Montpelier
I was just kind of maundering through a typical Sunday, shopping for groceries, when I began thinking about the improbable proposals of Donald Trump: constructing an impregnable wall between the United States and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (and billing the cost to Mexico); shutting off immigration of Muslims to the United States (including, presumably, returning U.S. veterans faithful to the Prophet); and, to make America great again, bringing back jobs (this from the guy who has his campaign caps manufactured in China).
There’s no acknowledgment in any of these notions of the role Congress would play in these initiatives. They’re bizarre; but with the probability of Trump’s becoming the Republican nominee, they haunt the horizon of my daily ruminations.
While I was thus engaged, I paused for a moment to help a woman in an electric cart reach a tub of cream cheese on a high shelf. I couldn’t help noticing the warning on the cart:
“No children in basket,” and just beneath it, “No niños en la canasta.”
Hmm, I thought. Isn’t that neat: a safety message to folks who may not read English, and a chance for the rest of us to get a peek at Spanish. I always read the differentlanguage instructions in owners’ manuals and on household supplies. I can handle most of languages, but Chinese and Japanese remain inscrutable. And you never know when you might want a paper tissue (mouchoir de papier) in the middle of France, or if shopping for groceries in a European supermarket, you might need to know what Keine Kinder im Korb or pas d’enfants dans le panier means (see above).
Many of my fellow Americans, especially those who selfidentify as “patriots,” take a dim view of multilingual conversations, notices, signs, and instructions. Sarah Palin, one of the leaders of the nativist movement currently in vogue, said recently that anyone who wants to live in the United States should “speak American.”
Let’s not forget the kerfuffle that arose on social media not long ago when the Vermont Legislature took up a proposal by a 15yearold freshman at Lyndon Institute to adopt a Latinlanguage state slogan based on a 1785 Vermont coin. One Facebook poster wrote, “We are thousands of miles from a Latino border? and this makes sense WHY? NO we should not!”
What got me going on all this, as I trekked the aisles in search of the items on Mother’s list, was the reading in church from the Acts of the Apostles. “The apostles were gathered in a house, when suddenly a great wind filled the place, followed by tongues of fire, one of which rested on each of them. (They) began to speak in other languages . . . . Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And… each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. . . . Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.”
What’s so striking about this first reported incident of ecstatic glossolalia is the number of Jews from different parts of the Empire living in Jerusalem. Probably they communicated with each other imperfectly — Hebrew might have bridged the gap — but under the Roman thumb and the discipline of the Temple they presumably cohabited relatively peacefully. The Romans, however, like us, couldn’t be bothered to learn the languages or customs of the inferior people they governed. They were a dominant culture; their language was used all around their empire; and now it isn’t used at all.
The United States, thanks to incredibly abundant natural resources, the longtime protection of two oceans, the energy and intelligence of immigrants (we always get the best), and a constitution that’s a work of pure genius, has become the planet’s currently dominant nation. But through all the years of our history has run the fear that, as Satchel Paige put it so memorably, “Something might be gaining on you.” There are two ways to react to that fear.
One way is to welcome the energy and diversity of newcomers; the other is to make it more difficult or impossible for them to settle here. We denigrate the newcomers at our peril. If we’re too lazy to learn their languages and sensibilities, we fertilize the seeds of ignorance that leaves us defenseless against changes that are already upon us. A little less chestbeating and a lot more listening would serve us very well.
Willem Lange’s column appears here every Wednesday. He can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
