Department of Motherhood & Apple Pie: Official, no wait, National, no wait, Common and Unifying

19 May 2006

Is English the national language or is it a common and unifying language? In a fit of linguistic demagoguery the U.S. Senate would have it both ways. Within the span of a few minutes the Senate declared English to be the national language and then the common and unifying language. Not a single senator voted against both wordings. (Three were not present for the vote.)

On Wednesday, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) submitted an amendment to the immigration reform bill pending action in the Senate that would make English the "national language" of the United States. The United States has never declared an "official" or "national" language, although several of the individual states have. The amendment passed the Senate on Thursday in a 63-34 vote.

The amendment declared that "English is the national language of the United States." The original version had "official language," but Inhofe changed it because a number of senators balked at supporting the amendment with that wording.

The amendment goes on to say:

The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America. Unless specifically stated in applicable law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English. If exceptions are made, that does not create a legal entitlement to additional services in that language or any language other than English. If any forms are issued by the Federal Government in a language other than English (or such forms are completed in a language other than English), the English language version of the form is the sole authority for all legal purposes.

And it requires those being naturalized as citizens to "demonstrate a sufficient understanding of the English language for usage in everyday life." It leaves it to the Department of Homeland Security to set standards for measuring English proficiency.

But moments after passing the Inhofe amendment, in a 58-39 vote the Senate also passed an amendment sponsored by Ken Salazar (D-CO) which declared the English was the "common and unifying language" of the country. Salazar’s amendment lacked any policy changes or requirements for government action.

In contradiction to the Senate actions, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a second-generation American, took a very sensible position saying today:

The president has never supported making English the national language . . . English represents freedom in our country and anybody who wants to be successful in our country has a much better chance of doing so if they speak English. It is of course a common language, but I don’t see the need to have laws or legislation that says English is the national language.

But Gonzalez was later contradicted by new White House press secretary Tony Snow, who said that the president did indeed support making English the national language.

The debate over this is simply the height of silliness. Language is not ruled by legislation and no act of the Senate will have the slightest impact on how fast or how well immigrants learn English. Studies have shown that overwhelming majorities of immigrants are eager to learn English and if they don’t, it is not for lack of desire or effort.

English is not a threatened language in the United States (or anywhere, for that matter). This is an English-speaking country and all trends indicate that it will remain an overwhelmingly English-speaking country as far into the future as anyone can predict.

The Salazar amendment is fairly innocuous. It doesn’t require or limit any government action and English is indeed the common language of the United States by any measure. Unifying is a bit trickier to measure, but it’s probably that too.

The Inhofe amendment, however, while largely symbolic could cause injury at the margins. If the purpose of government is to serve the people, then the government should make reasonable accommodations to provide information and services in the languages of its constituents. While there is nothing in the amendment to prevent this, it could serve as an excuse not to provide assistance to non-English speakers when such assistance should be provided. It won’t improve the acquisition of English by immigrants and has potential for alienating and disenfranchising them even further.

Molecular Mixology

12 May 2006

This Wednesday’s New York Times had an article by Peter Meehan ("Two Parts Vodka, a Twist of Science") that used the term molecular mixology, the practice of applying knowledge of chemistry and cooking techniques to make distinctive cocktails–I almost wrote original instead of distinctive, except that it seems most of these new cocktails are variants of old classics, like the Martini, instead of being new creations. The term was new to me, so I looked for its origin.

Meehan’s article stated that molecular mixology is a variant of an earlier term, molecular gastronomy, the application of scientific principles to cooking. Newspaper articles are notorious for getting etymologies wrong, but this time Meehan has got it right. The earliest use of molecular mixology that I could find is from 10 October 2004 on http://www.inicon.net ("The new international community forum for molecular gastronomy"):

Molecular Mixology (October 10, 2004, 11:53:01 PM) Hello all . . . I am doing some research into the possibilities presented for a ‘Molecular’ approach to cocktail production.

Its predecessor, molecular gastronomy, is one of those few words we actually know the exact circumstances of its creation. It was coined by physical chemist Hervé This and physicist Nicholas Kurti in 1988 and is, according to This:

�the scientific exploration of culinary and, more generally, gastronomical transformations and phenomena, as described either by culinary books or by cooks. Of course, Molecular Gastronomy is part of food science, but it focuses on (mainly home or restaurant) culinary transformations and eating phenomena (generally ‘gastronomy’) rather than physical and chemical structure of ingredients or transformations done by the food industry.

This goes on about how they chose the term:

I proposed that we use the name Molecular Gastronomy, but Nicholas resisted my chemical inclination and insisted that we also indicate that some processes are not chemical, but physical: we agreed that it would be an International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy. One remark: it has been sometimes asked why we did not call it Molecular and physical cooking, which would have avoided this pompous gastronomy. Nicholas and I knew that it was not appropriate, because we wanted to use science in order to examine culinary processes, certainly, but also some phenomena that arise when we are eating. For example, is there a way to avoid the astringent taste of tea? Which kind of wine is to be drunk as we are eating salad? Which kind of spoon should be used as we are eating oeuf à la coque?

(From Molecular gastronomy: a scientific look to cooking, Hervé This, INRA Group of Molecular Gastronomy, Collège de France, Paris, 2004, .)

The term mixology is much older. I had assumed it was a 20th century coinage and was surprised to find that it dates to the 19th century. The first citation of mixology in the OED3 is from 1891 in the title of W.T. Boothby’s Cocktail Boothby’s American bartender: the only practical treatise on the art of mixology published. It is a backformation of the older mixologist, a bartender, which the OED3 has from 1856 when it appeared in The Knickerbocker magazine:

Who ever heard of a man’s�calling the barkeeper a mixologist of tipicular fixins?

Of course mixology, molecular or ordinary, is all about cocktails, a word whose origin is not nearly as clear the one’s we’ve been discussing. Earlier this year, David Barnhart posted the earliest known use of cocktail to the American Dialect Society’s email discussion list. It’s from The Farmer’s Cabinet, 28 April 1803:

Drank a glass of coctail–excellent for the head�Call’d at the Doct’s. found Burnham–he looked very wise–drank another glass of cocktail

In response to Barnhart’s posting, Fred Shapiro followed up with a citation from around 1789 in The Prelateiad; or, the Rape of the Holy Bottle:

All Ceylon’s spicy gifts its moisture mends, And Kyan’s Pep. its cock-tail virtue lends.

The context is apparently that of alcoholic drinks (Kyan’s Pep. is probably a reference to cayenne pepper). The use of cocktail in this passage, however, may not be a direct reference to a drink. Instead, it is likely that it is an adjectival sense of cocktail that dates to at least 1600 and is used to denote something stimulating, something that cocks the tail. If so, it still provides a clue to the origin of cocktail, hinting that the modern noun sense may come from this earlier adjectival usage.

Sit, Google, Sit

5 May 2006

Objections in China over the name Google has chosen for itself in Mandarin. An online petition is circulating asking Google drop the name Guge. The name Guge is represented by the Chinese ideograms for harvest and song, or it can mean valley song or grain song. Chinese users of the search engine believe it has rural or traditional connotations, the opposite image the high-tech giant should be trying to cultivate.

A survey of Chinese internet users last year by the China Internet Network Information Company found that over half of the respondents failed to spell Google correctly. The search engine company is trying to counter this by pairing its English name with the Chinese name.

Some have suggested that Google be known as gougou, or dog dog. A suggestion that Google flatly rejects. Others suggest the English-Chinese blend Good gou, or good dog, in acknowledgement of Google’s behavior toward the Chinese government.

(Source: Straits Times, 22 & 30 April 2006)

Immigrants & The English Language

5 May 2006

This past Monday was A Day Without An Immigrant, a one-day strike by immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, to demonstrate the economic importance of immigrant labor in the United States and to protest a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would make illegal immigration a felony.

This past week also saw a stir over a Spanish-language version of the national anthem, with many believing it is unpatriotic to sing the song in any language other than English.

As this newsletter is about language, this week we look at a couple of myths and misconceptions about immigrants and the English language.

Myth: Immigrants Don’t Want To Learn English

"I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English."
– George W. Bush, 28 April 2006

A common complaint is that immigrants today, unlike those of past generations, make little effort to learn English–this is simply not true. Most who come to this country as children will learn to speak English fluently and those who come as adults will fail, but not through lack of will to do so.

79% of first-generation Mexican immigrants who come to the U.S. as children will learn to speak English well. The percentage of Chinese immigrant children who will do so is 88%. The difference in the numbers is that Mexicans are much more likely to live in Spanish-speaking communities and, therefore, have somewhat less opportunity to encounter English. But even so, the vast majority of Mexican children who come to the U.S. will learn to speak English. (Source)

The number of adult immigrants who learn to speak English well is much lower, but then language acquisition in general sharply declines with age. Immigrants who come to the U.S. before the age of eight will perform as well as native-born Americans on English language tests. Those who immigrate between the ages of eight and fifteen will score progressively worse the older they were at the time they came to the United States. And those that immigrate when even older will score the worst of all, but the results among adult immigrants do not correlate with age. In other words, sometime in the teens humans start losing the ability to learn new languages. It’s not impossible to learn new languages as adults, but most people find it very hard to do so. (Source: Newport, E. Maturational constraints on language learning. Cognitive Science, 14, 1990)

Adult immigrants don’t fail to learn English because they don’t want to. They fail because they adults in general find it very hard to learn new languages.

Myth: The large numbers of Hispanic immigrants will create a permanent split in this country between Spanish and English speakers.

The fear is that Spanish-speaking families will create and maintain a permanent division in this country by language–this is not true.

By the second generation (those born in the U.S.), nearly all speak English. Most children of immigrants will speak the immigrant language at home, but will also be fluent in English. This is the bilingual generation–in all ethnic groups, English fluency is nearly universal in the second generation.

By the third generation, over 70% will speak English and no other language. In other words, by the time you get to the grandchildren of immigrants, most will no longer speak the immigrant language at all.

This holds for almost all immigrant groups being studied, including Hispanics in general and Mexicans, the largest immigrant group, in particular. The grandchildren of non-Mexican Hispanics have a greater tendency to learn Spanish as well as English, but more than 60% will know only English. The only third generation ethnic group that has less than 60% of English-only speakers are Dominicans, who are 44% bilingual in the third generation.

And these numbers are not changing significantly with the rise in the numbers of Hispanic immigrants in the 1990s. In the 1990 census, 64% of third-generation Mexican-Americans spoke only English. By 2000, this had risen to 71%. (Source)

So we will not see a permanent division in this country by language. The immigrant generation will speak a language other than English. Their children will be bilingual. And their grandchildren will speak English only. This is the way it has always been. It’s the way it is now. And we have every reason to suspect that it will be the way of the future as well. The primacy of the English language in the United States is secure.

Antedating: General For Attorney General

14 April 2006

Back in the issue of 31 March, I stated that the practice of addressing the US attorney general as general dated to the Clinton administration. Hugh Rawson has written me with an antedating of the term to the Nixon administration and Attorney General John Mitchell. In his book Blind Ambition, John Dean quotes G. Gordon Liddy as saying to Mitchell on 27 January 1972, "Now, General, this operation will be equipped with its own operational arm."