A while ago, or maybe not a while, I should say quite some time ago, the Congress of the United State of America had started a vote. The role of this vote is to consider which language would be the official language of this country, German or English. It is now known as the Muhlenberg Vote. The result is English won over German in a tight competition.
Of course it is a hoax. It was a failed attempt to translate government official documents to German during that period. However, this story is just the tip of the iceberg, which represent a long lasting debate of which language should be considered official of the United State. One recent poll today showed that there are 90% people here are capable of speaking English, while 12.5% fluently speak Spanish. It also revealed that over one million US citizens speak Vietnamese as well. What do these numbers mean?
Apparently, they means that most business and official documents have to adapt to the languages of those people. A good and straight forward example is when you have to call T-Mobile for their service, you will hear a short "Welcome to T-Mobile" in English just a second before they storm you with a 30 seconds long Spanish welcome message. Sometime I wonder why "Welcome to T-Mobile" can be translated into such a long paragraph in Spanish. Naturally, I have a feeling that those Spanish speaking people have some more information that are not available to me.
Envy is one of the seven deadly sin. Guess what, I am going to hell for being jealous with them. Lucky for me, I am not a Christian. However, language diversity is really a worth mentioning topic if someone wants to talk about US culture. After all, United State also implies that this country united every races, ethnics, cultures and languages. You never know the person who sits next to you in the bus can speak English or not, unless you try to talk to them. Although, for me, my chance of trying to starting a conversation with a person who just talked in his/her strange language a moment ago is really low. There is an invisible barrier exists between people of this "united" country. Everyone is working, learning hard to get over it, but it is still there.
Now, imagine the vote I mentioned was real, and German won over English. Needless to say, you are reading this post in German. Moreover, Hitler could have won the war, who knows?
Oh I see. Indeed, I would also love to hear Russian as an optional language on the phone services! :) By the way, did you pick an American name for yourself? How often do you use it? How do you feel about it?
ReplyDeleteGlad you asked. Yes I did. My American name is Leonard Vu. Leonard means Brave Lion and it has a German origin. I told every American I know to call me in that name, or a cuter form of it: Lenny.
ReplyDeleteAll so I named some of my characters in the novel that name too. :D
I feel more confident with that name, because from now on, people here will feel easier to remember my name.
I'm glad it helps you and the people around you! But at Starbucks, they may still get it wrong. Just kidding. : )
ReplyDeleteI am not into cafe so Starbucks can be out of my wishlist :)
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