Re: bilingualism

[Andrew Sieber <absieber@eos.ncsu.edu>]

John Hodges wrote:
> I also considered the politics of Esperanto, the goal of a "universal second
> language", ideally sponsored by all the world's governments. One major
> source of resistance I saw was the fear that the second language would usurp
> the first, as it would be spoken more widely and would therefore be more
> useful; I thought perhaps this fear could be overcome if the sponsoring
> governments made it AGAINST policy/law to teach it or speak it to anyone
> under the age of (12, 14, 16, choose.) It would then NOT be a "language of
> the home", it would be a language you learned in your first year of "Foreign
> language" study in the schools. Children could/would learn any other
> langage(s) in the home, but Esperanto would thus be prevented from ever
> being anyone's first language.
RANT-ON
If my government ever has the arrogance to try to prevent me from
teaching any particular language to my child, I can guarantee that there
will be SEVERE consequences.
There are some people who are more in favor than other people of
governmental intervention in social issues, and indeed there are some
truly radical interventionists (who just happen to have gained
significant power in the United States over the past few decades) who
want governmental control of which organizations you financially
support, which "poor" people you give money to, how you invest for your
retirement, what you may eat, what you may drink, smoke, inhale, inject,
marry or have sexual intercourse with, but I have NEVER heard of someone
advocating that the government take responsibility for deciding which
language a child is allowed to learn.  This reeks of the concept of
"Newspeak" in the book _1984_.
RANT-OFF

I normally don't introduce any political ideology into my postings to
non-political mailing lists, but I simply must object to John's idea.

--Andrew
absieber@eos.ncsu.edu