Press 1 for English

I've seen this one enough times from a number of folks I'm connected with ( I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH. WE ARE IN THE UNITED STATES, LEARN THE LANGUAGE), but it always strikes me as very ironic that anyone of German decent in Cincinnati, OH would have this feeling.  After all, we had German language newspapers in this city for many, many years.  Business was conducted and records were kept in German.  German was required to be taught in Cincy's elementary schools until World War I.  Churches and buildings throughout the city are replete with German names on them. 

Right here in my neighborhood is the Matthews United Church of Christ.  Emblazoned over its entrance is "Winton Place Evangelische Kirche;" not built in the mid 1800's in the first waves of German immigration, but in 1912.  My wife's grandmother, born in 1890, fifty years after her own grandfather came to Missouri, spoke German.   My brothers and I decided to reconnect with our heritage and learned the language (Irish is next on my wish list).  Carol's Grandma always said to me when we visited her in Missouri, "you're the one that speaks German" and then we'd chat a bit even with my limited vocabulary.

So how do German folks in Cincinnati end up complaining about new immigrants (Spanish speaking, let's be specific) when our ancestors took about 100 years to remove German from daily discourse?  And Spanish is a language that was native to many Americans whose ancestors were on this continent centuries before mine ever thought of coming here.  Centuries.

And my experience has shown with my neighbors that the first immigrants who came as adults struggle to learn the new language.  Their children who came with them, learn it much better and their grandchildren are generally fluent in both languages.  It's been this way for a long time in this melting pot nation.

It's interesting, on Sunday I was talking with a guy in my parish while helping set up for Interfaith Hospitality Network, coming this week to our Catholic center.  We were talking about our ancestry and I asked what descent he was.  Polish, he told me; his grandparents came over in the early 1900's.  They moved to Chicago and he said they never really learned English since they lived in a Polish enclave there and never needed to.  Of course, his father learned English.  I remember hearing once that Chicago had the second largest Polish population in the world after Warsaw.

As for Pressing 1 for English, businesses would be foolish not to give their Spanish speaking customers the option to conduct business in a language they're comfortable with.  All the better to make money from those customers, which is the point afterall.  Why folks in the U.S. believe it's a virtue to speak only one language is  beyond me.  Our competitors in the world have citizens who speak multiple languages.  Makes for a smaller world when you can speak to one another.

I continue to say that with regards to the issue of Immigration, we would do well to learn our own histories.  Our families stories really aren't much different from today's immigrants.

Oh well, off my soapbox.