language in school and I did not care which. All of them chose German.
I guess the point of all of this is my fondness for giving advice. All of you parents who know a language other than English would be giving your children one of the greatest of all possible gifts if you use that language a great amount at home. Do not worry that it might hurt their English. It will help their English. They will see connections that other people do not see. And all of you children who have a chance to learn more languages, latch onto it. You won't be sorry. Learn the correct forms.
As for the cultural contributions to America, I usually think of music. Spanish style is among the best. On my mind right now are Bizet and Lalo and Fernando Sor.
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Also see -- Many Languages Dying Out
http://www.progress.org/lang02.htmLanguages -- Palaver from Persimmon Crossing
http://www.progress.org/archive/faulk07.htmFoldvary: A Global Language
http://www.progress.org/archive/fold17.htm
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